Cut in gradually in races with a one-turn stagger.
It boggles me how few athletes do this, but I constantly preach it with my runners. Feel free to double check my math, but in the diagram here (not to scale) we are assuming that the break-line following a one-turn stagger is about 90m to the 200m mark. The blue line represents a sharp cut-in and the red line represents a gradual cut-in. 6.4m is the distance from the inside of lane 1 to the inside of lane 7 on a standard high school track. The key thing to remember here is that on the straightaway all lanes are equal. You don’t need to be closer to the inside of the track until the curve, so if you take your time getting there, you just saved yourself 1.64m. That may not sound like much, but how many 800s and 4x400s end up being decided by less than a meter? I honestly feel many racers cut in with the group because it becomes socially awkward to be the lone runner lingering in the outer lanes.
Devil’s advocate: If you end up running the second curve in lane 2, you lose 3.03m. Wouldn’t it just be better to cut fast to the inside?
1) That assumes you can get to the inside from lane 7 and,
2) Despite my insistence on saving distance with the cut in, I have never been one to over-stress running on the inside of lane one. Especially in the 800m, the odds of getting boxed in are just too great. I prefer a spot on the outside of lane 1 where I can run “my race” and not be controlled by the whims of everyone else. I’d almost go so far as suggesting drifting to the outside of lane 1 after the first turn if that’s the lane you started in, but that’s another topic altogether.