Jess Hofheimer, Founder of Pace of Me Coaching and We Run On Art, Shares the Running and Creative Connection

“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!” 

Inside Jessica Hofheimer’s house, that’s what’s said on the first of each month. According to an English tradition, it’s meant to bring luck and a fresh start.  

The ritual began decades ago for Jess and her family. And each month, Jess creates a new piece of art — a rabbit — to celebrate.  

“In our kitchen, we have a wall of rabbits that I’ve painted,” Jess shares. “I didn’t actually know the connection with running, that the rabbit is a thing in running, until many years later.”

The rabbit is the pacesetter. It’s the name given to the runner whose role in a race is to set the pace for the leaders before hopping off the track or the marathon course. It’s also the name of a running apparel company, and part of the logo for another. 

For Jess, beyond the monthly tradition, the rabbit is a symbolic connection between two of her greatest passions: running and art. 

Realizing the Running and Creativity Connection

Longing to pursue an art degree in college, Jess found herself studying English literature to appease her father. After graduation, she landed a career in sales. While she thrived in her work, she struggled with depression and the negative coping mechanisms she picked up in college. Realizing a need for change, Jess decided to train for a marathon. 

“It seemed like a good idea, a good way to quit some bad habits by setting a goal and sort of developing a habit that would replace some of the less healthy ones,” Jess explains. 

In 2000, she followed a training plan she wrote and ran the Philadelphia Marathon. 

In the years that followed, Jess got married and had four pregnancies, including one miscarriage. Each pregnancy and birth ushered in a new chapter of her running journey. Some years were woven with postpartum depression and less running, creativity, and self-care. Other years, she leaned into running and, concurrently, more artistic endeavors.

“It’s been very interesting to me,” Jess shares. “If I’m not nurturing my creative self, I’m not nurturing my athletic self, and vice versa.” 

The Heart and Science (and Art) in Run Coaching

Jess began writing about her running journey on her blog, Pace of Me, and grew more interested in learning how to improve her performance. She decided to get her running coach certification to better understand the science behind training and racing. Doing so helped her unlock her running potential. 

Jess trained herself to her first sub-2-hour and sub-1:30 half marathons, her first sub-4-hour marathon, and her first Boston-qualifier. To date, Jess has completed 29 marathons in her 26 years of running. 

Many of her fastest marathon times have come in the last five years. This past April was her fifth consecutive Boston Marathon finish, where she set a personal best of 3:07:33, just 10 days after her 50th birthday. 

Through opportunities in her local running community, Jess found a passion for helping other runners improve their training and achieve their race goals. In 2010, she launched Pace of Me Coaching.

Over the years, Pace of Me Coaching has grown to a team of four coaches. Jess shares that the focus is equally on their athlete’s goals and interests, science-based training, and the artistic program development that glues it all together. Through Pace of Me Coaching, Jess also prioritizes creative partnerships and community events in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she and another coach are based. 

Creative Expression Through We Run On Art

If Jess isn’t coaching, training, at a community running event, or with her family, she’s likely creating art. Because when her running bucket is full, so too is her creativity. 

In 2019, Jess launched We Run On Art to connect her artistic side to her running business. She creates illustrations of race courses, custom runner portraits, greeting cards, and other keepsakes for runners. At the Boston Marathon this year, Jess took custom orders to illustrate a map of the course, with the runner’s name, finish time, and personal mantra.

“I love things that are going to celebrate and be a symbol of a cherished memory from your performance or your experience with a race. So, that’s the idea behind We Run On Art,” Jess shares. “My whole life, I’ve just loved drawing and playing with art supplies and making things for people.”

Below, Jess shares more about her running journey throughout motherhood and life, becoming a coach and launching Pace of Me Coaching, and her thoughts on the connection between running and creativity. 

What can you share about training for your first marathon?

Jess Hofheimer: I started training for my first marathon in 2000. I was 24 years old. I was really depressed throughout my college years, [and] this was a year or two out of college. It was really for my mental health. I had developed some coping mechanisms that weren’t necessarily very healthy in my college years — drinking, smoking, all that stuff. Coming out of college as a young professional and just learning how to be an adult, I was kind of sick of that. 

Running, for some reason, seemed like a good idea. It seemed really accessible to a young person who didn’t have a lot of discretionary income. 

I bought a book. It was called How to Train for and Run Your Best Marathon by Gordon Bakoulis Bloch …. I wrote my own training plan from the book, and it was all based on minutes, not miles, which seemed like a really easy thing to wrap my brain around.

I changed my lifestyle a lot so that I could be awake in the morning. I lived in the D.C. area, and I was training for a fall marathon, so it was really hot. I had a full-time job, so I’d need to run before I went to work or after work. It definitely changed my whole lifestyle and gave me confidence. Your first marathon, every weekend you’re running farther than you ever have in your whole life. 

I never even ran a 5K, so I was a bit naive. But I’m thankful to that young Jess, because she really was just trying to change her life. 

In what ways did your running journey evolve throughout life and motherhood?

Jess Hofheimer: I was dating my husband when I started training for that first marathon. We’ve been married for almost 24 years, and so we went through all life changes together. 

Right before I got married, I found out that my parents were getting a divorce after 35 years of marriage, and that was probably an early trauma in my young adulthood, because it was very confusing. I didn’t see it coming, and running was there for me. It’s always been like a buoy through the hard times in life. If I picture an ocean, lots of tipsy-turvy times. It’s the thing that’s helped me stay afloat. 

It was a tool for stress management and becoming a mom. I stopped running when I was pregnant with my daughter. I had trouble getting pregnant with her …. When I finally did get pregnant with her, I was having a lot of complications [and]…I didn’t run for the whole first trimester. When I got cleared to run, I was just too nervous, so I didn’t. I walked through that pregnancy and strength trained. 

After she was born, I was working full-time. I was so nervous I wasn’t going to be able to have more kids, because it was so hard to have her, so we didn’t prevent pregnancy. I got pregnant with my son Will when she was only eight months old. My two oldest kids are just 16.5 months apart. 

When Will was born, he was in the NICU for a week. Then, after he got out, it was just a spiral of health issues, including ‘failure to thrive,’ which is like the worst thing to tell a mom. I quit my full-time job…because I needed to take care of my babies, and I really was taking care of them and not myself.

I just had a lot of postpartum depression. Pretty tough times, and running helped me. My husband got me a double stroller, and I started pushing them, walking at first. I really rediscovered my running self during those young mom years.

I actually got pregnant again and lost a pregnancy, and that’s when I really poured myself into my running again. I really needed that. Got my Pilates teaching certification, my running coach certification, started a creative business called Sugar Cone, which was making these growth charts for children. Running was part of that resurgence of my creative self with my moving self. 

And then I had a surprise pregnancy, my third child …. That was really pivotal for me, because I was like, ‘I cannot afford to lose this part of myself again.’ 

That’s when my running really changed, after my third baby was born. That’s when I broke 4 hours for the first time, ran my first BQ, and my running career — from things I did outside of my running but were related to running — started to blossom.

After you became a certified running coach to improve your own performance, what inspired you to coach others?

Jess Hofheimer: Not long after I got my certification and trained myself for my sub-2-hour half, I found out I was pregnant. I was signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon, and the town I lived in had a running club called the Reston Runners. My sister lived a mile away from me, and she and I were planning to train with the Reston Runners for Marine Corps, but I decided not to do it because I was not going to run a marathon pregnant. 

My sister went to the training, and one day she’s like, ‘Oh, I found a client for you.’ There was a guy, Paul, who was training with the Reston Runners, and he needed some more help. The plan that they gave them wasn’t enough for him. He was going through some things in his life and just needed some more attention. 

I coached Paul, and I knew through that experience that I had found work that was really meaningful to me. He was such a joy to coach. I really enjoyed having that front-row seat to his journey and being a support for him. I couldn’t really run with him or anything, because I was growing by the month, but I was there for his marathon. 

That morning, I actually drove him and my sister to the start, and before I said goodbye, he handed me a box. Inside the box was a sterling silver whistle that he had engraved ‘Coach Jess.’ 

How do you approach coaching runners through Pace of Me Coaching?

Jess Hofheimer: We actually have four coaches at Pace of Me — all women. Two of us are here in North Carolina, one’s in Chicago, and one’s in New Jersey, but in the Philly area. We are doing one-on-one coaching, but as a team, and have cultivated a community that’s very aligned with the same value system and philosophy.

With Pace of Me, it’s heart and science, but there is an art to it. 

We meet each person where they are currently and get to know them and understand who they are as an athlete and as a person, what’s important to them, and then what their values are, so we can design training that is aligned with that in order to help them pursue their potential. 

By really nurturing the person and understanding who they are and the context of their busy lives, we then apply the science to that appropriately to develop them athletically towards the things that light them up. I might have an athlete who I can see is super fast-twitch and they could crush a mile. But they might want to spend hours on the trails. That’s what makes them happy. So we’re going to work on developing that system, because that’s what they love. 

From a philosophy standpoint, we prioritize the journey, the big picture. We’re not going to sacrifice someone’s health and well-being for a performance goal. But we do believe that when you are your healthiest and your happiest and the most engaged in the process, you actually will be able to discover your utmost potential from a performance standpoint. 

We’re all really experienced runners and coaches who are still in it, pursuing our own potential through the different seasons of our own lives. It’s not like we’re all heart. That’s only going to get you so far. Also, the science is only going to get you so far. It’s really important to make sure that, as a coach, you’re attending to all of those things.

What is your perspective on the connection between running and creativity?

Jess Hofheimer: Running movement, that process, and your sense of self, your abilities, it’s so intertwined with the creative self …. I know so many people who are actually making careers out of making running-related art, or even if they’re a musician or poet, a writer. The creative process is a movement process, and the movement process is a creative process.

That was very apparent to me during those [difficult] years. I moved away from my creativity when I moved away from my running. When I moved into my running, my creative self woke up.

We are creative beings. It’s something that separates us from other life. We have these things called ideas, and we have this ability to express ourselves in these ways that other species don’t. It’s such a gift. 

Sometimes, people feel like they can’t own this identity until they are X, achieve X …. It’s just very interesting to me — that parallel between the runner self and the creative self. So many times I hear people [say], ‘I’m not creative,’ or ‘I’m not a runner.’ But then, whoa! You put that pie together, or you made that flower arrangement. That’s freaking creative! You just ran five miles the other day? I think you’re a runner. 

Similarly to how everyone’s gait is different, your style is different, your interpretation. Your running is an expression of who you are, and I just think it’s really fun to think about art that way, too. You don’t have to be a professional runner to be a runner. You don’t have to be a professional artist to be an artist.

Follow @PaceofMeCoaching and @WeRunOnArt on Instagram. 

“With Pace of Me, it’s heart and science, but there is an art to it …. We prioritize the journey, the big picture. We’re not going to sacrifice someone’s health and well-being for a performance goal. But we do believe that when you are your healthiest and your happiest and the most engaged in the process, you actually will be able to discover your utmost potential from a performance standpoint.” – Jess Hofheimer