runDisney Virtual Running Shorts 2017

I ran the first of three 5ks today. I did not do as well as I had hoped I’m not too concerned about my time, more being able to run and walk to the point where I can run a 5k without walking at all. However, comparing this to the time of my last 5k in November, I did so much worse. And if this was a 5k at Disney I would have been swept :'( this is why I’m so glad for the virtual races!

I did 1 min run/2 min walk because that’s comfortable, I had a bigger distance to cover, and I wanted to make sure I finished. I stuck to that pretty good, extending my walk time a little bit for the couple of large inclines. I finished in 53:40, so I ran at a 19 minute pace I got my pace down to 13 with that run/walk ratio before this race, so that was disappointing.

For my last 5k I made up my own run/walk ratio (the same in training) because I felt more tired doing the C25K ratios. I used distance not time and ran a 5k in 39 minutes with about 10 weeks of training beforehand. I tried going back to a C25K program for the VRS and stuck with timed run/walk ratios for my training and this race and with 5 weeks of training under my belt so far, I’m not sure if I’m better off doing it that way this time around or not. Just thinking out loud for a moment there. My next 5k will be in July, most likely toward the end of the month, and I hope to beat my time!

Thanks @kcboston for running “with me” today! That was super encouraging knowing someone else was hating life as much as me in that moment but seriously though, that was cool! :blush:

@nascfan Yeah it’s really hard to know what to do. After I tried a C25K program for my first 5k and wasn’t able to keep up with each week, I decided to make up my own training progression rather than stretch out a week of the C25K for several weeks. That seemed to work pretty well, but everyone encouraged me to go back to the C25K since it’s a proven program (for some people). So many of those claim you’ll be able to run a 5k after X many weeks of using their training program, so it seemed very structured and made me feel like I could see an end goal. “Stick with this for 10 weeks and you’ll run that 5k”. But like you said I think it’s making my performance a lot worse than if I run to failure, take a walk break, and then resume running like I did before. Next time I think I’ll go back to making up my own ratios. With the 1 min/2 min run/walk ratio I felt like I could keep going and going but overall I am much slower. With my first 5k I walked the first 5 minutes as a warm up, then ran a half mile (however long that took), walked 0.25 miles, ran a half mile, and just kept repeating until I did 3.1, and paid no attention to how much time it took to walk or run those distances. Got done 14 minutes quicker that way :|