TC 10 Mile Training: NOTHING Like Last Year

Last year, the first few weeks of TC 10 Mile training went REALLY well. I was following workouts I was given by Coach Jen 15 years ago, and I was posting splits right in the range of where I was back then when I ran my 59:05 10 mile PR. And then I ended up running my 2nd best 10 mile ever last year with a 59:23 when I was just hoping to break 61 minutes. (DREAMING of breaking 60, which I heartily did!)

But after a fun June this year with less strict training, I learned I was NOT in the same shape in mid-July as I was last year. I had no big plans to post another fast TC 10 Mile time this fall, and my easier summer absolutely confirmed that!

But I still decided to do some of the same workouts as 15 years ago (and last year), but with the knowledge they’d be substantially slower.

I’m just over 3 weeks in to those similar workouts, and it’s a little depressing watching my crappier splits.

Here's a breakdown of some of the speed workouts over these last few weeks:

• The first speed workout of 4x1600 with 4:00 rest ended up being of similar speed as last year! (Here's a post about that workout, and I was just 0:01 slower on average for each interval this year.) I didn’t think that was going to last, but I was happy to kick of my training on a good note!

• The next speed workout was the pseudo-failed descending 4 mile tempo on a flat trail near Alexandria. It was a GREAT place to do that workout, but I just didn’t have it in me.

• Just over a week ago, I did 2x2 mile intervals along the river, and that was the biggest kick in the pants. I did this same workout 1.5 years ago in 11:28 and 11:24, but this time I struggled and only hit 11:51 for both intervals. Last year, I felt like it was a bad workout, and I hit 11:42 and 11:27... that's an extra OUCH for this year.

• And this past Friday, I did a longer speed workout of 8x (3 mins hard, 3 mins easy). My Garmin is set to take 1/2 mile splits, and last year I was running 2:40 to 2:50 for the first 1/2 mile for most of the intervals (and then another 0:10 to 0:20 to hit the full 3:00 for each interval). This year, I ran 2:50 to 2:57 for the first 1/2 mile of most of the intervals, only getting the final interval to start with a faster 2:46 half-mile split.

I ended up running 0.44 miles shorter over the 48 minutes of the "8x(3 mins hard, 3 mins easy)" which is substantial - that breaks down to 0.15 miles farther during the efforts, and 0.29 miles farther during the easy running. I was aware during the workout that the efforts were slightly slower, but I didn't realize at the time how much slower the recovery runs were in between the efforts.

I did an out-and-back course, so here are efforts #5-8 on the way "back" as they are covering efforts #1-4:

Easy to see the 8 efforts in my pace and heart rate.

And here's a post about a hard mid-week workout from eariler in the month too. I didn't run hard on my mid-week run last week due to injury concerns, and I haven't decided if I'll push the pace this week. We'll see!

In the meantime, I'm just working on not being depressed about running slower splits. I KNOW I won't be running sub-60 this year, and I just need to be putting in the efforts to do what I can... and I need to let go of what last year's splits were.