SMC 5k - "Training Speed? Please report to the startline..."

Pretty damned cold this morning.

Tried something a little different today, up at 5am for a very strong cup of coffee with a spoonful of honey to make it palatable. Yeah, that strong - I normally have it straight black. Spoon was just about standing up in it.

Bit of a rude shock to see 9 on the car thermometer, and on arrival at Smithfield with JD the number flipped to a fairly intimidating 6.

Caught up with the crowd, got through a reasonable warm up, did some drills, and got over to the start. Headed off from the start, with Uncle Dave (doing the 10k) and 2b (who won the last two 35+ age 5ks but won't have done the required 6 races) leading us out. I figured out at about the 1k mark that I wasn't going to able to go with them so just ran on perceived effort.

From then on, it was a pretty lonely run. I tried to avoid looking at the watch, except at the turnaround (9 minutes dead, where I had a quick glance at the field coming up to the cone and figured second outright was pretty safe) and a quick glance on approaching the cones on the final curve right).

Picture courtesy of Johnny Dark and Coolrunning

18:00, 1 second better than February. Effort felt pretty even throughout, with what I felt was a pretty reasonable last kilometre to make up for the climb just before it. Just felt a bit 'speed restricted' through the run - possibly some residual fatigue from a hard week, or the cold, hard to tell.

As I said to a few people, I'm getting a wee bit frustrated that I'm not converting good training into results at the moment. I managed 17:40 here back in January. I realise I need to be patient, keep doing the work and stay focussed on the longer term goal of Gold Coast, but it'd been nice to turn in some nice numbers along the way.

Had a pleasant cool down along the back loop of the long run course, with a bit of a chat with Bernie G and Psychoma.

Good to catch up with the crowd afterwards. The two Garmin 305 debutants ran PBs - I can't reveal one of them, but Aunty Karin ran an impressive 10k only two weeks after the Canberra 50k and a tough 'brick' tri session on the bike and in the pool yesterday. Horrie put up an impressive return to form, too.

Damn fresh though - thank goodness for the hot showers...