Tufts Health Plan 10K for Women

The Tufts Health Plan 10K for Women is a major 10 kilometer (6.2 mi) road race held annually in Boston, Massachusetts, on Columbus Day, popular as both an elite world-class competition and a women's running event promoting health and fitness. In 2016, the race drew over 7,000 participants and nearly 20,000 spectators.

Since 1994, the race has doubled as the USA Women's 10 km Championship (USA Track & Field) 18 times. It has attracted many of the world's top distance runners, including Olympic gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won three times, and Lynn Jennings, a six-time winner.

Begun in 1977 as the Bonne Bell Mini Marathon, the race took on its current name when the Tufts Health Plan became its sponsor in 1985. For several years it was the largest women-only 10K in the US, most recently in 2013.

The race course starts on Beacon Street near the Boston Common, crosses the Charles River via the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge into Cambridge near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, forms a loop along the river on Memorial Drive, and crosses back over the bridge and into Boston down brownstone-lined Commonwealth Avenue. The finish line on Charles Street returns the runners to the Boston Common for celebration.

The race has become a Boston tradition. "With Tufts now a holiday fixture, Columbus Day in Boston means thousands of vibrant, healthy women striding up and down the Charles," wrote Don Allison in Runner's World after the race's 20th anniversary in 1996.

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Wikipedia