You can learn a lot about life from volunteering at a race. I recently joined a local running club, and have started volunteering at races. Today I learned an incredibly powerful truth, well a couple actually.

I learned (again) that appearances can be deceiving. Of the 800 people running, not all the folks who were skinny and looked good in spandex were fast runners. Many of the front runners, true, looked like runners. But when it came to the middle of the pack….there were quite a few people my size and larger. And an amazing number of runners bringing up the rear were lean, athletic and young.

I’m leading the parade usually when it comes to preaching “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” But since I’m trying to lose weight, I have this entrenched belief about how a “runner” should look and what makes a person more athletic. I could blame the media or whatever, but I know better. This is a lesson I should already have known. Yesterday I started training with the YMCA’s 10K training team. I showed up, saw people WHO APPEARED TO BE in much worse shape, and definitely heavier than I am, who I thought I might be able to keep up with when we started running. Cut to the chase – I was last. More than last. Everyone else had gone home by the time I finished the two mile loop. Lesson learned. Don’t be deceived by appearances! But yesterday wasn’t enough.

My lesson the past few weeks has been, “Strength is what’s on the inside, not the outside.” Today was another reminder. I was a race marshal and was stationed, oddly enough, in the center of a clover leaf loop on the race course. That meant I got to see the runners FOUR TIMES over the course of the race. So I noticed a lot of things – like who was leading, and who the middle and ends of the pack were. Halfway through the race I watched a big guy run by – probably 6′ 4″ tall and easily 350- 400 pounds. He was really in obvious distress, but kept on putting one foot in front of the other, running faster than I ever could over a distance of 50 yards! Humbling.

Behind him…way behind him, near the end of the runners, were a LOT of men and women, much younger, much skinner, and much more athletic looking than the middle of the pack. They were lagging behind. I commented on this to the cop, a Marine (once a Marine, always a Marine – hoo-rah) who was also a runner – and working the race with me.

“Oh yeah,” he pointed out. “The faster, better runners have a cadence, a pattern they follow.” Turns out he also ran track in high school.

Those who kept a cadence, as he said, simply did better because they had a rhythm.

Being fast wasn’t the secret to running well, but being consistent is. Find a pace or cadence you can maintain for the distance and hold to it. That was my biggest lesson. It’s how the military can keep recruits running farther in a group than they do alone.

I think a lot of people go out of the gate in all kinds of races, running, business, life, relationships or whatever, as fast as they can. They overdo, over train, overwork and just hammer it in a race to “be first.” They go flat out then run out of steam. The secret to any challenge, and to life really, is to find a cadence, something you can maintain over time.

The cop/Marine told me he ran 7 minute miles and was trying to learn how to SLOW down his pace so he could do longer distances. If he can run a 9 minute mile, or keep a 9-minute mile cadence, he can run further and do longer distance races – like marathons. That was like a MAJOR revelation to me.

“If you go slower, you can go farther. If things are going too fast, slow down!”

My tendency is to do too much, too fast. Hearing that gave me a whole new perspective on how I’ve been living. I allow my tendency to try to meet everybody’s needs, wants, and requests to push me faster and faster and faster and to break my stride. I go a mile a minute trying to keep up with everyone and everything and all the demands on my time, resources and energy. And I burn out.

I learned today that finding a pace that works for ME, and for my current resource and skill level (not just in working out, but in life) and sticking to that pace, will benefit me in the long run. I’ll be able to finish what I start.

I realize now what the secret is – and it’s all about the pacing. Are you pacing yourself?