Elite male and female 800-m runners display different pacing strategies during seasons best performances’

Purpose: To analyse the pacing profiles of the world top 800-m annual performances between 2010 and 2016, comparing male and female strategies. Methods: One hundred and forty two performances were characterised for overall race times and 0-200 m, 200-400 m, 400-600 m, 600-800 m split times using available footage from YouTube. Only the best annual performance for each athlete was considered. Overall race and splits speed were calculated so that each lap speed could be expressed as a percentage of the mean race speed. Results: The mean speed of the men’s 800-m was 7.73 ± 0.06 m.s-1, with the 0-200 m split faster than the others. After the first split, the speed decreased significantly during the three subsequent splits (p <0.001). The mean speed of the women’s 800-m was 6.77 ± 0.05 m.s-1, with a significative variation in speed during the race (p <0.001). The first split was faster than the others (p <0.001). During the rest of the race, speed is almost constant and no difference observed between the other splits. Comparison between men and women revealed that there was an interaction between split and gender (p <0.001), showing a different pacing behaviour in 800-m competitions. Conclusion: The world best 800-m performances revealed an important difference in pacing profile between men and women. Tactics could play a greater role in this difference, but physiological and behavioural characteristics are likely also important.