In "The Week that was" article talks about how the first 5K of the London course is net 30-40 feet downhill. However, if you look at the link posted in the article, the elevation profile is listed in meters. That's roughly a 3.3 fold difference and could explain why the first 5K was so fast. Anyone else catch this error?
Didn't check the elevation plan but just from personal experience I was very surprised at the figure. Mile 3 drops off a cliff, there's no way it only falls by the amount they quoted.
Yep, looks like 30m, not 30 feet. Stupid Americans who cannot figure out the metric system :)
luv2run wrote:
Yep, looks like 30m, not 30 feet. Stupid Americans who cannot figure out the metric system :)
Agreed.
Brojos owned. Again.
Serious question: I thought for the marathon world record to be ratified as an actual record, the elevation change of the race had to be either 0 or uphill. London has a net downhill. How can that stand as a record? it would make sense to put the start and finish lines in the same place (loop course) to ensure that there is no overall elevation change. So, all this talk about setting a WR at London...would it have been a bogus record?
From somewhere on arrs.net site:
4.1 - Courses. A record quality course is defined as having not more than 1 m/km net drop between the start and finish and not more than 30% of the race distance separation between that start and finish, e.g. not more than a 3 km separation for a 10 km race. Records will only be accepted for record quality courses.
Actually it doesn’t matter because the BroJos did something smart- which was to compare Sundays pace with Paula’s record pace on the very same course. And if you interpret Paul’s as the perfect pacing for the course then you can see how far off the men were.
Just starting out- 2009 men went 4:35, 4:41, 4:29
Compare that to Paula 2003 : 5:10, 5:08, 4:57.
The men were all over the place, and note that Paula’s first mile exactly matched her average pace. All 3 opening men's miles were way below goal pace- and the first 2 were too fast, as were miles 4-6.
Thanks for pointing this out. It does make us look like dumb Americans (oh the metric system).
We've redone our analysis here:
http://www.letsrun.com/2009/weekthatwas0428.php
So the first 5km is roughly 30 meters downhill or 98.4 feet which is worth roughly 17.7 seconds - call it 18 seconds. The 3rd mile is actually roughly 40 meters downhill (131 feet) which is worth 23.6 seconds. So the first 5km was run roughly at 14:26 5k effort. Not nearly as bad was we first thought but still too fast. 14:26 is 2:01:48 pace. 14:26 is also 15.5 seconds faster than world record pace which is just more than 3 seconds per km too fast.
It actually makes all of paula radcliffe's splits fit into the +- 54 seconds per mile except for her 3rd mile which while appearing to be too fast was really too slow.
Hey at least you guys didn't crash a multi million dollar piece of NASA equipment like JPL did.
And regardless, Paula's splits show you need to hold in reserve for those opening miles. Same with all the downhill courses that open this way.
30 meters drop in a marathon is not worth 18 seconds, more like 10 seconds. Forget about John Kellog's calculations, they are not accurate for long races.
Also, Paula ran a different route when she ran 2.15.25
She started at Greenwich park, the elite men start at Blackheath.