Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!

Two More "Coached" Workouts: Long Run Fartleks and Long Intervals

>> Tuesday, August 18, 2026

I sort of kicked off TC 10 Mile training with an old "Coach Jen" workout of running some hills at the end of July, but that really set off my calf pain. Oops. The following week, I did a "normal" long run on Monday and a "Coach Jen" tempo run on Friday. That tempo run went WELL.

The week after that (last week), I added in 2 "Coach Jen" runs as well: I did her long run fartlek workout on Monday, and her 2x2 mile interval workout on Friday.

The long run was a longer warm-up, 4 x 0:30 sprints to get the legs "feeling snappy," and then 2x (1 min, 2 min, 4 min, 5 min) with 50% of the effort as easy running after. I didn't really have any goals, other than to try to keep the first half-mile of my 4 and 5 minute efforts to 3:00 or faster (which I did nicely in my first set of fartleks). Here are the splits of my fartleks:

1: 0.18, 5:41 pace
Easy 0:30: 0.07, 7:38 pace
2: 0.36, 5:36 pace
Easy 1: 0.13, 7:33 pace
4: 0.69 (2:57, 1:04), 5:51 pace
Easy 2: 0.26, 7:45 pace
5: 0.88 (2:51, 2:10), 5:41 pace
Easy 2.5: 0.31, 8:02 pace

= 2.88 miles

1: 0.18, 5:34 pace
Easy 0:30: 0.07, 7:58 pace
2: 0.35, 5:41 pace
Easy 1: 0.13, 7:56 pace
4: 0.68 (3:00, 1:01), 5:57 pace
Easy 2: 0.25, 8:11 pace
5: 0.85 (3:00, 2:01), 5:54 pace
Easy 2.5: 0.31, 8:11 pace

= 2.82 miles
(shorter in 2 efforts and 1 recovery by 0.01, and shorter in the final effort by 0.03)

Note that my first 4 and 5 minute efforts were fast (5:51 and 5:41 pace!), but the same 4 and 5 minute efforts at the end of the workout were slower (5:57 and 5:54 pace, with the opening half mile of both of those being 3:00 [6:00 pace]). I was hashed. I did this workout 2 years ago at the same point in my TC 10 Mile training, and I was a bit faster then: I covered 2.89 and 2.86 miles then, and only 2.88 and 2.82 miles now... so a bit less now, but not DRASTICALLY less.

LOTS of splits in this weird, fast, long workout.
(Split #6 was the start of my 4x30 sec efforts,
and split #33 was the end of my final 5 min effort.)

Pace and heart rate.

Zooming in on pace to see the efforts.

I was happy with that workout! And my legs held up!

Then on Friday, I did what has since become an "old classic" workout of mine: 2x2 mile intervals with 3:00 rest between. These are done on a running path... not the track. I started the first one with a 2:53 opening half-mile split, and I was thrilled about that because I was ready to TRY to be fast and to SUFFER. And I was proud of these splits:

#1: 2:53, 2:58, 2:49, 2:52 = 11:32.9

3:00 walking rest

#2: 2:49, 2:53, 2:53, 2:52 = 11:29.4

That's among the faster times I've done this workout! I know I've done this (YEARS) before in sub-11:30 for both splits, but to be just over that for the first one and just under it for the 2nd is great! (My PR for this workout is 11:28 and 11:24.) And it's FASTER than I did this workout in 2024 where my first one was way slower (11:42) but then my final one was a bit faster (11:27). And I was even slower back in 2010 when I was first given this workout by Coach Jen.

Close-up of the intervals (half mile splits).

At the start / finish point. Note where I stored my water bottle across the road.

Standard. But I don't believe that spike in HR half-way through the final interval.
My Garmin does that sometimes... it's not my heart. I don't think.

Oh, that workout was ALSO supposed to contain a few hill sprints after the 2x2 mile intervals, but I didn't want to risk my semi-injured calf. So I skipped that. But I DID head to the park after my cool-down to do some drills on the grass... something that I think was part of a longer distance workout originally:

Back-and-forth a bunch of times on the grass.

4 of each: high knees, butt kicks, grapevines, and sprints.

So starting with that hilly run on July 29th, I've now had 5 official "Coach Jen" TC 10 Mile workouts in the last 9 runs (the most recent one yesterday that I'll write about later). That was a decent gentle start. I'll see if I can keep doing 2 out of 3 runs from Coach Jen: a long run on Monday and a speed workout on Friday. Let's see if I can keep that up through early October for the TC 10 Mile!

July in Review

>> Monday, August 17, 2026

Here's what July looked like in my training log:

• SWIM: 7,800 yards
• BIKE: 258.6 miles
• RUN: 95.02 miles
• STRENGTH/CORE TIME: 57 hours and 25 minutes

As I stated in my "June in Review" post, I knew July could hold shorter bike mileage because of being gone for the first week (Henry's fencing tournament in Portland, also posting about a long run in Portland). But I still cranked out over 250 miles, so that's not horrible.

Running was just fine at 95 miles. It would have been over 100 (my loose threshold for it being a "good" month) if it weren't for backing off mid-month for the Raspberry Run 1 Mile (the 1-mile race on the 19th replaced an 11 mile long run on the 20th, so do the math...).

And my stregth time was nice! 57+ hours is easily a top-10 month for me based on time.

None of the individual weeks in July were that great, except for that last full week of the 20th. It was a post-race week, and I got in some nice bike time as I noted in this post. It ended up having 23.5 hours of training time, which is a BIG week!

Ramping up now for the TC 10 Mile. Back with a post about 2 good "coached" training runs shortly!

Alternative Swimming Pool (and Alternative Swimming Distance)

>> Saturday, August 15, 2026

My gym's pool currently looks like this:

So I headed to a different gym to swim earlier this week. That pool looks like this:

Post-swim at the Eagan YMCA.

A funny thing happened there. I did a longer warm-up and didn't do any math to figure out if I was swimming fast or slow. And then I went into a very common workout: 6x200.

Doing 200s is my MOST common swim workout in about the past 8 years of training. For my 200s, 3:0x is fast, 3:14 is around average (these days... used to be faster), and anything near 3:20 is slow. So I did a triple-take at my watch when my first 200 clocked in at 3:34! I honestly thought I was just having a rough day during my first rest period. But when I started my 2nd 200, I counted strokes / length of the pool. Normally, I'm at 27-29, but suddenly I was at 33-35 strokes....

Ahhh.... it was my first 25 METER pool when I'm used to 25 YARD pools.

The rest of the workout went well, even though I had no idea what sort of times I was swimming.