Iron Pol

In many situations, odds of 1 in 4 would be pretty good.  Considering multi-state lottery odds are usually in the 1 in 150 million range, 1 in 4 is pretty decent.  Of course, there are situations were 1 in 4 is something we'd rather not hear.  Most people diagnosed with a condition that kills 1 in 4 patients would have grave concerns.

Then there's the Bellin 10K run.  Last year, a sub-42 minute 10K was sufficient to qualify for the elite start corral.  This year, they changed that requirement, lowering it to 40 minutes.  That's a thousand meters every four minutes.  1 in 4.  Long odds, as I see it.

With the race a few short months away, I wanted to get a feel for where I was in the quest to meet the new time requirement.  So I ran a 5K training run using intervals of 4 minutes in zone 4 and 2 minutes active recovery (trying to get my heart rate back down near zone 2).  The actual distance I covered was 3.14 miles.  My time was 19:55.

Given the same pace over the second half, I would complete 6.28 miles in 39:50.  That's just enough to meet the new target.  The one minor positive is that the race is only 6.2 miles.  The one HUGE negative is that I don't think I could maintain that pace for another 5K.  Of course, I do have until June 14th to add speedwork to the training mix and improve those times.  Still, running sub-40 this year requires an improvement of nearly two minutes over last year.

Since nobody ever accused me of being sensible and realistic when it comes to improving my times, I think I'll shoot for it.  My first Bellin was 55 minutes.  The second was 45 minutes.  The third was 41:22.  Of course, I'm getting closer to the pointy end of the field, and shaving time is becoming more and more challenging.

Still, it's good to have goals...

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