Racing a SLOW 5K Today!

.... well.... the *COURSE* is fast.... it's just that *I* will be slow....

This will be the first Brian Kraft 5K that I've raced where I haven't raced another race earlier in the year. I didn't do a random fat bike race in the winter. I didn't race a random road race in March. I didn't race the Get in Gear 10K in April. I didn't race a duathlon earlier this month. I'm just going into this 5K naked. No sense of any speed.

And I've only got 1 real speed workout under my belt since late March because I hurt my calf on April 1st. So it's going to be ugly.

Not to mention that I posted about all my poor long runs over the weekend. It just hasn't been a fast April or May for me. And that's after just starting to feel better about a glute issue from January.

The good news is that my Garmin is telling me that my training status has been "productive" for a long while, so I'm moving in the right direction:

You can see my most recent injury within those "training status" numbers if you look back over the last 12 weeks: I hurt my calf on the 1st of April, tried running again on the 3rd, and then took it easy from that point on taking over a week off from running. So it shows "recovery" from April 6-14, then two days of "maintaining," and then I've been "productive" since then:

So, what goals do I have for the 5K? Just not to re-injure my calf. That's it. I'd love to see sub-3:00 half-mile splits for all 6 splits, but I don't know if that's possible. If that IS possible, my next thought would be to break 18:00 (5:47 pace, or 3:53 half-mile splits), but that's a dream. There's little chance that that will happen, and 0 chance that I'll be any faster than that. I could easily run my slowest 5K in about 20 years if I'm slower than the 2018 Hot Dash where I ran 18:36 which was also an "early season" race, but I had an 8K 2 weeks before that so I didn't feel as "naked" as going into that race.

I don't know if I'll go out too slow and have a big kick. Or if I'll go out too hard and crash and burn (like I did in that slow 5K in 2018). Or if I'll feel fine but not post an amazing time.

We'll see how I end up! Be back with a race report as soon as I can!