The FunRunParty Bus

The Messenger is Back
Ever since my “Being a Pacer, Choosing a Pacer – A Guide” I have published a table once a year after the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon (SCMM) on the performance of official pacers selected to set the pace for other recreational runners for various target times.

The reason for my tabulated updates after the race are outlined in the 2016 report and some lessons from pacer failures are outlined in the 2015 report.

Last Sunday, it felt great to be greeted throughout the race morning of the 2017 edition by runners who had used my freely available pacing bands. Even the tiny proportion of runners who decided to race with a pacer would have done well to use one of my pacing bands. For the SCMM, they were first released in 2016, and then republished in 2017. To see why I think they are calibrated brilliantly read this.

This Time you may Shoot the Messenger

Lights, Music, Dance, Colour

A whopping 184 runners pre-registered their interest to make history and run on my FunRunParty 2-hour Bus and many others joined along the way. The goal was to party along the entire route and, as promised, we had lights, music, dance and other action.  Wine, however, was not served – nor was beer! Save a few grumblers, everyone who was part of it had a wonderful experience… so, success was achieved at least on the ‘fun party’ dimension!

Shockingly enough I did not realize until I crossed the finish mat that I had missed my own strict deadline requirement by 32 seconds! Abominable and unforgivable! So, this time around, we can shoot the messenger! Not that one should have any excuse, but I did encourage everyone on my bus to wear the pacing band for their own target times, and I joked that those who were targeting 1:59:00 were to keep me on track. (It’s not the easiest thing to watch both wrists in crowds when carrying a very large flag while running at 10.6228 km/h. Excuses shex-queue-zes… Stop it Puru!!)

Results

OK, so here are the results in two separate tables for the half marathon and the full marathon.

Half Marathon

SCMM 2017 – Half Marathon – Pacer Performance

Full Marathon

SCMM 2017 – Full Marathon – Pacer Performance

Why are things still going wrong?
To continue to have half the pacers in the full marathon failing again this year is not a joking matter! The half marathon had significantly more failures than last year and the year before that– again not something to take lightly!
In terms of process, there continue to be odd things happening in the race times of the pacers listed. Just to cite a couple of examples and I am sure there are more:
Example 1: One of the 3-hour pacers for the half marathon was announced to have dropped out of the event because of a prior injury but his race time shows up as 2:17:33.
Example 2: Prior to the event I received communication from puzzled runners about the 3:45 pacer for the full marathon whose prior best time with the SCMM was 4:06:34. To give him the benefit of your doubt, which would have been formed based on what was advertised, perhaps he had indeed trained enough to achieve 3:45. However, those who decided to not run with him based on public information would have felt vindicated after he finished in 4:09:03.

So, What Next?
Presenting this table each year seems to not affect the outcome in the next year. But, it is still worth my doing so for the running community. On the bright side, do look out for more interesting articles from me based on this specific race in the weeks ahead that might be more relevant to your training as well as race experience.

Wait for the messenger!

Dr Purnendu Nath spends his waking hours focusing on helping individuals and organizations reach their goals, to make the world a better place. He speaks, writes and advises on topics such as finance, investment management, discipline, education, self-improvement, exercise, nutrition, health and fitness, leadership and parenting.