Amy Eloise: The importance of race pacers
We caught up with Amy Eloise Neale at the Night of the 10,000m PB’s where she played an important role in helping the competing athletes to achieve the qualifying time for the Olympic Games. Learn about the responsibility of pacing and how innovative technology has made this job easier.
“There’s a lot of women in this race who I wanted to give the best chance possible. It’s a big responsibility. You don't want to mess it up. It's a good experience and a big responsibility because it's almost more nerve-wracking pacing sometimes, I think. You're asked to do a job and you want to do it right, as a lot of people are depending on a good pacer.”
From her experience as an athlete, Amy Eloise has a good understanding of the role of a pacer and how much difference it can make to a race. She wanted to apply this personal experience to her pacing role at the Night of the 10,000m PB’s.
“I know how frustrating it is when the pacers aren't doing the job of going quite on pace and falling off or don't stay in as long as they should. So, I wanted to do the best job I could. I definitely went about as far as I thought I could reliably today.”
Wave light technology was first used at the Night of the 10,00m PB’s a few years ago and since then, it has been applied across many different events including the Diamond League.
“It's interesting because when racing some people can get really tuned into the wave lights. Personally, when I'm racing, the wave lights don't make a huge difference to me because I feel like I need to focus on racing other people and not doing a time trial.
“I think where they really come in useful is helping the pacers because instead of going out and then adjusting slower and then faster, the pacer can just look at the lights and get right on it. So, it made my job so much easier today. I think as the pacer it makes almost more of a difference than if you're racing, but obviously that then helps out the rest of the field as well.”