Discussion: My best on that course is 1...

My best on that course is 18:32, done twice, a long time ago. Splits were 5:55, 5:49, 6:15, 33 and 5:58, 5:55, 6:08, 31.

So I'd say you faded a bit. Third mile uphill is always going to be slower, but not that much.

What do you figure you should be running there? 18:00-18:15? You lost 10 seconds in the last 0.1 mile.

Nice! Well, something to aim for! =) And definitely a fading split then. But not all in the last 0.1 mile, I missed that mile mark, not exactly sure how the 1.1 divides up...

Track PR is 17.45, but that course does have some hills. Someone said flat 5k + 45s was what people tend to run, so somewhere 18.15-18.30ish?

My track PR is 17:41 (from the same period I did the 18:32s), but I figure your 17:45 still has a good bit of room for improvement, therefore also your time on the N'ton course.

It's a nice course, meaning that you get to see what you're made of on the last mile.... :-)

Sure I can improve the N'ton 5k, and think I can work the track down a bit too, we'll see!! And yeah, fierce last mile...

No one size fits all. I dug up my splits from my 1994 PR of 17:47 and they are 5:31,5:36, 6:05, 35. Having run the race over a hundred times, I can say that is the split profile that gives me the fastest finishing times. Mile 2 is downhill, and mile 3 continues uphill for another half mile after the big hill. If you ran those two miles at at the same effort (I train on them all the time), I think mile 3 would be (at the pace you were going) about 25 seconds slower than mile 2. (Also mile 1 of the race is a bit short and mile 3 a bit long.)

But you have always started races fast I think? Like on a flat course your first mile will be the fastest? As you say, no one size fits all.

For 5k on a track, my first mile was about 15 seconds faster than my third. That seems natural to me. You amazed me sometimes with your strong finishes, especially in longer races. But it also made me think you could have pushed harder for the first half of the race.