Q: Tell me one good reason why they can't have robots for pacers...

Km: Actually, the original question was why the pacers had to be human (we were watching my favorite show "Track and Field" on Universal Sports). When I asked if *lets call him Matt* would rather they use real rabbits, I got a flying screaming monkey flung at my head and the above challenge was issued. After I finished choking on the water that I had tried so desperately to swallow (the image or Rosey leading the men's 5000m was too much for me), I asked if he was actually being serious. Of course he was, so I tried the old "it wouldn't be in the spirit of the event" argument, which didn't go over too well. After all, how was being paced by a robot any different than a person... all that really mattered was that you could visualize the pace? Plus, you didn't have to pay a robot, and it was much more reliable than a human. I pointed out that this was the challenge (at another point we had watched a meet where the pacers did an awful job), plus a "real live human" was smart enough to get out of the way to let people pass. We went back and forth for a bit... the robot could be low on batteries and be "slow"... it could be remote controlled so it could "get out of the way"... what if someone hacked it... it didn't have to be a robot, it could be a light or something... was he saying that runners had the same mentality as cats chasing a laser...

By the end of the race, I still couldn't come up with an acceptable reason for not having robotic pacers. In fact (and I hate to admit this), I actually suggested a that they use the metal guard strip on the inside of Lane 1 as a track for a "pace flag" because it was out of everyone's way. Therefore, if any of the aforementioned "disasters" did occur, it wouldn't effect the outcome of the race anymore than a bad pacer. Matt modified it to a running mannequin...