Elites fail to run tangents at Boston. Hard to believe.

that's what I'm screaming ... Baysa made her big comeback running the short curve in the shade

It makes no noticeable difference and it's greatly exaggerated by the camera angle.

What is a tangent?

One of the better disguised humble brag threads. Good on you OP.

HardLoper wrote:

It makes no noticeable difference and it's greatly exaggerated by the camera angle.

Please explain. So if I was coming up to at right handed curve in the road and choose to hug the curb on the right, instead of running on the left side of the center median it wasn't savings anything ??

An 79-year-old? On here? Implausible.

HardLoper wrote:

It makes no noticeable difference and it's greatly exaggerated by the camera angle.

Well, in New York in 1981 it made a 148 meter difference when the course was measured by the shortest route. At the pace Salazar was running that would be about 27 seconds. And several more for everyone behind him. Enough to put him just a few seconds behind Derek Clayton's record.

Perhaps the difference would be less at Boston, but it still amazed me that runners trying to hang on didn't run the shortest line on the sweeping curves.

As for my "humble brag" - guilty as charged. But partly I did it in anticipation of trolls saying, well Salazar still kicked your butt by miles. True at any age so I played the old-guy-sympathy card.

Is that right? wrote:

An 79-year-old? On here? Implausible.

"Only" 78 and 7 months. And some of us old guys are not ready yet for the nursing home or even the rocking chair. But the years - and decades of 50-120 mile weeks (yeah it varied a lot) - led to replacing both hips. So when I could no longer run with the kids whom I coached - and still wanted to set some sort of example - I did 60 push-ups on my 60th birthday. The kids counted them. But as I suggested, old guys don't necessarily lose all their marbles. So each succeeding birthday I have done 60 minus one more year. As I told the kids I will be satisfied if I can do 40 at age 80 and 20 at 100 (if I can count to 20 at 100....). So far I'm on track. Even did 42 again today, inspired by Boston and good memories of that course. My favorite. And if I do 20 in 2037 and can indeed still count that high, I will be sure to report it on this message board. :)

What's crazy is how deep those races were. 226th place at 2:32 that year - that would be a top 40 male finisher most years now.

Smoove wrote:

What's crazy is how deep those races were. 226th place at 2:32 that year - that would be a top 40 male finisher most years now.

Not sure about top 40, but clearly much better than the 230th over-all - and 10th Masters (40+ - no five year age groups then) that I got with my 2:32:29. And the field was only about one third as large as nowadays.

Seems like maybe many of the relatively hard core guys like me and my running buddies are now doing triathlons and ultras and mud runs etc.

Rock on old man. Wish I had your nuts at your age.

Gainesville/Miami guy wrote:

HardLoper wrote:

It makes no noticeable difference and it's greatly exaggerated by the camera angle.

Well, in New York in 1981 it made a 148 meter difference when the course was measured by the shortest route. At the pace Salazar was running that would be about 27 seconds. And several more for everyone behind him. Enough to put him just a few seconds behind Derek Clayton's record.

Perhaps the difference would be less at Boston, but it still amazed me that runners trying to hang on didn't run the shortest line on the sweeping curves.

As for my "humble brag" - guilty as charged. But partly I did it in anticipation of trolls saying, well Salazar still kicked your butt by miles. True at any age so I played the old-guy-sympathy card.

TardLoper owned again.

Humblebrag detector wrote:

One of the better disguised humble brag threads. Good on you OP.

This.

Checking the results from NY for that race, looks like your name is Geoff.

Superb running for a 44 year old but it seems that you came in second among 44 years olds; some 44 year old ran a 2:31.

2:32 got you 95th male at the 2015 Boston Marathon

my thoughts wrote:

that's what I'm screaming ... Baysa made her big comeback running the short curve in the shade

Not intentionally. She ran the curve before that on the long side of the road. I think she was trying to stay in a little bit of shade on the right side of the road.

Running tangents is generally a good practice. Sometimes sharp turns, rough or canted road, aid stations, shade, other runners, and other factors make a non tangent route necessary or helpful.

As Dutch Runner points out, you often aren't losing as much distance as you think. It May not be worth throat in mental energy to run perfect tangents.

I've always wondered if someone would get DQed for cutting a corner (like a couple of steps on the sidewalk around a turn).

I was actually amazed by this (and not the first time).

As we all know that the courses are measured taking the tangents (within 30 cm of of curbs or cones). There are many places are the course within "S" curves where a runner could run several meters less by cutting the tangents.

One explanation could be without a blue line indicating the shortest path, the runners may not have been able to see due to the vehicles (press & TV) in front of them.

The London Olympic Marathon had over 30 turns for each of the 8 mile loops. So we tried to ensure that the runners would be able to see the shortest path. This included a true blue line. In some cases we had to tape a blue line on the ground in historic areas that didn't allow painting. We also had a vehicle coordinator to "try" and shift the convoy of lead vehicles to minimize the times when the runners couldn't see the SPR.

It's interesting to note that runners in a second pack who can maintain visual contact could often run a better race by seeing where the lead pack runs off of the SPR.

For the London marathon next week the course measurers are involved in laying out the blue line.

One of the reasons Rod Dixon won the NYC marathon was that he ran the tangents and Smith didn't.

Is the OP Geoff Pietsch??