Pace Group Leaders Strategy On Long Course

I'm interested in knowing how the pace group leaders handled the late stages of the race. It looks like both the 3:20 and the 3:30 pace group leaders significantly picked up the pace in the last mile. Chris (3:20) averaged 7:35 mile, but dropped the hammer on his group to run a 7:02 last mile while George (3:30) did a number on his group, too, dropping from over 7:55 to 7:16 for the last mile. I didn't check any of the other pace group leaders. Apparently the pace group leaders decided to try to pick up the pace at the end in order to cross the finish line at their designated times, instead of allowing a couple extra minutes for the longer course. I'm interested to know if that was indeed the strategy. I don't know how else to explain the significant increase in pace over the last mile or more. I know Chris has been reading the forums - can you chime in on how you dealt with the difficult situation of having to pace a group over a course that was altered at the minute. Otherwise, I assume you'd plan to run an even pace / even effort the entire way, right?

We didn't hear about the long course until the team had already split up in the corrals, so we didn't get word from our team captains that going over would be acceptable in this case...as a result, I think each pacer had to make a judgement call. I chose to run pretty even splits (or, no more faster in the second half than I would have normally, since the course is a negative split course to me). I did indeed pick up the pace the last half mile or so - once we crested the final hill, I took off a bit on the downhill to maybe get a little closer to 3:20. If that had been my main concern, I would have bolted much sooner, but I still had a number of people with me and I wanted to get them closer to the finish before taking off.

Typically I run the last mile a little slower, but each race is different. If I have some people that go with me, I'll push them along. I had 3-4 go with me of the 8-10 people that were by my side with a half mile to go, and we picked up a few people along the way. I told the ones that stayed back to pick up the pace as best they could and keep the balloons in sight and I think it worked for them. I stayed in the finish area and chatted with several afterwards and got no complaints.

So you know, our team guidelines are that we can finish up to 2 minutes faster than our designated time, but no slower...so a 3:18:01 is a good race, but 3:20:05 is technically a miss. In the 17-18 races I've done, most of our pacers are usually in the 10-45 seconds fast range (in other words, 3:19:15-3:19:50 for the 3:20 pacer).

I haven't had a chance to talk to all the other pacers yet, but not knowing how much longer the course was as we were pacing, we simply had to make a judgement call on how close to our time we should be. I picked it up at the end to get closer and because a few of my group came with me - I didn't need to because I wound up 75 seconds under target with my adjusted time, with about 35 seconds coming in the final half mile. But, when you've got a big sign and balloons that say 3:20 on it and the clock says 3:21, it's hard not to be tempted to go faster at the end.

For the most part, it looks like all the pacers were right on target at the half and some did indeed pick it up in the last mile or so, but overall I think we did a pretty good job. Hopefully you enjoyed our service!

Thanks for the information. I agree with you about the Pig being a negative split course, that was another thing I was curious about. It must have been difficult as a pacer, not knowing exactly how much the course lengthened. Again, I think the Pig and the pace teams handled the situation pretty well. Congrats on a good run.