USATF trail half marathon NC course was 0.7 miles short

As you noted trail racers seem to care less about accuracy (plus are there any standardized rules for certifying a trail course?) but 0.7 miles is way off. If you are using a GPS watch and thinking you have time to catch the person in front on you that really makes a difference.

While I agree with you on many aspects of your argument, it doesn't really matter. Everyone ran the same race. Winners/front runners (all participants really) ran knowing it's only 12.4 miles.

I suppose your real beef is that USATF signed on for a 12.4 mile half-marathon. Shame on them.

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luv2run wrote:

If you are using a GPS watch and thinking you have time to catch the person in front on you that really makes a difference.

Right? Or even if you were just going off the mile markers, and got to mile 12, and could tell that you were getting back to near the finish, but assumed you had another 1.1 miles of trail to work with, rather than 0.4.

This race had a total purse of $3,500 (!). The difference may have been more than academic.

Point very much taken @tapedispenser; I largely agree. My main issue is certainly with USATF, and their signing off on a NC event, with a not small prize purse, that was so comically far off the mark. And then, per the other poster here, I think there is a bigger concern if someone comes in not knowing the actual distance, and has their late-race strategy torpedoed as a result.

(I truly don't know how much that was publicized, if at all. I live in Anchorage, and was not racing in Wisconsin yesterday. And, no, I do not have better things to do than to gripe about USATF from a distance, thankyouverymuch.)

So, the advertised length of the race was 12.4 miles and the course was actually 12.4 miles. I do think short means what you think it means.

Big Boy Pants wrote:

So, the advertised length of the race was 12.4 miles and the course was actually 12.4 miles. I don't think short means what you think it means.

Fixed

Does it matter in trail running? It isn't like road racing where you can compare times for different championship teams and qualifiers. Trail courses have so many more variables that make times irrelevant for qualifying or record purposes. Nordic skiing is similar to this.

Head to head is what counts. And it happens they USATF picked a "half marathon" as the distance, or approximate distance. They should probably drop the title including "half marathon" and call it "Mid-Distance Trail Running Champsionships".

I've run in the Birkie many times and visited the area to race there many times. I can tell you this, the course is actually 12.3ish if you run tangents. Middle of trail around 12.43 or so. The problem is, you are measuring using GPS. The signal is weak within the bushy sections of the Birkie and also the constant switch backs are not measured correct on GPS.

Go ride the course and measure with a bike or you can wheel it, you will notice it is much longer than all the strava GPS data. That dude Gray who won ran a smoking time seriously. Wonder what he runs flat road half in. The 2nd place guy also ran extremely quick, this race never gets guys like that out here!

"this race never gets guys like that out here!"

money talks

Okay, I will apologize as I misread it. Let's not call it a half marathon then please.

But if they say it's a 12.4 miles (20k?) and it's measured as a 20k, then I don't see what the big deal is. Sure, they said "half marathon!" and they were off, but it's not as if they had a course that said it was 13.1 miles and it's really 12.4.

I'm in agreement with the OP. I understand that trail times don't matter, but if you have the ability to make it 13.1, why not do that? Personally, I think it still gives a nice basis for comparison when you look at the results. When you look at a trail 13.1 and see a 65min guy run 72 minutes, it gives you even a ballpark idea of how much slower than a standard road course it is.

Point is, there are at least some arguments for making it the actual half-marathon distance, but the only argument I'm hearing for why it makes sense to put a national half-marathon championship race on a 12.4 mile course is, "Who cares?" That's a not really an argument.

Now if you tell me that the other trails were flooded or not safe for running, then that would be a different story.

Because they don't USATF certify trail courses- you know, where someone goes out and measures it with a Jones counter on a bike. That would be next to impossible to do. The course was certainly USATF sanctioned.

Trails courses are always "roughly" the stated distance. A "50 miler" could be 48.9 miles, or a "100 miler" could be 102 miles. Even more stupid is why trail folks keep unofficial "world records", when the courses aren't USATF certified. Using GPS is definitely not the same as a Jones counter.

I am guessing that since this run was associated with the Birkie, that the course may have been a nearly accurate 20 kilometer distance. Perhaps xc skiers are more familiar with kilometers than miles. An even number of kilometers may make more sense than the odd "half-marathon" distance if you are a skier.

That said, this was a running race and runners understand how far a half marathon is.

There is no valid excuse for having a running race event advertised as a half marathon be held on a course over a half mile short in distance.

I could see where the event may not want to modify their course (especially if they had to re-measure things) so the question is why did the USATF Mountain Ultra Trail committee allow an event that is so short of a half marathon to be selected as the Half Marathon Trail Championship? (presuming they knew this in advance)

I know there are many other things to consider when selecting events as a Championship, but I wonder how many other events applied to be the championship trail half marathon. There are not that many trail half marathons and not all of them want to be the USATF National Championship.

So given limited choices, maybe this event was the best they could do.

luv2run wrote:

As you noted trail racers seem to care less about accuracy (plus are there any standardized rules for certifying a trail course?) but 0.7 miles is way off. If you are using a GPS watch and thinking you have time to catch the person in front on you that really makes a difference.

This seems like a silly gripe. It's not difficult to do some minimal homework on the course you are about to race. As pointed out, the race distance was exactly as advertised. If this is a repeat race, it's easy to look at Strava uploads from the prior year, which will show you what distance people's GPS watches indicated (often less than the wheel or bike distance of a course), and the elevation profile.

Long story short, the race is against other people, not your GPS watch! If you're focused on the latter, I have little sympathy.

Do you know what a half marathon trail time is worth? Nothing. It's not only a half marathon (who gives af) but it's a trail race. Spend your whole life being bothered by things like this, and you won't live very long.

907 born wrote:

Right? Or even if you were just going off the mile markers, and got to mile 12, and could tell that you were getting back to near the finish, but assumed you had another 1.1 miles of trail to work with, rather than 0.4.

Mile markers... what are those?

FormerTree has it right. I feel pretty confident in stating that no one racing for money was relying on a GPS watch to tell them when to make a move at the end. The elite athletes always check out the course in advance, particularly the last mile, so they know exactly how much course they have to work with when things get tight.

It's better than a 15K trail race I did a couple of years ago where, when we were on the starting line, the starter casually says, "we had a trail section wash out in the rain last night, so we have routed around that section and added a little over 2 miles to the course," which was followed by "runners, take your marks."