Theme of day: `You Go Girl!'

Cheri Kenah, the five-time runner-up at the US Indoor 3,000 meters who gave birth to twins less than a year ago, will be running. So will last year's BAA Half Marathon winner, Marie Davenport.

Cynthia Coburn and her friend, Maureen Corrigan, a recent kidney donor, will, too.

And Olympic gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson will be on hand to give opening remarks and run with her teenage daughter, Abby.

These are just some of the more than 7,000 women who will take part in the 28th Tufts Health Plan 10K for Women tomorrow.

The annual Columbus Day race, which starts on Beacon Street and ends at Boston Common, started as a fun run but now attracts runners ranging from elite to novice. Walkers and women in wheelchairs are invited to join. And this year there's the "You Go Girl!" club, which offers a registration discount to women running with a friend.

For the 10th year, the race has been selected by USA Track & Field as the USA National 10K Championship race. The results will be included in determining the standings in the 2004 USA Running Circuit.

Kenah is regarded as one of the most consistent American distance runners, dating to her high school days in Utica, N.Y. She has never run the Tufts 10K.

At Villanova, Kenah won the Big East Indoor mile her junior and senior years and was second in the mile at the NCAA Indoor her senior year.

From 1997 through 2002, she finished second in the USA Indoor 3,000 meters, but did not compete last year because of pregnancy.

Kenah, 33, said she's been focusing more on 5K and 10K races the past 10 years, and now is focusing on just getting back into running shape after giving birth in November. Kenah, who won the Friehofer's 5K Run for Women in Albany, N.Y., two years ago, was back at the race in June, but said she "wasn't competitive."

"This is definitely my comeback year," said Kenah, who was confined to bed rest for the last three months of her pregnancy. "I just got back to full-time training in April or May. I'm getting stronger every day, but I'm still not quite in the shape where I'm going to be competing with the top guns of the US."

Kenah tries to average runs of 10 miles a day, but said "it all depends on the day and the kids."

She said the Tufts 10K is the biggest race she's tackled post-pregnancy, "but I'm still on a learning curve, learning how my body is reacting."

By early 2005, Kenah wants to get competitive indoors and shoot for outdoor races.

"I potentially want to get back to where I was and make a run to possibly make the world championship team, either in the 5K of 10K. That would be the ultimate."

The "ultimate" goal is on a much smaller scale for Corrigan, of Wakefield, who donated a kidney to her father in July. Corrigan, 40, went to Loyola Marymount on a cross-country scholarship, but then "it got away from me and I haven't run much since then."

When she was recuperating from the donor surgery in Bellevue, Wash., this summer, she was visited by Coburn, who used to live in Boston but now lives in Portland, Ore.

"I always tried to get her to do it, but she never did," said Coburn, who has run the race. The timing is especially good, she said, because she'll be in town for Corrigan's wedding Oct. 25.

They will be among the 1,100 women in the "You Go Girl!" club.

Coburn said she knows they'll cross the finish line long after the elite runners, but that's not the point.

"I figure we'll run, or walk it, but it's such a beautiful race," she said.