This past Saturday I competed and completed the Davis Moo-nlight Half-Marathon in Davis, California; and one question still remains with me:

Are these gosh-darn Race Pacers really that important?!?

I see their importance in letting us, as the runner, know our pace.  It helped me knowing ‘Ok, I’m in between an hour 35 and an hour 40 minutes right now’.  It builds a fire of, “I can keep up with these guys” or “I’m not letting the next one pass me before the finish line!”

But, at least for me as a runner, it’s a psychological screw-up because I feel like I have to keep up with these guys.  If I don’t keep up with them, I feel like a failure that I didn’t do better or that I burnt myself trying to keep up with them.

With the exception of one pacer through my five/six half-marathons, these guys have gave me dirty looks because they can do the race in whatever their sign says.

The one pacer, which happened to be in Saturday’s race,  I felt like did his job as a pacer.  It was the hour 35 minute pacer in the race and he helped motivate me from the mile two to the mile four marker before I feel back due to fatigue.

Wise-words go a long way in my opinion.  If these guys can motivate more than holding a sign; then maybe, at least for me, I can be more confident in having them in the race.

I heard from another racer in the same race had a pacer came back to motivate her for the last mile of the race after holding a conversation in a situation that he could’ve just left her in the past as most of these guys have and will continue to do.

My question becomes this, why can’t pacers motivate us instead of giving us looks of, ‘Why can’t you do this in 1:35?  What do you mean you can’t do this in this time?!?  I don’t understand?”

As for me, I am steadily getting accustom to the idea of a ‘Pacer’, but I will always hold on to the theory of their worth in a race until they can do more than hold a sign.