First 5K of 2017

I ran my first 5K of the year last night. The only other one was 14 months ago in September 2016. Last night's effort was a good 7 minutes faster than that. What's more, while last year I had got completely exhausted after the run, last night I was feeling pretty strong. I could have gone on for another km or more. But then I didn't want to risk an injury by jumping straight from 4K to 6 or 7K.

Of course the weather was fantastic last evening. After Wednesday's day long untimely rain, Thursday was a lot cooler. It didn't rain but the sky was overcast. It was mildly breezy also. Perfect weather for a Calcuttan. Neither too cold, nor too hot. I didn't feel the humidity also.

Last year's 5K was run in humid September.

I had been running 4K for a couple of weeks and last night just felt like going for the 5K. Significantly, my 5th kilometer was faster than the 4th by 20 seconds. This shows I was feeling pretty strong towards the end.

My aim is to stick to this distance for a couple of weeks and then go for 6K where I intend to stay for another week or so before pushing to 7k. Before the end of winter I want to be able to do 10k. 

My First 5K

The other evening I ran my life's first 5 km. Let me write down the experience for posterity. First off - here is my map of the run from Strava. The original information was captured on my Garmin Forerunner 15, which was synced to Strava. That might sound too much of technology to many :-) But you can easily ignore that bit and not miss anything. 

I was running some 4 km more or less consistently for the last few weeks before this. On this particular evening I thought I would give 5K a try. Perhaps walk for a few hundred meters and then run again. I shall not save the run at 4K on my Garmin. As it turned out, I did not hear the beep at 4 km. When I looked at my watch it was showing 4.11 km. I stopped running but kept on walking. I was quite out of breath actually. This was on the other side of the Lake.

After walking for 200 meters I felt strong enough to run again. The heart beat per second had also come down considerably. So I started again in right earnest to stop only after hitting 5K. This part of the run was not as tough as I had imagined it might be. I could have gone on for some more distance perhaps. But then one has to remember the knees and other ligaments that may not keep pace with my enthusiasm :-)

I have noticed that on holidays and weekends, after a full day's rest when I run in the evening I do better - both in terms of distance and speed. On certain bad humid and breeze less, working days I can barely run for 2 kms.

My timing wasn't anything great. But I know I can bring it down in winter. Or perhaps in the morning also. I am not worried about that. My best timing over 4 km so far is 27 minutes. I think I clocked that some time in December 2015. Which is a little less than 7 min per km pace. I am sure with consistent practice it will come down to perhaps 6 min per km. But the tragedy is that every day I am getting old and getting slower. A classic case of running to stand still :-)

I must explain here why there is such a long gap between this entry and the previous one. Last year from January onwards I was getting bogged down by one after the other ailments that did not let me run. Finally I went to Chadar trek in late January and broke my wrist. This virtually put an end to my running. It may sound funny. But it indeed is impossible to be in a frame of mind to run when your wrist is recovering from a one-month long cast.

It took me quite a few months to come out of that phase and start to run again. I built up the distance slowly but steadily. Now I am trying to run 4 km every alternate evening. But I must admit on certain bad days I do finish the evening at 2 km. Of course I am not counting the 1+1 km walk to and from home to the starting point.