Fat, Slow, Dying
Negativity is back
It’s time to get back to what this website was founded on. "Oh I think I’ve found self esteem through powering up hills”, “Pushing myself to my limit gives me purpose.” Shut the fuck up. That’s over because what we’re doing here is simply not good enough.
Speed work and interval workouts are a good time and generally far more interesting than dragging yourself along at 5/10 effort for 8 miles getting annoyed because your heart rate has STILL crept into Zone 3 and now you’re buring carbs instead of fat and your mitrochondrial function is not improving the way you want. Is this why anyone starts running? No, but here I am.
So why was today such a failure? I was very much looking forward to this run because it is the sort of thing I want to do all the time. I’m being smart, I’m following the training plan and not injuring myself or getting burnt out but I’ve been desperate to be let off the leash these last few weeks and see just how fast I can run 5k or 10k. This is a ladder or pyramind workout where you stack smaller intervals up to a large one and then do the same in reverse on the way back down. In this case it was a five minute warm up followed by some stretching and then one minute at mile pace, five minutes at 5k pace, and then 10 minutes at 10k pace. You get three whole minutes to recover, and then 5k pace again, and close out with another minute at mile pace. I will break these down as they happened. I will also show the GPS discrepancy between the Nike app that is using iPhone GPS and my Polar watch which is using some satellities they lease I guess.
Warm-Up - 5 minutes
Uneventful just like it should be. Very light jog along the West Side Highway trying to catch a light so I can get over to to the park. The Nike app tells you to manually pause the run after this to stretch but it’s motion activated so if you try to get out of the way of other runners it just restarts. Annoying, but not a catastrophe.
Mile Pace - 1 Minute
Mile pace is so sick. You’re just out there kicking. You look great because no one else is running that fast and no one knows you only need to keep it going for one minute. As far as they can tell you’re a 2:20 marathoner.
Nike Pace: 7:25/mi
Polar Pace: 6:20/mi
(One minute recovery which I did walking. You have the option to do it however you want. I don’t like standing still and I’m not fit enough to jog it out, so I’m walking.)
5K Pace - 5 Minutes
I feel like I hit this pretty hard and it’s the way I want to be running all the time. I ran out onto Pier 34 and I was behind a guy in a Boston Marathon singlet. Adidas will sell them to anyone, but let’s assume he actually did get in to Boston. I stayed stride for stride with him at what felt like 7:30/mi or so. Make no mistake, I was feeling this. I don’t think this is actually 5K pace. It might be 3000m pace. I don’t think I could sustain it for the 23 minutes or so it would take to run a 5K. Either way, strong running.
Nike Pace: 8:02/mi
Polar Pace: 7:56/mi
(2:30 recovery)
10K Pace - 10 Minutes
Here’s where it goes wrong. I don’t actually know what my 10K pace should be. I have not run a 10K time trial or anything in a long time. For years I’ve just run and whatever happens happens. Some are fast, some are slow. I’m very much looking forward to the half marathon and I’d like to do the full marathon at some point. Running Western States is an insane fantasy but regular people can do it(I would die from altitude sickness) but here’s the thing. Any asshole can grind out a marathon. With the greatest respect to people who put a lot of time and effort into this, the time limit for the New York marathon is six and a half hours.
Do you know how much of a psycho you have to be to run a sub-30 10K? You might say “The world record is 26:11. Is that even realistic?” and the answer is “Kind of.” Taisto Mäki ran the first sub-30 10K on September 17, 1939 when he ran 29:52.6, so the world record has only improved by 3:41.6 in 84 years. You can become exceptional and still be nowhere near elite. It’s a harsh truth for those at the highest level, but it also means you can be an outrageously good amateur.
One of the stated goals of True Jock Agony is to get my 10K below 45 minutes. I have a stretch goal in mind that I’m not saying out loud because I don’t want to get yelled at, so imagine my disappointment when I pushing hard to finish 10 minutes at what I believe is an ideal 10K pace to find that it was 1. Not that fast 2. Exhausting.
Yes this can keep improving and yes I’m clearly doing the right things to make it improve but Jesus Christ.
NOT TO MENTION THAT SOMEHOW, MY WATCH LOST 22 SECONDS OF A TIMED 10 MINUTE INTERVAL. I don’t know how this happens but the pace was nearly identical either way.
Nike Pace: 8:28/mi
Polar Pace: 8:27/mi
(3 minutes recovery)
5K Pace - 5 Minutes
I knew I was in trouble during the recovery walk. I did not feel good and I couldn’t hype myself up for this. I got started at a decent pace but felt stuck in second gear. I just knew that if I pushed a little harder I would have to stop and walk so I tried to keep running strong while staying within myself. I felt sick. I did not want to puke in front of the tennis courts and pulled up. I walked for maybe 50 meters and then ran out the rest.
Junk. Garbage. Weak.
Nike Pace: 8:32/mi
Polar Pace: 8:08/mi (My watch recorded this 5 minutes as 4:49, so I think it just cut some walking out entirely)
(2:30 recovery)
Mile Pace - 1 Minute
I’ll give myself some credit here. I did find it within myself to finish with a solid minute at mile pace and felt like like I could have kept going if need be. It felt fast, but there’s a massive discrepancy between the phone and watch so who knows?
Nike Pace: 6:55/mi
Polar Pace: 6:19/mi
I’m very impatient. I remember being faster than this, and while everyone remembers being younger, if you never actually had a peak you can just keep getting better forever. I’m not talking about something that happened in 2008. It was maybe three years ago that I was regularly running 10Ks around 55 minutes. I ran a 2:09:XX(I forget the seconds) half mararthon with a disastrous drinking problem in 2018 and I cannot forsee a situation where I get under 2:15:00 on October 8th.
The pace on all these splits need to be 90 seconds faster for me to feel good about them. I need to be without exaggeration 20 pounds lighter and I realize that you have to be careful talking about weight when you are over by any objective measurement, average build, but that’s going to play a big part in getting that much faster.
I’ve decided to lose it about this today because work is absolutely miserable but no one wants to hear me complain about that anymore, so I’ve decided my only problem is that I’m slow. It’s novel enough that you can get hysterical about it in a fun way.
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