This local resident has run in every Myrtle Beach Marathon. Why he’s now changing course
Jim Pence’s perfect streak is coming to an end.
Not because it has to, but because he wants it to.
The Myrtle Beach resident has completed the 26.2 miles in each of the first 22 Myrtle Beach Marathons, and this week he decided to cut back to the half marathon in the 23rd annual event Saturday.
He has used as motivation his own health, his late father’s pride and his son’s birth and growth to continue running over the past two decades.
But his mother’s death last week at the age of 92 gave him cause for reflection, and he realized he has pushed himself hard enough to have already accomplished all he wanted in running, and he can now step back.
This year, at least.
“I’m just going to do this for me now, and I’m just going to run the half. I’ve reached every goal I’ve wanted to reach,” Pence said. “I’m just going to do the half and enjoy it, and I’m okay with that.”
A new endeavor
Pence, 60, wasn’t interested in running until he was 38, and the Myrtle Beach Marathon is the only road race of any distance he has ever entered.
The West Virginia native moved to Myrtle Beach at the age of 18 in 1978 and has been a bartender in the area since, including 30 years at what is now Ocean Reef Resort and eight years through 2019 at Tavern in the Forest.
In 1998, Pence decided to improve his conditioning and run in the inaugural Myrtle Beach Marathon in part out of boredom during an uneventful winter on the Grand Strand.
Prior to that, he was more of a recreational golfer, preferring to drink a few beers over 18 holes. “I had never planned on running anything,” Pence said. “. . . Then I told my wife I wanted to do this thing.”
Pence trained on his own and he thought he was doing well with one-hour training runs, until he spoke to an accomplished runner who advised him to begin running up to three hours.
“He goes, ‘Jim, how are you doing?’ ” Pence recalled. “I bowed up and said, ‘I’ve been running an hour every couple days.’ He said, ‘Oh, you’re not running the marathon then?’ And I really thought I was doing something. Then he informed me that until you’re running two- and three-hour runs consistently. . . . Then that’s what I did and it helped me get over the hump. Even now I’ll run one or two half marathons every week.”
Pence finished his first marathon in about 4 hours, 30 minutes, which remains a personal best. “I guess because I didn’t know what I was doing,” Pence joked. “But it took me two weeks to get off the chair [after the race] because I didn’t know how to train right.”
Over the years he has become less concerned with his time and more concerned with training appropriately and running a pace that will allow him to quickly recover.
At the time of his first race, he considered it a one-time endeavor. “It’s off my list,” Pence thought.
But in October of 1998 his father died, and at the funeral he was told by several people that his father was proud of him for completing the marathon. “I thought, ‘Son of a gun, I’m going to regroup and do one for the old man,’ ” Pence said. “So that’s how the streak indirectly got started. I did one for him and I kept going and kept going.”
The birth of his son Nick in 2002 was the next impetus to continue entering the marathon. As an older first-time parent at the age of 43, Pence wanted to maintain good health so he could be active with his son, and figured training to run a marathon every year was a good way to do it. Nick has crossed the finish line with his father in the past 17 marathons.
“So from then until now, the last quarter mile my son has been with me,” said Pence, who has a collection of 17 pictures of him and his son at or after the finish line. “It’s been a great ride. It’s been really cool.”
Pence enjoys the self-reflection and cathartic nature of distance running. “When you go out running it just clears your mind, it really does,” said Pence, who also appreciates the inexpensiveness of the hobby. “You figure things out, out there.”
A tough race
Pence generally runs 12- to 12 1/2-minute miles and keeps the pace throughout his training and races.
Last year, he was on a strong five-hour pace before his feet ballooned with painful swelling midway through the race and he struggled to continue.
“I had a lot of trouble,” Pence said. “At 13 miles I was wondering what in the world happened to me. To this day I don’t know what happened. Maybe just a banana would have helped me, I don’t know.”
He persevered, even as a police officer pulled up alongside him in his patrol car and requested that he jump in because the course was closing. Other runners were ending their races behind him and there were still a few miles to go.
But he quickly told his story of completing every Myrtle Beach Marathon ever held, and the officer radioed to the finish line that there was one more person finishing.
“Once you’re past the start line it’s Game On. I’m not tapping out,” Pence said. “I said. ‘I’m not getting off this course. You’re going to have to handcuff me.’ He said, ‘You’ve run in all these things?’ I said, ‘Yes sir.’ ”
Pence had to use crosswalks and wait as cars sped through previously protected intersections, and Nick found him on the course with about two miles to go and helped him reach the finish line.
Pence said he placed last among finishers in about 7 1/2 hours.
Before his mother’s funeral, he was prepared to run the full marathon again.
He knew his mother appreciated his streak but also worried about Pence pushing himself physically, and he believed his wife Marisa and son did also after he struggled last year.
“It was almost déjà vu again with my dad passing all these years ago with people like, ‘Your mother was so tickled with you running that thing every year, and on and on, and she was so worried,’ ” Pence said. “She thought I was overdoing it. Typical motherly love. . . . So it’s like, ‘Jim, you can tap the brakes now a little bit.’ ”
Pence runs about five days per week and averages about 30 miles a week most of the year, building to 50 to 60 miles leading up to the marathon.
“I’ve trained as good as I’ve ever trained before. I mean I’m ready to go,” Pence said. “I could go run another one, but that’s not the point anymore. It’s just to be part of this, and I’m going to stay with it.”
Pence hasn’t ruled out extending to the full distance again in the future.
“Maybe I’ll regroup and I’ll emotionally be back into this,” Pence said. “But right now it’s just like, ‘Go enjoy yourself, shake hands, smile at the police officers.’ It’s not a goal this year anymore, even though I know I could do it. . . . It’s just a personal thing between me and my family.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2020 at 3:20 PM.
