Fair enough, Mark. I still see a large amount of wiggle room in this policy. Again, I reference the type of course with two-way traffic. I know there isn't unanimity among RRTC folks about whether to measure only on one side of the road in each direction or, alternately, to measure the full road tangent. I measure the full road tangent unless the certification is for a major race in which I am confident that the course layout will prevent runners from cutting the course. This reduces the number of courses in which I don't measure the full tangent to like - one. I am aware that as certifiers, we do not, strictly speaking, assume any responsibility for how our certified course is set up or managed on race day. But, I have come to expect that many races do not understand or care about what we tell them, if we even bother, about how to ensure participants run the certified route. Each time we measure the full tangent in this curvy road situation, we encounter the likelihood that, if course layout is done properly, we have certified a course that is long. The more curves in the road, the greater the potential error. I suspect this is one contributing factor in that event with many record performances I referenced.
I always take an activist role in this. For some races I even show up and help with or consult on the course layout plan and execution. It seems to me that doing this differently, leaving the actual path to be run totally up to the race organizers to recreate, can easily lead to a short course being run in these circumstances. Am I right in saying that we have a baked-in bias for ensuring our measurements are always at least the nominal distance, and far less concern about whether they are long by some non-trivial amount? If we do, I for one, am fine with this. But, I am convinced we certify few if any short courses - ever - maybe none at all - and, plenty of courses that are long as actually run. Some, long by a non-trivial amount, because we cannot unilaterally control how any course is actually traversed by participant. I am interested to hear the experience of others, with respect to knowing that some course he/she certified may be longer than the standard distance by some non-trivial amount.