New Year's V02 Max Blast

Ran a really tough 5K course yesterday at the Stow Great New Year's Race. The course was a very hilly out and back on country roads with 4 or 5 legit climbs. The last hill at 2.5 miles give or take was brutal. Pretty happy with the way I ran considering I haven't done anything fast since Seattle. With this in mind I decided to be conservative in the early stages. After a controlled 5:49 opening mile I maintained my effort and hit 11:37 for 2 miles. Even though I was running the same pace, I felt like I was picking it up because so many people who went out too hard. The third mile was pretty tough with the aforementioned hill but I managed to hit 17:30 at that marker so not too much slow down. The finish, however, was further away than it should have been if the 3 mile mark was accurate as I hit the line in 18:19. Normally I do the last .1 a good 16-17 seconds faster than I did yesterday. In any case, a good effort. I was 20th overall and 1st in 45-49 by default as the winner of my age group was the overall masters winner clocking an impressive 17:39.

I wore my heart rate monitor in the race and actually got up to 178 so 5 bpm higher than I did on those hill repeats. This leads me to believe my max might be low 180s. The 208- .5 x age formula has me at 182, which might be pretty close. My overall average for the race was 166 but that takes into account the fact that I built up from the start. I didn't hit 160 until about 5 minutes into the race but once I got a bit past the mile mark, I got into the red zone pretty fast staying above 170 for the whole second half of the race.