A Month Without Coach Jen

Coach Jen worked with me for 8 weeks leading up to the TC 10 Mile. She taught me so much, and then dropped me like a bad habit. ;) A few weeks after the race, I logged into TrainingPeaks (for the first time since the race), and I saw this depressing pop-up:

Anyway, I thought I'd take a look at my numbers from 1 month BEFORE working with Jen, the 2 months I worked with her, and then my first full month AFTER working with Jen. Here are the numbers:

• July: (PRE-JEN)
Swim: 18,559 Yd
Bike: 87.01 Mi (38:30 on the trainer)
Run: 54.58 Mi
Strength: 4:30

• August: (WITH JEN)
Swim: 25,817 Yd
Bike: 144.05 Mi (1:40 on the trainer)
Run: 108.34 Mi
Strength: 5:15

• September: (WITH JEN)
Swim: 19,820 Yd
Bike: 55.96 Mi (2:15 on the trainer, 1:15 MTB)
Run: 110.44 Mi
Strength: 3:15

• October: (POST-JEN)
Swim: 4,500 Yd
Bike: 71.80 Mi (1 hour on the trainer, 1:30 MTB)
Run: 77.11 Mi
Strength: 6:56

So my swimming has gone down the pooper. I got in the pool twice in October. I did a lot of OWSing in July and August, and that helped keep my numbers up. But I can only do so much in my 25 yard pool at the Y without going crazy. GOTTA work on that!

My biking got a little lighter after working with Jen. I went on a few nice rides last month, but I hit the trainer less. I REALLY want to hit the trainer hard this winter. Which is TOUGH.

I'm happiest with my running last month. Jen apparently taught me something about warming up and cooling down - that's where I've been adding in the miles. Sure, 77 miles is nowhere near the 108 and 110 months I did with Jen while training for the TC 10 Mile. But 77 miles is a lot for me when I'm not really training for anything. (In fact, there are only 2 non-Jen months where I've had higher mileage than 77 miles this year, and those were January [half marathon] and March [10 mile].) AND I've been injury-free! Yay!

Oh, and look how my strength time jumped back up last month. For the last few years, I've REALLY thought that building a solid muscle base (including core) over the off-season has helped me to be more injury-free. I'm going to keep that up over the winter.

One last note on my running: In the 4 months before I started working with Jen, my average pace for ALL my runs was 6:29 / mile. Working with Jen, my average pace dropped to 7:08 / mile for 2 months (7:16 in Aug; 6:59 in Sept). By having me SLOW DOWN and get in MORE MILES, I was able to bust out my fastest race ever: 59:05 in the TC 10 Mile. There's a lesson in there somewhere.....