Michael: Coming Up Short Again

The hoot of the owl

Whistles through the misty morn

Like a withered door.

Friday, July 5, 2019



After three months of speedwork I gained approximately two seconds over my previous 5k best for the year yesterday. But I’m not going to surrender yet to going under 20.



Earlier, possibly due to age, I had even forgotten that I had run a 5k already this year in 20:22.  Yesterday, over a very similar course – a gentle rolling one – I did very marginally better.



So what can I do to make a difference and gain those 20 seconds before my time’s up? First off, be smarter in picking a course. No more “relatively flat” sign ups. I’m not going to search out a pure downhill course as I feel that would be cheating, but whatever I do is going to have to be guaranteed to be fast and FLAT.



As far as training goes, I’m just going to continue doing speedwork once a week and hope that’ll keep me in the ballpark. I’ve got too many long trail aspirations to change much else with my training.



And even if I was convinced that exchanging my two bike rides a week for some type of running would get me there, it’s not worth it to me. Cycling in the summer is SoCal is just too much fun.



I will taper a bit more and make another attempt when I’m on vacation and my legs are just more overall better rested. It’s frustrating because it seems so doable. But that’s what makes racing fun; you either put up or shut up. And if I don’t get there, there won’t be any coulda, woulda, shoulda… I promise, I’ll just keep quiet about it.