Marathon Pacing Debut!

Date: December 2, 2018

Event: Millennium City Marathon, Gurgaon

And there takes off my Marathon pacing career…

Even though I have been running for 4 years now, I never had many chances to give back to the running community by pacing events. So, when the organizers of MCM were looking for a full marathon pacer at the last minute and asked me, I said yes though I would be running right after an international trip.

So, the event was on Dec 2 and I got back to India from Germany on Dec 1 morning! Jetlagged and sleep deprived, I was not sure if I could run the course all by myself… Pacing is fun… But, it is serious job! Many runners will be counting on your strategy to achieve their personal bests! So, I was thinking I can’t screw this up!

The full marathon course was two loops of half marathon… I had my pacing plan for my 4:15 min bus; run consistently between 6:00-6:05 min/km… Few minutes into the race and I learned that the Garmin splits were inaccurate due to the GPS signal issues; we were surrounded by tall buildings and had to run through a number of underpasses… So, I started to rely on the route markings and the timer… It was going ok until the half way marking of first loop when I learned the half is at least 250m longer… Recalibrate, regroup and with some tweaking of plan, finished the run in 4:13:45… That was at least a minute faster, but I was happy with the whole process…

The best part was post race when many runners came to me and thanked me for having a good run with them… A lot of them didn’t finish with me… But, it was a good feeling… That pacer feeling…

Well, that the last official event of 2018 for me and it was amazing… Runner to pacer… 2018 has been wonderful!