The NYRR Mini 10k is the oldest women’s race in the United States and that alone makes this one of my all-time favorite races. Whenever I talk about this race to non-New York runners there is some explaining to do. The most common question I get is, “What’s a mini 10k?” The race is a full 10k but was named after the mini skirt because some guy in marketing thought this would attract women. You can get a brief history of the race here.

Another reason this is a fun race is because the first couple of miles of the course is on Central Park West. As much as I love running in the park it is nice to run outside of it from time to time, and yeah, getting to avoid some of the rolling hills on the westside of the park is a bonus.

I’m in a phase of my summer race season where I’m not specifically training for anything. After starting the year off with three half marathons three weeks apart and then hoping for that elusive half marathon PR at the Brooklyn Half my brain and body need a break. While I’ll be running in a lot of races, I am not racing them and am just focused on trying to keep an even pace on all of my splits. So far that seems to be working out well.

As for the race itself, I started out a little too fast but I was able to get things under control and keep things steady the whole way. I was able to focus on my form up the Harlem Hills and push the pace a bit near the end. When you include the great crowd support for this race, it was a perfect day. Oh and there were women running in sports bras — always a huge plus.

I often forget what day I’m on during this streak. Thank goodness it ends on July 4th. That is a day I can remember.

Now to change topics to my Runner’s World Run Streak that the Mini 10k became a part of. As I have mentioned in a previous post, runners are supposed to run at least one mile every day from Memorial Day to July 4th, 39 days total.

I think today was day 15 and for the most part my legs have been holding up well, until this week. Both yesterday and today they have felt very tired.

Part of my problem is that I don’t know how to run just one mile. When I go out running I go out to run multiple miles, nothing ever below three miles. It feels very odd to just try and run one. I always think I can do more. So far during the streak I have been able to incorporate one day of a one mile run but I think I need to add one more.

With the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge tomorrow I forced myself to run just 1.4 miles this morning. See, I couldn’t just get it in at one mile and even during this run I thought I could keep going and had to force myself to stop. I will need to figure this out if I want to make it to the end of this streak.

But the one good thing about these tired legs is that it forced me to slow down to my marathon training long run pace. One of the challenges I have always had when I start my marathon training is getting a feel for what that pace should be. Yes, I know the actual number is supposed to be one to two minutes slower than my marathon race pace. My problem has been staying in this range. I’ve always found it easier to be able to know what that pace feels like so that I can take my eyes off my Garmin and focus on other things. If you can feel your pace, you will run with less stress and that’s always a good thing.

So two days of tired legs have given me that feel for my marathon training long run pace and I am trying to commit this in my memory bank for July when that training actually starts. I’ll need that more than ever with the new training plan I am using.

This streak is helping me in so many ways but then again running always has.