Phnom Penh Athletics Club: May 2022

Tuesday 31 May 2022

PPAC-99 5km Road Race

The club's sixth 5km of the year was held in dry conditions for the season and saw a good turnout with a mix of local and international youth and senior athletes.

This year's 5km events are part of the 2022 5km road race series where every finish gets you a score. We will be tracking various statistics including races completed, PBs, best laps and consistency over the course of the year so make sure you join often and chart your progress with PPAC!

We had six first timers and twelve athletes taking part in their first PPAC 5km race with everyone finishing within 45 minutes. Well done to this week's first place category finishers Charonay and Yin Ling in the youth and senior women's respectively, and Soboros and Dan in the equivalent men's categories.

We had eight impressive PBs for athletes with previously recorded 5km times including new bests for four youth athletes with several big improvements in the range of 90 seconds to over six minutes. Two athletes recorded new points records and one athlete each respectively went sub-40, sub-30 and sub-20 minutes for the first time - great efforts all round!

Special mention for regular athlete Matthew who took part in his 43rd PPAC event and is now in clear second place overall, two ahead of the chasing pack in the all-time attendance records.

There are three performances with highly consistent pacing (sub 1.00 pacing consistency) this week with exceptional pacing from first timer, So, and all three registering PBs.

Special thanks to our volunteer officials, marshals and photographers on the morning, Meyjou, Neil, Seavmey and Seavleang as well as all who supported the event by accompanying the athletes or helping in any other way.

Join us in four weeks for our next 5km on the road and stay connected via the following to find out more about what's going on:

Like and follow us on our FB page, join our Strava club and watch our athletics videos on YouTube. If you're interested in helping out please contact us through FB or at phnompenh.athletics@gmail.com, you can also support our work through donation with details available on our blog.

Thursday 26 May 2022

PPAC-98 3km Road Race

Approaching halfway through the year, PPAC's fifth race of the 3km road series was held in mild conditions at the Chbar Ampouv 'off-road' course. Twenty-two athletes started, including four first timers, and all completed the race under twenty-four minutes including some exciting sprint finishes at the end.

Again we had some excellent performances all round, with new PBs for nine out of fourteen athletes with previously recorded 3km times and eight athletes achieving their first 3km results. Four athletes improved their times by a margin of over 10% which is a huge jump in performance but even small improvements are a great achievement - as you reach closer to your potential, every little improvement is more and more of a challenge!

Three athletes also scored points PBs, recording their best ever results overall in any PPAC race - so a special well done to them. PPAC points allow individual athletes to compare their own performances between different distance events and also let us evaluate the general standard of performance across all athletes.

This week we had three athletes with great pacing consistency scores below 1.0, two of whom recorded PBs and all of whom recorded negative splits, being the only athletes to achieve this on the morning. We can clearly see that the more experienced athletes run with improved consistency, compared with those who are running the 3km race for the first time.

Thanks to race officials, race-day photographers, all those accompanying youth athletes and for everyone's continued support and contribution. We look forward to seeing you all at our next event.