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On a warm, cloudless July morning in Central Park, hundreds of young adults, most wearing workout clothes, fanned out into a long line and faced Jordan Haber, 25, as he hit play on a portable speaker.
A monotone voice rang out: “The FitnessGram PACER test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues,” it droned. “The 20-meter PACER test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start.”
The PACER — which stands for “progressive aerobic cardiovascular endurance run” — is a fitness assessment in which participants run between two lines that are 20 meters apart. The laps are paced by a standardized beep track that gets steadily faster. The first time you don’t make it across the line before the beep is a warning; the second time, you’re out. The number of finished laps is your final score. But the assembled runners needed no reminder of the rules — they had vivid memories of the test from their childhoods.
The test has been a gym-class fixture for decades. But after the Obama administration included it in the Presidential Youth Fitness Program in the early 2010s, it became a generational rite of passage. (That initiative replaced the decades-old Presidential Fitness Test. Last year President Trump reinstated the older test, but kept PACER as an option.)
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