5K or not to 5K thats the question

[Nannyshirl]

So my daughter and I decided to run the University of Bristol 5K race yesterday. After nearly missing the start as instead of starting at 2pm they started 5 minutes earlier and we had been in the toilets and came out to see the runners having disappearing into the distance. So we ran to the start line trying to get our Strava app working to record our time but I couldn't get mine working but my daughter did so no problem she could add me to her recorded run later. So we ran the course which for some reason felt really hard but we complete and check the time and distance and find Strava recorded the run as 4.68K. What!!!!

Well thats annoying feel like we've been cheated. 😩😩😩😩😩

[Cmoi Marathon]

Hi Nannyshirl , I can understand that must be frustrating, but I use Strava myself and it's not really super-accurate. Even people running in a certified distance official race won't necessarily have the same distance recorded on Strava.

Also, from what I can gather by Googling, this was a free event, designed for the community and as a charity fundraiser, so I wouldn't be too harsh on the organisers if your recorded distance wasn't 5k. If you're really concerned about having Strava record 5k for a run then you can always check at the end and jog around a bit more if the distance is coming up short.

[Nannyshirl 10 Miles in reply to Cmoi]

Thank you Cmoi we had the opposite thing when we ran the Bristol 10K where Strava said 10K but we had another 200 metres to run to finish the race. It is a little disconcerting when you think you've finished but then realise you have more to do. I wasn't upset with the organisers more thinking the Strava app was playing up.

[Cmoi Marathon in reply to Nannyshirl]

When I did the Trail du Gévaudan back in October it turned out to be 10% longer than the marathon distance billed! Wasn't just my recording either, it was similar on everyone's Garmins and Strava etc. People weren't impressed with the volunteer at the final drinks station who insisted that all our phones and watches were wrong, it couldn't possibly be the course measurement that was off!

[sTrongFuse Half Marathon 10 Miles in reply to Cmoi]

In fairness, you could all be right. Over the course of 26 miles, the deviations from the actual measured race line could mount up to about that. They will have measured the optimal racing line, but almost no one will have actually ran that exact line around every single twist and turn on the course.

[Cmoi Marathon in reply to sTrongFuse]

I get what you're saying sTrongFuse , but a 10% error feels pretty chunky over marathon distance! Also, we're not talking about an optimal racing line for a road race here. This was a fairly technical trail marathon with 1835m elevation gain, with much of the course shared with 115km and 72km ultras.

In fact there were route changes just days before before the event, thanks to idiots recce'ing on private property whose owners then withdrew permission for its use on race day. I suspect things went a bit skew-whiff there.

The event's now been picked up by UTMB and is one of the races where you can get "running stones" for UTMB qualifying. That's led to various changes: the start's been moved to the next village, which will take out some of the more "interesting" initial sections, reducing the elevation gain a bit in the process. They've introduced cut-off times too.

I'm glad I did it when I did, I'd never have dared enter the new version! I've registered to volunteer on the day instead. 😀

[sTrongFuse Half Marathon 10 Miles in reply to Cmoi]

Fair enough. My trail runs have all been on routes I make up and run myself, so I've never had that issue. That said, even on official road runs, the KM marker signs are often out by quite a bit due to the availability/lack of convenient trees/lampposts to hang them on. I just go by the fact that I cross the line. As I said somewhere else, in the pre-technology days, we'd have accepted the distance without a thought.

[SkiMonday Ultramarathon in reply to Nannyshirl]

I had one race where I did a sprint finish then realised that I'd just gone through the start arch so still had a few 100 m to go.

[nowster Metric Marathon]

It's quite usual for GPS recordings to be about 10% short of official distances, especially if there's tree cover or lots of corners to go round.

[Nannyshirl 10 Miles]

Thank you Nowster yes it was on a field with tree cover and some inclines which my legs for some reason didn't like 😂😂😂

[SkiMonday Ultramarathon in reply to Nannyshirl]

My legs seem to like inclines, so long as they're the "down" variety 🙂

[sTrongFuse Half Marathon 10 Miles]

My local parkrun always comes out at about 4.7k. It has a lot of tree cover and has quite a few twists and turns.

Two things, even when it's an official race and has been measured, almost no one will actually run exactly the same route as the measuring wheel took. We'll be dodging other runners, going wide on some bends, going tight on others and generally straying from the "official" race line with just about every step we take, Then there's the technology. Something 20,000km up in the sky is trying to track something about the size of a £2 coin on your wrist, when your arm is swaying back and forth like a pendulum. Add in clouds, trees, hills, sharp bends, etc., and the big surprise here shouldn't be that there are inaccuracies, but that it actually gets it as close as it does.

Strava does have a "correct distance" feature where it takes the map distance rather than the GPS. This can, sometimes, add on those missing metres (annoyingly, it can also sometimes decide the route was shorter, but does allow you to revert back).

I'd say, it was billed as a 5k, you completed it, bask in the achievement of doing it. In the pre-technology days, we'd have just accepted the distance as a given. Technology is meant to help us, not suck the joy from our achievements.

Celebrate it; that's my simple advice.