M2M’s Chase the Pace: the perfect opportunity to try a track race

Whether you hit the track weekly for training sessions or have never stepped foot on one, if you live in Vancouver, Penticton, B.C., Calgary, Ottawa or Kingston, Ont., Chase the Pace is the race to try this summer. Chase the Pace is a 5,000 metre track race hosted by the coaching company Mile2Marathon (M2M) on July 23 that’s designed to take the intimidation factor out of track running in a fun and family-friendly environment.

With music, beer gardens, and all proceeds going to a good cause, you’re guaranteed to have a great time as well as potentially run your fastest 5K time. Not sure how to pace yourself on a track? Chase the Pace takes the guesswork out for you by providing pacesetters. All you have to do is show up and “chase the pace.” This year’s event offers a free 500-metre kid’s race (under 12) alongside the adult heats. All abilities are welcome, with proceeds going to Indspire, a charity supporting Indigenous youth. (Indspire invests in the education of First Nations, Inuit and Metis People for the long-term benefit of these individuals, their families, communities, and Canada.)

M2M was founded by Olympians Dylan Wykes and Michael Woods. We spoke to Wykes about the inspiration behind the race and how the event works.

Who came up with the idea for the event? 

Rob Watson, our head coach in Vancouver, came up with the idea for the event. At the time, he was coaching a group and they did track workouts once per week. The track was very new to people, but they loved it, and very few of them had raced on the track. Most of our athletes are focused on the roads or trails. So the idea was to give everyone an opportunity to see what racing on a track was like. Most “open” track meets do not appeal to the regular runner–they are either focused on youth development racing or high-performance racing. The atmosphere is often intimidating and not that exciting.

How many people are in each heat?

We try to not have more than 30 people in any heat; otherwise, it’s just way too busy and people start to feel too cramped (or “boxed in,” as they’d say in the track world).

I grew up running track, but I sometimes still feel a bit intimidated when running at our local track. How do you help people overcome that?

The intimidation thing is the biggest hurdle for a lot of runners to get on the track. It’s all about setting a good tone for the event (with the music and a fun festival-like atmosphere) and then making sure everyone knows that the races are for them, no matter what their ability. The runners in the slowest heat are given as much attention, and expert pacing, as the runners in the fastest heat. We really want people to be able to achieve their best time, no matter what their goals are.

How did you pick the race distance of  5,000m? 

The distance of 5,000m seemed like a good fit, because it’s a traditional distance in track and field meets. Anything longer than 5,000m would be a complete drag and not really much fun at all. Anything shorter seemed like it would be too foreign to a lot of the athletes we were working with, who even on the roads wouldn’t race anything shorter than a 5K. That said, a one-mile race would be fun too! We’ve hosted this event six or seven times in the Vancouver area over the past six years. We typically get over 100 people out running.

What motivated you to include such a wide variety of ages?

We definitely want this event to be a family thing for people.  So, adding some kid’s races is a good way to get the entire family out. We have a lot of parents in our adult groups and know that a lot of runners are parents and oftentimes use running as some good “me” time. But it can also be really fun to share the experience with the entire family. We’ve added some kids programming in Ottawa (called M2M Minis), so we’ve seen through that what fun it can be for the kids to be racing too. So, we hope there are kids that are keen to run her drag their parents out to race, and there are parents who are racing, who convince their kids to give it a go!

My wife and I brought our two daughters to one of the first events (when they were two and four years old) and they didn’t race, but they made up some signs and had a little cheer zone and high-five tunnel. It was a blast. And another way to add to the atmosphere of the event being less intimidating for the runners.

I love that you are supporting Indspire. How did you choose that organization? 

It’s important to M2M as an organization to try to have a positive impact in underserved communities. Indspire is doing great work with Indigenous youth, so we felt it was a really good fit for us. For the first time, we decided to try to do this event in multiple locations, across Canada. And with that, we wanted to choose a charity that had national reach and impact.

Find more information and sign up to race here.