Training Thoughts for the Loony Challenge

In less than 6 weeks, I'm racing the TC in Motion "Loony Challenge" again for the 2nd year in a row. It's a 10K and 5K on Oct 3rd, followed by the TC 10 Mile on Oct 4th. Last year, I ended up winning the series. (Oh, and here's my 10K and 5K race reports from last year, and here's my 10 Mile race report.) I'd love to win it again this year, but my training isn't quite the same, so who knows.

Here's a graph of my swim, bike, and run distances (made on BeginnerTriathlete.com where I log my miles) in the 6 months leading up to the race LAST YEAR:

Bad ankle sprain in early April, and then a quick build of running miles in July, Aug, and Sept.

Here's what THIS YEAR looks like so far:

Keeping running injuries in check in June and July as I was doing lots of triathlons, and
noting where my August running miles should end up if this next week goes as planned.

(Also notice that I stopped swimming after the North Mankato Triathlon a few weeks ago to let my sore elbow heal. I'm done swimming for a while because of that.)

The biggest thing that these 2 graphs DON'T show is bike trainer time: last year, over these 6 months, I only had 2 rides on the trainer for about 80 minutes total. This year, I've been on the trainer 880 minutes (14 hrs, 40 minutes) over these 6 months, which is the equivalent of 278 more miles on the bike (if you take my average speed outdoors and apply it to the time spent doing Spinerval workouts on the trainer). So my bike fitness is much greater this year, but I'm working on keeping these injuries at bay. And I'm using rides of 75-90 minutes as a way to keep my endurance up for the (hopefully) roughly 63 minute TC 10 Mile.

So after last year's race, I thought if I did the series again, I'd have a goal of running the SAME times. My 10K and 5K times/efforts were right where they needed to be. And then I MAYBE took it a little too easy in the opening miles of the 10 Mile on Sunday (scared that my legs were going to run out of steam). But the 10 Mile was just a little short, so my 1:01:42 finishing time was really actually the equivalent of 1:02:34. So if I ran the same times this year, I'd technically be faster. I finished the 3 races in 1:59:00 flat last year, so even if I run the same 10K and 5K, and then run the same pace for a full 10 Mile as I did last year, I COULD break 2 hours. (That'd be 1:59:52.) I guess that will be my "A" goal. But I don't think I'll quite be able to do that. Here are my goals for the upcoming weeks:

TRAINING GOALS, PRIORITIZED:

• FIRST, STAY HEALTHY! I need to increase my miles, but I need to be smart. I need to do what I can to stay injury-free. Being at the starting line with less training than I want but feeling relatively injury-free is more important than limping to the line on day 1 only to completely die on day 2 of racing.

• SECOND, BUILD DISTANCE. Miles. That's it. But don't loose sight of goal #1 above while doing it.

• THIRD, BUILD SPEED. This needs to take a back seat until my legs are feeling great. I need to let this go and not worry about it.

"The gang" before the 10K and 5K last year. Then, Matt and I did the 10 Mile the next day,
and Pharmie and Angela did the Marathon the next day. And that's the plan this year too!