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Finish off your next sprint-distance race in style

6 Tips for nailing a 5 km PB in your next sprint triathlon

Photo by: Kevin Mackinnon

Running a fast time in a sprint-distance triathlon is never easy, which is why it’s so exciting when you cross the finish line of a race and realize you’ve shaved time off your personal best (PB). But what’s the key to hitting a PB, especially after you’ve completed 750 m of swimming and 20 km of hard cycling? Unfortunately, there’s no one thing you can do to guarantee that you’ll PB at your next race, but there are ways you can improve your chances of nailing that run. We’ve got some tips that should help triathletes of all levels nail the run in their next short-distance tri.

1. Run your goal pace in training

Yeah, pretty obvious, but worth saying. If you want to run a sub-20-minute 5K, you have to train at 3:59 per-kilometre pace or quicker so your body can get used to running that fast and for a sustained effort. You shouldn’t always train at your goal pace, but make sure you have a couple of speed sessions a week during which you run at that speed or faster.

2. Focus on pacing

Go into your race knowing exactly what pace you need to hold in order to hit your PB. If you have a GPS watch, make sure you check on your pace throughout the run to ensure you’re not going too slowly or too quickly. If you don’t have a GPS watch, that’s no problem, a regular old stopwatch will work fine. In that case, you’ll need to memorize your goal splits for each kilometre, and when you pass the various checkpoints along the route, you can check your time and make sure you’re on pace to meet your goal.

Another key for pacing well in a 5 km occurs at the start of the run. While your legs will often feel pretty rough coming off the bike, it is surprisingly easy to get swept up in the moment at the beginning of a run. If you go too fast too soon, though, you could ruin your whole run in the first kilometre. In a longer race, you can get away with an early-kilometres pacing mistake, as you’ll have time to recover (you’ll still pay for it, so try to avoid this in any race), but with five km of running, you can’t afford to hit a wall in the second and third kilometre, because by the time you get back to your goal pace, your PB race-day performance will be out of reach. Start at your goal pace and, if you feel good, you can push it faster, but it’s misguided to start faster than planned and hope you can hold on until the finish.

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3. Put your PB in context

In training, you may get caught up in dreaming of race day glory and the possibility of smashing your PB, but in a sprint event, it’s really hard to PB by a big margin. Think about it: if you want to go just 10 seconds faster than your current PB, you have to run two seconds quicker per kilometre than you have previously. Then there are so many other variables to consider, like the swim conditions and level of wind on the bike. 

Photo: Kevin Mackinnon

4. Get out of your head

If you aren’t feeling great before or during your race, don’t let that bring you down mentally. Just because you start slow doesn’t mean you can’t make up for it later in the run, but if you get down on yourself, you’ll pretty much guarantee a poor run split. In those situations, remind yourself that the worst-case scenario in terms of your PB-chasing has already happened—you’re behind your goal pace—so you have nothing left to lose. You might as well drop the hammer and try to climb as close to your goal pace as possible. You may surprise yourself and end up nailing a great run after all.

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5. Be realistic

As we age up, we have to re-evaluate what hitting a PB means. Unless you’re a very special triathlete, you’re not going to be running close to the times that you were posting in your teens, 20s or 30s. With that in mind, as you get older, you need to set realistic, age-appropriate goals. Figure out what a reasonable goal time is for your next race and chase that.

6. Believe in yourself

This is cliche, we know, but it’s true that the only way to run a truly great result is if you believe that you can. Everyone has doubts on race day, but when those negative thoughts creep into your head, silence them by reminding yourself of all the training you’ve put in over the past months to get you to this position. Trust that you’ve done all that you can to give yourself the best shot at a great run and then go chase it.