Playing Catch Up

The designated mileage for running with the L.A. Leggers today was six miles. No problem. I ran with the twelve minute a mile pace group and we started running a little faster than that but not much., About a mile and a half in I had to use the restroom and didn't want to try and hold it for four and a half miles. I slipped out of the running pack and into the public restroom along our course.

I knew it was going to take me a mile or more to catch up, but I was feeling good and was confident I could. Approximately a mile after my pit stop I saw a group of L.A. Leggers running ahead of me. I assumed it was my group and picked up the pace to catch them. As I got within fifty yards of the group I realized it was the fourteen minute a mile pace group. No wonder I had such an easy time catching them. Oh well, I'll just keep going. However picking up the pace to catch up to the 14s tuckered me out a bit.

As I ran down the bridge to the Santa Monica Pier and to the beach I saw my group still more than a quarter of a mile ahead. I ran down the bridge and turned on the boardwalk and tried to pick up the pace. I was passing a few stragglers from the group who were unable to keep up. That is not so unusual as the miles start to increase. I kept running.

My Garmin indicated I was over 4 miles into this run and I was still not catching them. I was surprised because I was running under an eleven minute a mile pace. I was passing more and more people from the group who could not keep up.

The turn around point to go back was at four and a half miles and I was now about four and a third miles into this. The path curves a lot at this point and so I could not see very far ahead, but I was sure I had to be very close to the group. At about 4.4 miles a finally saw the group heading towards me. I was still about two tenths of a mile back. I could either cut off a bit of running and just join them, or go all the way to the turn around point. I decided to go to the turn around point and still try to catch up.

I picked up the pace considerably and looked down at my Garmin and saw that I was running under ten minute miles. I was going more than two minutes a mile faster than the pace group was going, why wasn't I catching up more quickly? I could now clearly see the group ahead of me. I knew I was going to catch them in a minute or two. When I finally did, I assumed I was going to fall back into a much slower pace, but I didn't. The group was doing about an eleven minute a mile pace. It suddenly all made sense. The reason I had so much trouble catching up, the reason there were so many stragglers who had to drop out was that the group was running way too fast.

The head mentor for the group and his top assistant were both gone this weekend. We had a mentor who apparently didn't watch his pace even though, I later learned, he was getting a lot of complaints about the pace and requests to slow down. When we finally finished and he looked at the average pace he said something like, it is good to push the pace. It makes you stronger. That is probably true, but he is supposed to be a mentor for a group that trains people for marathons who have often never done any kind real running before. I have the feeling that some of those people who had to abandon the group because they could not keep up may abandon the Leggers. Hopefully they joined slower groups as they came by, but you never know. I think our so called mentor did the group as a whole a great disservice.

John Thum