That's one interpretation. When referring not to other actions but to a word describing a location it becomes more ambiguous.

eg "pacing the frontier" could also mean they are impatiently or anxiously walking up and down the border.

That analogy doesn't hold up. In running you have to pace yourself to avoid falling apart later in the race. It's a strategy to maximize net speed across the entire race. But what Anthropic is doing is a cynical attempt to create an industry cartel or convince governments to impose legal restrictions in order to maximize their own profitability. They're afraid of running out of the capital necessary to stay in the race.

But a fast pace is a pace so it's potentially entirely contradictory to what they'd seem to mean