King's Runner 10K: a town 10K to find out what the legs are worth

A 10K is the shortest thing we race and the one that tells the most uncomfortable truth, because there's nowhere to hide in six miles. The pace you can hold is the pace you've got, and a 10K will tell you that number whether you asked for it or not.

Why a 10K in March

After a winter of long slow miles and a January that was mostly recovery, I wanted a number, not a goal-race number, just a reference for what the legs do when you ask them for faster than marathon pace for forty-some minutes. Whatever the answer was, that's where the spring was going to start from, and the spring had two halves and an Olympic triathlon in it, so it seemed worth knowing. A 10K at real effort also costs a lot less than a half at real effort.

This one was a town 10K: flat, early, well run, and over before the day got hot, which in March on Oahu meant it was warm instead of hot. I ran 46:48, 7:33 a mile, eleventh in the 50-54s out of 111, which was the number I was looking for. It wasn't fast enough to change any plans and wasn't slow enough to worry about, which is usually what a reference race tells you.

It also set up the rest of the month. The Ku'ikahi 10K came two weeks later and Michelle won her age group there, and the Windward Half was the week after that.