Secret Diary of a Taper : How I found 21 seconds in 21 days for 5km

On 18th February I ran a 5000m at Woden track in 17:21. I ran strongly throughout as I had been for months on end. In fact I ran 20 x 17 minute+ 5000m races (including Parkrun), but nothing in the 16 minutes+ range until the 16:59 yesterday. On the Friday night following that 17:21 race, when I realised things weren't going my way and the usual routine I would use to fix it (regular long runs) just wasn't working, I changed two things. First was getting on the floor and doing 60 pushups and a 60 second planks on most days. Second was my diet by replacing all the bad food with healthy food, inserting the notion of eating to train. Within six days the changes started to come. I took 20 seconds off my recent PB at my regular BBQ Stakes run over 6km on 24th February. The soft tummy I had kept through most of 2020 was starting to shrink. I was last in this shape during the bush fires/covid lockdown period when I could train at will, running a 16:50 5000m on 17 May 2020 and 16:31 two days later.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a formula for the cost of carrying useless weight in races (stronger muscles are good). It is 1.15 seconds, per kilo carried, per kilometre. With that formula it's possible to work out how many kilos I lost in 21 days.

I'll continue to maintain a healthy diet and core strength exercises and will into the future. My weight is now stable. Further improvements in performance will come from better training sessions and more rest.