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Setting a marathon course

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    Setting a marathon course

    I often wonder this, watching one (the Commonwealth one is on at the moment). Presumably the course (for record setting purposes etc) has to be precisely 26 miles 385 yards, which must be quite hard to get exactly right, if you've got a certain landmark in mind for start and finish? I mean you could stick a route into a routeplanner programme, but do they rely on the accuracy of those?

    I always imagine someone having to walk the proposed course with one of those wheely measurement things you see surveyors using, getting to the end, checking it to read "26 miles, 500 yards" and thinking "Bugger! Start again ..."

    #2
    Setting a marathon course

    They cheat though, by finishing in a stadium, so they can just add a lap or two and move the finish line a bit.

    It's easy to map a route oneself these days. I was bought a Garmin GPS running watch for my 50th by some work colleagues, which was very kind*. You switch it on when you start ( making sure you have a signal first) then turn it off at the end and it gives you a map when you hook it up to the web.

    You can also use mapmyrun.com to measure routes before you start, and tweak them that way. I've got a 5km, 7km etc. right up to a half marathon, saved in my account.

    *I didn't really want it, I was quite happy with a stopwatch. I'm not Lasse Viren. But I'm very grateful and will use it.

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      #3
      Setting a marathon course

      They can add a lap or two to Championship Marathons, but can't change where the finishing line is. That is always the general finishing line, where the expensive cameras etc. are set up.

      Its the start lines that get moved around as a consequence. They usually start somewhere in the grounds of a landmark or in a park, where shifting the start by a few hundred metres to get the length right is relatively trivial.

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        #4
        Setting a marathon course

        It doesn't have to be an exact length.

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