quote:“I think the course is just plain long by half a mile. This was the first year they changed the course and I think it was mismeasured. I can understand a tenth of a mile or two but almost half a mile difference tells me it is too long.”
Assuming the course was laid out properly - I'm pretty sure it was, because the Marines do a good job year in, year out - and, as Dickson points out, Bob Thurston is there on race day most every year to verify that it is - my reaction to the "mismeasured" claim is to just laugh!
One little nitpick - Dickson Mercer (mis)quotes Bob as saying the JC measures "revolutions of the bicycle wheel" when of course, it measures small increments of a revolution - which makes certification inherently more accurate than if our smallest unit of measurement was a single revolution. Another is that he makes no mention of the effect of tall buildings on GPS readings. There are parts of the MCM course in which this factor may come into play.
Other than this, a good article. I once had a long conversation with a top distance runner about running tangents. He was less than sanguine. I advised him to study the certification map of his next half marathon and devise a plan to run the course the way it was measured. He did, and he had a P.R. That day, he became a believer.