Since I had a good finish at the Harriers Pioneer 8k a couple of weeks ago, I decided to sign up for the Cobble Hill 10k (which took place on January 26, 2014).
Normally, I don’t do a 10k race that early in the year, but I thought that if I did one now, then I would get more experience racing that distance and be ready to kill it at the end of April (TC 10K).
Of course, whenever I race, I always look to achieve a personal best, regardless of the distance and regardless of the time of the year it is.
The other reason I signed up is because I’ve never done this race before and my friends were doing it too.
On race day, I got up a few hours before the start of the race because I knew I had to drive about 40 minutes to get to the race. I left the house early enough to have some time to pick up my race number and warm up a little without having to rush to the start line.
It’s very important to calmly arrive at the start line because if you rush to the start line and feel stressed, then it will be very hard to focus on the race, let alone perform well.
I also find that I use the shorter races, like 8k and 10k, as substitutes for speedwork as I train for the BMO Vancouver Marathon. They make speedwork more exciting because there are lot of people cheering and also a lot of fast runners to pace with.
In this race, I wanted to be as close to 40 minutes as possible when I reach the finish line. My best 10k time was 41:52 last year so I definitely wanted to beat that.
My only race strategy this time was to not deviate from the 4 minute kilometer by anything more than 12 seconds. I had my Garmin, so that it would tell me how fast I was doing each km. This means that at any given point, I would not go faster than 3:48 per km and neither would I go slower than 4:12 per km.
The hardest part was definitely trying not to start too fast, since that’s my biggest racing mistake.
Above: Just after finishing the race. 🙂 Sporting my Public Myth teaser super crop leggings and racer back sport bra.
This strategy seemed to work because I didn’t have any super slow kilometers mid way through the race, which used to happen when I start too fast.
Feeling great at the 8k mark, I decided that it was time to pick it up a bit. At 9k, I realized I didn’t go fast enough to break 40 minutes, but I suspected that it would be close-ish. I finished my last km in 3:45, which I thought was good.
At the end, I finished the race in 41:30, which equates to an average pace of 4:09 per km (about 6:41 per mile). I also came in 2nd in my age category.
Above: The awards ceremony. 🙂
I was thrilled to have a 20 second personal best in my first 10k race of 2014. I’m very excited for the next race!!