Cherry Blossom course short?

CherryBlossom wrote:

I lost the satellite when the race went on I-66 under the overpass (approx. mile 2.5). From then on, my watch didn't match the mile markers.

Checking the flybys, looks like everyone's signal got wonky there.

Are you saying the third mile marker was wrong then? Seems like people's watches had it at around a mile and the fourth mile marker was clearly wrong looking at both the distance and time people had for that mile, so that distance would have to have been made up somewhere

The stretch under the Kennedy Center seems to add distance, though. Most tracks show it jumping to the east into the building footprint and then gradually returning to the roadway.

Ok, I see the underpass part now. That could be the missing .07+.

I ran it on Sunday. My Garmin showed 10.02. The mile markers seemed slightly off early on as I was at 3.06 at the 3 mile but 10.02 at the 10 mile mark. The course while loopy is very narrow so you should end up pretty close to 10 miles on the Garmin.

That being said, I had to swerve around a little early on and wouldn't be surprised if it was a few hundredths of a mile short.

In comparison, my Garmin showed 10.11 last year running about a minute slower.

nah, you're wrong this a really bad take. all these courses are certified. relying on your GPS or a particular mile is dumb too.

mile 4 was in the wrong spot, and other miles were long but the course wasn't short. not a chance.

all you have to do is look at your GPS when you go under the Kennedy Center tunnel to see how wonky GPS can be as a basis for determining why you think a course is short. that can easily add .05-.06 to someone's reading by underestimating actual distance . was the 4th mile marker in the wrong spot, very likely. but the whole course, no.

A course can be certified and still come up short. It's definitely possible the tunnel explains the missing distance compared to other years. Since there were records set, the course will be re-measured so we'll know either way eventually.

cont. wrote:

all you have to do is look at your GPS when you go under the Kennedy Center tunnel to see how wonky GPS can be as a basis for determining why you think a course is short. that can easily add .05-.06 to someone's reading by underestimating actual distance . was the 4th mile marker in the wrong spot, very likely. but the whole course, no.

All fair except if the 4th mile marker was in the wrong spot, why weren't either the 3rd or 5th miles too long marker to marker? Or was every single mile very slightly off (which seems highly unlikely)?

Hains too-short point wrote:

cont. wrote:

all you have to do is look at your GPS when you go under the Kennedy Center tunnel to see how wonky GPS can be as a basis for determining why you think a course is short. that can easily add .05-.06 to someone's reading by underestimating actual distance . was the 4th mile marker in the wrong spot, very likely. but the whole course, no.

All fair except if the 4th mile marker was in the wrong spot, why weren't either the 3rd or 5th miles too long marker to marker? Or was every single mile very slightly off (which seems highly unlikely)?

The 8th mile measured long on my Garmin. Enough to offset the short 3rd mile. And the 8th mile was on Hains Point, where I get fantastic Garmin reception.

My hunch is that markers 1-3 and 8-10 were correct, but 4-7 used the pavement markings from a previous course. Which would explain why they were accurate in relation to each other, but there was an offset on either side of miles 4-7.

cone placement wrote:

Is Rojo on it? He did a fantastic job on proving a short marathon earlier this year.

I'm honored people are begging for me. And yet the staff didn't let me know.

I was out of town on Sunday and this week have been busy as our childcare is out of town.

With these things, I normally read about 10 posts and have gut reaction of "That guy was cheating" or "The course was short." I'll admit when I was that about that far down (through the Josh Izewski's strava posts) I thought it was short but then I read it was a different course than years past so I'm not going to make that conclusion.

Only conclusion I"m going to make is that it sounds like a mile marker was definitely off.

Update on 4/12/19: The race has been confirmed to be short. This thread is locked for new posts. To see how it's short, go here: