Why is there a pacesetter in track

New York City dropped rabbits back in , and Chicago followed suit in Boston has never allowed them. Attitudes vary across the board on whether or not elites should be paced at the distance. For non-U. Rabbits allowed the runners to leave the driving to someone else. In a typical marathon, rabbits are paid to run as far as the 30K mark. In Berlin, the rabbits could also earn an incentive for every 5K they held pace beyond 25K.

We also use elite marathoners who are at the end of their career and can run maybe a to for the full. Team tactics are certainly part of the sport, but there are people who question the ethics of pace setting for world records or fast times. For fans of head-to-head competition pace setters disrupt the mano-a-mano aspect of the sport.

For fans of fast times and records pace setters are invaluable. You can love them, hate them, or feel indifferent but, pace setters at least at this current time, are part of the sport and you will be a more knowledgeable fan if you understand what their role is. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.

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Share this: Share Facebook Email Print. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Comment. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here The main reasons marathon pacemakers sometimes carry on after the contractual agreed pacemaking distance is because they feel good and think they can achieve a PR, Olympic nomination or whatever goal.

Personally, I do not see any problem when in the end a pacemaker turns out to finish the race and win. After all, why would you prevent the best athlete in the race from winning? Besides that the very basic aim of a sports competition should be to see who is the best, by going on and winning the pacemaker achieves the organization's goal to hire him: to get an as sharp as possible winning time. For optimum performance on a long distance run in a flat terrain, each runner needs to follow their own optimum pace as opposed to a fluctuating pace.

Randomly fluctuating pace consumes more energy for the same finish time. Keeping awareness of the current pace at any given point consumes mental energy which could be spent elsewhere. The relatively easiest method of sticking to a known pace is to follow a runner who is known or expected to concentrate on a specific pace known in advance. It certainly helps if that runner pacemaker is incentivized by race organizers to serve other runners predictably; otherwise it is just a competitor, or worse, a potential conspirator of a competitor.

Furthermore, leading a fast group is slightly disadvantageous aerodynamically. Whoever can sustain being a steady front-runner for 25 km with a pack of closely following competitors and then go on outpacing them in the rest of a marathon track, has already helped the group tremendously basically regardless of what their exact pace for the first 25 km was.

This answer assumes that the pacemaker is at least barely professional in keeping their contract with the race organizers and that the contractual pace was chosen wisely. For more reading, this article predicts that. This isn't specifically about pacemakers, but about groups competing against each other, similar to cycling teams. The article has some good insights about the psychological aspects of running in a group.

There are two in famous cases of pacesetters continuing the race and going on to win: Paul Pilkington at the Los Angeles marathon , and Tom Byers at the Bislett Games.

Byers built a ten-second lead when "the rest of the field refused to follow his pace" and Pilkington similarly was well away from the rest of the pack at the point he was supposed to step off. Other answers have correctly noted that some events make their rabbits sign contracts to drop out, and IAAF rules require that any pacemakers start the race with everyone else otherwise the pacemakers constitute unfair assistance for some runners.

For events where dropping out is not a part of the contract, though, consider this: what motivation do the other runners have to follow the pace set by a rabbit when they know the rabbit will drop out? Perfect pacemaking requires the rabbit to hit exactly the requested splits at the designated milestones, but also requires the actual competitors to be close in with the pacemakers. A pacesetter basically ensures that he or she leads the race for a major portion of the event with a very fast speed, eventually dropping off.

Hence, they are also termed as rabbits, informally. The major benefit of having a pacemaker or pacesetter is that there is minimal to no tactical running. Usually during middle and long distance running there are a lot of tactics involved like starting the event as a flash before slowing down just to increase the mental pressure on fellow competitors. A pacemaker is also used during the world record attempts, wherein the pacesetter acts as an imaginary competitor to the one attempting to break a world record.