Fear vs Fatigue

My two decade hunt for a 5k PR

“Today is the day!” I told myself.

I recognized the script that my mind was frantically running. As the early 5k pace, under 4:45 per mile, ran through me, my internal alarms were sounding in search of a reason to relent, even though I knew I could not listen.

There wasn’t a reason today.

Cool air swishing through my hands, drying the sweat between my fingers as quickly as it surfaced, I knew that the weather conditions were ideal. I noted the perfection in order to stop the internal debate that was beginning. These were ideal conditions. Just like I’d hoped.

12 days earlier, I’d tried and failed for a 5k PR. I’d felt my resolve soften in the heat emanating off the 8-lane track and acknowledged that the conditions weren’t right for top performance. Yet, more daunting than the warmth itself was the excuse it provided. It offered a logical mental offramp from the road to a personal best.

But not today.

Two days after that meet I felt a sadness wash over me while sitting at home on a Saturday. Fit and reinvigorated for speed, I had nothing on the calendar to prepare for. I was sitting around with a stack of chips and no table at which to play. This sucked.

So I messaged some friends.

I wanted a group. Though technically an unofficial event can happen anytime morning, noon, or night, alone or with friends, I wanted to create something as close to the tension of a race. So I reached out to runners, including men I only sort of know, who also suffered in the heat of that meet, to see if they, too, cared to salve their disappointment with another hard effort.

To my delight, several said yes.

There’s a joke among our group that any effort done in a t-shirt is inherently casual. Even racers in major marathons, if wearing a tee, are indicating that they’re saving something for another date.

So I knew that I needed to wear my singlet.
And spikes.
And start right on time.

The worst part about unofficial efforts is that your mind can easily relent when running is most difficult. Instead of leaning into the pain and making the most of that moment, it can warrant backing down. It might even, amid the effort, find a future date to try again. All to avoid the terrifying physical and mental pain of committing fully and risking failure.

Having repeatedly stated my goal of breaking 15 minutes, the “risk” of failure was realized. One more shot. After so many shots. One more attempt to achieve something that should have been behind since in college.

7:29 a.m., walking to the line with seven friends, a friend attempted his best “old stuffy official” tone,

“Gentlemen, you’ll hear two commands, to your marks and then the gun.” Of course, there would be no gun on a corporate campus before 8 am, but we understood his direction.

“GO!” he screamed. And we were off.

My friend Chris had offered to pace us through two miles, which, for him, would be fairly easy. I trusted him entirely to deliver and didn’t dare let myself glance at my watch as we went along. To maximize the benefit of a pacer it’s important to fully settle in and put your effort in his hands.

Based on my breathing, I could tell when we were going quickly and when we were too slow, but I continued to have faith that Chris would take my goal as seriously as if it were his own.

Glancing at my watch after six and a quarter laps I could see I was a few seconds ahead of 7:30 - halfway to the 15-minute barrier that had eluded me for nearly two decades.

It was about then that Chris began to yell.

I couldn’t quite make out his commands because he was screaming toward the track ahead of us, but I sensed it was an instruction for me to relax. He couldn’t even see me, but he knew what to say. He shook out his arms to loosen his stride, and so so did I.

At two miles, he peeled off with a holler for me to continue.

This is when my fears began to speak, and I instantly recognized its creepy tone of abusive doubt.

“You’re not strong enough to sustain this pace. It’s alright, maybe another day. You tried really hard,” it mocked me with condescension.

The voices of doubt and fear are only empowered if you allow them, but after so many years of handing back seconds in the final mile, I deeply believed such skeptical statements.

After having headed out at sub-15 minute pace countless times, I believed I would fail before the moment arrived. With three laps remaining, when the impulse to slow reached peak volume, I was certain that I would abide. Luckily, this was when two friends moved past me.

“Come on Bromka!” they hollered as they surged past. If I was to achieve this lifelong goal today, it would have to happen now. Instead of philosophizing about whether it was possible, I needed to act.

550 meters remaining, I hadn’t checked my watch in several minutes, but I sensed from the strained cheers of friends on the trackside that I needed to commit quickly. If they believed, why shouldn’t I?

The fatigue toward the end of a 5,000 is a particular type of awful. It’s not a systemic muscle failure like the 800 or a tensing shuffle like the marathon. It’s a scalding stride that’s dying to go a bit slower.

Having practiced speed workouts in the past months, I knew that I could claw my way to the finish turn by turn, and I realized that if I waited until 300 left, I might leave it till too late.

No, I had to go now.

Sprinting, arms pumping, I knew the next minute would hurt immensely. Rapidly seeking a way to rationalize I promised myself that if I completed this next minute with integrity I never had to attempt another 5,000 again. With the deal made and promises signed in mental ink, I began to sprint.

I arrived back at the home stretch with all my muscles screaming, yet this time I hardly cared to listen. With only 100 meters left I just had to lift myself to the line.

Beep!
I stopped my watch and crashed the track - the exhausted racer’s promised reward.

“14:54!” a friend proclaimed,
“I fucking did it.” I chuckled inside.
“A 13 second PR.”
“I finally got it done.”

Congratulations all around, and thank yous to everyone that had come out.

Afterward, shuffling a cooldown around the track with friends, my feet barely felt like they were touching the ground. This was ecstasy. I thanked everyone again and began walking to my car alone.

It was only once I was sitting solo that the achievement hit me.
I’d finally done it.

A few indulgent tears rolled down my cheeks, and an ease washed over me as a weight that’d built gradually over years was lifted.

At that moment, I realized it wasn’t about the time.
It was about the doubt.
It was a freedom from years of endless internal self-trash-talk.

“You’re not fast enough. See! You’re not tough enough. Look! You always give up in the end. Told ya.”

It wasn’t productive, but it was potent, and it’d become such a part of running 5ks for me that I hadn’t been able to view the event from outside this cloud of doubt.

It’s not that the time is all that impressive, but breaking that barrier in some ways meant more to me than breaking 2:20 in the marathon because of the fear that’d loomed at its edge every time I’d attempted to pass.

Upon reflection, I realized that although breaking 2:20 is objectively more difficult, I’d never truly feared trying because I hadn’t had time to give it such thought. Each time I attempted to break 2:20, I’d done it. Not that it wasn’t incredibly painful, it was, but measurements of effort and physical discomfort are standardized, they’re known. Fear and doubt have no relative meaning; they expand to whatever space you allow. They grow to mythical status if you permit.

And I had.

Thinking back on accounts of breakout 5ks a theme emerges: the runners allowed themselves to lose track of time.

“I didn’t know what pace we were going, I just knew it was fast,” Josette Norris recently recounted after she slashed almost 20 seconds from her 5k best. It’s a simple truth that makes so much sense: the final laps of a 5k are too intense to cross over on a path built by obsessing splits and screaming down uncertainty. The only way to maximize those meters is to obsess each moment, make the most of each stride, and just race.

Jogging easily around a park the next day to loosen up, I thought back to the 5k with a new view, free from the storm of self-doubt, and the funniest thought occurred to me:

I wanted to do it again.