Rabbits in Races?

I once "Rabbited" a time trial for my team captain. I could run a 2:12.5 800 back then, and I'd never really raced an open 400 before. The plan was the my captain, who was trying to break 2:00, would run for 1:00 around the track, and then I'd sprint an all out 400 behind him, giving him someone to work with the last 350 or so meters. He came by in 58, we waited 2 seconds, then I took off. The backstretch had some temporary fencing that created a two-foot wide grassy lane next to lane 1. As we approached, there happened to be a rabbit. We frightened it as we came by, but trapped between us and the fence, it had no choice but to sprint in grassy lane zero. The three of us powered down the backstretch at an even pace, but as the 600 mark came I blew away while my captain began to fade badly. I ran 58.5. My captain faded to a 2:03. The rabbit, after sprinting 100m in approximately 14/15 seconds, DNF'd.

In any case, with the recent Alan Webb race, I was wondering about the legitimacy of rabbits (pacemakers, pacesetters) in races. I guess this has been long debated, and in fact rules today maybe lighter than they were many years ago. Rabbits these days can just drop out of races, while, a long time ago, they were actually required to finish. It seems to me that the entire idea of pacesetting is sort of artificial.

For instance, it's clear that there is a drafting effect in running. When you run behind someone, you will fall into their slip stream, creating a sort of air pocket. If you run in it, you will experience less resistance than the runner at the front, so clearly there will be a bit of energy saved. Secondly, there the psychological advantage of being "pulled" along. Instead of having to really focus on your pace, you simply focus on the rabbit's back, and let them pull you along. Basically, by having a rabbit, you can sit on someone for three laps, then hammer the last 400m of a Mile, and there you have it, a world record. In Marathons you can sit behind someone for 25 miles, then just work the last mile and 385 yards. I guess even if you assumed small energy saves of half a percent or so, half a percent over 125 minutes of marathoning is over thirty seconds worth of time. I mean, certainly that is the fastest that a person has ever covered that distance, but it was behind another person for a large part of it? Why don't I just have a truck run in front of a person for a Mile and find out how fast humans could move if there was essentially minimal air resistance?

So is rabbiting really okay?

I guess the question is, could we ever really get rid of rabbiting? I think we can't. Again, we could create rules like all rabbits must finish the race, but if we changed the rules on rabbiting, then wouldn't all the fastest races just end up being ideal situations anyway? Wouldn't the fastest races just be races like the historic Landy/Bannister duel, with one runner leading the whole way only to be outkicked at the finish? What about Paul Tergat's marathon? Both runners finished within a second of eachother, even though one was a rabbit. Could you not call that a race?

I guess what I'm saying is that even without paid pacesetters for meets, you would find that the world records would end up being perfectly rabbited races anyway, except in this case the rabbits wouldn't drop out, or maybe they wouldn't die so hard.

I guess without rabbits, however, a lot of races would end up much more tactically, like sit and kick.

I question whether the world records would stand where they are without the help of rabbits. Perhaps in very fast races with very good athletes to push eachother. It still seems however, that when you get a strong field of athletes together, there are stronger tendancies towards tactical races. I guess a good example of this is in the Olympics. In the Olympics, how often are world records set or fast times run? The Olympics isn't a perfect example because there are heats, but if you take all the best runners in the world and stick the all in one race, what happens? It seems that most of the time these races turn out to be tactical. It'd be interesting to try to trace through the Olympics when world records are set, and when the races are slow. It might just be my imagination but it seems to me that decades ago, more world records were set during the Olympics than these days. Of course there are many things to be considered, such as race length (I would contend that it's easier in sprints), and that over the course of the last 112 years or so, since the dawn of the Olympics, track surfaces and training techniques have also greatly evolved. But it just seems that today, with all of the World Record's having been rabbitted (at least distance races), the bar has been set so impossibly high that we could never really expect those times to be produced in "natural races." I mean, unless Bernard Lagat somehow ran 1509m all out not know he would die so bad in the last 100m, and it just happened that Hicham El Guerrouj was sitting on him the whole 1509m, and they decided to go at world record's pace, allowing El G to blast by him for the win, it just doesn't seem likely. The runners would probably pick a slower pace than 3:43.13.

One solution would be that we could establish races like in cycling. There could be races, where we know it's not necessarily the strongest who wins but the smartest, and there could be time trials, pure tests of fitness and internal pacesetting. But the idea of time trials in running would probably never work.

Another solution would be to run every race like the 100m. You have lanes running straight so you always know where your competetion is, but there would be no energy savings. However, you could still have the advantage of using others to find an appropriate pace.

In any case, I've always greatly admired front runners. Guys who went out there and just would grind away at the pace. They might not have a great kick, but if they can get out there and just make people hurt, and get the win, then they've earned it. In a sense, I know that racing is racing, and if you sit on somebody for 1550m and blow by them the last 50.9, then you get the gold medal. But I also know that you didn't work as hard in the race. And I guess that's interesting because it's the smartest runner who wins (and sometimes luckiest), not necessarily the hardest worker. Still, I think most of us still like to think that the harder we work, the more we deserve.

After reading Roger Bannister's The Four-Minute Mile and also Neal Bascomb's The Perfect Mile, I have no respect for Roger Bannister as an athlete. He was an ideal amateur athlete, but by today's professional standards would have failed to inspire anyone. I guess who I really began to admire was John Landy, not just because he was gutsy in his training, but incredibly gutsy in his running. He never had any pacesetters, and when he dipped under four, it was faster than Bannister's.

Oh well. I guess I just think there is something inherently wrong with rabbiting. Maybe I am just bitter because for most of my personal records I've run alone.

I also put this question out to you guys: When you set your PR's, how did the race go? Were you sitting behind someone most of the way? Were you running into a strong wind? What happened?