Pre-Race Thoughts / Goals for the TC 10 Mile

The TC 10 Mile is tomorrow. I’m in better shape than I ever thought I would be at this point (after brief injuries this winter and spring, and another flare-up at the start of this training cycle). So what’s my race plan and race goal?

I was coached in 2010 (to my first sub-60:00 finish of 59:05), and I reused pieces of that training plan in 2024 to go sub-60 again (59:23). I went into that 2024 race to try to break 61, and then found myself a lot faster than I thought I’d be and knew by mile 8 that I was going to hit sub-60 (which is WILD... in 2010, I wasn’t sure at mile 9.5 that I was going to be able to hold on and break 60!).

When I started this training plan in early August, the goal was just to not embarrass myself at the race. I had to ease back a few times earlier this year because of injuries, so I had no lofty goal for the race. Just wanted to get in some decent training.

But as I shared in my recent posts about my two last months of training (found here and here), I was surprisingly able to turn out some fast workouts... way faster than I had expected.

Pre-race 2024, I BARELY flirted with the idea of going sub-60, and then the race became a BLAST because I was turning in amazing splits. I’m afraid of putting too much pressure on myself for this year‘s race, and then not being happy with a relatively decent time. I could finish in 60:55 which was my goal time 2 years ago and would still currently be my 3rd fastest lifetime 10 mile (I’ve only been under 1:01:20 twice), and I could be bummed about that. Which makes zero sense as type this. But it could easily happen that way. I don’t think I want to go out at a pace that would mean an amazing finish only to slow up a little and still have a good finish but be depressed about it. I would hate to post a good time and still be bummed at the finish line. That’s just not the way I want to spend my race.

I never fully trust this as it usually reads FAST, but my Garmin is saying 59:15.
(Picture taken on Thursday, which is why it states "3D:" the race was 3 days away.)


It shows my anticipated finishing time dropping over the last 4 weeks.

I’ll have my splits from 2024 in my head, but I won’t necessarily be gunning for them. They will just let me know where I’m at compared to then - I’ll be slower for sure, but can I be close to them at times?

2024 also had a strong wind from the west - it pushed us home during this point-to-point race. It was a beautifully cool and perfect morning for a race, and Conner Mantz ran a course record of 45:13! (The top 5 times ever turned in at the TC 10 Mile were from 2024!) Being I had a good race on a perfect morning with perfect wind in 2024, I realistically can’t hope to be near that again. Or if I could be near that again, my training would have to be much better. Not just “similar.”

(Another reason I'm concerned about not being able to keep up with "2024 Steve" is that I set 3 lifetime running PRs in the spring of 2024: 5 mile, 10K, then 5K. I was coming off a GREAT few years of running. This year has been much more sporadic. Back to the upcoming race...)

In 2024, I hoped to be well under 31:00 at the halfway point, but I hit mile 5 at 30:03. And I wanted to be at mile 7 in 43:30 so I could possibly negative split my way to sub-61, but I was 75 seconds faster at 42:15 at that point. And I dropped down below 6:00 overall pace at mile 8 (47:59 overall at mile 8).

This year, I think my mid-race goals are to split the difference between my *goals* from 2024 and my *actual splits* from 2024. Sub-30:30 at mile 5 would be good. Then can I keep mile 6 faster than usual like I did in 2024? If I turn in a good first half, and then a good mile 6 and not feel DEAD, I’ll be happy... and then I'll be trying to see how much time I can shave off my finish.

In that "comparably trained" year of 2024, I was THRILLED with my mile 6-8 splits: 6:07, 6:01, and 5:44. (I even noted in a later post with some "final race thoughts" that miles 6 and 7 in 2024 were 0:41 faster than the average of those miles for all other TC 10 Miles of mine!! I ran 12:08 instead of my average of 12:49 for those miles in all previous years!) Compare that to miles 6-8 of 2025's race report where I wasn't quite as trained as I am this year, and I ran 6:24, 6:26, and 6:14 for those 3 miles. That's a difference of 1:12 over JUST those 3 miles between 2024 (FAST) and 2025 (depressingly average). There's a good chance that the good training in 2024 really showed up in those later miles of the race... and I'm hoping that happens again tomorrow!!

And even in my "pre-race goals" post from 2024, I noted how I would much rather speed up throughout the race as I wrote about paying attention to my half-way split at mile 5:

And again, how I'm feeling will play a part in my mood here: running 31:00 while feeling GREAT will have me pushing for a big negative split (which historically can turn out some decent race times for me), while running 30:00 while feeling DEAD will make those next uphill miles really slow and depressing, and I'll stop wanting to push myself.

Looking back to all of my 10 mile finishes (I think all but 3 are TC 10 Miles), you can see that I tend to finish around 1:02:something:

10 mile races (15 total):

59:xx: 2 times
1:01:xx: 3 times
1:02:xx: 9 times
1:03:xx: 1 time (at the end of the Loony Challenge race weekend)

I SHOULD be able to set a 3rd best 10 mile time of sub-1:01:20, I really think I can be under 61, and there's an outside chance that I could go sub-60 if everything comes together perfectly. I'm going out with 1:00:59 as my goal, and I'll see if I can chip away at that later in the the race if I have fitness left to spend! And I think that's the big question: how hard can I go in miles 6-8? Will this better training "show up" for those later miles and allow me to keep building speed? And can I stay fast enough in the earlier miles to give me a shot at a better finish? (Without blowing up by going TOO hard TOO early?)

Stay tuned!! Good luck all 10 Milers and Marathoners!!

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Friday Funny 2646: Fitness-Related Funnies

Lots more funny things posted all day long on SportsAndLaughs.tumblr.com. Happy weekend!!

Back tomorrow with some pre-race goals for the TC 10 Mile... which is SUNDAY!! It's time to see what I can do!!!....

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Friday Funny 2645: Trying to Look Tough

Some of these are quite cringy. Here are some people trying to look tough:

This is a guy who tries to fight teenage refs at his kid's games.










Three weeks. MmmmKAY.
(Also, that's Gennady Golovkin who was once ranked the "World's Best Boxer" on the left.)


Sidenote: I'm Cathloic. The nicest people I know are NOT religious and do the right
thing simply because it's the right thing to do. Not because they're scared of God.












Is this one trying to be funny? It might be.

More funny things on SportsAndLaughs.tumblr.com.

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Friday Funny 2644: a "Sign of Respect" in Their Culture

Funny cause it's true.




A crush called me a dork in high school, and I still rememeber loving it.

More funnies on SportsAndLaughs.tumblr.com.

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Final 4 Weeks of TC 10 Mile Training

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!!

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