Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!

Earlier this month, I posted about my first 5 weeks of TC 10 Mile training as I was looking at Coach Jen's old workouts from 2010. I compared this year's workouts to 2010 and 2024 to see where I was at comparatively. (Coach got me to run a 59:05 in 2010, and then I re-used her workouts 2 years ago and SHOCKED myself with a a 59:23 finish in 2024: the only 2 times I've been under 1:01:20.)

I also shared in my last post about how I had 7 hard runs IN A ROW to alter the training plan as I had 4 weeks between a triathlon and the TC 10 Mile in both 2010 and 2024, but I only had 3 weeks this year after the Square Lake Sprint Triathlon and the upcoming TC 10 Mile.

I entered this loose training plan about 2 months ago just using it to not embarrass myself at the race - I had minor injuries in January and April which took big bites out of my speed, so I had ZERO thoughts of trying to post any fast fast times at the TC 10 Mile. I just wanted to build back some speed. But then as I posted about my first 5 weeks of TC 10 Mile training, I saw that I was turning in some decent workouts here-and-there (between some others that were duds), so I started to get a little hopeful. I kept the training up, and here's what the majority of September looked like (after ending August with 2 slow runs).

I'm comparing times from 3 years. So RED TEXT means I was slowest of all 3 years, ORANGE TEXT means it was the middle time of the 3 years, and GREEN TEXT means it was my fastest time of the 3 years of doing these "Coach Jen" workouts for the TC 10 Mile:

Honestly, these were all good before the slower final long run on Sunday! Wrapping up the training plan like that was a bit of a bummer.

Here's a quick look back at those workouts:

The 2x2 mile intervals in the first week (Sept 4th) weren't the best. I do that workout a lot (one of the more common "Coach Jen" workouts from 2010 that I still do), and I did them the month before in 11:32.9 and 11:29.4 as one of my better splits ever. This time, I did them in 11:35 and 11:37. It wasn't good that I slowed down from the 1st to the 2nd. (I went out HOT to start the first one, and I paid for that in the rest of the workout.) But it was still a little better than my times from 2010 (11:48 and 11:34), and just a few seconds worse that my times from 2024 (11:42 and 11:27). So I was within the range of "decentness."

Week 2 started with a bang (Sept 7th) as I posted a fast "shorter" long run being I was going to race later that week. And then I posted a fast 5K run split at the Square Lake Sprint Triathlon that weekend - I tried to use that as a tempo run. Of the 5 years of doing that race, I only ran faster once (2 years ago before my sub-60 TC 10 Mile) with a 18:02. I ran an 18:07 this year, that 18:02 2 years ago, 18:08 3 years ago, and then around 19:00 both 4 and 5 years ago.

Week 3 was a bit of a recovery week, but I also wanted to push it as much as I could. I posted about that week a few weeks ago, and the Wednesday (Sept 16th) fartlek workout was in the middle of my distances that I'd covered for that workout the past few times. I felt OK with that. And the intervals on the track (Sept 18th) were my FASTEST VERSION OF THAT WORKOUT EVER! I had a beautiful descend in that workout with 1600 splits of 5:36, 5:30, 5:24, and 5:19!

Then came the week of "can I survive this?!? Can I keep doing hard workouts with NO easy run after the triathlon?!?" I posted about that in last post.

That final week started (Sept 21st) with a repeat of my most failed long run workout from the very end of August: a long run with 5 hard miles in the middle. Not descending, not speeding up... just 5 HARD miles in the middle. I didn't know if it was a good idea to try to re-do a workout that went poorly for the mental boost, or a bad idea because I wouldn't get as much out of it physically if I wasn't able to run as fast. Back in August, those middle 5 miles were 30:30 (with no mile split dropping below 6:00). But this time I hit it in 30:01 with 6 half-mile splits that were sub-3:00 and 2 mile splits that were sub-6:00. I was 1 second faster than in 2024, but 35 seconds slower than when I did it in 2010. (And 29 seconds faster than when I did it last month.)

Wednesday (Sept 23rd) was the biggest question mark - not because of my splits, but because of the thoughts of if I should even run a hard run that day! Wednesdays are usually always easy days for me, and this would be my 5th hard run straight if I went through with it! But I cranked out 6 miles with the middle 3 at tempo pace in 17:34 (descending with mile splits of 5:58, 5:52, and 5:43). That was 0:16 faster than in 2024, and just 0:02 slower than my best in 2010! NICE!

Friday (Sept 25th) was a normal speed day, and this was a similar fartlek workout like I've done 2 times already in this training session - it was identical to the one from the week before, only on paved trails (for speed) this time instead of on grass (to save my legs) like it was last week. Over the same amount of time, I traveled 0.04 miles farther this time than I did in 2024, and a LOT farther than in 2010 (when I didn't have a Garmin and can't give an exact number). I was riding high and getting ready to wrap up these hard 2 weeks with my best run ever...

... but then I had a crappy one on Sunday.

I did my final long run on Sunday (Sept 27th) mainly to have an extra day to rest this week before the race this weekend. I started and my legs felt heavy, even though I've only been biking easy and short... it was just all of these hard runs catching up with me. This workout was a sneakily brutal one: 6x 3:00 hard / 3:00 moderate. It doesn't look hard on paper, but it's the fact that there are no real "rests" that get ya. It's hard, then MODERATE. Not easy. To compare, here's the HR chart for a workout 6 weeks ago that was 8x 3:00 hard / 3:00 EASY, and you can see how my heart rate drops down well below my average during the "easy" parts:

Dropping well below the average line of 155 bpm.

And here's the workout from Sunday where it was HARD then MODERATE, and note how my heart rate never recovers:

Always staying well above the average line of 161 bpm.

I had goals in mind when I went out for this workout: I knew that 2 years ago, I was getting a half-mile split around 2:45 in to each "HARD" effort, and then running about 0.46 miles for every "MODERATE" effort. My first effort hit the half-mile split at 2:51, and then the 2nd was better in 2:46. But then the rest were in the 2:50s. And my moderate efforts also started well, with the first 3 covering 0.47, 0.47, and 0.48 miles (6:19 to 6:24 pace for the "moderate" efforts). But then crashed to 0.44, 0.45, and 0.45 for the final 3 (6:40 to 6:48 pace). All-in-all, I covered 5.93 miles for the guts of that workout, when I covered 6.02 miles in 2024, and about exactly 6 miles in 2010. D'oh. Not the "confidence booster" to end this training cycle on.

Finally, these last 3 images probably fit better in my last post about two hard weeks of training, but here they are instead. Here you can see my "intensity minutes" peak last week after 2 smaller weeks:

Biggest week since May.

V02 Max on the way up since a low of 60 in mid-August.

What does this all mean? I'll be back with some pre-race thoughts and goals either tomorrow or on Saturday! Big weekend ahead!!

Whew! I'm VERY glad to have gotten to this point in my TC 10 Mile training with no injuries flaring up!!

I was coached by Coach Jen in 2010 to hit my sub-60 minute 10 mile goal (I ran 59:05). Then 2 years ago, I looked back to her training plan and revamped it to work on my older body, and SHOCKED myself with a a 59:23 when I was just hoping to run a decent sub-61. Both of those training plans had a triathlon 4 weeks before the 10 Mile, but I recently realized that I'd only have THREE weeks between the Square Lake Sprint Triathlon and the TC 10 Mile this year. Things had to shift.

What ended up taking place was potentially dangerous for my injury-prone body. In 2010 and again in 2024, I had a post-triathlon week of 2 runs with some intensity, a pretty "normal" 2nd week with an easier day in the middle, a final BIG 3rd week of training, and then an easy 4th pre-race week. But what week would I remove for this year with only 3 weeks between the races? It ended up being that "normal" 2nd week with an easier day in the middle. So what did that mean?...

... that meant ALL runs had lots of effort from the triathlon through the following 2 weeks. That was 7 hard runs in a row!! YIKES!

A "normal" week of running for me is a long run with some fast miles in the middle on Monday, an easy run on Wednesday, and a speed day on Friday. Here are 2 "normal" weeks from my August training log with the runs highlighted:

These last few weeks, I got rid of those rest days as I just finished with these 2+ weeks of ONLY running hard:

And yes, I did my last long run yesterday on Sunday instead of today (on Monday) so that I'd have an extra day to rest before the race this weekend (something I did 2 years ago as well).

My strength training was very normal these last 2 weeks, along with my swimming. But my biking was all easy to moderate, and none of them were long rides. I really wanted to get out and ride longer on Saturday, but my legs were heavy and I was still prepping for the final long run on Sunday, so I still kept it a little scaled back. After a huge month of biking in August, I only got in 84 miles and a short 50 minute trainer ride over these last 2 weeks. As September wraps up, I'm looking at only about half the bike miles that I got in August, but that's all because of the heavy focus on running as I ramped up my TC 10 Mile training.

I'm in "taper" mode now! Back with posts about my final month of training, along with how I'm hoping to do at the TC 10 Mile this weekend!!