SURVIVING Two Hard Weeks of Running!

Whew! I'm VERY glad to have gotten to this point in my TC 10 Mile training with no injuries flaring up!!

I was coached by Coach Jen in 2010 to hit my sub-60 minute 10 mile goal (I ran 59:05). Then 2 years ago, I looked back to her training plan and revamped it to work on my older body, and SHOCKED myself with a a 59:23 when I was just hoping to run a decent sub-61. Both of those training plans had a triathlon 4 weeks before the 10 Mile, but I recently realized that I'd only have THREE weeks between the Square Lake Sprint Triathlon and the TC 10 Mile this year. Things had to shift.

What ended up taking place was potentially dangerous for my injury-prone body. In 2010 and again in 2024, I had a post-triathlon week of 2 runs with some intensity, a pretty "normal" 2nd week with an easier day in the middle, a final BIG 3rd week of training, and then an easy 4th pre-race week. But what week would I remove for this year with only 3 weeks between the races? It ended up being that "normal" 2nd week with an easier day in the middle. So what did that mean?...

... that meant ALL runs had lots of effort from the triathlon through the following 2 weeks. That was 7 hard runs in a row!! YIKES!

A "normal" week of running for me is a long run with some fast miles in the middle on Monday, an easy run on Wednesday, and a speed day on Friday. Here are 2 "normal" weeks from my August training log with the runs highlighted:

These last few weeks, I got rid of those rest days as I just finished with these 2+ weeks of ONLY running hard:

And yes, I did my last long run yesterday on Sunday instead of today (on Monday) so that I'd have an extra day to rest before the race this weekend (something I did 2 years ago as well).

My strength training was very normal these last 2 weeks, along with my swimming. But my biking was all easy to moderate, and none of them were long rides. I really wanted to get out and ride longer on Saturday, but my legs were heavy and I was still prepping for the final long run on Sunday, so I still kept it a little scaled back. After a huge month of biking in August, I only got in 84 miles and a short 50 minute trainer ride over these last 2 weeks. As September wraps up, I'm looking at only about half the bike miles that I got in August, but that's all because of the heavy focus on running as I ramped up my TC 10 Mile training.

I'm in "taper" mode now! Back with posts about my final month of training, along with how I'm hoping to do at the TC 10 Mile this weekend!!