Back-to-Back 'Coach Jen' Workouts

After Monday's long run from Coach Jen (a workout from 13 years ago), I decided to be risky and follow it up with a hard run on Wednesday as well. I looked back to Jen's TC 10 Mile training for me in 2010, and did this workout right after the descending long run: a descending tempo run.

She prescribed a workout that was about 7 miles total: 2 warm-up miles, straight into 4 hard descending miles, and then cool down for a mile: in her words she said "OK to crawl" for the cool down. ;) Here's what she said for the guts of the workout:

THE goal is that each mile gets faster and you need to control that - last mile, #6 is all out - I mean ALL OUT - how fast can you do that one? Should be suffering. OK? I am going to tell you that last mile should be 10k pace, so YES faster than goal pace for your 10 miler (sub 6) for damn sure.

The workout ended up being well over 7 miles in 2010, and I didn't want to go TOO far on what's normally an easier day... so I cut the warm-up down by a bit and ended up going 6.5 miles this week instead of 7.4 like I did back then.

Much like Monday's descending long run, the goal was to descend the MILES and not the HALF-MILES. I knew my first 1/2 mile would be fast as it has a bigger downhill, but then the goal was to make the final 1/2 mile not too slow as I was coming back UP that hill. Here's what I ran for those 4 miles:

3:01, 3:09, 3:05, 2:59, 2:54, 2:54, 2:51, 2:51 = 23:47.1

Honestly, I was happy with that. I was a bit disappointed with the 2nd split of 3:09, but then again, the goal was a DESCENDING tempo run, not just an "all out from the start" tempo run.

I didn't look at my splits from 13 years ago until AFTER I did this workout this week. But here's how they compare:

2010: 6:03, 5:55, 5:42, and 5:45.

2023: 6:10, 6:04, 2:49, and 2:42.

I can't really compare 29-year-old Steve with 42-year-old Steve, but I think those numbers are fine. A faster start would have been nice, but then I kept some decent speed in the last 2 miles.

Nothing usual here: 1.5 miles easier, 4 miles hard,
a 3:00 walk break, and about a mile running home easy.

This run was a big test for my body! In more way than one! It was a hard run on a Wednesday, and Wednesday's have been nothing but easy runs for the last 3 years. I did that for a few reasons. First, I've been running strong, so I want to see how much I can push myself and how fast I can be for the TC 10 Mile in a few weeks. (WithOUT injuring myself!!) Second, I'm racing a triathlon this weekend, so there goes my normal Friday track workout as well as my long run on Monday. So I was really trying to cram as much in as I could this past week before this weekend. (Again, withOUT injuring myself!)

A short sprint triathlon run doesn't beat me up too much (mainly because I can't run as fast because of the hard swimming and biking I did just before that, so then it doesn't hurt my legs as bad as just a running race of the same distance), so hopefully I can do well at the triathlon and then get back to some longer/harder workouts by later that week. I'm trying to push a bit more than normal to see what I can do at this year's TC 10 Mile, and it's a fine line!