A Few Final TC 10 Mile Notes

I posted my full race report on Monday if you missed it, but here are 6 more things related to my 12th 10 mile race:

• MINOR POSITIVE SPLIT: I made a big deal out of how crappy I felt and that I had a 4 second positive split. That's not much (I KNOW), but it is for me. In my last 2 TC 10 Mile races (pre-COVID in 2018 and 2017), I had negative splits of 35 and 57 seconds. In fact, ALL of my TC 10 Miles except for my 59:05 PR from 11 years ago were negative splits. (And that PR was insanely painful with a 21 sec positive split.) The point is that I didn't have the speed work to hold onto that pain like I wanted to. So even getting CLOSE to a positive split is a bad thing for me in a race like this.

• SOLID FIRST FEW MILES: Sort of going off the point above, I should note that I didn't go out too hard. My first 4 miles were GREAT: not too fast, but not too slow. I was at 24:31 after 4 miles, or just under 6:08 pace (when I was really hoping to hold 6:10 as an overall average). Then mile 5 was quite a bit slower, and then I just bled time for the next 2 miles after that as we were on that slow false flat. I didn't go out too hard; I just couldn't hold on any more.

• SO MANY PEOPLE PASSING ME ON SUMMIT AVE: I'm used to passing people all throughout the race. But I was the one being passed more often down Summit Ave (the last 4.5 miles of the race). Even in my "personal worst" 10 mile, I still passed 22 runners and was only passed by 2 in the last half of the race. In my last 2 TC 10 Miles (2017 and 2018), I passed 22 and 32 runners, and was only passed by 3 and 1 runner in the last half! That's passing 13 times more runners than runners who passed me! At last weekend's race, I passed 7 and was passed by 11. Again, not a huge difference, but instead of 13x difference it's 0.6x difference in the other direction.

• I'M STILL SHOCKED BY MY AGE GROUP RANKING! I was 4th in my age group out of 385!!! That's NUTS!! What happened to the speedy 40-year-olds?? Is this just my life now?? :) No, just kidding. This was some sort of fluke. I noticed that I knew 1st and 3rd in my AG as well: first was Doran C and 3rd was DKT who I talked with pre-race. I don't think I can hope to duplicate that nice of a ranking next year, but maybe I'll make that a goal if training is solid leading up to the race.

• WHAT COULD I HAVE DONE TO BE FASTER? That's always the question. It's pretty clear that my lack of speed work is what made the final half of the race suck. My long runs were OK, but I had to take it easy for the majority of the rest of my training runs because I was really trying to keep that early summer injury at bay. So I'm happy with what I was able to do this year, but I'll work in more consistent speed work in the future if my body allows.

• TRAINING IS MORE RANDOM THIS WEEK: I've kept a very standardized training routine since about the start of COVID 18-19 months ago: runs are usually M/W/F (with core and leg days being those days as well) and bike workouts are 2-3x/week on T/Th/Sat (with upper body work on those days too). But being everything was really just trying to get me to this last weekend's race, now I feel OK breaking that up and doing whatever I feel like for a week or so.

I wanted to let the stressed parts of my body rest up after the race, so Monday just had some upper body (no swimming, biking, or running for sure, and I even figured I'd let my core and legs rest another day). Then I hit the U of M pool on Tuesday for just the 4th time (all within the last 4 weeks) for an easier swim, and I tried to work my legs and core a bit (unsure of if I should even work my legs yet, but my knees and calves felt fine doing my leg work). And I ran a bit on the treadmill on Wednesday, but my left knee was a little sore afterwards, so I won't be planning anything drastic just yet. (And I've been extra aware of social distancing [always masked] this week as I was in crowds at the expo and the race this past weekend.)

Again, check out Monday's post which is my race report if you missed it!