Second Week of TC 10 Mile Training

Last week was week 2 of my 8 weeks of focus for the TC 10 Mile, and it looked like this:

First of all, it shows lots of biking because my boys and I spent 3 days camping and mountain biking up north. My only "training" ride was Saturday's 31 miler, and that capped 6 straight days of being in the saddle.

My swim was an odd distance on Thursday as it was in a 50 meter pool, so it had to be converted to yards. I did a mid-morning swim as my boys and I dropped off my tomatoes at the State Fair earlier that morning, and that natatorium at the U was set up "the long way" when I got there. I got there 15 minutes after it opened, and I WAS THE ONLY PERSON THERE!! I HAD 9 LANES OF A 50 METER POOL TO MYSELF FOR 10 MINUTES!!

Dead pool! (Not the comic book character.)


I had "personal records" because I rarely swim in a 50 meter pool...


... so I broke my old 100 PR (which still isn't fast, but I wasn't
doing 100s), and it was the first time my workout had 400
meters of straight swimming, so that was a default PR.

But on to the important numbers: my running workouts!

MONDAY was a long run (what my Monday's normally are) done with some speedy fartleks throughout the middle. I did NOT remember this workout from 14 years ago when Coach Jen first had me do this - this seemed brand new to me! Comparing this workout to 14 years ago showed that I was decently faster now: back THEN, I covered 2.71 and 2.66 miles over the 2 sets of farkleks, and NOW I covered 2.89 and 2.86 miles. (Not a perfect comparison as I mapped it out afterwards in my pre-Garmin days back in 2010, so it may have been a little off.) I had a little left calf/heel pain sneak in on that run, so I stretched and massaged it really well, and tried to be on top of it while camping the next few days.

That wrapped up my 5TH STRAIGHT HARD RUN. Whew. That's not usually how I train, but I made it nearly 2 weeks.

Lots of bursts of speed (without and with laps shown).
Short bursts from split 5 through 15, then longer fartleks from splits 15-33.

WEDNESDAY was an easy run, but it was supposed to be on some hills. So I ran to the "skills loop" area of Cuyuna and ran up and down the "Miner's Mountain" road 2 times. My heel felt OK!

FRIDAY'S run was a bit of a bummer at first, but then I felt better about it later. It was to be the 2x2 mile interval workout that I like to do on the paved trail by the river. I was VERY AWARE that I set a PR in this workout this past spring, and I was hoping to run around that pace again - I got both of those 2 mile intervals under 11:30, which was my goal.

But as I posted about this workout on Monday, my first 2 half-mile splits were 3:00 and 3:00, and 6:00 miles aren't going to add up to sub-11:30 for 2 miles. I wasn't as fast as I had hoped, but still worked to make them hard. So I finished the workout feeling a BIT bummed, but then saw that I ran 11:48 and 11:34 in this workout 14 years ago, so my splits of 11:42 and 11:27 last week were still a bit faster last week than they were years ago! (6 and 7 sec faster!) Again, more on that workout in this post from Monday.

My left heel got a LITTLE sore these last 2 days, but I'm trying to keep it in check. I'm still fitting in all of the "important" workouts from Coach Jen from her training plan from 14 years ago, so I'm still very happy with my current training!

And my workouts are still really on track! I posted last week that 3 out of my first 4 workouts were all FASTER now than they were back in 2010. This week, I can't count the easy hilly run as anything to compare, but the 2 hard workouts (Mon and Fri) were both faster now as well! So 5 out 6 hard/important workouts were faster this year than in 2010! I'd LOVE to keep that streak going!! (But NEWS FLASH, I wasn't quite as fast on Monday's workout, and I'm not looking forward to tomorrow's run either... I'll be back with "week 3" info sometime next week, but look for this hot streak of "faster than 2010 workouts" to NOT continue!)