Twin Cities Marathon pacers do the math, carry the flag and help runners reach their goals
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Thousands of runners hit the Twin Cities Marathon on Sunday chasing personal goals.
Some were trying for their fastest time. Others were running their first. And some were just trying to make it to the finish line.
But 30 runners winding the 26.2 miles from downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul weren’t focused on setting their own records. They were there to help other runners reach their own goals, volunteering as part runner, part coach and part human metronome.
They’re called pacers, and they carefully keep track of each mile, making sure they’re running an even split. As the name implies, they help runners keep pace.
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Kelsey Uribe from Hudson, Wis., paced the four-hour, 15-minute group. She said the people who run alongside her often have deeply personal reasons for being there. She enjoys getting to hear their stories.
“While it’s fun to run for myself, I just get so much more joy and reward out of running for other people and helping them hold on to the belief in themselves,” Uribe said.
For Uribe, the hardest part for runners she’s pacing often comes between miles 10 and 20, when the finish line can feel very far away.
“I tell them, if you saw the finish line right now, could you sprint? Could you pick up the pace?” she said. “Usually, the answer is yes.”
Before pacers can convince anyone else to keep going, they have to make sure they're going the right speed themselves.
That means a lot of math and regularly checking their paceband — a printed wristband with the mile splits they need to hit — against their actual time. Some pacers even note on their paceband changes in elevation and bathroom locations, which can prove helpful for runners.
Erin Manthey, a math professor from Apple Valley, said like most pacers, she constantly compares her pace with mile markers and her watch. If she gets too far ahead or falls behind, she makes tiny adjustments during the following mile.
Kenny Poole, who was a pacer for the first time on Sunday, described the process as a series of corrections.
“If I don’t make up that difference by the second mile, then I’m doing the calculation of what I need to do for the third mile.” Poole said. “Sometimes the math does get a little crazy.”
Kristina Funseth, who has paced roughly 100 races, said that while she pays close attention to her watch, she can settle into a steady pace naturally.
“I’m not sure if that’s from me growing up playing piano and being sort of like a metronome there or what,” Funseth said. “But it’s just something that I’ve been able to do my whole running career.”
Keeping time is only half the job. Pacers must pay attention to the people around them, figuring out when runners need encouragement, conversation or simply someone to follow. Uribe said she often reminds runners they trained for this day.
“They can believe in their training. They can believe in their fueling, and know that they will get there,” she said.
And then there’s the flag each pacer carries, which sits atop a long plastic stick and indicates both the mile and marathon time of the pacer.
It acts as a moving target for runners to find as the miles stretch on. Veteran pacers said holding a flag while running an entire marathon doesn’t end up much of a problem – unless the wind picks up.
“When it’s windy outside and the flag is whipping all over the place, because you don’t want to hit somebody with it accidentally, you sort of have to hold it closer to your body,” Funseth said. “So then it’s a little bit more tough.”
Funseth said for her, marathon pacing changes the usual dynamic of running.
“Running is an individual sport, but when you're pacing, you're sort of pacing a group of people,” Funseth said. “We're all sort of coming together and working as a team to get to that goal.”
When that flag reaches the finish line, runners who stayed with them reach their goal time – an accomplishment they've worked toward for months or years. For the pacers, the reward is seeing people who were strangers to them until as recently as that morning celebrating their accomplishment.
“Crossing the finish line feels like a celebration of all of the physical and emotional work that it took to get them there,” Uribe said.
And sometimes, she said, the people she helps across the line make the experience more meaningful than any finish time of her own.
“I get more out of running as a pacer than crossing the line at Boston,” Uribe said. “Getting a hug from someone, having them introduce me to their family afterwards because they did something they didn’t think they could do, is just a very powerful thing. And it’s honestly a privilege to get to do it.”
