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How I Apply My Pacing Mindset as a Runner to the Rest of My Life
“No surge” revolutionized how I run. Then it revolutionized how I live my life.
Without trying to be productive, I became more productive. Without trying to maximize my life, I started maximizing my life. Something changed and I didn’t feel prone to procrastination.
What changed? I had started applying something I learned from competitive running to how I lived my life: a pacing mindset.
As an accomplished long-distance runner, “no surge” is a mantra that runs through my mind when I run. It’s the mantra that I have carried with me in my most successful races. I used the mantra when I ran a 15:36 5K. I used the mantra when I ran a 2:40 marathon and qualified for the Boston Marathon. And I used the mantra when I ran a 33:03 10K.
It’s a mantra used to stop myself from erratic, sudden surges that sap me of my energy. It’s how I pace myself. My Achilles heel as a runner, historically, has been very poor pacing. Whenever someone passes me, I feel the need to overtake them again. When a big crowd is roaring in applause and motivational cheers, I have to impress the crowd and speed up.
It looks good in the moment. It’s terrible in a race. For a long-distance race, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And short, sudden bursts of energy sap you of your finish later in the race. They lead you to burn out and die at the end of the race.
I know this because it has happened to me many times. When I make sudden surges to respond to my competition, my finish is weak. Several times, I have been passed by over 40 to 50 people 50 meters from the finish line. I thought I had to give my all in every race, all the time.
It took my high school cross country coach to make me realize how wrong I was. He told me, the week before my junior year cross country championship meet, that he noticed I made six or seven sudden surges in the middle of the race. He said these made my race worse, and I didn’t perform to the best of my potential because I was nervous, antsy, and needed to try to win the beginning and the middle of the race. By the end, I had absolutely nothing. And that was because of all those surges.
