Boston Athletic Association 10k Post Race Report

Part of the reason I'm pushing this post out now is because I am doing my first sprint triathlon next week! I wanted to get this post out since it covers a change in my training philosophy that I carried into my current training block.

I've slowly been working my way down from marathons to shorter distances, so this year I ran the BAA 10k on Jun 21st. One thing I changed up that had a huge impact was choosing to take more days off to improve my recovery.

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The Course

A friend recommended this race when I mentioned I wanted to run a 10k near Boston. The race starts right between the Public Garden and Boston Common, takes you over the Longfellow, past MIT on Memorial Dr, back over the Charles, through Back Bay and finally back to the Common.

I couldn't get a GPX file from the event staff, so I transcribed the course map on my own into Garmin:

As you can see, it was a very flat race:

The course overlapped a little with the Boston Run to Remember Half Marathon I ran last year, but had a lot of new ground. The first portion of that race was in Seaport and it did not go near Commonwealth.

Training

I like to buy structured training plans that I can anchor onto my race day. Just like my last couple of races, I used a Matt Fitzgerald 80/20 running plan.

Some upsides to using a structured training plan:

• Handles 3 week cycles and the taper for me.
• Enforces rest days.
• Helps me pull back on foundation runs, knowing I have hard workouts scheduled on other days.

This time I went with the level 0 version of the 10k plan because I wanted my training to better fit into my life. More concretely, here's how the two plans differ:

I adopted a dog and even though she's 13 years old she loves to go for walks. Capped around twenty minutes, of course, as recommended by the vet. We walk probably one and a half to two and a half miles a day and unsurprisingly that has an impact on my recovery needs.

I also explicitly decided to prioritize completing my strength workouts twice a week. I gave up a lot of my strength days when I was in the thick of training over the last couple of years. This time I ran the 2 day Tactical Barbell Fighter template. It's specifically designed to be flexible for your recovery needs and pairs nicely with race training. I was able to get both workouts in most weeks.

When training for my past races I missed some social opportunities to cram more miles in. This time I gave myself the grace to miss more training days and that was a good thing. Outside of vacations, I only skipped 5 runs when training for my last race. This time I missed 19 workouts, but had more green recovery days on average. So I felt more prepared and hit my targets on the days when I ran. Plus, I got to spend more time with the people in my life.

The plan started April 1st and finished the day of the race. Before the block I only did some light indoor biking over winter. Honestly, it was weird to do less training this time and yet feel better prepared for the race.

Planning the Race Pacing

I usually set up my pacing to have a slightly negative split with an easier uphill effort:

There was minimal elevation impact this time. About a week before the race Garmin predicted a pace around 8:05 minutes / mile. I know the predictions are not that accurate for most people, but they are pretty on point for me. I run with a chest strap and I wonder if that helps.

For my marathon and half marathon I was intentionally very conservative with my pacing. At longer distances the risk of injury is pretty high. Especially for runs over three hours. This time though, I wanted to just let loose and have fun since the race was a shorter distance. So I targeted 50 minutes or a 7:52 pace.

Results

The race started just after 8am. The early morning was chilly, but got up to 68 at race start and over 70 by the end of the race. You never know what the wind will be like in Boston, but it was light that day. Honestly it was perfect weather for running a race.

50 minutes sounded like a stretch to me, but I ended up finishing in 49:04, which I was pretty happy about. Here are my kilometer splits:

Based on my target pace I was in the second wave of runners. You can see that I went out a little slow for the first two km while I worked my way through the crowd. Then I started hitting the target paces.

For the last half I opened up and did a nice negative split. I finished with a 5:21 push through the final stretch. I felt good and probably had a little extra in the tank! Thats encouraging and I think I'll set an even more aggressive goal vs my estimate for future races.

BAA took photos of me during the race, but they were offered through MarathonFoto, and it's $69 to get all of them. So alas, I have no photos to share. I was able to get some photos of cones left over from our Glaswegian visitors. I studied in Glasgow for a semester so I looked fondly at these as I remembered the Duke of Wellington statue.

My recommendation

I really enjoyed this race. If you're looking for a 10k in the Boston area, I think it's a really nice option for an early season event. It could make a great B race if you want to run a second training cycle and race in Fall. That's exactly what I did in preparation for my upcoming sprint triathlon. I'll try to get the post race report out sooner this time.