Pacer Mark

Wednesday's Miles: 8
Thursday's Miles: 6.25

I am thinking of running with a pace group in the marathon next week. I haven't ever had an opportunity to do this, only for the first 6 miles of a half marathon (before the pace group split from the half marathon route), so I do not have a lot of experience following along. Also, I am the pace picker for the majority of my runs. When I run with Mark, he runs at my pace so that he doesn't push me too fast on an easy day, and speed workouts I am running what my schedule tells me to. So for a bit of "pacer practice" I asked Mark if he would pace our Wednesday run. He was WAY too excited for this. And when I told him that Jamie was going to join us, he smiled and said, "now you REALLY can't complain!" Geesh.

Anyway, Pacer Mark was to run 2 miles warm-up, 4 miles at 8:15- 8:20 pace, then cool down. I didn't even wear my own Garmin, so I really had no clue as to pace or distance. I have to say, it was quite nice not having to worry about it! Jamie and I just stayed with Pacer Mark, and if we seemed to be drifting behind a bit, I made an effort to catch back up and stay with him. Fortunately, with the nice cool weather, the pace did not seem that hard at all, and Pacer Mark actually kept us at the faster end of the range. Splits for the 4 miles@ race pace: 8:13, 8:13, 8:14, 8:15. Nice job Mark!

The pace group I am planning on running with in San Francisco is for a 3:40 finish time, which is an 8:23 pace. Of course, there are going to be some hills in the race, so I really do not know how I will handle those, but I am hoping I can stay with that pace group, at least for most of the race.