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paintballimpact.com / Sports / Dolichos
Dolichos
The 5,000 meter and 10,000 meter races are considered long distance races, longer than the 800 and 1,500 meter, but much shorter than the marathon. Though the athletes line up side by side to start the race, runners end up competing for the same lanes on the inside of the track. Because of this, there is an inevitable amount of elbowing or shoving as players get bunched up or try to move past each other. The history of the near equivalent of the 5,000 meter goes all the way back to the ancient Olympics in Athens, Greece. Then, the Greeks held an event called the dolichos, an event that was near 1,500 meters. The predecessors to our modern running of these long distance races came in England in the 19th century. Then the British began to run the three mile (4,828 meters) and the 6 mile (9,656 meters). These two races were very popular, and were 1 transformed into metric equivalent races, the 800 meter and the 1,500 meter. Both races were included in the modern Olympics in 1912 in Stockholm. The women's runs came much later, with their 10,000 meter in 1988 in Seoul, and the 5,000 meter in Atlanta in 1996. Previously, the women's equivalent of this race was the women's 3,000 meter.
Running the Race. In the 5,000 meter final, 12 runners run 200 meters and then 12 laps of the track. In the 10,000 meters, a maximum of 20 competitors complete 25 laps of the race. Olympic caliber 10,000 meter runners run each lap at a rate of between 62-69 seconds, although the last lap may include an acceleration towards the finish line. The final lap of the 10,000 meter may be run in under 60 seconds.
The 5,000 meter and the 10,000 meter are two races longer than the 400 meter that runners don't have to stay in the lane where they started. After the beginning of the race, the athletes quickly move into the tow inside lanes. The closer to the inside lanes a runner is, the less distance they have to run. Over a 10,000 meter race, running just 1.0 m further outside than necessary on each curve adds up to running 20 extra meters.
Championship runners in the 5,000 meter and 10,000 meter must be able to start races fast and maintain a consistently high rate of speed, but they must be able to draw on bursts of speed as needed. Because up to 20 runners compete for just two tracks of track, runners must often break rhythm when jostling with opponents or trying to burst past an opponent on the side. When training for the race, runners alternate between relatively short runs and very long runs. To train for speed bursts to use when needed, runners run fast on distances of 400 to 1,000 meter on the track. Top train for the endurance needed to sustain such a long race, runners practice running between 1,000 and 10,000 on varied terrain. The short runs serve to increase aerobic power-the level of energy produced through oxygenation of cells.
The ideal runner for females in the 1,000 meter and 10,000 meter is about 5'4" and weighing 110 pounds. The ideal male runner is about 5'6" and weighs 132 pounds. These athletes, have a strong mental makeup to sustain a long endurance and a physically high pain tolerance threshold.
Paintball and the 5,000 meter and the 10,000 meter are all intense athletic events.
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