Week in Review: Last BIG Week of 10 Mile Training!

The hard work is behind me! The TC 10 Mile is just a few days away, so this past week was my final big week of training:

One big difference from a "normal" week of mine is that I usually do my long runs on Monday, but I'll SOMETIMES move them up to Sunday if it fits better in my schedule. I haven't done that in a while, but I did it this past weekend: I moved Monday's long run up to Sunday (the 30th up to the 29th) basically so I'd have an extra day to be recovered from that before racing this upcoming Sunday.

• MONDAY was one of my worst long runs in the last few months, good legs, and biking to work. I posted about that a week ago. Dang.

• TUESDAY was a long swim and decent upper body. A pretty normal workout of broken 3x400 and 3x200 with lots of extra drills.

• WEDNESDAY was 6 miles of running (3 of those being FAST), some running drills, good core and legs, and biking to work. Like Monday, the pace work in the run wasn't as fast as it was back in 2010 (as I'm doing Coach Jen's workouts from back then). The 3 hard miles back then were done in 17:32, but it took me 17:51 last week. After having a surprisingly strong few weeks of training that matched up with 2010 really nicely, it was a bummer to have back-to-back imporant workouts that were noticeably slower now.

• THURSDAY was an easier bike ride and some upper body. A pretty low-key day.

• FRIDAY was some fartleks, along with good core and legs. I FINALLY hit a good workout compared to 2010. In 2010, I ran similar fartleks going about 4.4 miles in 30:47. Last week, I ran 4.76 miles in 30:17. That's substantially better! But before you get too excited, that was on a wet and rainy day in 2010, and I did less of it on grass/dirt trails this year than compared to 2010. So I'm not THAT much fater.

• SATURDAY was like Thursday: another easier ride and some upper body.

• SUNDAY was my final pre-race long run: the middle miles had 6x (3:00 hard, 3:00 moderate). I remembered how much this run sucked in 2010. It looks easy, but the MODERATE efforts are killer - you never recover from the hard running. Look at my HR at the bottom of this pic and how during the non-efforts, it’s still climbing throughout (starting at 155 beats/min and then only dropping to like 170 beats/min in the final few moderate efforts):

Efforts starting at split 5, then out-and-back and ending at split 23.

I noted that back in 2010, I ran about exactly 6 miles over those 36 mins of hard and moderate efforts. A few days ago, I felt good and I didn’t feel like the moderate efforts were really that hard, and I covered 6.01 miles. SWEET!! Back in 2010, Coach Jen wanted my moderate efforts around 6:40 pace, and I had no idea what I was running (pre-Garmin). A few days ago, I averaged 6:35 pace for my moderate efforts. SWEET AGAIN!!

3:00 HARD w/ half mile splits = total distance (and pace / split)
3:00 MODERATE = distance (and pace)

2:49, 0:11 = 0.54 (5:39, 5:31)
3:01 = 0.45 (6:39)
2:44, 0:17 = 0.55 (5:30, 5:49)
2:59 = 0.46 (6:31)
2:49, 0:12 = 0.54 (5:38, 5:21)
3:00 = 0.47 (6:25)
2:45, 0:15 = 0.55 (5:31, 5:33)
2:59 = 0.45 (6:42)
2:46, 0:14 = 0.54 (5:34, 5:39)
3:00 = 0.46 (6:33)
2:45, 0:16 = 0.55 (5:30, 5:28)
3:00 = 0.46 (6:35)

= 6.01 miles in 36:11 (6:01.2 pace)

Because that week STARTED and ENDED with a long run, I logged 37.03 miles of running! Usually, I’m around 22-24 miles, with a few of these weeks with Jen being more like 25-26 miles. This week will be less (more like a normal 23 miles or so, ending with the race), and then next week will be smaller post-race.

Finally, my Garmin status has been telling me that I’ve been “productive” over the last 10 days or so. I don’t often see stretches of “productive” like this:

Not “productive” (just “maintaining” mid-month around the sprint triathlon I did...


... and then the 4 weeks before that. That blue is a “recovery” day around my
mountain biking trip with my boys where I took it easy for a few days.

I have a little burst of speed coming in a workout tomorrow, and then an easy rest of the week! Back with some pre-race thoughts shortly!!