Admin posted:The question of how long is too long was answered at an annual meeting a few years ago. It was decided that any distance long is too long. A course must be certified at the distance it is measured. If the RD has particular spots where he wants the start and finish to be, and you measure the course with those restrictions to be 5040 meters, then it must be certified at 5040 meters, not 5000.
There is a HUGE difference between people in a race running more than 5000 meters because the RD did not follow the certification map, and those people running more than 5000 meters because the course measurement was inaccurate.
So, the 5040 meters certification can still be called a "5K" on the certification map, and on the race advertisements?
We have a justifiably small margin of acceptable error between two measurements. So, why not establish a similar criterion for "too long"? I like .001. 1 meter per kilometer. If a 5K (with SCCF) is measured at more than 5005 meters, it is at least 16 feet long. This seems to me be a good cutoff point.
If this course were submitted for certification as a 5K at 5040 meters, we would certify it at 5.04K. Would we still want to call it "5K" on the map? How would we categorize it in the certification database? Entering "5K", then "exactly" in the database search field wouldn't show this course.