Last Friday’s fast effort resulted in me running 5K in 22:21. The splits were 4:30, 4:35, 4:32, 4:28, and 4:17. In fact, my final 3K was run in 13:16, which was noticeably faster than the standalone 3K of 13;33 I ran last week. I must be doing something right, but there’s still a lot improvement still to come.

I’ve come up with an interesting challenge for myself – to maintain my times for each distance between 100 metres and a marathon at less than double the current world record. For example, the 100 metres world record is 9:58 seconds, so as long as I’m running it in under 19:16 secs, I’ve achieved my goal for that distance. The marathon world record, for example, is 2:01:09, so I need to run it in under 4:02:18 to achieve my goal for that distance.

I’ll start attacking these goals in the months to come, although I’ve already achieved some of them. My 5K last week is just 1.77 times the world record of 12:35.4, and my 3K time of 13:16 is 1.81 times the world record of 7:20.7. Likewise, the 3:48 I ran for 1K last month is 1.73 times the world record of 2:11.96. Let’s see how I go with other distances, but I’m confident I can go under twice the world record for every distance.

The older I get, the slower I’ll become, so there will come a time when I can’t run any distance in under twice the world record. But at least it gives me something to aim for in the interim. Let’s see how old I can get and still be capable of this achievement. It’s a bit of a strange goal, but one that makes sense when you know you’ll never be running any outright PBs again.