PTRA Weighs in on The Pacer Conversation at WSER

Not an official position statement (yet) but posted on their blog the “PTRA Tribune” Emily Hawgood shares her story and opinion on pacers at Western States:

As soon as the topic of having pacers came up on the PTRA group I have had a heart felt need to speak up. We can’t let our elite athlete group change the incredible opportunity that is having pacers at Western States.

Here’s how PTRA frames this post:

Over the next few weeks, professional trail runners explore their perspectives on pacers in our sport.

It’s an interesting strategy, rather than internally debate and official statement the PTRA chooses to share various voices in the sport. I appreciate this approach, and it’s a lot softer than their approach with UTMB in the past. It’ll be interested to see what this will all result in. And in my view, since the debate around pacers at WSER (currently) only affects the elites I don’t have strong opinions. In general I would say that I favor a leveled playing field. This would mean that no pacers and limited support gives everyone the same chances of success, but clearly you can also see it from another perspective and more people in support creates more ‘community feel’ as Emily suggests:

I will argue to the end that having pacers is something special and with Western States being the oldest, most prestigious 100 mile event and paving the way for so many other events that now make up our international trail running calendar I think that a change here would spiral into lots of changes in the argument of free and fair competition but would in fact lead to a loss of the true heart of our community, the uniqueness of Western States and other events, the support for our races and much, much more.

Not sure I agree with Emily’s take here, “slippery slope arguments” are always a bit of a challenge as there’s not obvious connection that one thing has to lead to another. Will be fascinating though to read the other side of the argument when PTRA shares the next opinion piece.