Learning to Run Within a Group

This is my tenth Marathon Clinic.

And some things never change.

The single hardest thing for newbie marathoners to learn, is how to run within a group of other athletes. For people who are naturally ambitious, competitive and driven - who else signs up to run a marathon? - it is often a seemingly impossible task.

As a Pace Group Leader myself, I have the natural advantages of being large, loud and obnoxious. When people run too fast, or - God Forbid - run in front of me, I ask them to stop it. The second time I have to do it, I am likely to raise my voice. And I am not afraid to ask people to leave a group because their actions or behavior are ruining the experience and training experience for everyone else in the Pace Group. Not every pace Group Leader can be as obnoxious as me.

Hey, it's a gift.

I have come to call my philosophy behind group runs - the Long Slow Distance (LSD) Sunday Runs - "The Love of the Pack". In order for the pack to be successful, we all need each other. Everybody has good days and bad days. We run together to support each other. A good Pace Group can run 35 kilometres and all finish tightly packed together and all still chatting away without a care in the world. The competition is saved for race day. And then all bets are off.

But a group on a long slow distance run should never be split up, spread out, bunched up ten across on a sidewalk, or a Bridge, or GOD FORBID, leave a runner having a hard day behind in the dust. In my books, that is a criminal act. And a Pace Group Leader who allows the aforementioned behavior is no leader at all. And letting people get away with such behavior in a Pace Group is cowardice.

New runners don't get the idea that they will need to train carefully and cautiously for 18 weeks in order to save it for Race Day. When it comes to the 26.2 miles of the Marathon, they still haven't learned to respect the race or the distance. Boy are they in for a shock on race day.

The bottom line in running with a group of course, is all about ego and community. You have to put aside your selfishness and recognize that you are running with others to derive the benefits that come from running with a group during a training run. What ever happened to simple good manners?

Notice I said training run. A training run is not a race. There are no winners and losers in a training run, yet you would never guess that from our Pace Groups behavior recently.

This latest marathon clinic has more than its share of runners with talent. Unfortunately it also has way more than its share of runners who are completely and utterly self-indulgent, self-centered, self-absorbed and self-interested.

What it all really boils down to of course, is ego.

Let me digress for a moment, in what I hope will illustrate the point I am trying to make.

As the Dalai Lama - as great and as good a man who walks the Earth today - travels and lectures around the world these days, he rarely spends time detailing the major tenets of Buddhism, such as its Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.

Instead, the Lama is likely to connect the religion's broad themes to everyday life, as he recognizes that the biggest struggles that individuals face in the West, particularly in North America, are not with overcoming suffering but with overcoming ego and an over-inflated sense of self.

The Lama's major point is, with Buddhist teaching that there's no ego to really obsess about. ...

If you realize that ego is not an important foundation of our lives, we can easily find common ground.

That's a Buddhist approach, but the real issue is the common universal theme of reconciliation and community.

All you have to do when watching people compete within a training run and jockey for position at the front of the pack, is to see the incredible sense of indignation from people whose sense of ego is so over-powering and so passive-aggressive that they have lost all ability to see past their ego. And they have lost all ability to see how their actions negatively effect those around them.

They can not imagine that others might have the right to run in front of them. They can not imagine that their needs are not the most important in the group.

And more importantly, they fail to aknowledge and to recognize that other people may have a legitimate point of view that may even contradict their own.

The world is not about you. Or your place at the front of the pace group. Or your ego.

If you or your behavior is disturbing the pace group or causing difficulty for others in your pace group, you should be ashamed.

First, because you have obviously failed to learn the lessons needed to behave in the larger world and the responsibility you have as a member of that world, and secondly because you have failed to understand your own place in the larger world and your community. In this instance, the Pace Group. Do you know your place in the Pace Group?

Living in a community requires that we reconcil our needs with those of the rest of the people we live with in the community. These are the occasions where our individual needs are less important than the larger needs of the entire group as a whole. Or, in other words, The Pace Group.

Reconciliation is not about ego, nor about being right or wrong on a point of law. Reconciliation is about recognizing that you are a small part of something larger and more important than yourself.

When you recognize that, you are on the road to enlightentment. And to being a better runner and a better neighbour and a better person as well.

And then everyone can enjoy their Sunday Long Slow Distance Run in peace.

And then speed to their personal best on the day of the actual Marathon Race.