It's all About Pacing Yourself

We had a few other dogs join the group for morning run on Saturday.  Gunnar decided that he couldn't abide being BEHIND any other dogs, so he took off.  That was fine and I was willing to let him run a bit faster, but he wasn't content to being in front of those dogs, he wanted to be in front of the other humans as well.   Again, I gave him a little time to pass them as well, but he wouldn't back off into a comfortable pace.  He strained at the leash to the extent that he breathing was strained, and frankly, it was a pace I didn't care to run at.  He gave no sign of backing off, so I did.  I stopped, and we let the rest of the group go.  Gunnar certainly didn't like THAT!  But, we sat where we were for a few moments.  Then, we reversed course and ran by ourselves.  Gunnar again decided to charge out like the proverbial bat, but I stopped.  Every time he would run faster than he could handle with comfortable breathing, and without leash strain, we would stop.  Sometimes we'd walk, sometimes dead stop.  Until he would run at the pace I wanted.

Not sure if this is right or not, but it seemed to work.  Seems to tie in a bit with the leash training we did this past Sunday, though.  Anybody with other suggestions for pace control?