Why do track races involve so much strategy? Shouldn’t runners just go at whatever pace gives them the best time?
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> Shouldn’t runners just go at whatever pace gives them the best time?
That could work if everybody ran individual solo time trials on an empty track, but real races have multiple runners on the same track at the same time and two people running in the exact same place at the exact same time results in a collision – so the idea of trying to *”run your solo pace (while ignoring everyone else)”* is physically impossible even if you wanted to do so (because you cannot simply run “through” somebody like a ghost-rider in a videogame).
Therefore, you have to consider your best natural solo-pace energy burn-rate in conjunction with the paces of the other runners. Does it burn less energy to overtake someone quickly with *just enough* energy to squeeze by before settling into your most-efficient solo pace, or it less energy to increase slightly above your natural pace and slowly overtake them from the outside over a long timeframe? (There’s also adrenalin and psychology to consider too.) These questions can partially depend upon the specific runner’s strengths and weaknesses, but for the most part nobody has the luxury of *not* considering them unless they are so-fast or so-slow that collisions are physically impossible.
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