After over 30 years of holding that event, it's incomprehensible they would do such a lousy job of it -- unless they just don't care enough to get things right. The event organizers are the same now as when they started, for heavens sake. They should have it down with precision as far as I'm concerned. 300 m is not nothing! I don't blame you one bit for feeling disappointed, KCam.
Don't make excuses for why you can't get it done.
Focus on all the reasons why you must make it happen.
That sucks KCam. Some race directors just dont care if it's off a bit - never mind the people that may actually be trying for a PR, which you'll never get if its 300m long - that's almost a quarter of a mile.
They used to have a 5K in my town that was run by a guy who was primarily an ultra runner. When I mapped out the course that we had run it was almost 3.5 miles and his attitude was "its only an extra .4 miles" which may not matter much to your time in an ultra marathon but everyone was pissed because it affected some rankings and it is just deflating to me when I was running hard and knew what I should have had for a time and it was almost 3 minutes slower than I expected.
Sigh. I kind of understand their perspective. Likely 99% of runners don't care if it's 5km or 4.8km or 5.2km. It's a lot of work to to measure out a course on city streets accurately for only 1% of runners in the race.
I went to the USATF certified courses list for Davis and found a Davis Turkey Trot 5K course that was certified. It is 'mostly' the same as the one I ran. Very suspicious in that the Start and Finish lines were exactly the same as Saturday's race but in the middle of the course they had made changes. Conjecture, but it's very difficult to not have to adjust either the Start or Finish locations when the course is changed as much as this one was. To be fair they did not advertise a certified course. OK.
Onward to yet another Turkey Trot. This one in San Jose, a 10K, on Thursday. I trust this course as the map shows the same as the certified course on file with USATF. Just have to hope that they setup the Start/Finish lines in the right place and any turnaround cones on the course are placed in the right spots!
Anyone else running/racing on Thanksgiving?
Best of luck tomorrow in the 10K, KCam!
I'll be running (duh!), but no racing. There are no local Turkey Trots here anyway. I think that faded out 5-10 years ago, can't recall exactly. Years ago I lived in the Sacramento area where there was a race for every holiday and I did them all. So much fun!
Fun Fact: I see that I'm at 1243 miles for the year right now. That was my first RA Pace Bunny Group! the 2000 km (1243 miles)
I made some long-lasting friendships there.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Had a good race this morning. Ahead of time I thought I'd be doing well to break 47 but was able to run 46:20 (chip time). That is very much in line with my 3000m track race of a couple weeks ago. This 10K time predicts about a 22:32 5K time so that is further 'proof' that Davis was long (ran 23:30). It was a great morning to race - 49deg, sunny, no wind.
Way to go, KCam!! Congrats!
Hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving Day.