Accuracy of Road Roace Courses During the '70s and '80s

Johnny, while I don't know about all courses, obviously, but I do know that in the middle 80's I ran mostly on certified courses.Times and competition were far superior then. In one 10k in Ohio, for example, I ran 32:20 and finished 28th. Today, on the same certified course, I would finish in the top 10 or higher even though this past year the course record was broken by the winner. That was the case in most races then.

32:30 sucks. In 1980 or in 2007.

jali wrote:

Johnny, while I don't know about all courses, obviously, but I do know that in the middle 80's I ran mostly on certified courses.Times and competition were far superior then. In one 10k in Ohio, for example, I ran 32:20 and finished 28th. Today, on the same certified course, I would finish in the top 10 or higher even though this past year the course record was broken by the winner. That was the case in most races then.

But the question, John...has been determining whether or not these "certified" courses are in fact accurate. You're generalizing when you make the statement "Times and competition were far superior then." At the Ohio 10k race or across the country at races like Carlsbad or Gate River?

But you still can't run 32:30, yet you sit here and bash people who can - yet another not so subtle difference between then and now. Back then dads would "beat the crap out of their kids" because they deserved it, and if their dad didn't do it, somebody else's dad would ... just like Red Foreman on "That 70s Show". Red would go put in a long day at the mill, then go out for a 15 miler at sub 6:00 pace after work, then bust a few smart mouthed kids in the mouth - just for fun, if the kids went home crying about how Red popped him in the mouth, then the kid's dad would say something like "what'd you do to deserve that?" then he popped the kid in the mouth for general principle, after which Red and "smart mouth's dad" would go down a few beers at the pool hall where they would rant about the Boston Marathon qualifying time being bumped back to 3:00 to let in the "joggers".

Scott or other measuring experts:

What is the rationale behind the "Short Course Protection Factor"? Either a course is accurate or it isn't. Is it an "insurance policy" against a record being nullified in re-measurement? If so, are the rest of us running extra distance for the benefit of a "possible" record performance?

Thanks in advance.

We're not talking about what it's like to grow up in New Jersey; this is a discussion on the accuracy of course measurements in the 80's as it compares to today.

horses for courses wrote:

Scott or other measuring experts:

What is the rationale behind the "Short Course Protection Factor"? Either a course is accurate or it isn't. Is it an "insurance policy" against a record being nullified in re-measurement? If so, are the rest of us running extra distance for the benefit of a "possible" record performance?

Thanks in advance.

The rationale is pretty simple; make sure the source is at least the advertised distance.

While on something like a marathon is seems extreme (42 meters), it insures you are getting what you're expecting. Course measurement technology isn't exact and the SCPF gives you "insurance" as you call it. On a 5K for example a well measured course is between 5000 and 5005 meters. The alternative would be to expect courses to be 4995-5000 meters without it. You need to be able to do two rides within .008 which is darn close, but not exact, so not having it would mean most courses would be short (not by much, but still short).

Keith Stone wrote:

On a 5K for example a well measured course is between 5000 and 5005 meters.

Actually, a well-measured course would be expected to be between 5000 and 5010 meters, no?

dukerdog wrote:

Actually, a well-measured course would be expected to be between 5000 and 5010 meters, no?

0.10% is the rule. 5 meters.

Yes. We measure the course to be 5005 meters to ensure that it is not less than 5000. If we measure perfectly the course will be 5005 meters. Any error in the process is just as likely to result in a course longer than 5005 meters as it is in a course shorter than 5005 meters. A 5010 meter course is just as likely as a 5000 meter course.

Adding to Keith's comments: our measuring instruments are imperfect so, in acknowledgment of that, we add the .1% SCPreventionF to help ensure the course is at least the nominal/advertised distance. The .1% is added to each split point...in doing so, frankly, nobody can say for sure whether they're adding .1% to each split or something between 0-1m in a kilometer or 0-5.28' in each mile.

In a perfect world, we could measure as if we'd laid out a string around the course and pulled it taut against a point 8" from uncurbed edges & 12" from curbs. In a perfect world, tire pressure would remain constant. In a perfect world we wouldn't have to deal w/rain or snow.

These are some of the 'loose ends' we think about and address w/the SCPF.

I like this post best of just about any post I've ever read on this board, like, ever.

By the way, in '89 I ran the Asbury Park (NJ) 10k. The race director put me in a room with a semi-retired masters runner from Austrailia (or maybe New Zealand?) and he told me about how he trained when he was fit- he had been a lineman and he had to dig holes for telephone poles, BY HAND. Then he'd go home and run 10-20 miles. Then, he said- then he'd drink about a case of beer. I think he'd been on an olympic team with a marathon pr of around 2:10 from around 1968-1976. The guy was TOUGH. And he was right at home doing a race in Jersey.

I think Kieth Brantly won that day, and the next 5 runners were Mexican, Columbian, and Venezuelan.

horses for courses wrote:

Scott or other measuring experts:

What is the rationale behind the "Short Course Protection Factor"? Either a course is accurate or it isn't. Is it an "insurance policy" against a record being nullified in re-measurement? If so, are the rest of us running extra distance for the benefit of a "possible" record performance?

Thanks in advance.

Technically, yes, although Pete Riegel once elegantly stated the effect is the same as adding a single card to a deck of 52 - if you looked at it or held it, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Thanks for all your responses on the SCPF. I mistakenly thought it was 1.0%, which of course would add significant time. 0.1% is something even a whiner like me can live with ;)

dukerdog wrote:

Yes. We measure the course to be 5005 meters to ensure that it is not less than 5000. If we measure perfectly the course will be 5005 meters. Any error in the process is just as likely to result in a course longer than 5005 meters as it is in a course shorter than 5005 meters. A 5010 meter course is just as likely as a 5000 meter course.

On that point I don't agree. My experience has been that measuring errors (as opposed to math errors) almost always trend toward the short side. If you swing a corner wide, don't follow a tangent, etc, you'll measure longer than the course is, meaning a short measurement.

Now if you lay out a calibration course poorly then all bets are off, so yes, those could make for long courses.

Benji Durden measures all of the tangents, then adds 12 percent. If you run a PR on a Benji course for 5K, you can run 3 minutes faster anywhere else.

A Little History

The history of the Road Course Certification is well documented on the rrtc.net website. The Cliff Notes version:

Ted Corbitt helped form the AAU Standards Committee ( I believe it was in the late 60's). The committee had about 10 members - most were engineers - Chaired by Ted. If you wanted a course certified, you wrote to Ted who would then send you typed out instructions on the various methods of measurements plus the information the commitee would need to evaluate the report. Upon reciept of the information, Ted would farm out the report to members of the committee for approval. If approved, Ted would send you a letter stating that the course appears to have been measured correctly and Certification was awarded. For many years Ted was the only one who had this "final signatory" status.

The boom of road racing required a decentralization of the process. Additional "final signatories" were added - Tom Knight -California, Alan Steinfeld, myself and others.

Ken and Jennifer Young of the National Running Data Center helped to promote course certification. The NRDC was the clearing house for all US road running records and the Youngs recognized the importance of accurate courses if the records they were keeping would ever have any validity.

Ken worked closely with Ted to establish a sliding scale of acceptable tolerances to bring courses up to the desired accuracy. He also created a validation program to check the accuracy of the courses:

From the National Running Data Center Newsletter:

"In 1981, a validation program was started by the NRDC to verify the accuracy of race courses where American records was established. For a performance to stand as a record, the course may not be REMEASURED short of the proper distance by more than the following short tolerances:

1. Races held prior to 1 April 1981- short tolerance is 0.5%

2. Races held from 1 April 1981- thru Dec 1983-short tolerance is 0.2%

3. Races held from 1 Jan 1984 thru 31 Dec 1984- short tolerance is 0.1%

4. Races held on or after 1 Jan 1985 - no short courses allowed.

These tolerances apply only to the findings of an independent measurer, assigned to validate performaces for a particular race by the NRDC."

TAC then created the RRTC to take over the supervision of course certification and validation. Pete Riegel's low key style help to promote course measuring throughout the country (and around the world).

Course Accuracy in the 70' & 80'

There were many measurers who where working hard to get it right.

Measurement errors then are no different from now:

-sloppy math

-inaccurate calibration course

-sloppy bike riding

But there was one main difference with the early courses:

"where to measure?" Ted's early writings told us to measure the "prudent path of the runner" which was a judgement call. Of course now we measure the shortest possible route (spr)staying 30 cm from curbs. Some of the older courses were measured with a surveyors wheel which proved to be inaccurate because of the difficulty of following the path of the runners + the wheel would lose surface contact if walked/jog faster then 20 minutes per mile.

A major turning point in course accuracy came with the measurement of the 1984 Olympic Marathon and racewalks. About a dozen of the top measurers in the country came togehter for a weekend in LA. Pioneers of measuring were there: Bob Letson, Tom Knight, Bob Baumel, Alan Steinfeld, Pete Riegel (the new kid on the block)and myself...it was a real nerd fest! We stayed up all night talking about techniques and methods. We left LA knowing that we were all doing the same thing.

Another major source of error came from "where we were allowed to measure!" Course measurers are told by race management/municipalities where on the road the race will be allowed to run only to find out after the race that the course was not coned properly or the municipality had some additional restrictions. This was the case with the 1981 NY City Marathon. The NYC Parks Deparment required that all races be measured in the inside "recreation lane" but when it came to race day, the race was run using the full roadway! The difference between taking the shortest path or staying in the recreation lane is approximately 40 meters between miles 23-25! The 1981 NYC Marathon was validated by Tom Knight. He concluded that the course was 148.3 meters short if measured 30 cm from the curb or 103 meters short if measured 1 meter from the curb (as recommended in the early days by Ted Corbitt). It should be noted that this course fell in the middle of the newly designed validations standards outlined by Ken Young. The standards were set in 1981. If the race was run one year early it would have had an allowable tolerance of over 200 meters. The short course tolerance went from 200 meters to 80+ meters in one year.

It was odd that people where screaming about removing Salazar's 1981 time from the list of progression of world bests while still leaving Clayton's time up when no one knew the accuracy of that course!

Summary

I think the courses of the 70's and 80's were pretty accurate as long as they were measured by one of the known measurers. Our top runners of that period were "hungry" and they were good. Shorter showed the way to gold and many thought they could follow him to the victory stand. They ran with courage. Benoit is the perfect example. What runners today would a move at the 4 mile mark of the Olympic Marathon on a hot steamy day....and go on to win?

Thanks for that informative reply. There's nothing like getting information directly from the source! I'm intrigued by the level of...nerdiness among measurers--in a good way!

Thanks David, that clears up a lot of the questions. Is there any new technology that may impact course certification on the horizon?

While I understand NYC Dept of Parks and Recreation saying Central Park recreational jogging paths should be measured where they want people to run under normal park use how did they get involved in setting up rules for the NYRRC races which never were intended to be run in the bike/joggers lane in the first place?