As a kid growing in 80's we had nothing other than Doordarshan for entertainment or information. Olympics used to be my favorite event to watch on TV. As I remember I was watching one of the long distance run at Seoul Olympics and heard for the first time word "Pacer". From my knowledge of English, I understood he is the one who sets the pace. Watching the entire I understood that Pacer is runner who sets the pace for someone who is targeting a record or personal best. This was all I remember as a kid.
Back to present, when I appeared for my first 10K in Nov 2016, I started seeing the words 45 min Bus. 60 min Bus 70 min Bus. It took bit of time to understand. Its a Runner who is pacer who is experience Runner who is going to help you achieve 45 min personal best (PB) and the group who follows the Runner/Pacer are called "Bus". As I was new , I didn't need to be on a bus as any time was going to be my PB. My next few races went the same way, I didn't get my timing bus or there was no bus.
Moving on, I attended the TCS World 10K in Bengaluru, I still like the name Bangalore. 10K had 18 buses the most I seen for any 10K race. After finishing the race with my PB, I thought about how did the actual pacers performed. It took time for me get the timings from the event site, their name on event handbook and registered name were different. The table of pacers came out like this
| S.No. | BUS | Name | Net time | Gross Time | Deviation |
| 1 | 0:45:00 | Umang Kamra | 0:44:11 | 0:44:24 | 0:00:49 |
| 2 | 0:45:00 | Murali Gaddam | 0:44:00 | 0:44:22 | 0:01:00 |
| 3 | 0:50:00 | Sumit Chadha | 0:49:25 | 0:49:54 | 0:00:35 |
| 4 | 0:50:00 | Sukhchain Singh | 0:49:07 | 0:49:53 | 0:00:53 |
| 5 | 0:55:00 | Akhilesh Kamath | 0:54:30 | 0:56:52 | 0:00:30 |
| 6 | 0:55:00 | Dinesh Heda | 0:53:16 | 0:54:50 | 0:01:44 |
| 7 | 1:00:00 | Arun Mahendrakumar | 0:59:26 | 1:01:07 | 0:00:34 |
| 8 | 1:00:00 | Kartik Subramanian | 0:59:58 | 1:01:15 | 0:00:02 |
| 9 | 1:00:00 | Sandeep Cr | 0:59:14 | 1:01:10 | 0:00:46 |
| 10 | 1:05:00 | Karthikeyan Balasubramanian | 1:05:10 | 1:06:40 | (0.00) |
| 11 | 1:05:00 | Sunil Chainani | 1:03:35 | 1:05:30 | 0:01:25 |
| 12 | 1:10:00 | Devander Bhatia | 1:10:24 | 1:26:27 | (0.00) |
| 13 | 1:15:00 | Mahalakshmi Sagar | 1:13:37 | 1:16:43 | 0:01:23 |
| 14 | 1:15:00 | Lokesh Rekapalli | 1:12:05 | 1:14:56 | 0:02:55 |
| 15 | 1:20:00 | Nandini Ashokumar | 1:19:53 | 1:27:54 | 0:00:07 |
| 16 | 1:20:00 | S Jaya Jaya Raman | 1:19:44 | 1:27:48 | 0:00:16 |
| 17 | 1:30:00 | Rajapriya Sivakumar | 1:29:21 | 1:38:05 | 0:00:39 |
| 18 | 1:30:00 | Govindarajan Krishnan | 1:29:23 | 1:38:06 | 0:00:37 |
The list shows most of the Pacers did the job, only 2 pacers missed the time planned for their bus. Some bus was real fast reaching 2 mins or more before the time. I had read somewhere the bus for 10k , net time should be at least 20 secs lesser than the planned. Pacer uses the smartwatch for the time, and as manual error can creep in they will be always looking to finish before 30 secs on their watch. I mentioned the gross time which is the gun time of the race starting. If we look into the buses of more than 65 mins the gross time are big as they start from last zone. Just to add , Mr.. Krishnan ran the Boston marathon 2017.
From my perspective 1 min before the planned finish will be little difficult for runners who are trying breach the mark, this depends on the bus which is gunning for the time. 2 min and plus will be real tough on the guys who are on the bus. It would have been interesting if timing of runners who were on the bus was available. Pacing is a difficult job when you are sacrificing your pace, the runner who runs consistently tend to be better pacers. Closing off ,the pacers did their job brilliantly. The results speaks of their work.
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