Pacing Myself (and others)

Once a month at Oldham parkrun Royton Road Runners provide a team of pacers who aim to complete the 5k course in a fixed time at an even pace. Today was June's pacing event to tie in with the clubs twice a year "parkrun day" where we try and get as many club members to come down in their vests, hoodies & coats to celebrate being part of the club and the links we have with our local parkrun.

The RRR pace team (l to r: Simon Howard, John Lambe,
Garry Bower, Neil Brock, me & Abigail & David Ellis.)

I was running the 30 min pacer slot while pushing Abigail round in her pram so my wife could also have a run.

I've never been great at pacing and today proved no different. Half way round lap one according to my watch I was on schedule to finish in 30 mins yet I could see the 35 min pacer ahead of me and not just a little he was a good hundred metres or so if not more away.

Three quarters of the way round the lap I finally caught up, "Something's not right here Simon." I said I as started to pass. "I've only just got satellite signal on my watch." was the reply.

I went on to finish the run in 29:18 which is well out for pacing 30 mins at 5k. According to my watch I was on schedule most of the way round with for me not bad kilometer spits (6:12, 6:04, 5:34, 5:57 & 6:01* *pace for split as only 0.9k)  but I was still over forty seconds fast.

Why?

Well I was pacing myself from my TomTom watch and that clocked I'd only ran 4.9k not 5k.

This caused some discussion among the pacing team post run. We are all so dependent on the Garmin/TomTom/et al to keep up on pace this falls apart when the device measures short or long, or in Simon's case isn't ready to start when the Run Director says, "Go!" Perhaps the problem is we are all so brain washed to look at our GPS devices to know what pace we are running we can't do it on feel. I know I couldn't run 30 mins on feel: I'd be running what felt 'easy' and still be doing 5:20m/km's which would be far too fast.

What's the solution? For people like me who have only ever ran with a GPS device, be it a mobile phone or a dedicated running watch I'm not sure there is one. I'm not going to run without my watch as I like to see where I've ran and at what pace recorded, plus there are all those Strava segments to be recorded. Perhaps with time I could teach myself to run that pace on feel, but my first thought was that I'd need my GPS watch to tell me I was on that pace!

Maybe we'll just have to live with the pacing team not being 100% on target every time.