Getting Ahead of Myself...

Today I ran the second Long Training Run organized by the NYRR intended for folks preparing for fall marathons. In the first LTR, I ran the full 20 miles with the 8:30 pace group and felt great.

This time I had decided not to go the full distance because of the challenging 20 mile run I had done last weekend.

As I entered the park, I saw a Flyer that I didn't know, and we introduced ourselves. She turned out to be GDB, a well established member of the club whose name was well known to me. She asked if I was going to be a pace leader (the Flyers provide all the pace leaders for the LTRs), and I said that I wasn't. I told her that I was too new to the game, but she encouraged me to do it anyway. She pointed out that there were multiple pace leaders with each group, so there was no real pressure. She also mentioned that it was very helpful to the club if we could produce a full set of pacers.

In the end, she talked me into it, and I signed up to pace lead the 8:30 group for 16 miles. There were 3 groups that went out at the 8:30 pace, and I was assigned to the first. There were two other Flyers leading that group, one of which was ST, whom I knew to be a very experienced and fast runner. I asked her how confident she was of her 8:30 pace, and her answer was "once I find it, I can keep it". This was, unfortunately, how I was feeling. Although I often train at 8:30 per mile, I wasn't sure I could hit the mark in the first mile. I remembered that in the first LTR, the pace was spot on from beginning to end, and I wasn't sure about meeting that standard.

The first mile of this run is down and up the biggest hill in the park, making it that much tougher to set the pace, but once we started running, I started to feel more confident. The three pace leaders ran side by side at the front of the group, and we seemed to be in unspoken agreement about the pace. None of the other runners seemed to have any issue, so on we went. I was a very new feeling, sensing the energy of a pack of around 50 runners at the start of their run, right on our heels, but not passing.

After topping the hill we came to the first mile mark, and a quick glance at the watch showed that we were way fast - under 8 minutes (yikes). At the same moment, everyone else in the group came to the same realization, and folks generally let their objections be known. They didn't appreciate being led over the biggest hill of the course at a faster speed than they had signed up for. We pulled back the pace right away of course, but I had the feeling that we would be hearing about this all morning.

By the time we finished the first loop we were on pace, and we stayed steady for the rest of the 16 miles that I ran. There were some friendly folks to chat with along the way, including a very nice guy from the Brooklyn Road Runners who had some interesting things to say about the way the club points races were run. There were also mildly disgruntled types, such as one guy who commented "I'm really happy that we are running 8:30s now."

I ended the outing with mixed feelings. On one hand, I had no business being a pace leader given my lack of experience, and I was embarrassed at having missed the mark so badly in the first mile. If one of the other pace leaders had pulled us back, I could have gotten away with it, and if I was a veteran of many marathons, I could shrug it off as one small miscalculation, but as it was, I felt exposed as a fraud. On the positive side, I felt very under control at the pace and distance I ran, and while many of the other runners struggled, I was able to cruise along and focus on keeping the pace steady.

Although I should have waited a year (at least) before putting myself out there as a pace leader, the experience did reinforce my sense of myself as a runner, and I look forward to becoming more involved in the running community in the future. Running -- good.