In May, I ran the Menifee Half-Marathon. The opportunity presented itself and my coach, Sebastiian Bol (www.oxfos.com) thought it would be a good idea for me to run it as a training race, as I prepared for my goal of breaking 20 minutes in a 5k.

I agreed to take the challenge. And, it was a challenge. The course appears flat, yet there are gentle rolling hills here and there and long steady slopes in a couple of places. We set a goal: sub 1 hour and 40 minutes, which would require a 7:37 pace.

Sebastiaan rode his bike along the course and monitored my pace the whole time. I didn’t have to look at my watch, because he called out my splits and average pace about every minute or so. I’d never had an experience like this: as he cycled along at my side, I felt like an Olympic athlete in training.

At the beginning, I was lost in a sea of the first hundred or so people but at the 5k turn-around, a great surprise was revealed: I was in the top ten half-marathon runners. That stoked my furnace with a little competitive fuel! Miles 3-6 rolled by and I felt good, dropping the pace to 7:25 every now and then. I could feel when my cadence was right, clipping along briskly; when Sebastiaan would chirp, “Pick it up!” or “7:50” I would buckle down and focus on regaining the right cadence. About mile 7-9, I started struggling to keep the same pace and Sebastiaan reiterated all the reasons I should keep giving a maximal effort: it’s for Darlene, make your kids proud, it’s for Team World Vision. After mile 9, I saw my hold on a 7:37 pace start to fade. Other runners started to pass me: not many, but I slipped out of sixth or seventh place overall and watched the figures of the passing runners get farther and farther away from me.

Sebastiaan proposed a new goal, realistically calculating that even with a redoubled effort in the last half-mile that usually happens when a runner senses the finish line, I could no longer break 1:40. We set our eyes on a PR. My previous half-marathon in January at the Team World Vision event to raise funds for clean water was my first ever half-marathon that I ran for time and I hit 1:46.30. Now the pressure was on to better that time.

As my legs turned to lead, I wondered what was happening to my body. I tried to summon the mental focus to whip my deadening stride into my earlier semblance of running. My pace fell out of the eight minute range, into the nine, and I think hit the ten minute per mile range coming up the last slow incline.

I churned my legs in the last half-mile, but they didn’t produce the speed I expected. However, in the last 400 meters I musterered what stood in for a sprint and miraculously, in the last 200 meters, I found another gear, happily – and legitimately – sprinting to the line through the cries of sleepy spectators.

1:43.30. A new personal record.

I credit Sebastiaan with getting me there; so many times in miles nine through thirteen, I wanted to stop, but he kept talking me through it and helping me focus on the goal.  That was fundamental for finishing as well as I did: Sebastiaan kept me focused on the goal, instead of dwelling on negative thoughts.

Now, after following Sebastiaan’s training plan for the last two months, I am ready to see what I can do in a 5k.  The Raincross 5k in early 2012 is my PR at 21:37.  Let’s see what I can do at the Ontario Mills 5k tomorrow.  Sub-20-minute, here we come!