My journey to the sub-20 5k – will 2019 be the year?

When I ran my first 5K race about 3 years ago, my only goal was to finish . I walked, ran, puffed, and sweated my way to a finish time of over 30 minutes. But as the months went by and I continued running on a regular basis my 5K times started to drop. And I started to wonder if someday I would be able to run that distance in under 20 minutes . So the sub-20 5K became somewhat of a “pie-in-the-sky” goal that I hoped I could reach sometime in the distant future. Over the next two-and-a-half years my times kept dropping little by little.  Finally, in the fall of 2018, I was able to break 21 minutes in the Jen Hacker Memorial 5k (video – results). Here is a complete list of the 5k races I’ve participated in to date:

So now, the goal that was far off in the distance now has become my biggest running goal for 2019.  By the end of this year I would like to get it done. This is probably a bit ambitious, considering that I hope to run an ultra marathon (maybe a 50 miler) in the fall, and training for that will obviously look a bit different than training for a fast 5k.  The fact that I typically run only three times a weeks makes both of those goals even harder to attain. But, as they say, it is better to aim high and miss than aim low and hit. Wish me luck, and I’ll try to keep you up-to-date on this blog.