Upcoming 5K Thoughts: Henry and Me!

Henry and I are racing the Brian Kraft 5K coming up shortly! He's put in some work this spring. Nearly 2 weeks ago, I took him on his 2nd longest run ever: he'd went on basically a 10K run with my wife early this spring, and 2 weeks ago he did 5 miles with me.

About 2 miles in, along River Parkway.


Crossing the Franklin Ave Bridge.


Running on the MPLS side of the river.


Pointing out the bald eagle nest that I always check on during my runs.
The arrow is pointing to a bald eagle peeking up from their nest.


Crossing back towards home across the Lake/Marshall Bridge.

He started by running 9:00 miles, and slowed down to around 10:00s by the end. He did 5.0 miles in 47:35, which includes a walk-break (I kept the time running).

Then last weekend, he wanted to do intervals on the track. I took him for 8x200 with 2:00 rest between. We had no time goals, but just to run hard for a few laps. He ran the first one in 0:47, and then mis-hit something on his watch and guessed that his 2nd was 0:41. "I don't know Henry... I don't think we can assume it was suddenly THAT much faster" I told him. But then the next one was 0:41... and the next 2 were 0:40! He was dropping time!

Here were his 8 splits from his 200s:

47, 41, 41, 40, 40, 38, 41, 38

= 40.75 sec average.

And he looked like he was FLYING the whole time:

As far as my recent training: I had a pretty NON-confidence boosting long run this week. It was just after a thunderstorm, and it was a bit humid... which I've learned zaps my speed. My "normal" long run is 11-12 miles with the middle 6 harder, and I said from the start that I was just going to do 5 miles harder so they could be faster. Well, those miles weren't any faster. Earlier this month, I had my best long run ever with those 6 harder miles at 6:04 pace. This last long run, I was only able to muster up 6:15 pace for 5 miles. Dang.

How do we hope to do at the race?

Henry hopes to shoot for a PR again! He ran a 22:50 at last month's 'Get in Gear' 5K, but he noted that he ran with another kid who really pulled him well. So he's not sure how well he'll do without a "race buddy" to help pace him. (That's decent insight!)

After I PRed a 5 mile and a 10K last month, I can honestly say that I'm NOT PLANNING TO PR THIS 5K!! I ran this race PERFECTLY last year (and on a nearly perfect morning to race), and if I race well coming up, I COULD beat that time (which was 17:29). But I have no goals of hitting my PR of 17:11 from when I was in my 20s. I don't have any specific goals: I don't need to hit XX:XX pace for the first half mile, don't hope to negative or positive split, and I don't really have any specific finish time goals. I'd LIKE to go sub 17:30 again, but I'm just really going to try to race hard and suffer a lot and see how I do.

Back with a dual race report soon!