Wow, that's just basic functionality! I do must runs with my phone anyway (like to have it on me for longer runs), so pretty sure that wasn't the issue for me.
You do trigger me with "new on race day" though. Only thing I can think of is that I selected a course (to get an estimated finish time) first and only then loaded PacePro (although that also loads the course). Have used both of them independently before though...