Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Leeds 10.25k???!!!
Just done the Leeds 10k and according to my Garmin the course was 10.25km long. Would be interesting to see the measurments from other Garmins.
To put this in perspective, at 5 mins/km pace this adds 1 minute 15 secs to your time. Not so great if you were chasing a PB.
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
Your Garmin is probably correct,
i recently ran the Mens Health 10K in Glasgow, (with a friend) and my Garmin has the distance down as 6.22 miles.
I ran the Polaroid series 10K's (3 of them) and the distances are either slightly over or under, normally by 0.2 of a mile. The FLM was the same, but this is due to a "perfect line" the distance is marked using a surveyors wheel (those things you see blokes in yellow coats pushing up the side of roads) and that will be the true distance, if you run either side of that line, especially corners etc, you may find that you ran further, or not so far, as you think!
Of course, the garmin is pretty damn accurate, but I have run the same 'course' near my house several times, and quite often there's a small distance variation.
Hope that helps.
My garmin measured 6.37 miles - which is 10.25km, so not just your Garmin.
Not really that bothered though, it was fun
Yep, I got 6.39 miles or 10.28 km - ran it in 55.00 and took nearly 4 mins off my pb. Brilliant race - well organised and a great atmosphere, but I am now thinking what my new pb would be had the distance been correct - reckon I can take off over a minute for .25k? ;p
I'm not convinced that you can explain away that much of an error just by not taking the most optimal path, don't forget that also, the garmin only works in 2d and doesn't include distance added by going up and down hills, so in theory, the garmin should show slightly less distance than the officially measured one I believe.
Anyway, seems a little churlish of me to be fussing after such a great event.
If you're chasing a PB in Leeds, wait for the Abbey Dash in November...
Lee, if you were using the Garmin you should be able to get a split for 10k
I shall be doing that very thing just a little bit more. I didn't realise that flat didn't actually mean flat and I also didn't realise that 10k meant 10.25k!!
Ah well.
I'll get over it!!
Well Well that is interesting, my hubby ran it in 42 mins and has been down in the dumps all afternoon, having thought he'd get a PB.
He ran the abbey dash in 40 mins
I ran the 10k today in 63 mins and was thoroughly peev'ed off - goodness knows what happened to me today I just was not in the mood to run and walked quite a few times????? - SHAME ON ME!!! - oh well (only human) interesting forum though!
I'll pass on comments to hubby!!!
* Great race though and loved every minute of the atmos!
Charlotte -x-
A clear mess-up with the extra 250m. Dig-out the copy of the official map (on the race leaflet) and in boy scout fashion, use a bit of paper to measure the distance between say the 4k and 5k markers. Now do the same for between the 9k and 10k markers - hey presto it is 1.25 km.
If the positioning of the start/finish lines was a constraining factor, surely they only needed to move the turning point at the top of Meanwood Road.
Garmans are complete garbage at measuring distance. In fact, they are just as inaccurate as measuring the course using a map.
Firstly, Garmans, and maps, use a bird's eye perspective. They don't take gradiants into account at all. If a road is 100 metres long and has a 1 in 10 gradiant, the length you run is 100 metres. The length the garman counts is 90 metres. Just consider the difference between walking from one side of the roof of your house, and the distance of walking up the side of the house (somehow along the roof and then walking down the other side. A Garman would say both distances are the same - they clearly are not.
Additionally, Garmans do not measure the distance you run. They measure the distance between a few GPS locations taken at random times during a run. They do not measure your exact position to the nearest millimetre, they measure it to a wider nearest location. The positioning of the markers in their system dicates how far you've moved. If a grid reference on there system is a 10 inch square, then moving from the corner of one to the fall corner of the next sqaure would see you move 14 inches, but it would only regard you have moving 10 inches. They are designed to give a guide, and should not be taken as account.
They are the two main reasons why I don't own a Garman - they only give you inaccurate data, so what's the point of trying to analysis something which is inherently wrong?
Dave,
I have to correct your maths about the gradient thing. If you run a 1 in 10 gradient that means that your elevation increases by 10m for every 100m measured on the map. If you now use Pythagoras to work out the distance you have actually run then it is just under 100.5m, so the difference is just 0.5m or 0.5%. Since you're very unlikely to do a whole run on 1 in 10 gradients you can see that any error in the distance due to the GPS is very small.
Personally I would have thought that the main reason for the long distances on this race would be the difficulty in following the optimum racing line. I didn't run the race this year due to injury, but I did run it last year and found that I had to weave in and out all over the place. There are quite a few turns on the course on wide roads and with the number for people running it's impossible to run the best line round all of them.
I've never run a race that my garmin did measure as the race distance - swerving round people and moving from one side of the road to the other always adds more distance. Galling when you think you've done the race and still can't see the finish line but trying to work out what I have run etc can be quite a good distraction!
Congrats to everyone who ran on sunday
Forget the Garmin for a moment and take a look at the official race map:
http://www.runforall.com/athlete.html
Using a bit of string or the edge of a bit of paper, measure the distance between any of the first 9 kilometre markers and then compare this to the distance between the 9k and 10k markers. I think you will find that the last kilometer is 25% longer than the previous 9!
- No satellite errors
- No gradients errors
- No weaving in and out errors
- No Pythag
They simply got it wrong.
Have a little trawl around the site for countless other threads complaining about course accuracy based on Garmin information (including certified races), and you'll see that you can't rely on GPS anyway. There's also a huge bias in this kind of poll - you'll tend to attract the people with the biggest discrepancy, whilst the 'satisfied' keep quiet.
All in all, it probably wasn't 10K, but it had no compelling reason to be and you don't know anyway! Run a certified course next time you're after a PB.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic Diana.
At the end of the day those events should be taken as a great day out run in a good atmosphere and it shouldne be taken out of context to what the day meant to many. Like previous posters have said, if you want PB go to lower field sized runs where they have certified measurements. Overall I would say they did the drink stations pretty well though and for something on that scale it was a very well run event!! Also it was a pretty wide course in the last 1.5k so perhaps some of the extra distance came from that?
So was I James. So was I.
Sorry if this offends, but the day meant nothing but a race to me. I'm not one of these people who cries about someone I never knew. Yes. I did it for a charity. I did it for SPARKS if you must know. I paid twenty quid to run in this race,It was billed as a 10k. I expected a 10k. As did many other people.
Oh and before people bang on about how I don't care about Charity yadda yadda yadda.
I organise and host a raffle twice a year for varies differnt charities. Not bigging myself up. Just thought you should know that I'm not heartless.
Dianne - no one (including me thinks your heartness
)
We all have our reasons for running, I personally run for a club and to be frank I'M PANTS!!! - ha ha ha I'm a regular 10 minute miler, but I like the mass events as I don't feel like i'm chasing a club vest and letting everyone down.
Also, if you want a great (DEFINATELY UNDULATING) race next year try the Firemans's 5 at Birkenshaw Fire Station, did that a couple of weeks ago and definately worth a go!
Charlotte -x-
General rule is that if the entry fee is the same for club athletes and non club athletes then it isn't run under UK Athletics rules and it probably won't have been measured as accurately as if it had been run under UKA rules. I did a "10K" earlier this year that was a charity run and I knew immediately on finishing that the course must have been short because I did a PB by nearly 2 minutes. I knew I'd run well, but not that well.
It's fairly pointless wearing a Garmin in a race to record your stats because the only distance that matters is the one between the start and the finish lines and the only official time is the one on the finish clock. As Swerve says, if it isn't an officially certified course then any PB isn't strictly valid.
James. That is something I will be doing. I entered this race when I started out running, I was quite naive!!
TBH, I didn't appreciate the grand scale of the event!
Mass events are great when you start out running. They help you build up confidence because you know that there will be hundreds or thousands of people around you and it's highly unlikely you will ever be alone. Don't be too hard on mass charity events because they raise lots of money, it's the mass commercial events that I don't like. They just line the pockets of the organisers.#
Many people have this fear of being last. If that's the case then the best thing to do is google the previous few years results and check what times runners did and gauge it from there.