Common Problem
As it turns out, the Oakville Half-Marathon wasn’t the only race to get their course distance wrong in Canada in recent years. Other high-prof ile races t hat att racted thousands also had issues with course measurement, as well as course management problems, such as runners going off course. “The Mississauga Marathon got the leaders lost [in 2011],” points out Robert Moore of the Ontario Roadrunners Association. His group has established a rating system for races in the province. “I think there should be mandatory criteria for safety. Some of the entry fees are now so high that sloppiness in running the race should not happen. Taking an entry fee for a deficient race is fraud.” Moore feels that municipalities should require that races pass some sort of quality assurance test in order to get a permit to hold the race. “The quality of races has diminished. Some races are a scandal.”
Last June, Dave Clark, the race director and founder of The North Face Whistler Half-Marathon, and his staff watched the lead runners close in on the finish line on the idyllic course. He knew the times were too good to be true. The winner, Dave Palermo, approached him after he crossed the finish line and was thrilled, not only for winning the race, but for running a huge PB. Clark did the right thing. Almost immediately, he began to investigate. After a few days of digging, Clark and BC Athletics discovered an error in the calibration process for the measuring wheel. Clark knew it was important not to dodge the issue as it affected the “integrity of the race.”
“I checked a split at around 15K and the marker was way off.”
–Melinda Campbell
Peter Pimm, who coaches recreational and elite runners in Toronto, has seen many course errors in the past 40 years. Pimm has been involved with races as a director and course measurer since the 1980s, measuring many of the most popular races in southern Ontario. “It’s a hodge podge,” he says, describing the state of today’s road races. “It all depends on how much homework the race directors have done,” he adds as a caveat. “If you’ve got a course that’s got a three-lane road, it’s very difficult. It can be very tough to measure a busy road. The key is that you have to measure it as if you are the lead runner, trying to run the shortest line to the finish.”
In order to get that exact line for running the tangents perfectly, a measurer must know exactly which roads are going to be closed and what sort of marshalling and police support will be out on the roads. They then hit the pavement, usually very early on a Saturday morning, and with their bicycle – Jones counter attached – they begin the measurement. Surprisingly, gps doesn’t seem to help much. “I was doing the measurement for the U.S. men’s Olympic Trials in Philadelphia at the advent of gps technology,” says course measurement veteran Bernie Conway. “It was fine at first, but once we got downtown, it suddenly thought we were no longer in North America.” He said that the only time he’s seen a gps device measure accurately was when it was once used to measure a straight 300m calibration course.
Both Pimm and Conway have lived through both major running booms. The first, which was brought on by Frank Shorter’s stunning 1972 marathon win at the Munich Olympics, saw the sport grow from the club level outwards, with an emphasis on competition and time. “Back in the 70s and 80s, racers were dominated by track clubs that used the races for base building, or road runners who were focused on running fast marathon times. If I look at the 85 finishers from the Around the Bay that I won in 1972, all of them were club runners,” recalls Pimm. “But that race was 19 miles, 168 yards – an odd distance. It was more about the course than the distance back then for some races. They then changed it to a 30k to have that nice round number.”
Pimm feels that although races were, for the most part, extremely well run club operations during the first boom, there was less emphasis on course accuracy than on making sure the course was well organized. “Actually, one of the big things that’s happened in the last 10 years is the attention to detail and a focus on distances,” he says.