RRCA Club Challenge

RRCA Club Challenge is held in Columbia, Maryland, on February 28, 2027. There is one distance, a 10-miler (16.1 kilometers), starting at 8:00 a.m. As the name says, the race doubles as a club competition: it is run under the Road Runners Club of America banner, so alongside individual results there is a team element for the running clubs that turn out.

Ten miles is an underrated racing distance. It is long enough to expose gaps in your endurance but short enough to recover from in a week, which makes it a strong late-winter checkpoint if you are building toward a spring half marathon or marathon. Aim to run it at roughly your half-marathon effort, a shade slower than 10K pace, and hold that from the gun rather than chasing the fast club runners off the line. Six weeks with a weekly long run of 10 to 12 miles and one tempo of 4 to 6 miles is a reasonable approach.