TC 10 Mile Week! (Last Long-ish Run)

Yesterday I headed out for my final longer run before this weekend's TC 10 Mile!

A few years ago (like in 2018), my long runs were on Thursday or Saturday. That made long runs leading up to a race easy: for a Sunday race, I had 8 or 10 days between my last long/hard run and the race. Now that I've been doing my long runs on Tuesdays (for the last 18 months or so), it's tricky leading up to a race. Do I do a "normal" long/hard run just 5-6 days pre-race? That seems pretty tight - my legs might not totally be fresh for the race. But having my last long run nearly 2 weeks pre-race seems too far out. So I never know what to do.

I figured I'd do a "shorter" long run with fewer "pace" miles than normal for yesterday's run. The week before I went 11.26 miles, with the middle 5.5 miles at 6:20 pace. That was my last REAL long/hard run.

So yesterday, I went about 10.16 miles with the middle 4 miles at 6:11 pace:

An out-and-back along the river (which I did last week as well, but
last week I added on more around my neighborhood to add mileage).

I kept thinking this run would feel "easy" because I had fewer pace miles, but that was a crock. There's never anything easy about running 6:10 miles. I'm still running without a Garmin (which died 3 weeks ago), but my rough mile splits for the 4 pace miles were 6:06, 6:16, 6:08, and 6:12 to total 24:43.83 (6:10.96 / mile pace). Overall, it was 10.16 miles in 1:10:07 (6:54.1 / mile pace).

One new variable for the race that I forgot to mention in my big pre-race training comparison post on Saturday was that I won't be getting half-mile splits on my Garmin for the first time since 2011. I think I make minor adjustments to my pace/effort (sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously) when I see what I just ran for the last 1/2 mile. This year, I'll just have the mile markers on the course, and that will be strange!

(If you're wondering how that will be so different, here's an example. Let's say I run a 6:20 mile and think "that's a bit slow, but not bad." But I actually ran half mile splits of 3:00 and 3:20. Now I'm holding my pace thinking it's "not bad," but I'm holding that 3:20 half-mile pace, or 6:40/mile pace. So then my next mile split will slap me in the face with a 6:40. It's all a good excuse to just run by perceived effort, but very few of us can *truly* do that.)

If you missed my weekend post with some pre-race thoughts based on my current training, here's a link! I'm hoping for sub-1:02 on a good day. Maybe 6:10 pace on a great day. But I think I'll be starting off easier and building, so that might ruin the chance for a super fast race. The "race strategy" will be a race-day decision, and it will be morphing every mile, so we'll just have to see what happens in the end!