The race hadn't started but the women who were at the Medtronic TC 10-Mile/USA Championships press conference were unhappy about losing ten seconds and the defending men's champion, Mohamed Trafeh, was still waiting for his luggage.
"That wasn't fair," said defending women's champion Janet Bawcom of the 6:31 head start the women have for this year's "equalizer" race within a race. They had more last year and Bawcom was caught and passed by Trafeh within a half-mile of the finish, winning the $10,000 bonus. If you went strictly by the numbers this year, the top male time by the entrants is course recordholder Abdi Abdirhamin's 46:35, while top female entrant Kara Goucher's course record is 53:16, which comes down to a 6:41 handicap.
The top two men, Abdirhamin and Trafeh, also plan to work together for at least part of the race "to catch the girls," said Trafeh. It worked for them last year and the lure of the equalizer bonus will similarly alter race tactics again this year, Trafeh said. Both the men's and women's race winners get a first place prize of $12,000(with an additional $2,000 bonus if either sets a course record), so the equalizer incentive is enough to change the race.
When asked if the women would employ a similar strategy, both Bawcom and last year's runner-up, Olympian Julie Culley, said with Goucher also in the field the race for first will push the women to their limits. "I want to give it all," said Bawcom of her normal approach to a race, so trying to stay ahead of the men probably won't provide that much of an extra incentive for her, but for Culley, who is an Olympian at 5K on the track, the temptation to "sit and kick" would be stronger if she were just going for the win.
Both the women and the men said that the bonus incentive made it a more "honest" race as neither gender can afford to let the pace lag if they want to win the bonus. The women's strategy is to hold as much of their lead as long as they can because they know those chasing have the advantage of "smelling blood" once their "prey" come into sight near the end of the race.
Chris Solinsky, a Wisconsin native who is the fastest of the top men entered in the US championships on the track, is relatively new to the roads, and said he probably will not try and follow if the other men in the race set a fast early pace, preferring, like Culley did last year in her first attempt at the longer distance, to judge how to manage his energy at the longer distance. Trafah is just hoping his luggage catches up with him, but either way, he hopes to repeat last year's double triumph and added: "We're just here to have fun."
Star Tribune story on the Medtronic TC 10-Mile press conference is HERE.
The official site for the USA 10-Mile Championships, with video of the pre-race press conference is HERE.
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