Leader of the Pack

Erik Sowinski is a runner and a pacer. A pacer helps make the other runners’ victory possible “‘The faster the pace, the more there is that can go wrong,’ said Yared Nuguse, a rising star who followed Sowinski at the Millrose Games before setting an American record for the indoor mile, finishing in 3:47.38. ‘You really need the right person for that job.’ … Oddly enough, few runners are more visible. Sowinski is guaranteed to lead the field for the first half of nearly every race that he enters, and many of them are televised. … ‘It’s so much easier to run behind someone to take the edge off mentally and physically,’ said Mark Coogan, an Olympic marathoner and the coach of Team New Balance Boston. ‘If you have a good pacer, you can try to relax for as long as possible before you have to take the race on yourself’” (Scott Cacciola, “Meet the Runner Who Leads Every Pack and Then Vanishes,” New York Times, February 25, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/sports/erik-sowinski-pacer.html). Sowinski gets the runners going at a sustainable pace, keeping them there for a while and then leaving, but God is our pacer and never leaves us. He doesn’t set the pace and then vanish; he keeps in step with us.