Prove your fitness on race day, not in workouts

About a month ago, I ran a 5 mile race at 6:03 pace. Cesar asked me how I could run that pace for a 5 mile race when my mile repeat workouts were slower (generally 6:20-6:30 pace in early spring, working down to 6:10-6:20 pace). As I recall, I offered a two part response.
First, I was doing shorter repeats at faster than 6:00 pace so it wasn’t a pace I was unfamiliar with.
Second, I wasn’t racing my workouts. I would expect my mile repeats to be slower than 5 mile race pace. If they weren’t, I’d be close to race effort in my workouts.
…



