There was a 5K time trial this morning in the clinical trial with the most adverse conditions possible...

1) We showed up at 5:00am. On December 4. The sun didn't even start to consider rising.

2) It was freezing (0 Celsius).

3) We were not allowed to consume any calories starting 5pm the previous day.

4) And no caffeine!

5) Work is busy and stressful. I had no time to run all day Wednesday, so I did my daily run (only 6.6 miles) after 9pm, already fasting for 4 hours. I wasn't allowed to eat anything after the run. Just 8 hours later I ran the time trial. And I only slept 4.5 hours.

6) They draw blood before you run.

7) They messed it up and so they played around in my vein for a while before they decided to use my other arm.

8) There were only 8 runners, and they are almost all faster than I.

I wanted to run 18:45 at 1:30 per lap. Went out a bit fast, but I still ran at last place for a few laps. Then passed one guy, who slowed a lot. I ran the first 1600 just under 6 minutes (that's fine), but started to melt down for the second 1600, and I arrived to 3200 at little over 12 minutes. I continued fading and I arrived to 4600 at 17:30. I pushed for a last lap to get in at 18:57. In my penultimate lap I got lapped by the winner, and I finished 7th out of 8 runners.

The plus side is that it seems like I can run sub-19 in the worst circumstances. The minus side that it is a whopping 1 minute slower than my goal time by the spring... I hope at least it was good training. We're up for a repeat next Thursday. Conditions will be pretty much the same.