More summer pledges: the sub-20:00 5K

Summer is a good time to plan to accomplish things when you are in school. Sure, you may have a summer job, but it’s not like working at the cinema or the ice cream stand is so taxing on your youthful self that it prevents you from getting a lot done during the three months of the season. However, once you are done with school, summer is a terrible time to try to get things done. Your weekends are often spoilt by friends having barbecues or getting married, and you are still working at your regular job during the week.

Old habits die hard, which is why I have my summer reading list (I haven’t started yet, unless you count the preface to The Historian) and is why I am making a new summer goal of running a sub-20 minute 5K. I resolved this last night during one of my typical runs, when I realized that I like to run fast. I don’t often run fast, but I like it when I do. I also realized that I’m getting sick of the runs I go on all the time, and so is my body, which is very bad. I’m too used to doing the same old thing, which means that I’m not really getting any better at running or even getting in much better shape.

I’ve run several 5K races, and they are a great deal of fun: quick and intense. Back when I was younger, I even ran one at close to a sub-20:00 pace. I chose this particular time for my summer goal because it’s what I consider fast, but is not so brutal as to be impossible to attain for a casual runner. For reference, expert runners have around 15:00 or 16:00 5K times. A 20:00 5K is a 6:26 mile pace, which is fast, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not super-fast, and I need only maintain it for just over 3 miles.

This will be very hard, but I need some different training and a new goal to shake me out of my running doldrums. I’m going to find an Internet log to use to keep track of training times and distances, which I’ll link to shortly and which I hope to feed into Twitter (follow me at http://www.twitter.com/khren). The plan I’m using is Hal Higdon’s 5K Intermediate training plan. Anyone who feels like joining in, drop a comment and we’ll kill ourselves together.

EDIT: I found a good running log called Log Your Run that should do everything I want.  I’ll be setting it up with my plan this week.