People upset after learning Atlanta marathon course was about 600ft/90sec short

This is 2025, how does a course end up measured short with all of today's technology? In any case, I hope the BAA comes up with a solution other than none of the Atlanta times count as a possible BQ. That seems like you are punishing the victims here.

today isn't the gold standard. most people can't make change for a dollar in their head.

most courses are off, and this latest finding could be as well.

you need a couple of independent surveys, and a google maps verification,

I can't wait to click on hoover.org

It must be so intelligent and legit.

Edit: It IS intelligent and legit!! You just twisted what is actually there.

Not a ton of people qualify at Atlanta. It’s a tough course. 84 BQs last year. Probably fewer this year with the change in BQ times.

ever been there measuring a course??

silly boys

i've seen the same course measured wrong 3 times, and then a motorcycle run "verified" it.

and Al Sal WR in NY was later found to be short.

Clayton WR in Belgium was rumored short.... I don't know exactly the result intregity.

etc. etc.

only when you look under the hood do you know what's in there.

sorry about that.

and then you have WR with 6.0 m/s winds registering zero.

with flags blowing off the mast.

while the jumps register, the 100m does not, and vice versa.

the takeaway, is to verify, with quality. and when there is a gaff, look into the failed protocol.

if that failed protocol is repeated, and especially by the same bunch.

hello

Gotta take care of the basics first.

It's cuz of DEI, alotta people are saying.

And with shutting down the dept of Education this ensures that I will be running the atlanta marathon for a pr for years to come

Yep. It used to be harder too when we split from the half at 7 and went into Decatur. They softened it up and we have to run the first 12 with the halfers. I'm not upset, I ran the Marathon and got into Atlanta 2026 for free.

To me, putting on a race without disclosing that the race is not the precise distance that’s advertised is fraud. Races are expensive these days. As as race director, this is a most essential part of your product. Getting people to pay you to provide a service that you’re not providing is not acceptable. Putting on a marathon that isn’t a marathon is fraud.

I was also a HS Math Major.

They can just add .4%

"Today's technology" is not the way road race courses are measured. I measure courses. We use a Jones Counter and a bicycle, same as has been done for decades. We can also use a steel tape, but that's going to take a lot longer than the Jones Counter method.

According to the RW article, the Atlanta course was not MEASURED to be short. Cones were put in the wrong place which caused the actual course the racers ran to be different than the measured course.

Boston has a long history of not allowing results from races that turned out to not be a full 26.2 miles. There is zero chance they'll make an exception here. It's harsh, but I appreciate that they stick to that standard.

Since David Monti hasn't commented here yet, I'll share a couple notes about course measurement to hopefully correct some of the misplaced thoughts I've seen in this thread already... No runner should ever have their Garmin (or Polar or whatever their wrist GPS device is) end up showing less than the advertised race distance at the end of a race being held on a certified course. When we measure, we ride the tangents between turns. No runners ever follows the tangents exactly. Did you pass another runner during a race? You likely veered from the tangent to do so. Did you swing over a few feet to take a cup of water? You veered from the tangent line. If you didn't run the tangents or you ran >30cm from any curbs, you added distance. Then there is what we call the Short Course Prevention Factor. We add 5.28'/mile into our initial calculations. That's done in case we happened to make a small error in our work. The USATF wants courses AT LEAST AS LONG AS whatever the advertised distance is. SCPF is an important step to guarantee that. That's ~130' extra in a marathon.

In urban races or under heavy tree cover sometimes a personal GPS will show shorter than the race distance even if the course was right. GPS is challenged to get good reads around big buildings. So sometimes it will miss some reads and then estimate where you were. That kind of stuff is pretty easy to see if you zoom in on the track that was recorded.

There is no "google maps verification" step in the certification process.

In my 30 years measuring courses, I've never seen a course get "measured wrong 3 times". The process is, we ride a calibration course and do a bunch of math to figure out what kind of readings we need to get on the Jones Counter. Then we ride the course and put a mark down at each mile or kilo plus any critical points like start, finish, turn-arounds. Then we ride the course again and record the numbers at each mark. Then we go back and re-calibrate to make sure our initial math was correct. I suspect I've measured about 50 courses or course modifications over the years, I've never needed to do more than 2 rides. There's no motorcycle ride afterwards to verify a course. The races Salazar and Clayton ran were (hurts me to write this) over 40 years ago. The process was standard back then but IMO the process has improved since then due to more transparency now (maps available online, primarily).

I used to say that the #1 thing RDs need to get right is the distance and the timing. I now think that's #2, with event safety being #1.

on the note of margin of error, this race, and carlsbad 5000 race mentioned in article, fall into that range... so the advertised distance was run...

Atlanta was reported to be 554' short. .1% over a marathon course is about 130'.

I would totally agree that it's HIGHLY probably that everybody who ran the Atlanta Marathon ran at least 42.2km. It is so easy to add distance even if you're trying hard to run tangents. Especially on Atlanta's course, which has a whole bunch of 90° turns. I did some quick measurements a few years ago using google earth, so not exact by any means but I know I was able to get close. A 4-lane street, 90° turn, if a runner stays in the middle of the street vs cutting the tangents, it adds around 60'. Do that 5 times, as might happen in a big city race with a lot of runners, you just added 100 yards.

But the point isn't how far any of those racers actually ran - it's that the BAA requires qualifiers to be run on a USATF certified course. I think that's a pretty reasonable standard. The BAA needs to draw the line somewhere, if they didn't they'd have 100,000 runners on the start line. Hopkinton would freak out!!