Track season is rabbit season

The collegiate track and field season ended with the NCAA championships last weekend, and the high school season ended over a month earlier, but we still have months of professional track to enjoy, leading up to the opening of the World Championships in August. So in between your long training runs this summer, you’ll occasionally be able to flop down on the couch and enjoy a track broadcast, probably of a meet in Europe. And if you’re watching a mile or a 1500-meter race, you might see a rabbit.


Rabbits or pacemakers are used in other events, too, but most commonly in the mile. Meet organizers like to see a fast time so the crowd can go home thrilled that they’ve seen a record or near-record performance, but the athletes in the mile don’t see it that way. No runner wants to spend most of the race leading, doing the work for the rest of the field, and then have one or more of those bums streak by on the last lap to claim the win. So all too often in the mile, the runners will just shuffle along at a modest pace for most of the race, and the only racing is a sprint over the last few hundred yards.


This isn’t new. For instance, back in the 1930s, there was the “Typographical Error Mile.” A mile race that included all the stars of that era, the athletes ran so cautiously that when the results went out over the wires, news editors were convinced that the slow times must have been a typographical error. *


So meet directors often employ a rabbit, a second-tier athlete who can lead the runners through half or three-quarters of the race at a swift pace. After that, the rabbit can step off the track. Or not. The job is to lead the early part of the race, not to finish it.


Of course, the world-class runners in the field may realize that the rabbit is a no-name runner and choose to ignore his pacemaking. They do this at their peril.


At a 1981 1500-meter race in Oslo, American miler Tom Byers had been hired to run as a rabbit. The field, which included then world-record holder Steve Ovett, raced among themselves, letting Byers get farther and farther ahead. With a lap to go the favorites realized that Byers was still running, and that he had a huge lead. Ovett’s kick wasn’t enough to catch the rabbit, and Byers became the Bislett 1500-meter champion.


That’s only one of the more notable times a rabbit has stolen a race. Just this past May, Jeff Eggleston was hired by the Pittsburgh Marathon to run the first 18 miles of the race at 2:19 pace, 2:19 being the qualifying standard for the U.S. Olympic Trials marathon. Eggleston ran the contracted distance at the contracted pace, and then decided to race the leaders for the last 8.2 miles. He wore down the competition and won the race in a personal-best 2:16:40.


So whether you’re watching or racing this summer--look out for the rabbits.


* "Tired of being outkicked, [Glen Cunningham] refused to push the pace in the Columbian Mile on March 14 [1936]. [Gene] Venzke and [Joe] Mangan allowed the pace to slow to an astonishing 3:52.6 for three-quarters. Then Cunningham blasted his last quarter in 54.2 to beat Venzke by five yards and Mangan by seven in 4:46.8. Before the race, Cunningham had said, 'I'm going to win, no matter if it's going to take me the whole night.' Sportswriters dubbed it 'the typographical error mile.'" (Nelson & Quercetani, 1973)


Links:

• Original publication in the 19 June 2011 Tallahassee Democrat
  http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011106190377