When I run a longer race, I am terrible at pacing.

If Dave is running with me, he will keep me back at the start. I am a negative splitter naturally, but if I get too excited at the start I will (of course) run out of energy before the race is over.

One of the things I love about the Buffalo Marathon is that the half and the full start out at the same time and I can run with Dave (who does the half).

When I ran the 2019 Chicago Marathon, I was on my own.

I use this marathon pacing calculator from Runners Connect to map out my strategy, but I have to keep everything straight in my head which is a challenge (math, lol).

The Garmin wasn’t a part of my gear at the time (thanks to Cameel and Heather, my son-in-law and daughter for getting me the Garmin as a Mother’s Day present last year). I had to just try my hardest to figure out where I was pace-wise, which became impossible after an at least 10 minute wait at a port-a-potty station at the 3 mile mark (thanks loads of coffee).

PacePro for Garmin

Creating an Automatic Course

In order to access the Pace Pro, you need to have the Garmin Connect App on your phone.

From the home screen, tap the “…” to get to the “More” section

Here you will pick “Training” and you’ll see the “PacePro Pacing Strategies” selection.

You will then “Creat PacePro Strategy”- the blue button on the bottom of the screen.

Select either a course or a race distance.

If you select a course, you can then create your own course

You’ll have the options below, and of course we are going to choose “Running”

On the next screen, you can tell the App to draw your course automatically, or you can draw your own. I’ll show you automatic first.

Name the course and choose your distance. The default is 3, but you can enter any one you wish. I’ll enter 6 miles.

Hit ok and either choose a direction, or choose random. I can point you pretty accurately to where you may want to go, but have no idea if it’s North, South, East or West so I’ll choose Random.

Choose “Next” and pick a spot on the map. You will show up as a blue dot. Since I really don’t want to have a picture of where I live on a map on the internet, just trust me!

What is really super cool about this, is you can ask it to map this out for you for a running route just for the fun of it, even without pacing. I’m thrilled at this, because Dave and I run the same routes a lot because he has to have a relatively good idea about when he will be back home to get ready for work on the early morning runs.

When it picks your course, you can choose to change it or add to it if you want by hitting the blue circle in the lower right hand corner. BTW- I re-routed, so this doesn’t represent where I live at all, lol.

You can add course points, such as where to find food, water, etc. I’m going to add a “water” marker, since I know I can get water at the place on the map.

Then hit done.

After you set up a course, you can select it from this screen:

You’ll then be able to enter a “Goal Time” or “Goal Pace”. Let’s choose “Goal Pace” and keep it at the 9:00 min/mi, hit next at the bottom of the screen (if you choose to change the pace, you’ll be able to enter whatever you want to for your particular pace).

You can name the course whatever you would like, and you can change your goal time, pace and splits within that course whenever you’d like.

The “Splits” let you select miles, kilometers or elevation change.

When you scroll down on the PacePro screen, you will see a slider that lets you change how you like your pacing. I like to negative split (finishing the second half of a race faster than the first half), so I slide it to the right

Then hit “save”.

Now you’ve built your own course that you can choose and edit whenever you want! Really cool feature.

The only thing that has me a bit confused I guess, is that I entered 6 miles as the course and ended up with a 4.27 mile course. I live in the city, so finding 6 miles should not be a problem. AND that’s a lot of distance that isn’t covered if I want to do a 6 miler.

For some reason, now that I have created one course in the PacePro Strategies section, I can’t do anything but select that course. So if I want to build another one, I’ve found that I can go into “Courses” to do that and it allows me to “Create Course”. Weird, but with Garmin Connect I have found some weirdness, lol.

Using Your Garmin on the Run

When you want to run one of the courses you create, you will need to send it to your watch.

^^^pic 23

NOTE- After getting to this point, I learned that my Garmin Watch needed to have older activity files deleted before it would allow any Courses to be added to it. I had to connect my watch to Garmin Express in order to do that and get a software update.

Apparently this is a known issue for ios Garmin Connect users, so if that’s what you are using you may need to do that before you can use Pace Pro. This link will take you to the Garmin site to walk you through the process.

When you head out for a run, you are going to start the run to bring up the Options menu. Hit the “Up” button to see your options for that run.

Use the “Down” button to see the menu.

Find the “Training” option and you should have “Pace Pro Plans” as part of the things you can choose.

When you select Pace Pro plans, you will see your courses.

When I choose “Casino Run”, there is an outline of the course, the time I chose to complete it in and the average pace per mile. To confirm that is the run you want, hit the “Start” button.

You will see what your first mile pace is, and there is a bar to show you how much more you need to complete for each mile.

Before you tell the run to start, you can look at what each mile split will be by choosing the “Down” button.

Hit the “Start” button to view splits, or hit the “down” button to view the map.

As you can see, the map is not very helpful. Nothing is marked as far as navigation goes, so you will have to know how to get to your starting point.

Ok, now that we know how to make our own course, you can do that or choose a different option.

Race Distance

Instead of choosing “Select a Course” in the “Create PacePro Strategy” section, you can “Select a Race Distance”.

Select the distance you want, or hit “Other” to put in a different mileage.

Other Course Option

On the “Select a Course” screen, if you hit the magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner and zoom out, you will see running courses set up by other people that you can choose to run yourself.

When you choose one of the blue running man dots, a short description of the run will pop up.

If you click on the description, the enter time and pace screen will come up like the other runs.

Once you decide that and hit “Next”, a map of the run will be on the next screen.

As you can see, the PacePro Strategy on the Garmin can be used for a LOT more than just a race!

Creating Your Own Course From Scratch

The final way you can use this course option, is to create your own from scratch.

Just like using the Google Map Measure option, you can put points on a map to whatever distance you want. I can see me using this option when I am deep in marathon training and need a 20 mile course.

To do this, get to the “Drawing Method” option in your “Courses” tab.

A movable map will pop up and if you hit the pin tool at the bottom, you will be able to choose a starting point.

When you have it where you want the first point to be, hit “Next”

The tool will come back to the bottom again, and go to the next point.

Your options button at the bottom will appear when you have 2 points created.

You will be able to add course markers, reverse direction, designate the course an “Out and Back” or a “Loop”.

When you do create a course, don’t forget to hit the “Save” button in the upper right hand corner.

Using the Watch on the Run

When I tried out the watch on the run, the sun was full blast so I didn’t get good pictures. I will be doing a YouTube video on it, which I’ll post here as soon as it comes out.

The watch will give you navigation, in the form of arrows and beeps on the face and tell you if you are off course.

I think the video will give a much clearer view of what happens on the run, but the watch will tell you all you need to know as you are running!

Pacing Your Workouts

When you have been running for a while and want to add things like Tempo Runs or run at Race Pace or add other types of workouts, this tool can help you keep on pace.

If you want to see what paces you should be doing your workouts at, check out this training paces calculator from Runners World.

My post on Workouts will describe for you what some runs will look like if you add them into your routine.

There is also a podcast episode and YouTube video as well.

Pacing Your Races

If you are like me and don’t do well with pacing, this tool can be really helpful if you want a race strategy. Having something nudging me to start out slow and then pushing me later will be what a need in races that Dave isn’t there to monitor me.

I like Pacers as well, but sometimes they aren’t accurate and go too fast in the beginning of a race in order to bank time. I don’t like to do that, so it can be detrimental to me if I just follow them.

What I actually do with pacers, is start out with a pacing group about 20 minutes slower then my goal (in a marathon). My task is then to catch the 10 minute slower pacer in the first half of the race and work up to the one I actually want.

This keeps me slow at the start, and gradually gets me to where I want to be. If I follow that strategy well, I usually pass the one I am aiming for and get to the finish line quicker.

Back to the Runners Connect Pacing Strategy Calculator. This tells you what miles you should run a certain pace, when to ramp it up and when to just go for it. Using that and the PacePro together can help with mental readiness for a longer race.

Whatever you use, DO have a strategy. I find I feel more prepared and that will help down the road when it starts to get tough.