Ah, Chess Club president DKatz has spoken!
I validated a Crim 10 mile back in the .02% tolerance days and it passed by about 3'. I had to reconstruct a few blocks that had undergone construction since the record I was validating for had been set (probably American women's record).
I still have Ted Corbitt assigned cert letters in my files, letters I treasure & some correspondence. He composed the cert letters on his typewriter, before the RRTC became cool w/their forms to fill out.
Speaking of Ted how is his son Gary getting on with his project?
info here>>
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=1742666&thread=1742666
As a former board member/director for Run Nova Scotia from the early 80's I will tell you the process we used. The CTFA brought us a Jones counter device complete with instructions on how road running courses were to be measured. If you run, you will know that certified courses for 10K's, as an example, must be accurate within 6 feet, or something very miniscule like that. a course is measured twice by a different person on the same bike, tires inflated to thus and so, keep within 3 feet of curb and so on. We took it very seriously. If you had a course that was accurate it pretty much seemed that the best runners would be able to tell you if it was so. If it wasn't there was immediate doubt cast one way or the other. 5K's as I remember were a dash...running 16:00 meant you had a bad day and you were likely 20th or worse.
The second part of this is that those times were that fast. I would guess there will not be another time soon where so many runners in NS will be that fast for a few reasons.
1. People will spend more time on the internet than training. we had very few distractions like cell phones, pagers, interenet etc. we are technically hooked to a serious fualt. I know runners who carry cell phones when they run. Hideous...unthinkable. no discipline. They cannot tell you anything about gut suffering in racing coz never get there in training
2. Boston's qualifying times were 20 minutes faster for most age groups than now. That meant 70-80 mile weeks for a good portion of the year. Ie, in 1980, I ran 2:48.49 in Ottawa to qualify for Boston ... the cut-off was 2:50. I ran 2:34;43 in 1981, placed 481st/10,000. In the last 5 years if you ran thatyou'd have been anywhwere from 50th to top 100. I was a good runner, but certainly not a great NS runner. I ran 32 minutes for 10K's from 1980 through 1994...and many faster in the meantime. But there were years I ran 32 and placed in the top 10, just barely.
Yes people now are very much slower. Look also at the numbers of young kids with type 2 diabetes and who will have arthritis at very early adult years...staggering... that is the telling tale of a society that will not leave its comforts to train.
I think what Malmo and others, as well as a local RD who's been racing since forever, are saying is that back in the 70s and 80s your standard race distance (if there even was one) wasn't 5k. It was usually 10k or some off-distance just to get from one point to the other. The goal was to run as fast as possible at this distance, be it 7 miles, 5.4 miles or 8.3 miles. Then the next year you try and beat that time. The influx of 5k came with the influx of disease and awareness races and local yocal YMCA fun run we all get a prize type events that came with the 80s/90s.
Also...jones counters and other such distance measuring devices have been around for a god aweful long time. 1970. The bicycle counter that counted single revolutions has been around since at least '61. I'm sure there's been countless other ways to measure courses using a bike. As long as you know the distance around the wheel while you're sitting on it and know the number of revolutions you can easily count distance.
Well yes Freeman it's amazing what assumptions would be made about the backwaters like the Atlantic Provinces of Canada in the 80s . Some posters would be surprised that they would have to race against the likes of one Paul Mccloy in an out of the way "Apple blossom Festival" 8 miler. I believe he would go on to set the world point to point 10km road record at 27:48 and 8th first non African at World cross '87. On that list are some other Olympic athletes nonetheless.(Smartex tambala ..Barclona marathon Eric Gillis ..now fully developed Beijing 10km member)I remember being the last wave of runners running road races as a serious "amateur" early 90s but really late 80s. It is such a small province population wise but I agree there was no easy ticket in the local Nova Scotia road races. I only ran 30:51 10km (iaaf-ctfa certified thanks) but such a time should have at least won me a local race...no luck. There were a handful of guys running between 2:16-2:22 as well.
P.S. ..to me as a kid YOU were one the greatest.
Doing fine thanks