Wrong Distance?

I like looking at the search terms people use to find my site.  Lately, I’ve seen a lot of searches for “(race name) wrong distance.”  I’ve also noticed comments on various race pages talking about races being long.

Let’s discuss.

Do you run with a GPS watch or use a GPS tracker on your phone?  Do you have some electronic gadget that tells you how far you have run?  Awesome, I have one too, and I love it.  But these gadgets can be misleading when it comes to races.

When a race course is certified, it is certified at the shortest distance.  What that means is that you perfectly take all corners and run perfect diagonals to get from one side of the road to the other before a turn.  It means that you don’t have to weave around anyone.

Does anyone actually run a perfect race like this?  Well, maybe the first few people in the race, the ones without anyone to block their way.  But for the vast majority of us, we will never take the turns perfectly or run on the perfect diagonals.  And this means that we might end up running slightly farther than the race distance in order to get to the finish line.

Looking back at my past few races, I’m anywhere from .1 to .5 over, depending on the race distance.  In fact, I recently ran a half marathon where I came in right at 13.1 miles according to my GPS and I wondered if perhaps the course was short, because there was no way I ran that race perfectly.

Of course, this leads to another point.  GPS, while incredibly accurate, isn’t always perfect.  Sometimes the satellites get lost due to cloud cover or trees or bridges or any number of things.  The watch or program may not alert you, but when this happens, the distance tracking can become slightly less accurate.

One recent race I ran was the runDisney Tower of Terror Ten Miler.   I have seen a number of people, mostly new runners, talking about how the course was long.  While I didn’t personally measure it, I can guarantee that it wasn’t.  My GPS showed about 10.2 miles.  That sounds about right for the weaving that we did.

So how are you supposed to train for this, knowing you might actually have to run slightly longer than the announced distance?  Well, first off, the difference is minimal.  I promise, if you weren’t watching your GPS, you wouldn’t even notice.   If you’re trained, you will be fine and that extra distance won’t hurt you.

Another thing to do is make sure you are looking at the official mile markers on the race course.  Your watch says you are at 7.2 but you are just now passing the 7 mile marker?  You are at mile 7.  Don’t worry about that extra 2 tenths showing up.

Of course, there is the rare occasion when a race distance is long.  In all the races I have run, that has happened once.  There were enough people commenting that their GPS showed them at 13.7 or longer when the race was supposed to be 13.1.  While you expect overages, you don’t expect that much extra distance.  And it turns out that the race was slightly long and the race organizers adjusted finishing times to reflect that, which I thought was pretty awesome of them.

But again, this is a rarity.  99% of the time, your race was measured correctly.  Go out and run and have fun and don’t worry about what your GPS is telling you.