I have mentioned the importance of knowing how to learn your pace in previous articles. When you know how fast you are running you can adjust your pace in a race to reach your predicted time. Problems start when you do not know how fast you are running and run too fast in the early miles of the race. From experience I can tell you that for every minute you are running too fast at the beginning will be those same minutes too slow near the end of the race. I had to learn from experience since I had no formal coaching in long distance running. I ran the quarter mile and hurdles in college and thought that any runner running around the track more than once was a waste of time. So, when I started running the 5K’s, half marathons, etc. it was a learning experience.
The first learning experience was in my first 5K. I had run several 10K’s and wrongly thought that since the race was only half as far I could run much faster than what I ran 10K’s in. It took me less than a mile into the race when I realized that if I didn’t slow down I might not make it to the second mile. The second experience was in my half marathon. I had planned on running with a partner for an easy 7:30 pace. When my partner didn’t show up I joined up with another group of my friends. It seemed like a nice pace until we hit the timer at mile one. He was calling out, “6:15, 6:16, 6:17”. That was much faster than I wanted to run. It took me until mile four before I got back to a 7:30 pace. This was much better. That pace was good until I hit mile nine. My pace started to slow quite rapidly. By the time I got to mile 11 this lady with a fast walk came up alongside me and wanted to know if I wanted to keep up with her. I told her to go on as I was fading fast. I will say that I didn’t walk, but the pace was about that fast to the finish line. Those first four fast miles were made up with the last four miles at a pace that most people walk around their neighborhood in.
The point that is misleading when you mention what your pace in a race was. This is when you take your finish time and divide it by the distance you ran and you get an average of your pace. In all likelihood you probably never ran that average pace for more than a short distance during the race. Some runners start out at an easy pace and then pick the pace up when they determine how they feel that day and gradually increase their speed. Others start out a little faster than usual and hope to maintain that average pace as they fade in the later part of the race. Both will work as long as you do not venture too far from your average pace.
I used the Meyer’s System for predicting a finish time in a marathon. The system divided the marathon distance into five 5 mile distances and had various times for each section. It had the runner starting slower than the average pace, pick up the pace in sections two and three, and slow down for sections four and five. It worked to perfection for me.
Most runners think that as the distance of the race gets longer the average pace will be slower. Talking with runners that monitor their time this is not necessarily true. The time they run the 5K distance in a 10K race is usually only a few seconds off what their time in a 5K race is. I have talked to marathon runners that will be only a few seconds off their 5K times. It might be around 15 – 20 seconds slower for the first 5K distance, but the middle 5K distances will be closer to five second differences.
One phrase you might hear from experienced runners is, “I had a negative split for the last half of the race.” For a marathon runner this means that they ran the last 13.1 miles faster than they ran the first 13.1 miles. You might hear this in 10K distances races and half marathons more than the 5K race.
The key to all of these examples is that the runners either knew their pace, or they didn’t. The runners that know their pace will adjust their speed to the conditions of the weather, the terrain, and competition for that race. When a runner doesn’t know how fast their pace is there is a tendency to try and keep up with the front runners in a race. More than likely the runners in the front of the pack are experienced and will run a faster pace than you can maintain. Trying to stay with them will find you walking into the finish line at the end. If the runner knows their pace there is a chance that they can have a ‘finishing kick’ to the finish line and look good for their friends.
It is not always the case as there are some younger runners out there that are good runners, but I usually tell race directors to have the young kids get back in the pack. Too many of them work their way to the front line and sprint for about 200 yards and then come to a dead stop when they run out of gas. The rest of the pack comes running up and in some cases have bumped into them when they come to that abrupt stop. It is just a matter of safety and preventing a possible injury to a young runner.
It takes time and practice running around a track to learn pace. It will be worth the time to put in a few sessions trying to get a handle on how fast you run and know when you are not following that pace.
