The Merville 15k took place on April 6, 2014. It’s the 2nd to last race of the Vancouver Island Race Series.
Merville is a small community about 15 minutes north of Courtenay. It’s about 2.5-3 hours north of Victoria.
Since the race would be starting at 11am, I got up at 6:30am and left my house at around 7am to give myself enough time to drive the distance.
I wasn’t really sure where Merville was, but I figured that once I got to Courtenay, it would be self-explanatory. I didn’t have any trouble finding Merville and its Community Hall.
Since I’ve driven up Island a few times for races now, I started to enjoy the drive a bit more. I had quite a bit of energy during the drive and I couldn’t wait to get to the start line.
In training, I would always run 15k in just a little under 1:10. I knew I could go a lot faster and this time I was really prepared to do so.
I got there with enough time to pickup my race number, have my pre-race energy drink and warm-up with my friends before the race started.
At the start line, I just thought: “I’m going to get as close to 1hour as possible. I am starting with the intention to break 1 hour and if that doesn’t happen, then I will still have a great time.”
As the race started, I just took off and settled into a really good pace from the start.
I got to the 5k mark in 20:28, which I was very happy with, especially since that was my 5k race time a couple of weeks ago and I had tons of energy left to keep that pace going.
I was just under 33 minutes at the 8k mark, which is faster than my time at the Harriers Pioneer 8k race. The greatest thing about it: I still felt great.
Then, I reached the 10k mark in 41:40, which used to be my PR last year.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on my Garmin…
That is, until I got to 12k in 50:06! What?????!!!!! Did I just run a 12k personal best as part of my 15k run? YUP!
I seemed to have flown through the next 2k (and don’t remember much of what happened then) and the next thing I knew, I had less than 1km to go. At that point, I knew I would be under 1:04.
Above: My friends and I post-race.
I admit, I didn’t have much of a sprint left at the end and I’m not disappointed by that. I finished the race in 1:02:21 which is far better than I expected. It’s an average pace of 4:10 per km or 6:42 per mile.
I placed 1st in my age group and 42/312 overall.
I want to do this race next year because I WOULD LOVE to break 1 hour, even if I get 59:59. 🙂