Elusive sub 50 minutes in a 10 km race

2015 was a great running year for me. It was also my 2^nd year of running, naturally, I was excited as a child, looking for a running event online and registering for a race almost every month. TCS 10K being the most popular 10K in the country, it isn’t surprising I registered for it too. At that time, I was training part of PaceMakers running group, TCS 10K was considered a ‘key’ race in the group, and even now is, runners train hard to get personal best performances. I used to be very diligent with my training then and wanted to clock my best time as well. A few Time-Trial runs on the actual race route building up to the event went well, 55:25 on May 2^nd, 53:27 on May 10^th, managed to run the race on May 17^th in 52:26. That was the last and the only 10K race I ran that year, as I was sufficiently distracted running half marathons.

Fast-forwarding to May 2016, the same rut, 2 Time-Trial runs before the race, one on Apr 7^th, 49:52 and another on May 1^st, 50:29. I attributed the slight drop in finish times due to hot weather conditions. Brijesh Gajera was pacing a buddy of mine for a 48:00. Having done 49:52 a month before the race, I set out with a target of finishing the race in 48:00 which in my opinion was not too ambitious. On the race day, the first 7 km came in 34:41, on track for a 48:30, with the last km downhill one can’t rule out 48:00 or thereabouts. I unknowingly started to slow down in the 8^th km and somewhere during the 9^th km my legs just won’t move, I was dehydrated and heated up, I thought I was going to die that day! I had two choices at that juncture, abort and walk back from Cubbon Park into the finish area or just finish the race. Given it was only 1.5 km or so, choosing the latter was a no-brainer. I ended up crossing the finish line in 1:08:58. The last 3 km took a staggering 34:17, one can imagine the extent of suffering I endured. It happens to be the slowest ever 10 km I have ever run including in training! Latter part of 2015 & early 2016, I managed to better my 10 km timing and bring it into the 50:xx, but they were part of half marathon races. Given the fiasco and lack of experience running 10K races in general, I avoided participating in the 2017 & 2018 editions of TCS 10K and my plan for the 2019 edition wasn’t any different.

My friend, Shailja Singh, who I log a lot of training miles with, was training for a 10 km race in Jun and was planning to run TCS 10K as a practice run. The training we both were following was less mileage with more speed focus given her race in Jun. I didn’t have a key 10K race in the year, I thought I would give TCS 10K a go, plus McAfee Running Club was sponsoring employees, therefore it won’t have been a good idea to stay away from the event. The buildup to the event was not great to say the least, there was immense amounts of work stress in Apr & May, kids were unwell, vacation time cancelled due to that, etc. The training volume was low, so was the motivation and confidence. As I was mostly away mid-Apr to mid-May, directly ran the race, barring one practice run on the route on May 12^th in 50:27. Shailja was the official pacer for the event, the plan was to hang around with her for 5-7 km and then go fast but decided to chill and finish the race with her, we finished in 49:39. 

I wanted to be sure I have it in me to run a sub 50 again. So, I ran a 10 km training run in Brighton during a work trip and managed a comfortable 47:19. Next I wanted to rule out if I can repeat this in Indian weather conditions. I ran Bengaluru 10K challenge on Jul 7^th in 47:42. I surely could go much faster in a 10 km race as I have stamina to produce about the same timing for 10 km distance during a Half Marathon race. I still do not know how to strategize and run a fast(er) 10 km race, maybe something to work on in 2020!