TC 10 Mile Training: A Rework

First things first: there was a funny coincidence regarding Monday's "post-race training" post. In that post, I noted that I ran 6.4 miles (with the double stroller) with the middle 4 at 6:23.5 pace. Well, later Monday (that same day) I had a "Facebook memory" from 2 years ago that was this:

Nice. Feeling the same now (actually, I feel like I'll ALWAYS be feeling this way): just always "trying to get some speed back." And it's nice to see my speed was just 1.5 sec slower/mile this year with the DOUBLE stroller. I'm OK giving up 6 seconds over 4 miles with the added weight.

I had a hard, solid training run on Wednesday morning, but that made me re-think my TC 10 Mile training. I did 2x2 miles along the river in a nothing-to-write-home-about time:

- 3:05.5, 3:05.5, 2:59.4, 3:00.2 = 12:10.6
- 2:59.7, 2:58.7, 2:55.1, 2:56.6 = 11:50.1

The right side of my sacrum / right hip was achy that evening, and it's no wonder: my previous 3 runs were a bit harder (Friday was a hard run with the boys, Sunday was my longest run in 1.5 years [both noted in Monday's post], and Wednesday was the 2x2 mile intervals.) This is one of the pleasant "side effects" of keeping a training log: I could easily look back and say "well shit, I hadn't done any hard training runs since April, and now I did 3 harder runs over a week. Time to BACK OFF, dummy." So yesterday's run was an easy 5-miler with the boys:

It was chilly and damp, but a nice morning for a run!

So I'm going to back off when thinking about the "hard" training, and just make sure to focus on getting in the miles. The speedwork is secondary to nice long runs. And I'll still be peppering in rides and swims. (Sidenote: last week, I was VERY aware that I was done with triathlons when I was in the pool, and I had much less motivation to swim hard/fast/well.)

It's a bit too soon to be making any solid TC 10 Mile predictions (race is in 5 weeks), but I can safely say I hope to NOT run a PW ("personal worst") of slower than 1:03:05 as I ran the last time I did this race in 2015 (but as part of the Looney Challenge where I ran a 5K and 10K the morning before). I know I won't PR (which is 59:05 at this race in 2010), so I guess right now there's a 4 minute window where I expect to finish. I hope to narrow that down in the upcoming weeks, probably somewhere in the middle (sub-60 won't be realistic).