23:09

I ran another of those pesky 5K's at 85-90% of max. Typically I chose a Dolphin Club race up in San Francisco. It started about a mile south of the Giants Ball park, circled the outside of the stadium twice and then came back that same mile to the finish.

Nice course. Flat and relatively fast. It was cool, sopped in with fog and with a light head wind going out. Even with a 22 minute warm up my blood was like sludge but I just got out a quickly as I could to drive my HR up into my target range and then just stayed there for the rest of the way. I didn't look at my splits. My last run at this effort had been 23:38. The one before that was at 24 minutes and change so I just hoped to "do better".

I was further up in the pecking order, running with folks that I knew generally ran in the high 22's and low 23's. Of course I wasn't racing them. They were just company while I ran to my HR. I picked it up if I dropped below range (85%) and slowed down slightly if I went over 90%. So it was simply a game against myself.

Anyway, I came across in 23:09 which was better than my last effort but still 2 minutes slower than I was running these in 2007 & early 2008 (prior to pulling my calf). It is hard for me to believe I will ever get that 2 minutes back.

Realistically, getting down into the 22's would be nice.

The total workout including my 5 minute "dump" run in my neighborhood was 60 minutes.

27 minutes warm up
23:09, 5K at 85-90%
10 minute warm down