Enid Au won all the league cross-country meets she entered this year. Then, last week, she won the Vancouver public school final. On Saturday, the Killarney senior will race in the B.C. championship in Victoria.
Her nerves might be heightened, but her approach will be the same. She won’t care how she places.
“I’m not a result-centred runner,” said Au, 17. “If I focus too much on results, it ruins my psyche. It may affect my form.”
“This is my last provincial high school cross-country race. I want to run to my best ability and not worry too much about my placing.”
Au, whose older sister competed for Canada world ultimate championships this summer, won in back-to-back weeks at Quilchena Park, improving her showing on the 3.5-kilometre course by six seconds the second time around. At Fraserview for the Oct. 21 final, she covered 3.8 km in 14 minutes and 58.42 seconds.
In two of the three races this fall, Au beat Calli Charlton, an impressive runner from Lord Byng who was a top-5 league finisher in Grade 9 when she placed 48th at provincials. Last year, as a Grade 10 student, Charlton won the league final in 14:46.43 and won bronze at provincials. Au came second at Fraserview in 15:23.52 and finished 42nd in the province.
“It’s healthy because it pushes us both to run harder,” Au said of the competition with her Byng rival.
Au is one year older than Charlton and didn’t race in 2010 or even 2011. In 2012, the first year Au joined the cross-country team at Killarney as a Grade 10 student, she qualified for provincials and finished 103rd out of 251 competitors. A year later she was in the top 45.
Not that it matters much to Au. Or her coach.
“I hesitate to say how I think she will do at provincials,” Don Chang wrote in an email. “That would be focusing too much on the number and not the process.”
The Cougars coach named Au a captain this season because of her quiet leadership.
“The other kids on the team care about, respect and admire her, as do the alumni who still follow what she does and how the team is going,” wrote Chang. “Enid has been one of our team's prime examples of focusing on training consistently, dedication to running workouts well, and having a commitment to going out and running her best, and not worrying so much about the ‘numbers’ — time and placement.
“She usually leads workouts with our top boys. The others on the team follow suit. If they run their best, the ‘numbers’ will take care of themselves. Respect the process and trust the process.”
The tight Killarney team is one reasons athletes like Au stay involved. She practises six times a week.
“It takes up a large part of my life now,” she said. “After school every day there’s practice, I look forward to it. The people is what makes it even more special. We always stay behind after meets and we cheer each other on as a team.”
Largely because of her training partners, Au has learned to keep up with leaders when she’s not out in front herself and she doesn’t just keep the same pace.
“For the [league] meets this season, I was leading but during hard races like Provincials, I try to latch on and I prefer to run behind someone because that’s how I practise,” she said. “If I’m doing that, I try to make my breathing the same as theirs, I set my pace and I don’t let go.
“When I’m running, I focus on form. I take care of the little things that you need to do like breathing, keeping cadence and try to keep everything else out of the way, especially results and times. These things take care of themselves if you take care of what you have to do.”
