Friday, April 27, 2012

Love the 10K: Get in Gear preview

Tomorrow is Get in Gear, Minnesota's annual rite of spring!

That's the event's tagline, not my own creativity. But I have had 10K races on the brain lately, and Get in Gear - although it now includes 2K, 5K, and half-marathon options - is a classic one. I will be on the start line tomorrow. One friend and Miles and Laurel reader (Kate!) is running it, and it's her 10K debut!  I also received an email from a friend asking for recommendations for 10K races in the fall. (More on this, perhaps, in a future post.)

This is all kind of funny to me because I find a 10K (6.2 miles) to be a fantastic challenge (emphasis on challenge). As strange as it sounds, I find half-marathons easier than 10Ks. This may be partly because I race the 10K distance so infrequently, mostly as speedwork at the end of a marathon training cycle, that I have a glorious history of starting out the race running as fast as I can because six miles is nothing! and then burning out magnificently around mile 4. I don't recommend that pacing strategy, okay?

But I need to admit, to myself and all of M&L land, that I'd like to start emphasizing the fantastic in "fantastic challenge" instead.  I just wrote the other day that my friend Sara and I talk about the scared-excited mashup feeling that accompanies many worthwhile activities. Well, thinking about 10Ks churns up those feelings for me. Racing one requires speedy legs and patience to not go out too fast - and you can't fake endurance if it's not there, either. It's really tricky!  But racing that distance is also such good prep for longer race training, I've found.

Lest you think I only have terrible 10K experiences in my running history, I do have a favorite 10K, and it was at Get in Gear in 2009! The race field is large and can be mayhem at the start, which usually leads to a slower first mile as runner sort out their paces. In 2009, that continued into a slower second mile and third mile than I was expecting - not because of the crowds, just because I was dawdling and not pushing myself because it was just easier to sit back. I got my 5K split that year and thought to myself, no, no! that's not what I want.  I won that little mental battle, kicked it up a notch (I got in gear, if you want to get punny), and I had the fitness to back up the surge. It was a huge thrill for me, and I finished in a time I never quite expected I could ever run. It's still my current PR.

That feeling is part of what keeps me coming back to this race and this distance. It is really a spring tradition for lots of Minnesota runners, too. While I'm sure that race organizers would love 55 degrees and mostly cloudy, it also won't be Get in Gear we know and love unless the weather is wacky.  I ran my first GIG in 2003 when I was a freshman in college, and that was the closest to mild weather conditions I've ever experienced there (it was sort of warm and humid but nothing wild). I've run either the 5K or 10K at GIG probably five times since then and have learned that late April in Minnesota is one gigantic wild card in terms of possible meteorological conditions. On the day I ran my PR, it was windy and sleeting. In the past couple of years, pouring rain has been the name of the game. Tomorrow's forecast says "a chance of rain and a chance of snow." It's part of the race's charm for sure.

So, in honor of Get in Gear, I'll reveal a mini-goal. Beginning with tomorrow's race, this will be the summer of the 10K!  I'd like to work on the distance, figure out how to pace myself better, and maybe even get close to that old PR.  Please feel free to remind me of that, if needed, when I come back tomorrow for a race report.

Good luck to everyone racing tomorrow!  Will any of you be among the thousands at Get in Gear?  Anyone else running or racing this weekend?  And now that I shared mine, tell me: what is your toughest race distance?

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