There are plenty of 10 - mile racesa round for you to experiment with speed. Follow our advice below and we guarantee you ‘l l get hooked!

words: Laura Fountain

A BLUFFER’S GUIDE TO FINISHING

10 miles is a long way if you’re under-prepared. If training hasn’t gone as you hoped, break the race down and try a run-walk strategy instead. Even one minute of walking every mile can make it go much more smoothly. Walk when you’ve decided to as part of your strategy. Don’t wait until you feel like you HAVE to walk.

Ask a runner to rattle offtheir race times and you’ll often get their 5K, 10K, half marathon and sometimes a marathon PB in return. Seldom will you hear a 10-mile race mentioned. Perhaps it’s because it’s not a distance we see at the Olympics or World Championships that the 10-miler often gets overlooked as a race distance in its own right, and it’s used instead as a training race for half and full marathons.

But 10-mile races are a long-established feature of the racing calendar in the UK. The Cabbage Patch 10 in Twickenham was founded in 1982 and counts Mo Farah, Scott Overall and Mara Yamauchi among its finishers. Meanwhile, just across the river in Richmond Park, the London 10 Mile launched in 2017. Scheduled, as it is, in May it has boldly placed itself outside of the marathon training season and challenged runners to take it on as a goal race. Does this signal a resurgence of 10-mile distance running in the UK? We hope so.