i might be revealing my inexperience here, but i don't understand the whole "run fast at the beginning to get a good time, but save it for the end in a big race" thing. if you know you can run a certain distance in a certain time, why not just run your race like you know you need to in order to get that time – or near it – and forget about what everyone else is doing? why bother saving a kick to win with a time of 1:50 when you could just push hard and win in 1:45 like you know you can? it doesn't matter if you leave yourself very little kick because by running that way you've run everyone else's kick out of them too, right?
As a general rule you shouldn't run your first lap faster than 4s slower than your best 400m time. An understanding of pace is crucial in this race and that means running your own race, but competition is competition and the mental aspects of someone going out and laying down a 22s first 200m and the field following because they are scared of him, but not having an understanding of their own abilities or the nut laying down that very aggressive pace. I've seen this 22-23s first 200m split done by runners on both sides of the spectrum (very talented and not very talented). The results, the very talented runner shredded the field and ran an average race but still won in 1:55 at a HS meet against some decent competition. The untalented runner shredded the field, but a couple of smarter runners of better talent hung back but still a little fast for them at 24-25s instead of their normal 26-27s, ran PR's and finished 1-2 going away from the rest of field. The talented runner's goal was to destroy any confidence of the runners who would challenge him later at the state meet, he was a 3x state champion and finished 4th at Keebler GW invite. The untalented runner had a mediocre coach (myself in my first season) before I learned that saying words like fast doesn't mean the runner will understand that what I really meant was to be implied as a fast controlled pace that the runner can handle to complete the race in a pr or near pr time, instead he crashes and burns at 2:20 and I have a heck of a time explaining how I did everything wrong, but that he had a 400m pr by 2s in an 800m race so it still gave us something to build off of.