The Cedar 12k took place on February 9, 2014, about 1.5 hours north of Victoria. Every time I have to drive over the Malahat, I admit, I get a little bit nervous. At least I wasn’t too nervous about the race itself, especially after I learned how to keep pre-race anxiety at bay.
Again, I was thrilled to be racing! This whole idea of racing every 2 weeks is definitely growing on me. Like I said before, I treat these shorter races like “hard training runs”, which will hopefully help me PR in the upcoming BMO Vancouver marathon. Thinking of them as “hard training runs” takes all the pressure of “racing” off me.
Also, the more I race, the better I feel about racing. In high school, I used to get very nervous for races and I believe that being nervous can hinder performance.
The fact that my friends always do all the races in the Island Series make me want to do it too.
Remembering the course from last year, I knew that it was not an easy race. There are rolling hills that make it challenging.
Going into the race, I was 100% sure I was going to beat last year’s time. What’s every interesting is that this year, it was my first race where I was referred to as “elite”, so I got a very low race number. It was a really pleasant surprise. 🙂
Above: Nearing the finish line, almost ready for the sprint. Sporting my Public Myth teaser leggings and racer back tank.
At the start line, I thought to myself: “I’m prepared, I’m trained and I’m looking forward to seeing how much faster than last year I will be.”
As we took off at the start line, I made of point of trying to do ~4:15kms using my Garmin. When I got to the halfway point, I realized that I was about 30 seconds faster than last year.
At that point, the hills were a non-issue. I have been running up and down Mount Doug for the past few weeks in order to get used to hills and I believe that type of training helped a lot. Last year, the hills almost got me, but not this time.
Above: Really coming in towards the finish. All I could think was: “get him, get him, get him!”.
When I got to the turnaround, I aimed to maintain pace. Although I ended up slowing down a little bit going up the very last hill, I still managed to beat my last year’s time.
I finished the race in 51:02, which is 59 seconds faster than last year. My average pace this time was 4:16 per km (6:51 per mile).
Above: The awards ceremony. Sporting my medal and teaser jacket from Public Myth. 🙂
I was SO THRILLED that I also won 1st place in my age category. I’m definitely looking forward to the next race in the series. These races have become ADDICTIVE, in a REALLY good way. 🙂
You can see the full results from Cedar 2014 on Raceday Timing.