Pacing

I remember my first cross country race. It was the fall of 2008 at the Kearney Country Club. There was a cool breeze on this morning; the weather was perfect for racing. I looked around me as I arrived at the course and saw rolling hills all around me. My teammates were chatting about the course, reminiscing about running here for high school state cross country. I had heard this was a fairly difficult course, but I had never ran it before - not because I wasn't a fast enough runner to be in the high school state meet, but simply: my high school was too small to have a cross country team.

So what was I doing here anyway? How could my first cross country race be with a college team?

I went to a very small high school, the smallest classification of high school even for the agricultural state of Nebraska. We barely had enough girls go out for the track team to make a team. Somehow, we made it work.

And somehow, I had ran a fast enough 800 and 1,600 meter that here I was. Recruited to run middle distance? Cross country came with the package.

How fast was I supposed to run a 6K (3.75 mile) race over grassy hills? I had not a clue. So I did what came naturally to me - I ran fast. I came through the first mile in a little over six minutes, and I was running with our team leader. Something was wrong here.

Cue in THE HILL.

I was about 1.5 miles in when I reached the base of the notorious hill on the course. It was quite steep. I remember making it to the top of the hill and realizing my race was over. About a mile or so later, I was running through the trees, utterly alone. A spectator pointed at me and said, "That girl was at the front at the beginning!" This was one of the most embarrassing moments I would ever experience while racing.

I crossed the line in a fairly slow time. It was then that I realized I couldn't race a 3.75 mile, hilly cross country race the same way I ran guts-out around a track.

When track rolled around, I continued to struggle with the same concept. I always had been able to do well if I tried really hard and ran as fast as I could. Eventually, my coach began to talk to me about a concept called "pacing." He told me I needed to leave a little "in the tank." We began doing paced workouts, in which my coach banned me from going faster than a certain time per repetition.

It took until my sophomore year track season, in February of 2010, to really be able to pull off the "pacing" thing. What happened when I figured it out? I lowered my mile personal best time by 20 seconds.

Recently, I have been doing some thinking about this story and how it applies to me now. I tend to approach all of life in this gutsy, hurried, "go-all-out-all-the-time" way. It worked up to a point. However, expending a lot of energy all at once will eventually lead to fatigue.

I am at the mid-term of my first semester in graduate school, and I have noticed the mental and physical fatigue begin approaching me once again. Yet, this time, I stopped to evaluate. I caught the correlation between my 23-year-old flute playing self and my 16-year-old track runner. Here I am, continuing to push really hard without taking the time to see the value in calm pacing. My body has gotten sick twice this semester already, forcing me to rest, when I would have been better off taking things slowly, one day at a time.

The correlation extends beyond general life. This semester, I have been experiencing some pain and tightness in my neck and right arm. I have been getting chiropractic and massage treatment for it, but couldn't quite figure out the source. This week, I believe I found the culprit. My teacher pointed out that when I take a breath, I dip my flute down and move my head, destabilizing the flute for the next pitch. In the practice room, I discovered this is not an isolated experience, but something I do almost every time I take a breath. My neck pulled in the exact place I have been experiencing pain. All this happened because I was thinking too fast and going ahead mentally to the next phrase before I arrived.

My other discovery reminded me even more of my hurried runner self. I hadn't practiced my concerto with a metronome in awhile, and I turned it on to the given tempo. The tempo felt ridiculously slow under my fingers...yet, it was the exact tempo marked. I remember that same tempo feeling fast and frenzied this summer. I have learned the notes to the point that the marked tempo felt easy, yet I have been continuing to push myself to faster and faster tempos that feel uncomfortable without even realizing it.

I reflect back to the repeated workouts my coach put me through. Time after time after time, perhaps hundreds of times, we practiced pacing. As much as I wanted to "take it to the well," as coach would call it, he pulled me back and reminded me to pace. Once I learned this skill, what happened?

I became faster. My big improvement jump came when I learned how to conserve my energy so my body felt better for longer.

Here I am, my sixth year into training with a professional flutist, and I now am learning how to pace myself with my flute. I now know that the speed my fingers are comfortable pressing the keys is exactly the pace I need to be at during that time. Speed will increase with training, all without going "to the well" and tightening up faster.

I wish I had learned this sooner. It would have saved me a lot of energy, stress, tears, friendships (I'm not exaggerating on any of those).

How many years was it from my freshman year in high school to when I made my running jump?

SIX.

It's going to be a great year.

Running high school track "guts out," on the way to a 1,600 meter gold.

Running a cross country race in 2011, after learning what it meant to "pace."