neanderthal dream wrote:
watchoutxcrankings wrote:The course was shortened only after it was lengthened...
Thanks for the clarification. I only heard about the shortening, never knew it had been lengthened. Although I swear the current course cut a big chunk off one of the turns from when I ran it back in the old 5k days, but maybe that's just wishful thinking that my time was more competitive with today.
I don't remember the exact nature of the change in 2005/2006 (whichever year it was), so it could be that the turn you remember might have been "moved" to a different part of the course. I think the change was between the 2 mile and 4k marks, but I'm not sure.
I suppose I shouldn't have said only major changes were smoothing of turns (though that was the reason for the change, segments were removed here and added there with slightly different terrain as you would expect). My point was that it's still the same 5000m distance with essentially the same terrain, and with about as many turns (though more smoothed out turns means there is a better flow to the course, which can save a few seconds here and there). If I had to hazzard a guess, I'd say the current course is no more than 10-15 seconds faster than the 1997-2004 layout (but probably even less of a difference than that, 5-10 might be more accurate but it's hard to gauge especially with those 2-3 years of the long course in between).