TRAINING ZONE: Front-Running

The story of American distance running legend Steve Prefontaine has been immortalized in a couple of Hollywood movies, Prefontaine and Without Limits. He was a talented and headstrong runner who always liked to run at the front of the pack, against the advice of his coach. We’ve all met someone like that, who treats workouts as races or has to run 15 metres ahead of you. But for most runners, front-running just doesn’t pay off. Depending on how fast you’re running, it can take as much as six percent more energy to conquer wind resistance when you’re leading – and it’s also more taxing mentally. More often than not, you’ll end up like Prefontaine, who led much of the 1972 Olympic 5000-metre race before fading to fourth in the final lap.

It’s not just about physiology. The advantages of sticking together in a pack during workouts, tempo runs and races are rooted in economic theory. John Nash, the subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind, won a Nobel Prize for his work in game theory. Our instincts tell us to try to beat our competitors by doing what’s best for ourselves. Nash, however, showed that we can sometimes obtain a better result for ourselves by co-operating with those we’re competing against.

I learned this lesson at the Niagara Half-Marathon, where early in the race a group of us pulled together to battle the oncoming wind. We decided we would stick together as a pack and share the work of breaking the wind. One of the runners kept us on pace with his GPS watch and pulled anyone back who was tempted to run ahead. Those who finished together, including myself, beat their personal bests by more than three minutes.

While I was living in England a few years ago, I found that this training philosophy was embedded in the club system. Runners join clubs that compete in cross-country, track and road races in regional divisions. My club trained in a pack and discouraged front-running, since races were won as a group. Team standings were determined by adding together the placings of each runner on the team, so the more runners you placed near the front, the better. We all trained to run within a few places of each other, and the fast runners pulled the slower runners along. The result: our team worked its way up from Division 2 to the upper echelons of Division 1 against some of the top teams in the country.

More recently, think of Simon Whitfield’s heroic performance in the Olympic triathlon. He arranged in advance to work together with teammate Colin Jenkins. Jenkins would pull Whitfield through the biking stage keeping him out of trouble near the front, and allowing Whitfield to avoid the mental and physical burden of front-running. According to Nash’s theory, this ended up being the right move for the Canadian team – and with a whole lot of guts at the finish, he won the silver medal.

If you have ever ridden in a cycling peloton or watched the Tour de France, the group dynamic is intrinsic to the nature of team racing and training. The aerodynamics of cycling are different than running, but the same basic principles apply. When the group works together, everyone benefits; if you try to do it all by yourself, you just make it more difficult. So the next time those fangs come out at the start line and you look around wondering who you’re going to beat – maybe you should agree to work together instead. Of course, when it comes down to the final stretch, throw off the visor and give it all you’ve got.

Michael Midmer is a Toronto investment manager and marathon runner.