Pacing the Hackney Half

Pacing the Hackney Half for 2:20 – What a day! Sunshine, a real buzz running through the crowds of runners and supporters, a half marathon to be run. And best of all, despite a touch of heatstroke, I made my time but more on that later….

The race is part of a whole weekend of the Festival for Fitness which include a 5k on the Saturday and a line-up of fitness classes which includes an action packed boxing lesson. And Virgin’s ambition? To make fitness fun and accessible to all and celebrate the spirit of Hackney. The half marathon is presented by ASICS.

A huge congrats to eveyone who ran and a very big thank you to the residents of Hackney, all the supporters lining the streets, the many volunteers, and the pacing crew who made this such an amazing experience!

So this is how my first pacing gig went….

 

The beginning

I’d set my alarms for 5am. Up I got. Where I live it was sunny with a slight chill in the air.

Two coffees, two pieces of toast with honey, antihistamine, bag packed, more coffee in travel mug, and out the door I headed. It was a little after 6am.

The build-up had been months in the coming – two meet-ups with the other pacers (a fab bunch) and a couple of #meetthepacer runs out of the ASICS Store on Regents Street.

I was nervous. I was freaking out. What if I messed up? What if it all just went horribly wrong and I messed up the time so that runners who’d been training for months wouldn’t meet their goals? Argh!

A bus, two tubes, a mile or so walk. It was misty – the top of cranes and tall buildings shrouded.

 

Getting sorted

I arrived at 7.30 and headed to the volunteer centre to collect my pacer vest, flag, and little bag of goodies – sweets, a few hairbands, some bandaids – some of the things that runners might ask for along the way. I was chatting to the other pacers, pleased I wasn’t the only newbie.

A couple of tables away, there was the offer of some glitter make-up. Me….do glitter? Well, there’s a first time for everything. Colours selected – green and purple – and on the glitter went. Sometimes I don’t recognise myself with this running lark (this is for a separate post).

We headed outside to the bag drop. There’s something interesting about wearing that flag on your back – people smile, ask questions, you’re given an air of authority. I’ve come across this with marshalling before but it’s a little weird every time.

A quick photo with a few of us including Matt, also a blogger; and Becs! You may also want to check out some of the other pacer profiles including Kemi, Dan, Adam, Abbi, Lottie, Ruth and Megs.

Off we headed to the pens. I was in pen H. I could sense people’s nerves – runners quiet and focused.

 

The route

 

Pacing the Hackney Half

And off we went.

This is a race with 20k runners so a big race. We set off in waves, taking 25 mins or so to cross the start line. This had all been explained in the race guide.

I spent the first few miles trying to find the pace I knew I needed to stick to.

I was asked questions and had lots of chats. There were a lot of first-timers around me. Many runners very quiet as they got on with the miles. There were a few comments like ‘oh shit’ when people saw me coming as the 2:20 flag might mean they wouldn’t be near the time they were hoping for. I explained that it depended on when they started in relation to me so not to worry.

The miles ticked by

On short loops, I managed to high-5 and give shout-outs to friends and other pacers coming the other way. I cheered on the bands and supporters along the route. Water drunk, bottles passed to other runners. It was warming up.

The crowd support through the streets of Hackney was fantastic and the crowds were huge. Locals, family, friends, onlookers. A brilliant show put on by Hackney!

From about the half way point, a few were beginning to struggle. It was sunny and getting warmer. There were a few mist showers along the route which everyone was running through, including me. A good number of water stations, a couple of stations for Nuun Electrolytes, one of jelly babies, and another for energy gels. The miles ticked by.

 

And then it got a little tough….

It was about mile 9 I started getting a touch of nausea. OK, just keep going. More water. I had made sure I was well hydrated in the days leading up so was hoping the nausea would go away….

Mile 10. Running around the Olympic Stadium. Nausea continued. Oh dear….this was certainly not going as planned and as I’d trained for. I slowed but didn’t worry too much as I was still on target. I mumbled a few choice swear words under my breath while continuing to cheer on runners around me.

It was around this point I looked down. Somehow I had made the biggest of biggest rookie pacer errors – I had paused my Garmin. WTF! Passing the mile markers, and thankfully in addition to the Garmin I had a wrist band setting out the times, I did quick calculations (not so easy 10 miles in).

Yep, I was still on pace.

And on I continued, working on keeping an even pace for folks with my flag in their sight.

By mile 11, nausea combined with some light headedness…. But what the f*** do you do? I kept going. Thankfully I’m used to things going wrong in races so here’s another to add to the list…

That last mile, with the crowds cheering, lots of ‘Go 2:20’, I pushed forward. Shoutout from Derek from my running club who’d gone along to cheer on his daughter. And then metres from the finish line, a shoutout from Theo from Virgin Sport who had organised all us pacers.

And the final time: 2:18:38 – about a minute faster than I was planning but I was happy all the same.

 

The bling

 

 

Getting through the finish line, bling around neck, t-shirt, water, banana etc, I collected my bag and headed to the volunteer station. While obviously I can’t review this race as I’d normally do given I was a pacer, I did think it was really well organised. There was no faffing in going through the finish and picking up my bag. This is a real achievement given the huge crowds.

While the nausea had gone, my head was still spinning. After some water and salty food, within minutes I was feeling better as I suspected I would. I met up with Derek and slowly headed home.

 

Would I pace again?

Yes, yes, and yes. What an amazing opportunity. Lots of fun, get to meet fab folks, get to support other runners – truly a privilege.

Having said this, I still like to do my own thing so while I’d love to pace from time to time, I also want to race and work on getting my times down.

And you may be asking how I got the gig

The application process

In December I received an email – ‘Welcome! We would love you to pace at Virgin Sport Hackney 2018’. What…me?

I’d put in an application a few months earlier then proceeded to forget all about it. I knew lots of people had applied so wasn’t expecting to be accepted. I can’t remember what I put in my application and I don’t have formal pacing experience. Instead, I have had years of running with beginners, and have paced by running buddy a few times at races, and I’ve marshaled at races including at Hackney in their first year when it was run by Vitality. They had over 600 applications, with about 40 of us selected.

Now some might think I got to pace because I have a blog and a social media profile – fair enough. While it might have helped (who knows), there’s more to it than that. Lots of those selected aren’t big on social media so I don’t think that was a deciding factor.

That first time I got to meet the other pacers was an amazing experience. OK, so before I went I was nervous…I’d be hanging out with all the cool kids! And what I found? A real mix of runners from all over London, a huge spread of ages, background, talents, and paces. I love this group! So many really lovely people. While some can easily bang out sub-2:30 and 3 hour marathons, some of us not so much. What we all share is a love of running, and a love of running with others.

 

Afterthought

I sit here writing this with a huge grin on my face…wow…just wow! What an experience! It’s definitely up there with my top running related experience of the year, on a par with meeting Dion and Lucja and getting slobbered on the face by the fabulous Gobi.

 

Did you do Hackney? How was it for you?

If you want to do a review of it or check out reviews of other races, head over to Racecheck.

 

And if you like this post and want to be the first to read new posts, you can subscribe. Link at the top of the page!