How to improve your PR: Improve your race strategy with the Pacer (and learn how to use pacing in your training)

Success can be measured in many ways. Success can mean even making it to the track, it can be managing a mile without stitches, 5k without walking or maximizing the kcal burned over a long sustained run. But for many of us success is measured in breaking our personal records. One clever tool that helps many of our users to improve upon their PR is the Pacer.

For those who aren’t familiar with Track Runner’s Pacer: This feature helps you stick to a predetermined pace by guiding you through the run with voice notifications. If you want to run 5k in 30 minutes for example, the pacer keeps you running at a constant speed by telling you to slow down if you steam ahead in the beginning or speed up if you’re not quite on track to finish in your chosen time. It’s super simple to set up and gives your training the extra edge. 

But the Pacer isn’t just for pros, it doesn’t judge, it just gives us the extra kick we may need to keep on target.I have been working on technique as of lately as my goal is to improve my stride rate and aerobic fitness and have used the pacer to discipline myself more so than to achieve new PRs. My new routine is running every other day with the following pattern: 5k, 10k, recovery (anything between 3k and 7k) and I use the pacer most of the time. The 5k is about pushing and shaving off seconds of my personal best but the other two distances are really about managing my resources, staying in a moderate heart rate zone and being consistent. These are the runs where I hone my stride rate (up to 176 steps per minute now!) and try to maintain a relatively low heartbeat while still moving forward (harder than it sounds ;)

As you can see on the pictures, the pacer has (mostly) kept me in check and even made recovery runs still feel like a fun challenge.

Pushing hard to improve my PR	Time for a recovery run! Cardio Map below in large.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you use the pacer for?  Let us know on Facebook (http://facebook.com/trackrunnerapp), Twitter (@trackrunnerapp) or in the comments!