Non-exact race distances? (Read 125 times)

Ran my first night race last night, it was chip timed, 5k*

I google earthed the race course prior to and it seemed longer than 5k, and my gps watch confirmed the same, 3.23 vs 3.1 miles.

ran 31x punched that time into a pace conversion and found out my real 5k time would be 30x, both times are my best for the year.

the course wasn't usatf certified or anything, so I'm curious how often any of you find non-exact race course distances??

was a pretty good race overall, the course was hilly however, nothing extreme, but seemed like 50-75% was either uphill or downhill. Some sections were even more uphill/downhill. I pretty much stayed within myself on these sections. cranked it up on the downhills, as it seemed like almost more work to maintain my slower pace downhill than to let loose a bit, kind of surprised others didn't respond the same.

was rather chilly/ideal, I was warm comfortable, went with the tshirt vs the tank singlet, probably could have but was fine in the tshirt, think I need to get some runners gloves though. First chilly race of the year so was nice in that sense not to be hot and humid. trying to break 30 by thanksgiving 5k. I think it'll be possible if I can maintain my training, haven't really done much speed work at all this year, very little, so planning to try to tempo and interval a bit more, hopefully that'll sharpen the knife.

Have an 8M coming up as well, so need a bit more of everything I suppose, increasing the long run from 5M to 8M or as close to as possible, would simply like to run that 8M race comfortably, run the entire route.

excited for things to come! this year and next! also have a 3k coming up. fun times!!

good luck all!

Just keep being consistent in your training and build up your mileage gradually and your 5k times will get faster naturally.

Smaller local races aren't always exact. GPS is not perfect either. If the course has lots of turns, GPS can get fussy.

 

Very weird. I’ve never had a short “race” GPS reading....EVER.

Nothing related to GPS at all.  Turn cone placed wrong. Course marshal misdirects, or a leading runner takes wrong turn and all follow. Or course is just not laid out to match the advertised or title distance.  The latter what course certification resolves.

Yep. I find that course measureres are meticulous and awesome, and the courses they measure and certify are usually dead on...but come race day, they aren’t the ones who put the cones down, so the turn around at “pole 1221” gets placed at pole 1121. Or there’s construction on race day, or the vonunteer puts the turn sign the wrong way, or any number of things happen to make a race not exactly what you thought it would be. Too bad, so sad. This is the awesomest / dumbest sport in the world. The better you are, the more you realize you are ridiculous. Then you understand that ridiculous is fine because it’s just you vs you. And unless you realize that the post race cool down with your buddies, or the Sunday morning long run with your training partner, or the post workout beer with the club, or just recounting the race with internet strangers is the real thing, more real than how accurate the course is...well, then, you’ll be stuck -stuck worrying about the wrong thing. (Actually there’s nothing to worry about, except maybe being /staying healthy enough to do this). Anyway, except for the track races, I have no idea if any of my times are accurate. Good thing running isn’t about accurate times, it’s about good times.

Well, at least everyone in the race has to run the same distance. Some races are not by distance, but by route, such as "once around the lake". I haven't raced much in the last 30 years, but previous to that there were always races that were "suspect" of being long or short. We didn't have GPS then, and the courses were sometimes set by someone driving their car and looking at the odometer, or with an olde tyme bike computer. The "certified" races were all set with a meter wheel.

Here in New Zealand very few races are certified. Most events are run by private companies who dont really care about course accuracy etc.

I wouldnt be surprised if they just run/bike the course with their own gps and take that as the distance.

I think the frustration sometimes is breaking a barrier or goal time. You may not have broken 20 minutes ever in a 5K in years and raced in heat all summer. It is now Fall and you are fit and you are eying a 5K race in a couple weeks. Younwant to break 20.  It is race day and a perfect 50 degrees and you feel great. You race and run 20:15 and Garmin shows 3.2 miles. You likely would have broke 20 min on a near exact 3.1 mile course. Or maybe you run a 19:50 on a 3.02 course. Does this count as a 5K accomplishment or PR and breaking 20 min?

 

This where competitive runners may have an issue or frustration. Solution is to travel to a certified course. In my area, this could be hours.

As indicated in a number of previous posts: no it isn't. Solution is to try not to worry about it so much. Because if you race with any kind of frequency, it will happen. It's just part of what we do as casual hobbyjoggers and hobbyracers.

My record was a half last year which was about 12.55 miles. It was not only a certified course, the race also served as Northwest Regional USATF Half Marathon Championships. (Not sure exactly what that means, but there were a lot of fast people there.). Turnaround cone placed in the wrong spot; mile markers were on track through 6, then 7 came up at 6.5. Of course we did not know what was going on while running - throughout the second half of the race, had no idea if it was going to finish a half mile short, or if the course would somehow make up the difference. So you're not quite sure when to put on that final surge. Fortunately I was having a really bad day and was just glad to be done. A lot of people were naturally pretty furious.

Oh and ha, I was also the guy trying to break 20 last year. One of my attempts was a 2.95 mile race, another was 3.26 miles. Fortunately I would not have done it in either. One local race told me they prefer the distance to end up slightly short, because it makes people happier about their times.