This isn't over-thinking. I swear.
It's just that last year was a strange year as I was slowly coming back from a major injury to race a "virtual" race. And this year I had great training through May when I had a calf/achilles injury that really slowed me up all summer.
So I wanted to look at what I should expect at this year's race, so I starting thinking about things to compare. I had these 8 things to look at, and here they are in no particular order:
Weekly mileage
Treadmill vs outside
Speedwork
Pace work
Hill training
Long runs
Cross training
Previous base
WEEKLY MILEAGE: This is hardly better this year. Last year, I was still building back from my winter-long foot injury and I was just hitting a few 20 mile weeks within the month before the TC 10 Mile. Here's my weekly mileage the 9 weeks before the week of the TC 10 Mile:
2020: 16.6, 17.02, 16.18, 17.40, 18.70, 20.11, 20.5, 20.7, 21.22 = 168.43 (18.71/week)
2021: 19.44, 20.32, 20.85, 21.06, 16.69, 21.92, 20.5, 14.01, 22.75 = 177.54 (19.73/week)
So that's slowly climbing up last year, with this year being a lot longer from the start but having 2 weeks that backed way off (due to injury 1 week and doing a triathlon the other week). I can't argue that 1 extra mile/week is any real difference.
TREADMILL vs. OUTSIDE: This catagory was better last year (assuming that running outside is "better" than running on a treadmill). I've done a lot of miles this summer on the treadmill while working through my injury.
SPEEDWORK: This was SO MUCH WORSE this year compared to last year! Sure, I was working my overall mileage back up last year, but I was doing very CONSISTENT speed work every 2 weeks starting in early JUNE! From the first of June through the end of Sept last year, I had 9 speed days: 2 each month with 3 in July.
This year, because I was nursing my heel injury, I've only done TWO speed workouts in the last 4 months: just a 3x1 mile on the track, and a 2x2 mile along the river. (You could MAYBE count the
sprint tri on Sept 12th as a 3rd speed day. Maybe.) So that's 4 months of solid speed work that I missed out on this year. THIS IS THE BIGGEST "X FACTOR" LEADING IN THIS YEAR'S RACE.
PACE WORK: I THOUGHT this was worse this year, but it turns out it's not as bad once I looked at the numbers. Here's the "pace work" within my long runs from last year from late July from 2 weeks pre-race:
- 7 miles, 6:57/mile
- 7.7 miles, 5 pace miles at 6:37/mile
- 6.8 miles, 5 pace miles at 6:30/mile
- 8.1 miles, 5 pace miles at 6:22/mile
- 9 miles, 6 pace miles at 6:50/mile
- 8.5 miles, 5 pace miles age 6:33/mile
- 9.7 miles, 5.5 pace miles at 6:28/mile
- 10.6 miles, 6 pace miles at 6:33/mile
- 11.3 miles, 6 pace miles at 6:39/mile
And this year, I was building miles back after not running as much in June because of my heel injury. So the same set of long runs looked like this this year:
- 8.14 miles, 3 pace miles at 6:36/mile
- 9 miles, 4 pace miles at 6:29/mile
- 10.25 miles, 5 pace miles at 6:31/mile
- 10.37 miles, 5 pace miles at 6:27/mile
- 8.59 miles, 5 pace miles at 6:35/mile
- 10 miles, 2.5 pace miles at 6:35/mile
- 10.2 miles, 5.5 pace miles at 6:31/mile
- skipped long run because of the Square Lake Sprint Triathlon
- 11.26 miles, 5.5 pace miles at 6:20/mile
So last year, I had 4 runs that had 5.5+ miles of pace work, and this year I only had 2. But my uninjured long runs this year had solidly faster paces than any of my runs from last year. And my earlier pace work this year was much shorter miles because I was "testing" my injury. So I don't know what to make of this. I think the edge goes to this year.
HILL TRAINING: This is pretty similar from last year. Last year, my hill work was maybe a D, and this year it's maybe a C-. My outdoor runs are along the river where there are small rolling hills, but I've been avoiding the big ones because of my heel injury.
Related to my hill training is the difference in race courses from 2020 to 2021. In
last year's virtual race, we just looped around the river. So we got that little gut buster of a hill at mile 5 of the normal route (and the rollers leading up to it), but we didn't have the long climb up from the river at mile 2-3. And we didn't have that "false flat" slowly uphill from mile 6-8 or so. So I can pretty easily say that last year's course was a bit easier. (And shorter! I just ran until my Garmin said 10.00 miles last year, and everyone knows that barely any runners run the best possible line, so a 10 mile race curving through the city almost always reads more like 10.07 or so on a Garmin.)
Oh, and one last difference as I'm talking about the course is that last year I had no crowd to make me push extra hard to the finish. And I
noted in my race report that I had a slower final mile because of that. So this year the course will be harder, but I might push harder near the end, so these thoughts might be a wash.
LONG RUNS: You can see some of this info in the "pace work" section as well. This was an area that I thought I was doing much worse at this year. That late May injury lingered around and really started to take a hit out of my long runs, and I was starting to get bummed out. But looking at the distances, it's a lot better this year! Last year, I had 2 runs between 9-10 miles, and 2 runs that were 10+ miles. This year (since the injury in late May), I've had one 9 mile run, and then 5 runs of 10+ miles! (And I may shoot for around 10 miles on Monday to make it 6 runs of 10+ miles.) So I've had more long runs this year.
CROSS TRAINING: My weight lifting, core work, and leg exercises haven't changed much over the year, so those are all similar from 2020 to 2021. But I've had slightly longer and DEFINITELY more effort on the bike this year! Here's a comparison from June through Sept from 2020 and 2021:
2020:
- 22 easy rides
- 11 outdoor rides with OK effort
- 5 short efforts
- 5 truly hard rides
2021:
- 18 easy rides
- 2 outdoor rides with OK effort
- 1 short effort
- 27 truly hard rides <<< THAT NUMBER!!
From those sets of numbers, you can see I was riding more outdoor last year, but that I've had WAY more harder efforts (some outdoors but mostly on the trainer) this year!
And lets look at total saddle time as well through this same nearly 4 month stretch:
2020:
- 1541 mins on the trainer
- 1547 mins biking outside
- Total of 3088 mins, or 51 hours and 28 mins
2021:
- 2843 mins on the trainer
- 753 mins biking outside
- Total of 3596 mins, or 59 hours and 56 mins
A bit more time (not too dramatically different), but a BIG difference in effort this year. So it's pretty easy to say this is better this year!
PREVIOUS BASE: This is no contest.
Before my injury in late May, I had 9 months in a row of running between 84 and 103 miles each month.
A year ago, I was just starting back, so the first 6 months of that comparison had NO running, with the last 3 months having 157 miles TOTAL. Compare that 157 miles for those 9 months in 2019-20 to 817 miles for the same 9 months in 2020-21. SOOO much better of a base this year (before my injury in late May). But I truly don't know how long it takes for that base to dwindle away after taking it really easy in June to try to heal up.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -So if I were to note if these categories were better or worse this year, I'd say this:
= Weekly mileage
- Treadmill vs outside
- - - Speedwork
+ Pace work
= Hill training
+ Long runs
+ + Cross training
+ + Previous base
What does that mean for the race? I'm feeling pretty good, but just worried about about that big difference in speedwork. Last year, I ran a 1:02:33. This year, I'd love to shoot for sub-1:02. I have no big "important" goals, so I'll just run it and be happy to be racing! But if I can crank out a good time, then SWEET.
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