The Final 4 Weeks of 'Coach Jen's' TC 10 Mile Training

In September, I posted about the first 4.5 weeks of TC 10 Mile training where I "reused" Coach Jen's workouts from 2010. I was REALLY HAPPY that I was able to keep up with my 29-year-old self now that it's 14 years later! I REALLY didn't think I'd be able to do that!

Here's what the final 4 weeks of training with her workouts looked like (showing early Sept through the race in early Oct):

And here's that same calendar with my workouts overlaid as FASTER NOW or SLOWER NOW (just like I did in the post about my first 4.5 weeks of training):

The overall bummer (and why I was questioning myself so much leading up to the race) was that my only 2 "normal" Monday long runs were slower now: the first one wasn't bad (just 0:01 slower), but the second one was 0:36 slower, and that made me question my fitness. My 3rd long run was VERY similar (1 week pre-race), but then my final burst of speed the Wednesday of the race was slower as well. I had 3 out of 12 workouts RED in those last 4 weeks, where I only had 2 out of 14 workouts RED in my first 4.5 weeks of TC 10 Mile training - but I suspected that I'd be "making faster gains" when I was back in my 20s vs being an older and more seasoned runner now, so that wasn't surprising.

For more details: here's a post about the first 10 days of that calendar above, here's my descending tempo run that was a bit faster on the 20th, here's the WORST run - my last slow long run, and here's the final big week of training of the 23rd through the 29th. Oh, and here's "September in Review", but that doesn't go into detail of the specific workouts like the previous links do. And here's the first 4.5 weeks of TC 10 Mile training where I started with Jen's workouts.

And one kind-of-unrelated note: even though I was 0:18 slower this year at the TC 10 Mile than I was when Coach Jen got me to my PR 14 years ago, I still felt like this was a MAJOR WIN. I was NOT expecting to get under 60 minutes, so to go 59:23 this year was a DREAM. I maybe could have shaved a few seconds off some middle miles, but only if I had the hindsight to know "You will feel like [this] and run a 59:23. So how much more can you suffer in miles 5, 6, and 7 and still NOT BONK?!?" But I don't think there would have been ANY way in a PERFECT race to hit a PR. As I age, I'm happy seeing my "age graded" results going up and getting better. In my PR race in 2010, I had an age graded result of 74%:

And that moved up to 78% this year even though I was 0:18 slower because I'm slowing down "more slowly" than average:

Old guy still trying to bang it out!

(Also note that I was so much BETTER in my age group this year because I'm runner strong as an older guy [vs in 2010 when my age group was all the speedy 22 to 29-year-old men], and also note that my overall place is much WORSE this year because they included the pros in the overall race [which they traditionally haven't done].)

Also, I can't state enough that I had GREAT weather for this training. I'm pretty rigid in what days I do what workouts, which stinks on some of these nice fall days where I say "Jeez, it's 75 today, and it would have been a great day for a ride! But it's my 'pool day,' so woe is me. Oh well." But that rigidity has also helped keep me injury-free these last few years! And this fall had many PERFECT running days. And that helped me prep for this sub-60 10 mile. One of the reasons I didn't hit my goal at the Raspberry Run 1 Mile (running a 4:52 instead of a PR of sub-4:49) was that 2-3 of my track workouts were rainy (one was POURING rain) and one "important" track workout had to be done on a family trip on a trail. I was grateful for great training weather leading up to this race, and it helped me on race day!

As far as next year goes, I really don't know if I want to train this hard right away agian. I was just starting to feel a little burnt out by the end of these 8.5 weeks, and I don't know if I can do this RIGHT AWAY again. It was SUPER FUN to run FAST at the race, but I also don't need to have a goal like that EVERY year - I can just "run." If I trained like this next year, I know I'd be obsessively comparing new training to 2024 splits to 2010 splits, and I don't know if I need to do that. I don't need to make running a stressful endeavor. We'll see what next summer holds... I could see myself looking back to SOME of the workouts, but not doing the entire "program" like I did this year. My "normal" long runs these last few years looked a lot like what Jen had me doing, so I can keep doing normal long runs and maybe just pepper in some different speed workouts here-and-there. We'll see.

Again, check some links above for more specifics about these workouts, and here's the first 4.5 weeks of TC 10 Mile training to kick off this 8+ week training session.