Best stories of letdown after finding out a course is short.

Mine was in a duathlon. My buddy did the bike leg and I did the running. The bike leg was supposed to be 9 miles, but it turned out to be more like 6.5. That didn't matter a whole lot because my friend was a fairly novice biker in his first race, and he finished about mid-pack. The running leg was supposed to be 5 miles, and I had ran the route the previous weekend so I was familiar with it. Since I got the hand-off at mid-pack, I was crushing the field in front of me, but I started hearing someone slowly gaining. I held him off for a while but he eventually passed me and proceeded to pull away. About 3 miles into the race the course loops back near the finish area, and there was supposed to be another shorter loop, but instead, the RD decided to shorten the run that morning and skip the second loop, effectively shortening the run to 3 miles. The dude that had just passed me finished about 10 seconds in front of me, and then I come in, wondering what happened to the final 2 miles of the race. The team in front of me ended up taking 3rd in the relay division (most were individual competitors), and we were just out of trophy and prize contention. I would've held that guy off if I'd known the finish was coming up, but I had been pacing myself for a 5-miler instead. No biggie really, but the trophies were pretty cool and would've given my friend a big boost of confidence in his first race.

This is different, but similar.

I once finished relatively well in a big two mile invite. It was my best time by about 10 seconds. I was especially excited about being on the podium (top 8).

Well it turned out I had been holding the little place card they hand out upside down. It wasn't until half an hour later that someone told me I was 9th and not 6th.

The first time I ever broke 20:00 in the 5k, in 9th grade, the time was 17:32. It was still a breakthrough race, but the course turned out to be like 2.9 miles.

I ran a race in 8th grade where they took our tags and put them on this holder. it was going good until the parent that was holding it dropped it. I thought i ran good but i didn't know my time or my place.

Anyone who has ever run the XC course at Auburn has had a letdown when they ran any other course.

I don't have a short course story, but I guess my long course story is somewhat related.

I had just started running road races as a college student after a high school career as a mid distance guy. I showed up to what was probably my 5th or 6th race, which was on the 5K road loop at Penn State. Anyone who has run in the State College area knows that a good 50% of the races in town are on this loop, so even as a new road racer, I had run the course a few times and I knew the loop.

I had been steadily dropping time over my first few races and I was probably on pace for another PR. Half way through the race, I was running fairly well with the two leaders probably 50 meters ahead and one guy between the leaders and I. After the two mile mark, you are supposed to turn right onto a little side road which takes you up to the road leading into the finish. Well, the leaders apparently didn't know where the turn was, and for some reason the volunteer who was standing at the turn didn't tell them to turn. They cruised right past the turn and continued to the T at the end of the road before turning(adding about a quarter mile to the race).

Seeing this happen in front of me, I had a bit of a decision to make. I knew that I could run the right way and probably win, but that seemed like somewhat of a meaningless victory to me, so I followed the course that the leaders had set.

Apparently the volunteer at the turn realized her mistake shortly after I passed and directed everyone after me to go the right way, so the leaders and I came around the turn on our lengthened course to find that we were now in about 20th place. The guys in front of me, who were much better than me at the time, just went ahead and blew past all of the guys who had popped out in front of us and went on to take first and second despite running an extra quarter. I passed a few, but didn't regain my original place. I didn't PR that race (I guess technically I PRed at the the 5.25K).

Since it was just a friendly road race, they decided to adjust our times. One of the other runners walked over to us after the race and asked the leader what time he would have run in an actual 5K and they took the difference and subtracted it from each of our times to come up with adjusted places.

Hate to break it to you but 95+% of all uncertified courses are short, some a little, some a whole lot.

Hate to break it to you, but 10+% of all certified courses are short, some a little, some a whole lot.

Certification doesn't necessarily mean you're good to go.

Okay, let's have a little statistical fun.

Maybe 10-15% of all races are held on certified courses. Using your 10% of all certified courses coming up short, that means about 1-2 certified courses in 100 are short.

Roughly 85% of all courses are uncertified and 95% of those are short. That means about 82 courses in 100 are short.

You choose- certified or not.

When I was in high school, a guy on our team broke our long standing school record in the 220 yd (yup, I'm old). He was going nuts until someone realized that they had started on the wrong line. I'm thinking the race started at the end of the 4x110 exchange zone. Kind of humorous at the time.

duathloner, that's pretty funny because it's a story of actual letdown after literally finding the course to be short. It wasn't inaccurate by 120 yards or something, it just ended before it should have.

I had the opposite happen. When I was a freshman in high school, I ran an indoor 2-mile at Marlboro HS in MA where it was probably 13 laps to the mile (at least). I was in second place, the guy in first was beating me pretty soundly, and then I realized that all kinds of people I had lapped were standing on the side of the track. There were big fat kids finishing. I then realized that my teammate that was supposed to count my laps had bailed and I had run who knows how many laps. I finished last, and threw up on a random woman standing on the side of the track.

In highschool (I can't remember if it was after the 10th or 11th grade) I decided to run a 5k road race right after track season to see if I could take advantage of my peak and get a good time. I ran a 17:49 when my PR for an xc 5k was in the 18:30s.

Obviously huge, but seemed reasonable at the time because I was young enough to where that kind of improvement happens and plus its was 9 months or whatever since I ran cross and coming off track it seemed believable.

I got real excited, started telling people how well I was going to do in cross, etc..

Turns out the course was about 160 meters short.

Last summer (before my sophomore year of college) I decided to jump in a 10K road race without trying to run it all out, just to do a decent tempo run and get a 10K PR, since my 10K PR was 48:52 from running one randomly senior year of high school before actually did more than 5 miles a day regularly (I'd run 28:52 in an 8K freshman year of cross country). I went out relaxed and feeling really good, as I'd been planning on running about 6:20 pace but had no trouble running 5:50 or so for the first mile. When we were coming back towards the finish, I knew we weren't close to being done (because of the time) and the leaders were too far away for me to see, so I took a wrong turn. I added at least two minutes to my time (and to a couple of other people's times, since they followed me), and about 30 seconds after I got back on the original course, I saw the timer at the finish line, so I hammered it in to catch the first place woman in the race. The clock said I ran about 32 minutes, but I knew I hadn't been going anywhere near that fast for 10K. It turns out that the race was supposed to be 6K out and 4K back (there was an additional loop on the "out" part), but they accidentally put the turnaround at the 5K, so we ran 5K out and 3K back. What should've been at least a 10 minute 10K PR turned out to just be an up-tempo 8K.

LeQuisha Smalls wrote:

Okay, let's have a little statistical fun.

Maybe 10-15% of all races are held on certified courses. Using your 10% of all certified courses coming up short, that means about 1-2 certified courses in 100 are short.

Roughly 85% of all courses are uncertified and 95% of those are short. That means about 82 courses in 100 are short.

You choose- certified or not.

your math is right but your description of the result is wrong

1.5% of courses are certified and short

82% of courses are uncertified and short

3% of courses are uncertified and correct length

12.5% of courses are certified and the right length

either way, 10/100 certified courses are short and 85/100 uncertified courses are short....thats what percentage is....

and his post was meant to say that a course being certified means there is a better change that it is accurate but it doesn't gaurantee it

Details are foggy but I ran a predict your time 4 miler that ended up being about 3.7. The woman who one was a bit crazy and seriously thought she had done really well at predicting her time.

Amazed in Alabama wrote:

Tell your stories of how you got all excited after seeing your time for something like a 5k before you found out that the course was short...

I was at a high school 5k and i had been running low 17s and stuff. It was about a month from state and all of the sudden I run 16:32 on this course. Not an incredible PR, but a huge one for me. I get all excited and then i hear about the girl who had never broken 18 and ran 17:04. The kid that won was usually a 15:30s guy and ran 14:57. I found out later that it was a 3 mile so i equaled my PR.

This was Husky Invitational for any Alabama runners out there.

you identity has been narrowed down now.

don't ever give exact PR's. and so much detail too, we can even find out what year you are.

always say, I ran a 15:4x or, I never broke 16 but I was close. Stuff like that. Slow would have sufficed for your example.

Toyota pious wrote:

you identity has been narrowed down now.

don't ever give exact PR's. and so much detail too, we can even find out what year you are.

always say, I ran a 15:4x or, I never broke 16 but I was close. Stuff like that. Slow would have sufficed for your example.

You looked it up? Are you kidding me? What a loser!

Amazed in Alabama, you have blown your cover. You have to get out of the country in the next 48 hours or you are SCREWED.