Clicking on lines and the Chicago Distance Classic 2008

Posted At : July 9, 2008 5:33 PM | Posted By : earnshavian
Related Categories: Chicago Distance Classic, WalkJogRun
Two updates this week of note. The biggest announcement is that after meeting John Bingham and Coach Jenny to discuss the site last week, they asked WalkJogRun to be the official map provider for the Chicago Distance Classic Half Marathon! I took the map provided by the route certifier and created the 13.1 mile route. There will be updates to come including aid stations, sponsored water stops and bathrooms but for now it's live at WalkJogRun.net/cdc. I'm running it again this year and looking to beat my Indy Mini time of 1:58:20...

The other announcement is a bug fix. When creating routes you may have noticed that if you clicked to add a turn marker on top of one of the blue route marker lines, it wouldn't register. Last night I changed some code to make it possible to click on the lines to add turn markers.

Comments (20) | Print | Send | del.icio.us | Linking Blogs
Comments
[Add Comment]
Congraduations to all that particpated in the Chicago Distance Classic. I have some great pictures on my blog.

http://theblognovice.com/2008/08/10/chicago-distan...



The Blog Novice
# Posted By Eric P. Martin | 8/10/08 3:35 PM
Four different Garmin-wearers told me that the race measured at 13.44 miles, not 13.1. Has anyone else discovered this?
# Posted By Vendela | 8/10/08 4:19 PM
I got 13.21 on my Garmin.
# Posted By Mary Simpson | 8/10/08 6:18 PM
My Garmin measured 13.41
# Posted By Andrea Schultz | 8/10/08 7:04 PM
13.44 on my Garmin. The problem seemed to be between miles 6 & 7. I went 1.29 miles that mile!
# Posted By Mike | 8/10/08 8:56 PM
My Garmin said 13.42 .After mile 6 it showed the mile markers to be off . Ispoke to a few others with GPS ,same thing .
We`re talking a couple minutes here ,kind of ridiculous .
# Posted By Greg | 8/10/08 8:58 PM
My garmin measured 13.41. I emailed the race people to let them know. I have the garmin 405 and checked the course we ran and compared it to the supposed route on the CDC website and we went to far out on the out and back. Whoever was leading the group did not go on the correct route. I think it is very low class.
# Posted By Allen | 8/11/08 8:10 AM
My Garmin 405 said 13.35. However, it is almost impossible to run all the tangents precisely in a large crowd, so my GPS almost always measures the course a little long. Allthough I have had half marathons where my GPS had the total only a few hundredths over. My best guess is that it was about two-tenths of a mile too long. Several of my very experienced friends also believe the mile between 6 and 7 was long, and based on their pace, feel it was also between .15 and .20 long.
# Posted By Jmurphy | 8/11/08 8:39 AM
I know for sure that we were following the wrong course and I don't need my garmin to prove it. Do you remember the board walk we ran on when we turned around? We were not supposed to run on that. If you look closely at the map on the CDC web site we were supposed to turn around well before then and go back down the road and not all the way up to the board walk and then down that curvy path.
# Posted By Allen | 8/11/08 8:56 AM
I dont have GPS but the problem was definitely between 6 and 7. Was running 6:55 consistently through 6 miles then mile 7 was a an 8:40 mile. about 0.2-0.3 miles long. several other people I talked to felt the same way.
# Posted By Aaron | 8/11/08 9:31 AM
Have the Garmin 305 and I also showed 3.41 and I tried to run tangents as best as possible. Even so, it was about .2-.3 long. Definitely occurred between Mile 6 and 7
# Posted By matt | 8/11/08 11:55 AM
My Garmin read 13.21, but I lost satellite in the tunnel earlier in the race, so I am figuring those with the 13.44 totals is what race actually was.
# Posted By Mary Simpson | 8/11/08 2:44 PM
I was using a Garmin 305 and I got 13.43 miles for the course. Couldn't tell where the dsicrepancy was but I know the mile markers were out from about midway through the race. I'm not too worried as I was doing it for fun.
Otherwise, I thought this was an excellent race with plenty of well-stocked water stops and a fun finish.
# Posted By Brendan | 8/11/08 4:45 PM
I was using a Polar HRM with footpod, so no satellite issues on mine. My miles were measuring accurate to the hundredth with the markers until mile 6-7, which I came up with an extra .3 miles or so. Every other mile measured just fine, but I did end the race at about 13.44. Frustrating, since I really wanted to meet my time goal (which I ended up doing) but had to run faster the last half than I'd planned.
# Posted By Rachel | 8/11/08 5:03 PM
Hi All,
Thanks for the great comments - I also have a Garmin 305 and came in at 13.41 like others experienced. I'll shoot a note to John Bingham and see if he or the official who certified the course can shed some light on how the course is measured and suggest why the various approaches (Polar, Garmin, mile splits) might imply a .3 mile variation. The implications could be pretty big for some runners who missed a marathon qualification place or a personal best.

As a follow up to the content of my blog post, I did set a new PR at 1:48:38 which, if it was .3 miles over could well be 1:47:12...

Adam
# Posted By Adam Howitt | 8/11/08 8:18 PM
Thanks, Adam! Let us know what sort of feedback you receive from John. I was hoping for a marathon preferred coral start myself but had a bad race, so it wasn't down to a minute or two to qualify like it was for some people. If I was close but missed my qualifier by even 30 seconds, I would have been really bummed out. I guess this is why race directors HATE Garmins!
# Posted By Vendela | 8/11/08 8:29 PM
Hi Vendela,
Check out this thread on Runners World:
http://forums.runnersworld.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/...
Beth from John Bingham racing mentioned that they are going to have the person who certified the course remeasure it so look for a final comment later this week.

Hope that helps!
Adam
P.S. - Nice pics Eric! Love the one of the guy taking a pic of you :-) It's a shame you couldn't get one of me as I swung !
# Posted By Adam Howitt | 8/11/08 9:37 PM
Beth may have already said this.

The course was USATF measured and certified (certification # IL – 08064 – JW). In addition, we had the certifier lead the pack on his bicycle to ensure that all the athletes went on the correct course. We have heard comments that the course may be long and we have asked the certifier to re-measure the course and will have a final comment on this later this week.


John

John “the Penguin” Bingham
Runner’s World columnist
www.johnbingham.com
?
# Posted By John Bingham | 8/11/08 10:01 PM
Again I am 99.9% sure the problem was at the turn-around. If you look at the interactive map on the web-site we were not supposed to go out as far as we did. We were not supposed to go on that board walk part. We were supposed to go back on the road. Now I don't know where the guy that lead the leaders went because I was not there, I was running around 8:30 miles and the entire pack was going all the way up to the boardwalk. So bottom line anyone who ran on the boardwalk went to far.
# Posted By Allen | 8/12/08 8:13 AM
I think you're right Allen and I don't think it was a mismeasured race - just some people missed the turn before the boardwalk and turned at the entrance to the boardwalk instead which, coincidentally is .24 miles round trip added on in the middle of the race. My garmin 7th mile distance seems far more plausible that way. I've created a second CDC route of my personal path extracted from my Garmin as represented in a Google earth map to correct some of the inaccuracies people mentioned on the runners world forum where I selected the wrong path on the way back up north:
http://walkjogrun.net/index.cfm?rid=B70C8E9D-0181-...
It measures 13.48 online (remember that there will be some inaccuracies due to the nature of clicking points on curves etc).
# Posted By Adam Howitt | 8/12/08 9:35 AM
[Add Comment]
BlogCFC was created by Raymond Camden. This blog is running version 5 (Beta 2).