HIGHER, STRONGER, GETTING-AWAYERER: If all goes according to expectations, in about 45 minutes or so a person will run right by my office carrying a burning stick, chased by what I can confirm is an angry mob consisting of colorfully-dressed and liberally-placarded people, a disproportionate number of whom have black hair or are bald. (Note: No politics here, people! No politics!)
This got me thinking of a dilemma to which my mind wanders frequently: in the absence of another's ability to surround, head off, or call for backup, what is the optimal way to flee*? I realize you probably have to start out in a dead sprint and at some point you have to go to the kind of run that you might be able to maintain forever, but how and when do you transition between the two? I used to think that efficient fleeing would require you to sprint top-speed until you're about 10 yards or so ahead of the chaser, and then calibrate your speed to the speed of the chaser, thus always maintaining your 10-yard cushion. The more I think about it, though, I think there's a value to putting as much distance between you and the chaser at the beginning, to discourage him (or her, depending upon the nature of your misdeed, I suppose) from trying to keep up and to increase the possibility of losing the chaser entirely. The problem with this approach, though, is that an intrepid chaser can just continue pursuit, gaining ground as you get winded. Surprisingly, Baseball Prospectus has been no help at all.
Also, I'm not sure how I know this, but I'm fairly certain the efficient escape route involves vaulting over a fruit stand, running through a suburban family's afternoon barbeque party, and somehow rakishly surprising a scantily-clad woman.
*(My assumptions are that you and the chaser are in equal physical condition; that there are no enclosures that would prevent you from continuing to run forever; and that the rate of exhaustion/distance increases linearly as speed increases, although a logarithmic increase is equally plausible.)
ETA: San Francisco, eager to avoid a Seattle WTO-style wang-dang-doodle, has faked us out. Instead of running the torch from AT&T Park up the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf, SF rerouted it to Bush and Van Ness several miles away, leaving thousands of protesters along the waterfront with no totem to scorn. Perhaps the protesters should have guessed from the fact that there was not a single policeman along the Embarcadero today.
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