A Few More 'Sub-60 TC 10 Mile' Thoughts

I was SUPER happy with this past weekend's 59:23 at the TC 10 Mile! I shifted my goal mid-race from "maybe I can go sub-61?..." to "I'll be bummed if I don't get sub-60 because this is REALLY GOING WELL!!"

As I said in my race report, I think I was so fast because I had been nailing Coach Jen's workouts (that she gave me in 2010 for my PR race of 59:05) over the last 8+ weeks, and also because I've been running my long runs harder over these last 2-3 years.

Here are 13 more post-race thoughts:

• ONE: I really let myself rest before this race. I tend to always try to do a LITTLE more leading up to the race. Here's what 2021 and 2022 (the last 2 times I did the TC 10 Mile) looked like leading up to the race:

2021: 55 min easy spin and upper body on Thurs, core and legs with easy run on Friday.


2022: same (with slightly longer easy spin and upper body
on Thurs, and slightly longer final legs and core on Friday).

Compare that with what Coach Jen had me do in my PR year of 2010:

2010: easy spin WED, easy run Thurs, nothing Fri, and short easy run Sat.

So I backed way off this year... more than what I'm comfortable doing:

2024: short/easy spin Thurs, NO upper body Thurs, NO legs and core Fri, nothing Saturday!

That's SO much less than I'm used to doing if you look above to 2021 and 2022!! That may have helped! (And even with that extra rest, I DID have some effort in my run on Wednesday: normally I'd be going totally easy, but Jen's workout was "6x2 min hard then 2 min easy" just to get the legs moving.)

• TWO: related to that, my intensity over the 4 weeks leading up to the race shows that I was building, and then resting. The race is the final "peak" on the far right of this graph:

Three weeks of decent intensity, then a TINY week.

• THREE: it's fun to look at where the runners were based on the time of day. These interactive graphs were shown in the race results. The pros started at 6:55, and the first wave (including me) started at 7:00, with 5 total waves going out including the pros. By 7:30, there were TWO runners at mile 7.7, and everyone else was behind them:

7:45: some pros had finished, and I would have been at 7.3 miles (not yet to 7.7 miles).


8:00: I had been finished for 37 seconds! I was one of the 189 finishers at that point!

• FOUR: my overall place is much worse at this race than in year's past because the pros were lumped in with us "normies." The last 3 times I did this race before 2022, I was 85th, 95th, and 94th overall. This year, I posted a LOT better time (also moving way up in my age group), but ended up 147th. I don't know how many pros went off before us, but it was probably about 50 runners... which would put me back just breaking into the top-100 like "normal."

• FIVE: here's my elevation and pace chart. It shows the big hill at mile 2-3, the short little hill at the half-way point, and then that brutal "false flat" uphill from miles 5-7:

Half-mile pace with elevation: slow up the mile 3 hill,
then faster along River Road, then building to the finish.

• SIX: maybe my "proudest" results from the race are my age group placement: 5th out of 545. I've never been that high in a field so big. I was curious how close I was to top-3, and I would have had to have been 23 seconds faster (10 spots overall):

• SEVEN: where could I have been faster during the race? It's hard to say. I always look back after a race to figure out where I could shave off time with the gift of hindsight, and I think I ran this race VERY well. As I said in my race report that I often finish and think I could have been faster in the middle miles, but I was already SO FAST in these middle miles compared to other TC 10 Miles: I ran miles 6 and 7 in 12:08 this year, and the average of those miles over the previous 7 times I did this race was 12:49! I took off 0:41 between those 2 miles alone! If I was faster in some earlier miles, I maybe wouldn't have the endurance to keep those middle miles fast - that's a big unknown. I MAYBE could have gone a bit faster in miles 8 and 9, but I was working pretty hard. An ABSOLUTELY perfect race could have MAYBE gotten me down to a sub-59:05 PR, but I don't know where I'd find those seconds. I'm not disappointed at all with this race! I got right up to my redline and held myself there for 10 miles!

• EIGHT: I ran through SO many race scenarios in my head leading up to the race. I think that helped me be ready. What if I started fast? Slow? What would I do up the hill at mile 3 in either case? What if I hit half-way point sub-30:00? Or at my ideal of 30:15 or so? Or slower nearing 31:00? What if I hit it at 30:15 feeling like crap? Feeling great? I worked through lots of options and wasn't just thinking about "OK, so I'm gonna run 60:45 for sure, and I'll do it like [this]."

• NINE: in my pre-race post, I noted "peaking" at the right time. My Garmin also then told me when the race was over and that I've been "recovering" now:

"Maintaining," then lots of "productive" training (maybe my biggest
stretch ever), then "peaking" for a few days, and now in "recovery."

(Sidenote: maybe I've never seen "peaking" before because I've never been properly trained... or maybe it's because I've never entered an upcoming race into my Garmin. I don't know if it truly just looks at the workouts/effort/HR of your training, or if it also needed to see "oh, you're racing in 2 days... I think you're 'peaking' for that. Doesn't that make you feel good?" I just don't know.)

• TEN: my HRV status TANKED after the race. I once had it hit 50 the night after I was in a car crash. But the night after the 10 Mile, it dropped to 46, which is the lowest I'd ever seen:

... but then that same morning, it told me I was "recovered" and ready to train again:

• ELEVEN: local speedster Danny Docherty showed someone familiar in one of his Instagram posts! He ended up 17th overall in 2:26! I was flipping through his images, and I spotted this scene from the last 2.5 miles of the marathon:

That's our priest Father RJ in front of our church blessing the runners!

If Danny started at 8:00 a.m., ran a 2:26 marathon, and was at mile 23.8 here, that would mean it was about 10:12 a.m. when he ran past our church. And there's a 10:30 a.m. mass, so Father RJ was maybe outside for a bit before mass. Worlds colliding! Too funny!

• TWELVE: this hard training over the last 2 months bumped up my V02 Max. It normally floats between 62 and 64, but it shot up to 66 during the final bit of my training:

• THIRTEEN: the day after the race, I had a nice walk around the University before class, and I enjoyed a Cosmic Brownie from a vending machine. I just got out to get some blood flowing before class:

A nice 30 min walk (to keep my "30 mins of exercise/day" streak alive
since Nov 2023, along with my "walk 1+ mile everyday" streak as well).

Back with some race photos shortly! Here's my RACE REPORT if you missed it!