Pace making

Dear all,

I've been running for the last 5-6 years. Can manage to run 1:32 to 1:37 half-marathon. My next event is the Great West Run (Exeter's half). Been asked to pace a group to come under 1:45. Any advice?

Regards,
Dragan

Hi Dragan, never paced anyone before but I would imagine you would need to run a very evenly paced race. Each mile within a few seconds of each other and I guess you would need to practise the required pace.

Good luck and hopefully you will get advise from others who have been pacers themselves.

This works out pretty close to 8 minutes per mile, so with markers every mile you should be able to adjust the pace as you go along to be cumulatively correct.

The first few miles will be tricky as the start is congested, and your admiring set of followers may not like making up ground over the uphill first two miles.

Good luck!

Please post afterwards & let us know how it went.

There is a thread somewhere on the flm site that gives mile times for any pace that you can print off and use as a wristband.
May find it helpful
Has all distances and paces.

My plan is to start slower the first mile or so, say 8:15 to 8:30/mile. After that I will try to speed up slowly (and yes, the hill at the second/eight mile is a killer).

Will let you know afterwards how it went.

Plan sounds good, although my personal plan is steady pace all the way.

Not sure any one hill at GWR is a problem, just that the overall stretch from the railway bridge to the first roundabout includes two hills & 1 long drag from about 0.5 to 2.0 miles.

Good luck!

Dragan - So how was it?

Hi everybody,

Sorry for this late report. I had to go abroad on Monday after the race and only came back Wednesday night. First, the good news. I managed to finish the race in 1:44.16. I though that was pretty good considering that we had to wear those “infamous” time chips to accurately time us. You would think that would actually help. However, that made my job much more difficult because not all the people wanting to run about 1:45 actually started with me. Therefore, I had to keep an eye on my own time, but have in mind that people who started before me will have to be there close to the official race time.

As for the even pace, I’m not so sure I did it very evenly (if you know what I mean). The first mile was spot on, 8.00. The second mile is the one with a nasty steep hill, followed by a narrow longer hill - 7.45 (serious lapse of judgement!). The only explanation I have for that one is that the road gets really narrow on the next hill and because of the congestion I thought we were much slower. From then on I was always between 7.50 and 8.15 per mile, except the mile 8 (again the retched hill). This time there were cars waiting for us to pass, but the problem was the road was narrow even for runners only. We ended up slowing down considerably – 9.00. Toward the end of the race I was followed by some more experienced runners who liked the pace. In the end, about 10-15 people finished with me. Few even thanked me afterwards.

Would I want to do it again – YES. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve never enjoyed the Great West before. Would I try to do it differently – YES, again. I’ll try not to make a mistake of speeding up too soon.

Dragan - Thanks, interesting report. How did you record your mile splits? I didn't see many mile markers apart from 1, 4, & 7 I think?

Hi Dragan,
Well done, it sounds like running a steady pace below your normal race pace is harder than running steadily at race pace. You have less feedback from your body screaming for you to slow down for one thing. I think personally, if I was being paced, I would want to be paced at a constant effort rather than constant pace per mile.
Therefore slowing down for the hill on the second lap was really the right thing to do. If I was going to run a constant effort race well below my own race pace, I'd want to be wearing both my HRM (to get a fairly constant effort) and Speed and Distance monitor (so I didn't need to look out for those elusive mile markers) - but that would be cheating.