Believing you can do Something – Jordan’s Story

At the start of 2018 I had set myself a goal of running under 17 minutes in a 5km race.

When I had initially set this as a goal I was currently about 2 minutes off my target time. After I had run this 19 minute race, it was quite overwhelming to ever think – how am I ever going to get there! 

The first year of attempting this goal I really was not committed to it. My training was infrequent and my focus was not where it needed to be to achieve this. Fast forward to 2019 and I found a running coach who helped keep me accountable, I was able to immerse myself in running and find consistency with training while remaining healthy. 

From a physical standpoint I was improving quickly and during 2019 my times dropped by over a minute and I was consistently running in the low 17’s at the back end of the year and at the start of 2020. In fact, I had run 8 races or time trials with times between 17:05 and 17:25 before I was finally able to crack the 17 minute barrier. 

During mid April I was able to run an unofficial 16:56 for the 5km – 4 seconds under my goal time.  I started training better and hitting sessions with confidence. Interestingly enough, 2 weeks later I attempted another time trial and threw down a 16:19. A 37 second improvement.

What happened?