Penetration Testing: Cisco Secret 5 and John Password Cracker

[Unknown User <9nkn0wn () gmail com>]

Hi

 I have recovered some cisco passwords that are encrypted using the
secret 5 format. They look like this

 $1$Wgqc$sbb8R/2rtOhc7t86J5axj.

 The question is can i simply plug this into a standard unix type
shadow file format and use john to crack. I've tried this but I'm not
convinced that John is actually working. Its also incrediblly slow.
Any other tools available to crack these types of passwords.

 Thanks