I'm going to try to pay special attention as to whether or not the Santa Scramble course is short or not. If I remember correctly it was exactly 3.1 miles last year.
If it measures precisely 5k by the Garmin, then it's definitely short.
"I want you to pray as if everything depends on it, but I want you to prepare yourself as if everything depends on you."
-- Dick LeBeau
Hmmm... Could you elaborate on that?
Richard Hefner Past Race Results (Athlinks)
http://www.usatf.org/events/courses/certification/manual/shortest-possible-route.asp
The Shortest Possible Route
A race course is defined by the shortest possible route that a runner could take and not be disqualified. A given runner might not follow the shortest possible route, just as a runner on a track may be forced to run further to pass another runner. The actual path of any given runner is irrelevant. The shortest possible route is a reasonably well-defined and unambiguous route that ensures all runners will run at least the stated race distance.
Scheduled Races:
Tokyo Marathon (March 2020)
Boston Marathon (April 2020)
I was just messing with Richard with that short course comment but, any course need to be slightly longer than 3.11 to be certified, that and for the reasons nanxin gives, plus garmin's inherent bias to measure a course long (very slightly) means a course measured at 3.1 is most likely slightly short of a 5k. the best I ever got was 3.2 on a certified course. however if this santa scramble is a straight line, then garmin accuracy can be relied upon.
Tying those posts together: a certified course is measured (several times) along the "blue line", which is the absolute perfect racing line from Start to Finish. The course can measure long but can in no instance measure short; for this reason, every certified course is actually longer than the "certified" distance.
Whether it's because of traffic, other runners, barricades, spectators' arms, debris on the ground, poor footing, or what have you ... a given racer has essentially no chance of running that perfect racing line. Even doing one lap on a 400m track, being in lane 2 adds about 6m (hence the use of staggered starts). So Garmin device accuracy aside, a person running a certified race course (say, 5k and up) in an actual race should NOT end up with a distance at or less than the certified distance.
I think I'll just run the race and leave all the details to you guys.
Man, Clive is putting the hurt on me with a sub 21! What pace is that?
They call it "Lynwood pace".
Congratulations to Lynwood and me! (haha... hope it's okay to congratulate myself)... Anyhoo, we both had a PR today at the Santa Scramble and we both placed and came home with cool trophies.
Some of you other folks should put this race on your calendar next year. It's really a lot of fun, and awards went 5 deep in 5-year age groups this year!
Lynwood and I started out together up near the front in back of a pack of wild 10-year-olds. Not quite sure why they allow that but it worked out okay once they flailed their way to the side after going out like so many bottle rockets.
I ended up with an all-time PR of 19:40. I don't remember Lynwood's exact time but he knocked quite a bit off his all-time PR too... he'll give you more details.
Yes sir it's ok Richard. heh Congratulations on your trophy also.
PR for me @ 21:22 per my watch, and I won my first trophy with 5th in my age group. Thank goodness for 5 places. As Richard said, we were behind a mob of munchkins running wild. But they were cool, and suprisingly most of em up front ran hard for long way and caused no problems as far as I could tell. I enjoyed watching Richard zig zag around them.
Clive, I think you had more insight into my pace than I did. I was just thinking breaking 22 would be cool.
Haha... You enjoyed watching me dodge them more than I enjoyed doing it. The race started so fast I was mostly just trying not to get trampled because I wasn't ready to run.
By the way, on the official results I'm 2 seconds slower than I thought at 19:42 instead of 19:40. Heck, the clock read 19:39 when I crossed the finish line... I added an extra second just to be sure. Maybe I missed something like a second finishing mat or something.
http://results.active.com/pages/displayNonGru.jsp?pubID=3&rsID=121392
They definitely suprised us on the start and I didn't hear any announcement. I think you were turned around talking to me. My time was slightly slower also. It says chip and gun time, but if you notice, they are the same for everybody. The race was chip timed but there was no starting mat, so the chip time is not accurate. Your watch would be accurate for when we really started running as a "chip time". We weren't on the front, so we lost a few seconds.
MTA: I just noticed I beat a guy in my age group by less than a second. I chased him down at the end thinking he might be in my age group and out sprinted him at the finish. I'm obviously glad I did.
Congratulations to Richard and Lynwood, it sounds fun. Hmm.. I think I wil run it next year.