Pacing, pacing, pacing!

As I previously mentioned, my first race was not as successful as I hoped due to rookie mistakes. The biggest of those mistakes was a failure in pacing. I was hoping to run a time that would have required a 7:10-7:15 per mile pace, but between the initial surge of adrenaline and starting up near the front with some of the faster runners, I wound up going out in about 6:40 for the first mile, and my race was pretty much done from there. So, I learned right away how important pacing was in a race. Lately, however, I’ve discovered how important pacing is in pretty much every aspect of training.


The most significant example of this was in my interval training. When I’m doing intervals, I run a quarter mile at a pace notably faster than my planned race pace, then walk an eighth of a mile, and then repeat the process for however many I’m supposed to do. The idea is to keep a relatively consistent pace throughout the workout, with everything below or at a particular goal. Going into the training plan, the most I had ever done was 7 or 8 intervals, and I always felt like death at the end of those. The training plan called for me to start my weekly speed workouts at 7-8 intervals and step up to 15-16 over 5 weeks by adding 2 every week. I was really skeptical that I was going to be able to do this.

My pattern had been that my first couple intervals were always several seconds faster than my intended steady pace, while the freshness wore off my legs, and then I would start to see the times fall off towards the end. So, I decided to try a new tactic and hold back a little bit early on. It felt kind of awkward at first, and the end result was that my early intervals would be right at, or just over, goal pace. I immediately noticed a couple changes in how these workouts went. First of all, I found myself feeling much stronger (though still plenty tired) at the end. And secondly, I was now running my fastest times in the last several intervals, rather than seeing a drop off. And so, each week as I had to add 2 more intervals, I found it to be very doable – to the point where by the end of the build-up, I was doing a set of 16 intervals that were consistently faster than the sets of 7 or 8 I had been doing at the start.

Something else that I noticed was that when I focused on holding a bit back, my times didn’t really fall off, with the exception of the initial intervals that I had been running too quickly. Instead, I was running similar times and feeling stronger at the finish of each interval. What became apparent from this was that previously, I had been starting out at a pace I couldn’t sustain and falling dramatically off at the end of the interval. When I held something back early, I set a pace I could maintain throughout, and so I ran a similar time without the extra initial strain of going way too fast.

It’s somewhat counterintuitive to think you can run the exact same distance in the exact same time and yet come away with different levels of fatigue, but it’s quite possible. I saw this play out over a longer distance in my longest race rehearsal. My previous race rehearsal had been 2 miles long. I ran it in 14:45, with almost identical mile splits, and I ended it feeling pretty good, though tired. The next rehearsal, almost 3 weeks later, was 2.25 miles. I went out way too fast in the first ¼ mile, wound up running the first mile in 7 flat, and was in trouble. I wound hitting the 2 mile mark in 14:45 again, but this time I felt like I was dying – and I was in better shape and several pounds lighter than I had been in the previous run.

So, given all that, probably the only thought that will be prominent in my head at the start of Saturday’s race is “DON’T GO OUT TOO FAST!” I’ve put in the work and gotten myself back in shape, so I’m pretty sure that the only thing that can keep me from a good race (short of some sort of disastrous weather conditions) will be making that same mistake again.