5k's, Triathlon, Bike Ride??

Things are getting unusual on the workout front for me.

I've never been good at incorporating speed work into my training so the Weekly Back Cove 5k Series each summer is as close as I ever get to doing regular speed work. In the past 15 days I have now done 4 5k's, each one was getting progressively slower until last night when I managed (thanks to cool and damp weather) to pull out a slightly faster time for a new Back Cove PR of 19:33. Official results haven't been posted yet, but even if that's not quite the right time at least it's not slower than all my previous ones which is the direction I seemed to be going in.

Splits:
7:27 warm-up
race
6:06
6:25
6:24
0.1 mile @ 5:24
cool down
8:24
9:16
7:59

race time: 19:33
distance: 3.1 miles
pace: 6:18
place: 18/187

total time: 52:06
distance: 7.0 miles
pace: 7:24

Although the race felt fine I had a particular slow cool down run due to having eaten way too many eggs (they were about to expire so I ate as many as I could in one day, bad idea) and had to make a pit stop along the way. In fact, my stomach felt pretty rough all day so I was lucky to have a good run.

Backtracking to the TMR TNR at Twin Brook, I arrived a bit late and we started out with a pretty big group that quickly got broken up. I ended up running most of the way with Jim at a comfortable pace with a few up-tempo (but not sprint) sections thrown in. There is some kind of rail rebuilding going on in the notoriously wet area on the north side of TB, someone has finally realized that some of those "puddles" have been there for years and are probably wetlands where trails never should have been built in the first place. We avoided all the closed sections of trail and still managed to get our usual distance in even on an unusual route.

time: 48:23
distance: 5.62 miles
pace: 8:36

Monday night (still working backwards here) I went for a bike ride through South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. The weather was perfect for riding, about 70 degrees with a light breeze, and the roads were in great condition. There has been a bunch of repaving of the shoulder along Rt 77 and now it makes for fast riding. It was a great way to loosen up after the weekend running.

time: 51:15
distance: 15.53 miles
pace: 3:18

On Sunday I went to Point Sebago to compete in the Pirate Tri as a team with two of my co-workers. I was of course doing the running leg, but after having run 22 miles at Bradbury the day before I wasn't feeling particularly fast.

Despite setting off in the novice wave our swimmer Katherine proved that she is anything but a novice as she beat almost everone in her wave and even passed several swimmers who had started in the previous two waves. After a quick transition Kenji headed off on the 14 mile bike course and I went out for a warm-up on the run course. I figured that doing the whole 5k route would be a good way to loosen things up that were still feeling a little tight from the Bradbury run. I got back, stretched for a few minutes and it wasn't long until Kenji came in with a solid bike time. As soon as I set off I could tell that today's 5k pace wasn't quite where it should be. No problems, just a little sluggish. I had hoped that being on roads (as opposed to Back Cove) I'd be able to log a faster time but that wasn't going to happen.

I was happen to finish in 20:04. Our team ended up finishing second out of 5 mixed teams, and we beat all the same gender teams. The only team to beat us was anchored by another Trail Monster, Tom Whitaker who wasn't slowed down by the beer and pizza he had eaten the day before.

Full Results