Drone As Pace-setter

In this article you will learn how to use your drone to better help with pacing your time trial effort. We are going to use the drone as a 'rabbit'. Rabbits are often used by elite runners to help them pacing their race. Alternatively, the drone could be seen as an opponent, who you want to beat. By carefully setting the pace of the drone, you can beat your personal best!

• A drone that is compatible with the Litchi app, including waypoints missions (I use a DJI Mavic Air 2)
• A tablet (I use an iPad 2020)
• The Litchi app (https://flylitchi.com/)

You should know the pacing plan for your run. In this example, we will run a 1500m. With the trainer, we have constructed a pacing plan. The pacing plan should describe the lap times and final time. The pacing plan should be such that it makes you run at your maximal capacity. That means you should be completely empty at the end of the race, but not have all energy resources depleted before the finish!

In the above example, the pacing plan is set such that the 1500m will take 4 minutes and 10 seconds to complete. The RST stands for the Relative Section Time and is the percentage of the total time. So, in this example, the athlete 'spends' 26% of the race on lap 1, 26,6% on lap 2, 27% on lap 3 and 20,4% on the last 300 meters. Thus, the athlete runs with a 'positive' pacing plan.

There are also negative, J-or U-shaped pacing plans. Find the one that fits you!

Now its time to transfer your pacing plan into the Litchi app.

First of all, it is important to know where you want to complete your run. In this case, we found an athletics track. Keep in mind the local regulations for flying.

Then, in the Litchi app on your tablet, you create a waypoint mission. An example is shown in the video. Another example of the final look is shown in the image. Feel free to check out the mission in the Litchi Mission Hub: https://flylitchi.com/hub?m=YdejNmfAZX

When creating the mission, pay attention to the following:

• Make sure the flight path of the drone is always over the track
• Make sure the hight is set to always be at a safe distance (> 3 m)
• Try to make the drone fly in the outer lane to the runner
• You can set the speed at each waypoint, but it is best to set all waypoints in a lap to the same speed to avoid unsteady flights
• You will find that the time projected by Litchi is (much) greater than the actual distance. Also the distance projected is inaccurate.
• What is accurate though is the speed. As long as this is not >25 kmph, the corners should be flown smoothly, at constant speeds.

Before you fly your actual pacing plan, make sure to add a mission over the track at a very low speed, so that you can walk or jog along with the drone, keeping the option to abort the mission when necessary.

In this way, you will discover potential obstacles on the track. Furthermore, you can check if the projected flight path corresponds in reality. You do not want to discover this isn't so when flying at 20 kmph!

Furthermore, this step is important to find out if there are any birds breeding around the track. See the video for what happened on the track I wanted to fly!

... or beat the drone!

Make sure that there is always someone in control over the drone. Now use the drone as a pacing tool similar to the WaveLight technology (https://wavelight.live/about/) or as your opponent!