Pacing Strategies Selection of Male Elite Runners in 5000m Race in Last Five Years

Abstract

Pacing strategies are correlated with the energy expenditure during athletic competition and may be analyzed using races information to provide an indicative for training. PURPOSE: to analyze pacing strategies selection of male elite runners in 5000m race in three world competitions in last five years. METHODS: Publically available data from Olimpic Games 2008, Golden League 2009 and World Championship 2013 were used to analyze pacing strategies of 45 finalist athletes. Groups of 15 athletes were organized according to the order of arrival (G-first,G-middle and G-last places). The mean velocity of the athletes was represented using a relative percentage of world-record (WR). An analysis of variance with repeated measures and Tuckey post-hoc were used to identify differences within and among the places (P<0.05). RESULTS: The mean velocity of the last WR runner in 5000m was 6.44m/s. The finalists reached a performance of 97.8±5.8%, 97.0±5.1%and 95.1±3.9%, of mean WR velocity, respectively to their groups. Negative pacing profiles were the most frequently used among finalists athletes independent of the classification (Table 1), with a significantly difference between 1000m and 5000m laps. The last laps (4000m-5000m) are decisive for performance. These results showed changes in pacing strategies profile in the last years [1] and this analysis may represent an importance of the anaerobic capacity used for end spurt. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in pacing strategy profile during male elite competition for 5000m races were identified when compared these three competitions with the last 20 years. Currently, the negative pacing is used by elite runners. Thus, this pacing strategy must be considered for training. Supported by FAPESP (2012/06355-2, 2014/10336-9) and CNPQ. REFERENCES 1. TUCKER, R. et al. (2006) Int J Sports Physiol Perform, v. 1, n. 3, p. 233-45.