Over the past 12 weeks I have been following a Pete Pfitzinger training plan for a 10 mile race. In one week I will finish the plan and race in the Cherry Blossom 10 mile race in Washington, D.C.

At the beginning of the training schedule I competed in a half marathon which I discussed in a previous post. The race went very well and gave me a good indication of my fitness prior to the training program.

The next ten weeks were spent building my base from 45 to 60 mile per week. Trying to rebound from the half marathon effort, the first weeks I felt exhausted. After taking a couple days to rejuvenate the legs, I was able to complete the workouts and build the miles.

At the end of the eighth week the schedule wanted me to race. Luckily it lined up with the Shamrock Run 8k. This was the perfect race to run fast and check my fitness. The race conditions were perfect, cold, light rain, and no wind. I started out fast, 1 minute and 25 seconds for the first quarter mile and 5:42 for the first mile. I was flying and feeling great! The second mile I slowed a little, but I was still happy with the pace, 5:51. The last three continued at about 5:45 pace and I finished with a great time. I was a good 30 seconds under my goal. The race built a lot of confidence for the upcoming 10 mile race.

The following week I completed 60 miles, the highest volume on the schedule. The week after I was supposed to race a 10k. I couldn't find a good race nearby so I just made a course on the waterfront and ran as hard as I could. Unfortunately I was tired and my mile splits were slow. The first three miles were at 6:15 pace. After turning back toward home I notice that things got easier. I imagine there was a slight grade and / or some wind which hampered those first three miles because the next three were covered in 18 minutes. I didn't feel great about the run, but at least I finished strong.

Going into race week my body feels tired. The simulated 10k, a long run that went long when I got a little lost, and a high intensity track workout took it out of me. It took the remaining part of the week before I started to regain some form. If I don't feel great on Tuesday I am going to take extra days off to make sure my body is rested for the race on Sunday. I don't think I can make any fitness gains at this point so my main goal is to make sure I am feeling good on race day.

Following the Shamrock 8k, I plotted up my race record to see if I am on schedule to run a sub-60 minute 10 mile race. Each data point shows the Functional Threshold Pace (FTP) calculated from my race performance. Remember that the FTP is the pace one can maintain for an hour. The goal FTP for race day is 6:00 / mile. If I can maintain that speed for a full hour I will be right at my goal for the 10 miler. A best fit line to my past race data suggests I could be four to five seconds per mile below goal pace on race day (marked by the vertical red line). This is a pretty optimistic forecast since the curve fit falls below my last two race paces. A shift up by two to three seconds puts my just below goal race pace.

A second order curve fits the data really well. This fit suggests my fitness might not quite be there on race day (two seconds per mile slower than my goal). Extrapolating the second order fit further (not shown) you would see that I reach peak fitness a few hundred days beyond the race day with a peak FTP of around 5:55 per mile. A curve fit suggesting I only have a few years worth of running improvement may be a little pessimistic.

The next fit matches the data very well. It is a spline fit. This shows the slope of my improvement decreasing with time. Diminishing returns should be expected as I get faster.Extrapolating the fit shows I will be right near goal fitness on race day.

Finally, here is a ridiculous fit. It is always bad practice to choose a crazy fit just because it matches the data well. Line fits to data should have a basis in reality if they are being used to predict future performance as I have done in the previous paragraphs. But look at that match! The only thing I might take away from the sixth order fit shown below is that running fitness improves in unsteady ways. Plateaus can be reached and then broken through as training changes.

Overall, my fitness appears to be good. I think my goal is reasonable but challenging. Let's hope for good weather and fresh legs come Sunday.