Pacers required for the 2010 Cork City Marathon...
This year for the very first time, there will be groups of pacers in the Cork City Marathon. Each group will try to  run the full 26.2 miles at a steady pace for the following times....
3:15, 3:30, 3:45, 4:00, 4:15, 4:30 and maybe 5:00

Pacers are a great help for people who are trying to break a certain time for the Marathon. They have proved very popular in other Marathon events in Ireland and are a usual feature in bigger Marathons in Europe and elsewhere.

Pacers wanted!!
There are still a few slots left to be filled and they are looking for experienced Marathon runners to act as pacers. Joanne Fearon is helping to organise the pacers and she provides the following info....


Cork City Marathon Pacers:
Cork city marathon is proposing to introduce pacers for the marathon in June. I was involved in the same introduction in Dublin last year so they've asked me to put out feelers around Cork. Asics have come
on board as sponsors for kit. Pacers will be running with a balloon (probably a huge one to identify them at the start, smaller ones to keep in sight through the race). Ideally we will have pace groups to get people home in 3:00, 3:15, 3:30, 3:45, 4:00, 4:15, 4:30, 5:00 and maybe 5:30. 


We need a minimum of 2 people per time group. If you know anyone who might be interested in pacing, could you have them contact me at fearonjATgmail.com (Replace the AT with @). 


An ideal marathon pacer is -an experienced marathon runner having at least 4-5 marathons under their belt
- has run a marathon relatively recently (say within the last 6 months) - should aim to pace a group 30 minutes slower than their PB (e.g. someone with a PB of 3:12 is ideal for the 3:45 group, obviously we might have to be a bit more lenient for the faster groups)
- should be able to maintain a regular pace (pacing is not a race, pacers should reach the finish line within 15 seconds of their goal time)
- should be good at motivation. A huge amount of the pacing experience is not the actual metronome running the marathon, it's the encouragement you give the runners, the chat along the way. Pacing is a magic experience and one I would recommend to anyone. I'm happy to meet up with anyone who might want to get a better feel for what's involved. If we can't get enough people who are willing to pace the entire 26.2 miles, we might have to consider people who run 13.1 and another pacer take over at the half way mark.


..........Joanne Fearnon

I understand that a lot of the slots may well be filled at this stage but if you are interested then contact Joanne at the e-mail address given above for more info.