3000m sub 9
Today I had the first competition in 2008. It was the Central-Finnland Championship (Keski-Suomen hallimestaruuskilpailut) and I ran the 3.000m. The performance of finishing 3rd in 8:57,60 min was reasonable. Taking into account that I only had one fast track session this year (5x800), my aim was to run under 9 minutes and well I've done it. I know that I don't have the best speed but with this time I'm confident that I can run 5K under 15 minutes in the summer time. So far I never ran a timed 5K under 15, even though the second half of my 10K personal best (30:04min) was faster than 15.
The rest of the week was somewhat awkward: monday I had to run on treadmill (16,2K in 1 hour) because the indoor track was not accesible (there was a football match going on). On Tuesday evening I went for cross-country skiing - the first time on finnish snow! This unusual exercise might have caused the problems that I had in my foot on Wednesday and Thursday. I guess there was an inflammation and it was smetimes quite painful. In fact so painful that I had to cut the morning exercises short and Th. evening I only could go for 1h spinning on the bike. After this misery I was not sure if I could compete at all on the weekend, but Friday was ok (no pain during jogging) so I could go for it.