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Eliminate Expirations and Renewals

A MODEST PROPOSAL

I don’t remember exactly when the various ideas of expiration, renewals and remeasurements became part of what we do. At the time I signed on, around 1980, certification was about recognition of accurate course measurement. Early on, certification was part and parcel of Ken Young’s National Running Data Center, the precursor to USATF’s Records Committee’s recognition of road records.

An essential part of the record process was, and is, validation. When a record time happens, the circumstances of the race are examined. This includes an examination of the timing of the race and the course used. If there is a serious error in either length or timing, the time does not qualify as a record.

While record performances occur on only a tiny percentage of the courses we certify, they remain the official reason why USATF supports the certification program.

The ordinary runner is not as picky as USATF. He or she merely seeks assurance that the course is reasonably accurate.

My proposal is this: eliminate the 10 year course life, and eliminate the idea of “renewal.” A course, once certified, stays that way. It is defined by the map. If the course run does not match the map, the certification is void.

There is nothing magic about ten years. Many of the courses I have measured have been changed more frequently than that. And many are run only once. We don’t know how our courses are used, only how they are measured.

When I oversaw the course list, renewals and expirations added work to the job. Our “status” column expanded to cover all sorts of conditions, all of which were rare. The only meaningful ones were the rare cases when a course passed or failed its validation measurement. I believe these should be retained, but none of the others.

The most recently certified course is readily identified by its certification ID.

As I have backed away from course measurement and its administration, I have no stake in what may be decided. I simply believe that simple is best and that no significant benefit is gained by trying to eliminate every what-if that may be imagined. The what-ifs are an insignificant fraction of our work, and are safely covered already by the validation process.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough. The cure is worse than the disease. In my view, all the bureaucratic hoops we are asking people to jump through do not lead to meaningful improvement in the system, and it would please me to see things return to simplicity.

So, in my view I’d like to see things get back to basics and for us to eliminate the busywork of trying to eliminate every possible bad thing. Eliminate expirations and renewals and their attendant unnecessary paperwork.
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