I have run the Crim 10 mile race in Flint many times and they use a blue paint throughout the course and have accurate miles every year. You would think a world class marathon would have accurate splits
Some of the reported Chicago Marathon mile splits made no sense to us. Both Kelvin Kiptum and Sifan Haass ran ran super fast for mile 19 but super slow for mile 20? So we did a little investigation and found that for Kiptum's mile splits to be accurate, he'd have had to run sub-4 mile pace during both mile 19 and mile 22.
Aren't world-class marathons supposed to be measured by World Athletics, not just some doofus from the city public works department? Speaking of doofuses, I've posted this before, and this may not be the last time: Measure. Valencia. Oh I know: sea level, salty air, cool temperatures... BUT, if it seems too good to be true, probably it is. Jus sayin'
Aren't world-class marathons supposed to be measured by World Athletics, not just some doofus from the city public works department? Speaking of doofuses, I've posted this before, and this may not be the last time: Measure. Valencia. Oh I know: sea level, salty air, cool temperatures... BUT, if it seems too good to be true, probably it is. Jus sayin'
The official response from the race organisers was that the marathon distance was 100% certified along with each 5km of the race which had recording mats stationed that the runners passed over but not for each mile so the media etc were just making rough estimates for each mile split when reporting live during the race. You’d think with a race of Chicago’s magnitude however that they should be able to come up with a system through GPS and micro chips on athletes bibs etc to track the location of each athlete accurate to within a few meters. Hopefully this will be something they do in the near future.
This post was edited 8 minutes after it was posted.
Mile 12 was also screwed up, I was running an even pace with the same group of people but somehow my mile 12 split was about 10 seconds slow, and my mile 13 split was 10 seconds fast. And the mile 16 and 17 markers were missing altogether. The mile 19 marker was placed just in front of a couple of long, dark railroad underpasses, looks like it should have actually been under the overpass. Really annoying that they screwed this up on a WMM course where GPS doesn't work so well.
This isn’t like discovering that Abu Dhabi was short that year. This has been happening regularly at major marathons and it’s always the same thing, where an athlete goes, say, 4:40-4:40-4:40-4:19-5:01-4:40…doesn’t take a genius to realize the athlete continued running 4:40s and one mile marker was misplaced. It happened at Berlin this year and last year.
It's probably just someone who works with the organizers and isn't authorized to talk to the media. That's how a lot of big organizations work, you'd get in trouble for talking to the media with your name or on behalf of the organization. Doesn't mean he's worried about getting murdered, just doesn't want to get in trouble.
There is a better way to do this, essentially using statistics rather than a sample of one or two. Take all of the top 10, or better, 100, and average the times and you can work out just how far the errant marks are off.
This is the equivalent of a discussion about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Personally, I don't believe in angels - and a 2 hour marathon.
The person who marked the course splits did his best. He was brought in from europe and he confirmed himself that the splits were wrong but I was also assured they would be corrected after the race using the car data etc.
In the lead car during the race he was frantically waving at the runners because several points were marked wrong and the car was showing very incorrect splits. Unfortunately coverage was extremely terrible as everyone knows so this drama might not be on the tv recordings
I ran Chicago and was clocking splits on my watch (versus GPS doing it). I had a split late in the race about 10 seconds per mile faster than I had been running then a very slow split after. When I looked at my GPS pace it was the not showing I sped up or slow down - thank you letsrun for solving this mystery!!
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