Time and time again highschool/club and sometimes college coaches are telling athletes to get out hard so they can get a good position, and while there are situations where this can be applicable (think bottlenecks, tight funnel) inevitably this is hurting the athletes races.
If an athlete wants to take a race hard from the start, by all means they should, but in no instance should the first stretch be faster than any other stretch. Using the analogy of a car, when you accelerate really fast from 0-60 you burn much more gas then if you use the slow burn to bring it up to 60. Jakob can be used as a study for his tactics that were used in the 1500m final of the Olympics. While championship tactics vary from other races, in this race he went out hard, and got 4th. However when we see him going out behind a pacer, he clearly can knock out some fast times.
Should "fast out of the gate" still be a philosophy in coaching?
Shotput.
The only situation where getting out fast no matter what makes sense is in a short sprint.
What race is this? It isn’t from 2023 nationals, which Pomona-Pitzer won by a point with 158, not 80. And they were in third at the mile marker, and their number one runner was in second and finished ninth. They were in first at the two mile mark.
What race is this? It isn’t from 2023 nationals, which Pomona-Pitzer won by a point with 158, not 80. And they were in third at the mile marker, and their number one runner was in second and finished ninth. They were in first at the two mile mark.
Maybe this is 2021?
Yes these stats are from D3 nationals in 2021.
Notably in 2023 when they won again, the course was narrow and very hilly which made passing more difficult, so Pomona went out much harder than they had 2 years before. (Although La Crosse went out even faster but lost over 50 points in the last 2K to lose by a single point. It worked out pretty well for Ethan Gregg though.) That's what's great about cross country- every course is different and calls for different strategies.