My ex-Boston Marathon 2010

When i was learning how to walk back in early 70s, thousands of runners around the world were starting subculture that slowly grow into this cult we all worship today. The Running Cult. Phenomenon of the late 20th century. From the boom of jogging around Central Park in NYC to today’s record number of marathon finishers.Back then, running was pioneer effort. Not commercialized, popular sport like it is today. No running subdivisions of major athletic companies, no gadgets, no special nutrition. One of the huge problem of the amateur runners in the era was measuring their distances, and speed. So, brilliantly, they invented pace. A time needed to run from point A to point B. Points were usually recognizable objects. Stop signs, trees, houses, anything that can be easily remembered and used. Then back home to the old maps, topographic prints, to measure the distance. If distance from that stop sign to the first street light is 1 mile, and it took them 7 min, just by watching at the time on their stopwatches, they could easly calculate that their pace was 7 min/mile. Or even easier, if they run one lap around the track in 1:30 min, their pace was 6 min/mile.And it worked. It was simple effective way of tracking their training, progression.Now lets move fast to September 1st, 1983. Korean Air Lines Flight 007, en-route from NYC to Seoul, Korea, with 269 people on board. On the other side Russians had test firing of SS-25, mobile, intercontinental ballistic missiles. After swinginig from its planned course, ill-fated airliner eventually ended in restricted russian air space and was taken down by russian jet intercepters. All 269 people on board died that night. As result US president R. Reagan issued a directive making GPS freely available for civilian use as common good.Now back to running. Over next decade or so, running become more and more popular, and more and more companies begin producing enormous number of gadgets to aide runners to achieve their goals.  Many of them, like Polar, continued perfecting their pedometer devices, and some like Garmin, begin implementing now free GPS system of satellite navigations. Soon runners around the world, were able to know exactly where they are in the world, how far have they run, and at what speed. On other side, internet, which back in 80s was academic playground, become public phenomenon. And so did online maps, satelite maps, even 3D rendered maps of every corner of the world. Today we can plot our runs, have virtual 3D tour of the run, import the run to our “watches” and later, export recorded data into our computers, analyze every second of our runs, from elevation to percentage of maximum heart rate. My iPhone can even send my location every 5 sec, serving as GPS beacon, allowing users at home to see my progress on their computers, even oceans away. But we still use pace, we still pace ourselves, we still improve on our pace.  My Garmin can show me my speed, current and average, at any point of my run.But i like to talk about my pace. Speed? Speed is for cars, and monster trucks, we runners pace, we don’t speed. Go to local 5k and watch 20 year old college kid finishing his sub-20 5k. Comment something like “wow, what a speed” and soon you will be isolated. You are not a runner anymore. Say “that is some killer pace” and you will start interesting conversation. Why do we need pace? Is it one of the dinosaurs of the old school running? Will it become just interesting piece of history of running, like “flat coke”? Or will it survive and keep helping us push harder, faster, further.