TC 10 Mile Goal

About 2 weeks ago, I added the TC 10 Mile to my upcoming races in my Garmin app, and it asked me my goal. I was about to put 1:02:00, but that's where I THINK I can finish. My GOAL is to be faster than that. So I put in 1:01:30 as my goal:

6:09s seems scary. I've only had THREE 10 miles (out of about 14?) that were faster!

And then the following day, I happened to be scrolling through my Garmin, and it noted this was what it currently expected my finishing time to be:

I would be THRILLED with 1:00:45!!

I don't fully believe that "anticipated finish" time. I'm not getting my hopes up that I can run a sub-61. I'd LOVE to do that, but I'm not being blinded by my Garmin telling me I can do that when I'm often "slower" than these things usually predict. (Although a week before the race last year, I had my Garmin telling me I'd run a 59:16 and then I went on to finish in 59:23, so that was close! But it was also a PERFECT day to race with a great tail-wind.)

I forgot about it, and then glanced at it just a few days ago... and it was sub-60. That is NOT happening. I'm not anywhere near the same shape I was in last year when I went sub-60 for just the 2nd time ever, so there's no DREAM to even try to break 60 this year! TRULY! If I break 61:00, that'd be AMAZING. I'd be so happy with that.

I went for an easy bike ride on Thursday, and during that ride was the first time I was thinking "Just to keep 'working hard' in the middle miles of the race, I should probably give myself some mid-race goals..." I had a LOT of mid-race thoughts and goals before last year's TC 10 Mile in this post, and I had been thinking about those for a WHILE. That just shows how different my mindset is this year: I'm NOT trained to do anything amazing this year. Being my stated goal is around 6:09 pace, I hope to be at that pace at the half-way point: just under 31:00 would be good. But if I'm over-heating, it could be close to 32:00, which would be crappy (that would be on pace for a 1:04:00, and my WORST 10 mile was 1:03:05 from 10 years ago where I ran the first half in 31:59 - let's keep a PW off the table!). And one of my goals last year was to keep miles 6 and 7 a bit faster, so I'll see if I can do that this year as well. I had stated last year that seeing 43:30 at mile 7 would be great, because I could maybe run 5:50s to the end and finish in 61 flat. I ended up running 75 seconds faster than that at the mile 7 marker last year, so I'm still thinking that 43:30 at mile 7 is a realistic "check in" point with slightly worse training this year. Maybe. I mean, it'd be really good if I could be at that time at mile 7! (And if I can't run as fast as 5:50s to the finish, I'd still finish AT MY GOAL TIME of 1:01:30 if I can run 6:00s to the finish.) So really, I'll just be checking out my overall time at mile 5 and 7 to see where I'm at. And I just decided on doing that 2 days ago.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, off to race hard and see what I can do! It's going to be WARM, and I'm just not super confident this year... Just going to crank this out and hope it's decent!