Alright, so the Chuy’s 5K is tomorrow. Planning a strategy for this race has been pretty difficult. I’ve been ignoring my calf soreness, assuming that it will have faded by tomorrow morning; I sure hope that it will have gone away. I’m not doing any running today, maybe a small upper body workout but that’ll be it.

The overall layout of the new course is pretty simple. Its basically a square. The first leg goes North, and its up and down (mostly up) through a nice, hilly neighborhood. Some of the hills are pretty durn steep, too - I ran through part of the course last Sunday. The second leg, running East, is slightly uphill but nothing compared to the first leg (I’ve been told that it feels flat in comparison). The third leg, South, is mostly downhill with one or two small uphills for variety. The final leg, Westbound on LAB, is almost dead flat - maybe rising 5-10 feet overall.

So here’s my current thinking. I’m going to make sure that I’ve done one or two miles of warmup ending about 15 minutes before the start, to toss me over to fat-burning rather than glycogen-burning mode and to give me enough time to get some really good warm stretching in. Maybe take a Gu at that point, maybe not.

During the race itself, I’m going to run the uphill portion hard, as if its a two mile race rather than a three miler - going for an 8:00 pace. I did just do this at a 9:05 as part of my last LSD run, so I think that’s attainable. As the course gets easier, for the 2nd leg, I want to keep my pace the same and bring my effort down to a 3-2 breathing level (3 steps in, 2 steps out). For the downhill, I can step things up again and try to keep my effort the same, but speeding up a bit to a 7:00 pace or thereabouts. Finally, once we make the final turn, I want to kick up the effort to a 2-2 breathing level and try to keep the pace down in the 7s, with a final 100m all-out kick at the end.

I know that my overall cardio condition has continued to improve. My legs are stronger, and my form is getting better. I think the main questions will have to do with how my calf performance running through Scenic affects the rest of the race, and if my (relatively weak) quads can hold up comfortably for over half a mile of downhill speed.

I’d really like to break 25:00, but I realize that this is a challenging 5K. Whatever happens, it looks like its a really fun and interesting course, so I’m sure I’ll have a good time. Stay tuned for the results and, as always, advice will be read, enjoyed, and appreciated (if not always followed).

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