Week 8 – Marathon Musings: More Than a Pace
2023 Marine Corps Marathon: never been happier to have glasses as they helped me hide all the big emotions.
Pace is such a hot topic in running and I get it: information about pace is easy to access if you wear a watch and pace as a metric can give a runner a lot of information about how they are responding to training. Pace is something that people often use as a measure for determining how they are improving with running where getting faster = becoming a better runner. Here’s the thing though, “faster” and “better” are subjective words when it comes to describing a runner and their performance with running. Why are they subjective? Because people aren’t the same every single day and how we respond to life’s stressors (both good and bad) is impacted by how resourced we are when we have to respond to a given stressor.
I experience this subjectivity every week in my favorite workout: 4-6 mile run with strides. This workout is done every week on the same day and the results (aka pace) are always all over the place because I’m a different person each time I “perform” this workout. There are workouts where I am well rested, and the effort feels easy. There are workouts where I’m just getting by, and the effort is a drag. If I were to judge my progress as a runner solely on this workout, there would be days (let’s be honest, weeks) where I feel like I’m getting “worse” at running because my paces aren’t consistently trending faster.
When I zoom out and look at this workout in the context of everything else happening in life, I’m able to see that executing this workout well week after week, especially with the growing fatigue inherent in marathon training, I am becoming a “better” runner. I am managing the demands of running within the greater demands of being a woman, mother, partner, friend, and self-employed entrepreneur. Pace gives me information that is quantifiable, like how long it took me to cover a certain distance and how long I can anticipate a certain distance taking me to complete in the future. If that’s all I ever look at, I miss a big part of the picture that covers the qualitative aspects of the run:
How did the effort of the run feel?
How did the weather impact me?
How rested and recovered was I going into the run?
Was I adequately hydrated for the run?
Did I have enough to eat before and during the run?
How was I doing mentally before the run and on the run?
The answers to these questions allow me to better understand what worked or didn’t work in the run and they also allow me to better prepare for future runs. I become a better runner by understanding myself as a runner better, not by running faster.
Additionally, we often forget that paces are numbers (objective), and it is us humans that assign meaning to those numbers (subjective). I often wonder who the first person was to call a certain pace “fast” and whether that person took something like genetics into account when making that declaration. Not all runners are built the same and no two runners respond to training in the exact same way, even if they have the exact same training plan. A cherry on top here is the ever-important reminder that one person’s “fast” is another person’s “slow” and vice versa.
Defining progress solely through the lens of pace is short-changing the whole experience of being a runner. In my opinion, running is forward movement at an effort that feels more challenging than a walk. Yes, the pace of movement is faster, but how that looks is up to you (shout out to my run-walk people!). You don’t need anyone’s stamp of approval to run in a way that makes sense for you. You decide if you are a runner and that decision shouldn’t be defined by someone else’s definition of “fast” or “slow.” You also shouldn’t feel like you need to explain your paces to anyone; they aren’t you walking through life with your history so what do they truly know about being in your body and in your experience?
This last part is something I feel especially passionate about after my 2023 Marine Corps Marathon where I experienced my “slowest” marathon finish time. You can read about the grief I experienced in that race here and how my time felt like one of the biggest triumphs of my running life. If I were to only focus on the time, I would be disappointed with how that race turned out. However, understanding everything I felt in that run and what it took to get to the finish line, I am beyond proud of my time. The story of this race is greater than the highlight reel of pace and finish time. This race was a reminder that I shouldn’t let paces define me and I hope that after reading this blog post, you can start to embrace the same.
My mantra on repeat on my long runs lately has been “I am more than this pace. I don’t have to explain this pace to anyone. This is my pace because Chicago will be my race.”
Quieting the noise around pace is hard and there are moments where I still feel insecure about my pace and what it means about my evolution as a runner, but then I remember that for every person that calls a certain pace “fast” or “slow” there are thousands of others who understand that running, regardless of pace, is a big freaking deal. To choose to run is to choose to do something hard and that should always be celebrated.
Marathon History:
2014 Chicago Marathon
2015 Miami Marathon
2015 Berlin Marathon
2015 Chicago Marathon
2016 Chicago Marathon
2016 NYC Marathon
2017 Chicago Marathon
2018 Chicago Marathon
2021 Chicago Marathon
2023 London Marathon
2023 Marine Corps Marathon
Marathon Musings series:
9 weeks until Chicago and 8 weeks of musings written. Here’s to experiencing running as an opportunity to celebrate our individual journeys.
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