2026 Houston Chevron Marathon Review

I had a goal last year of beating a 4 hour marathon time.  This is a goal I achieved.  After became interested in pacing the marathon and luckily have a friend who has paced it several times before.  So I met him up at the philosophy club (Eureka heights brewing) and learned a bit about the entire process of pacing. 

I then received a communication from the coordinator of the pacing group asking for volunteers.   It is an application process as they want to see evidence you have completed a recent marathon and then match you with times lower than that to ensure the pacer is on course to assist runners. 

I submitted my application and requested to pace with my friend for the 5:05 pace group.  

I was accepted!

Communication happens with the group through an app call "Heylo" as well as email follow ups.  This worked extremely well for the continual updates.   The coordinator also held several teams meetings for all to join in and review high level topics and answer questions.  

They hold several events through the summer and fall for runners to come meet pacers and run with some of the group.  It was not mandatory to attend, but as a runner who has joined some of these in the past, they are a nice way of community reach out. 

Brooks is a sponsor of the run.  As a pacer Brooks provides a shoe each year to the pacers who are able to participate in the run.  This year, I received the Brooks Hyperion Max 3.   The only downside is I received it 11 days before the marathon as I was doing a 100 miler and did not get a chance to really try the shoes, so I did not use them for the marathon.  However, I am looking forward to getting some miles in them down the road.  

You also get a pacers shirt.  They do require to volunteer at the pacers booth for the expo, but they give you another Race Crew shirt, voucher for food and they cover your parking.   It's about 2 hours of your time and I enjoyed getting to meet some of the pacers, see fellow runners I know, meet new runners and answer questions as best I could.  The booth was a neat (is that word outdated now?) experience. 

Now, here are the benefits I found to be brilliant.  Run day morning, the pace crew has their own designated area that is shared with legacy runners.   You have your own set of bathrooms (not porta pots), tables to sit at, coffee available and space to breath.   The bathrooms............it was so nice to not have the porta line to wait in.   You also get designated parking with bussing to the convention center that is free to use for pacers/race crew.  So, I didn't have to worry about parking or peeing, which was quite nice.  =)

First: You are required to carry a pace sign for the entire race so other runners know what pace you represent.  It was a little odd to carry something in my right hand (normally free) for 5 plus hours, but it also was fairly easily negotiable and I got some tips from other paces on how to make it a little easier in the future. 

Second: You are given a bigger sign the morning of the run to carry to the Corral.  You hold that sign up (the other sign actually seats into it so you can carry together).  When you get to the start finish area, you dispose of the bigger/heavier sign. 

Third: You have a finish target of plus/minus 2 minutes from target pace.  I did struggle a bit with this through the run as my natural pace is a bit faster than this, but I was still able to come in within the range

Fourth: Unspoken, but help the runners around you achieve their goal and remember it is about them. 

I was lucky enough to be partnered with a veteran pacer.  Our strategy was to have a bit of a faster pace in between aid/hydration stations so that we could slow the pace or walk through those stations to allow anyone trying to stay with us the chance to get their refills and keep visual tracking of us.  

We also tried to gain about a minute to a minute and a half cushion time as this marathon hits some hills down the stretch so that we could power walk up those inclines and maintain pace.  

The Pace booth hands out pace "tattoos" to have on your forearm for the run so you can track your performance.  My pace partner was clever and put these on his signage so we just needed to compare the markers to the times on the signage.  

All in all, the strategy worked very well. 

Up to around mile 22 my partner and me were able to stay together pretty well.   I had to divert to use the on course porta pot, but was able to catch back up quite quickly and was rooted on by our group as I caught up.   We had a fun group around us =)

At around 22 my pace partner let me know he was having an issue with his foot and may not be able to keep up on the pace.  So, we switched pacing signs (his had the tattoo on it) and he fell back into a walk/run pace and I carried the pace on.

For some reason with the loss of my pace partner, the group kind of came up around me and we all started chatting about marathons, running, training, life, what was hurting lol.  It made the final 5Kish of the marathon go by in an enjoyable way. 

It is also, exactly the reason why I wanted to pace.  I had 2 first time marathons staying with me and talking with me.  So we had some great conversations and they helped me greatly and I hoped I helped them as well. 

What I didn't know, was I had some runners behind me that were just hanging with us and coming down the stretch, they thanked me for pacing and keeping them on target.  It was great validation of why I wanted to pace.

Coming down the stretch, I told everyone to "just go" as it is their marathon and finish.  They earned every Mile/KM of it.  I had 1 runner that said she was going to stay with me no matter what all the way through the finish.  She is pictured here and she did awesome as all runners did. 

Absolutely.  If someone is tired of the PR hunt or wants to have a different perspective during the marathon, I fully recommend giving pacing a try.  It was a rewarding experience.