IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cbt/econwp/16-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Pacing of 400m and 800m Races: A Standard Microeconomics Approach

Author

Abstract

The optimal way for an athlete to run 400m and 800m races has long been debated by athletes, coaches, and more recently by physicists and applied mathematicians. These two particular running events are different from both shorter and longer races, due to their emphasis upon an athlete’s lactate system. If the first part of the race is run either too quickly (in which case the fatigue that is generated makes the second half of the race both slow and painful) or too slowly (in which case even though the second half will be fast, it cannot make up for the time lost earlier on),2 the total time for the entire distance will not be as fast as it could otherwise have been. In this paper we discuss this choice problem in a standard microeconomic setting, and we solve for the optimal “split” times for the first and second half of the race.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Watt & Philip Gunby, 2016. "Optimal Pacing of 400m and 800m Races: A Standard Microeconomics Approach," Working Papers in Economics 16/12, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbt:econwp:16/12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.canterbury.ac.nz/cbt/econwp/1612.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cbt:econwp:16/12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Albert Yee (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decannz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.