Since we've been getting a few calibration course stories recently, I thought I'd add my own, very embarrassing one.
I measured quite a few courses starting in the 1970s but tried to get out of the “business” in the 1990s. (I never charged for measuring.) One summer my son, Clain, set up a business of measuring courses. He did were a 10 km and a 5 km starting and finishing in Hickories Park in Owego, a Dick’s Sporting Goods, 5 km and 10 km, and a marathon in near-by Owego. (A little known fact -- Dick's Sporting Goods got their start in Binghamton, NY.)
In the year 2001, I got my friend Steve and his boys interested. I loaned them two Jones Counters. Steve’s two oldest, Richard and Stephen, measured the Forks XV 15 km in Chenango Forks and went on to have a thriving business. As each boy graduated from High School, he would teach the next one coming along until they all graduated and gave me back my counters. At this time the only measurers in the Triple Cities Runners Club were Vince and George. George and his wife moved to North Carolina to be closer to their daughter. I decided we need some more measurers. In early 2013, I put out a query on the Triple Cities Runners Club (TCRC) forum asking for people who might be interested. The result was that Susan and Diana responded as did Mark. Susan and Diana went on to measure courses but Mark was too busy with work and the development of a chip-timing system for the TCRC.
To train Susan and Diana, we decided to measure the Forks XV. This 15 km race was created in 1973 at which time I measured it. Back then there was no requirement to do two measurements. Clain and I measured it in the 1984 and I used it to train Richard and Stephen Nichols to measure it in 2001.
Our area had only one certification course which was in Endicott about eight miles west of Binghamton, NY our county seat. The measurers, and prospective measurers, wanted a course closer to the center of the county so we laid out one on the Binghamton River Walk. We couldn’t find a perfectly straight stretch so picked a section that, while not perfectly straight allowed one to ride the bike in a straight line. On March 10, 2013, we laid out the calibration course and measured the Forks XV course. When we submitted both the calibration course and the Forks XV to Jim Gilmer, the New York State Certifier, he certified both but would allow us to use the calibration course only this one time since the River Walk did not have a curb or a straight line which the rider could follow.
On April 14, 2013, we laid out a calibration course a bit east of Binghamton in Conklin, New York on a perfectly straight section of Conklin Road. We used Vince’s 100’ tape which was the same tape we used for the Endicott and River Walk calibration courses. We laid out a course slightly over 300 meters. After the measurement, Vince did four pre-calibration rides and headed out to measure a course. I asked him if his counts agree with previous measurements. He said they did. I sent the paperwork to Jim who certified it.
In November 2013, Vince sent me an e-mail saying something was wrong. Either a measurement on a previously measured course was off or his counts were off. I don’t recall which. He asked me to check my arithmetic. I went over it very carefully and could not find any problem. We agreed it was getting late in the year so we said we would measure it again in the spring of 2014.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t communicated with Diana and Susan about this possible problem and, before we got the course re-measured, they had already measured two courses and sent the paper work to Jim. A little later, when they went to measure a 5 km course, Susan calibrated on the Endicott course and Diana on the Conklin course. When done, Diana’s course was about 100 meters longer than Susan’s! In order to get the course measured and certified, Diana drove back to the Endicott calibration course, pre-calibrated, measured the course and came back again to Endicott for her post-calibration rides. Diana’s measurement agreed with Susan’s so they sent it in to Jim and reported the problem to us. That spurred us all into action.
I got figures from Vince on the discrepancy that he found and it was an error of about two percent, similar to what Diana found with an error of 100 meters on a 5 km course. Then the puzzle became, What could cause a 2% error using a tape that had measured two previous courses. I went to Google Earth where there were street-view images of the course and I could see our end anchor points – one a telephone pole and the other a fire hydrant. But I couldn’t confirm an error.
Then it hit me! I concluded that Vince’s tape was 100 feet long but must have had an extra two feet on the end providing a place to hold it while placing the 100 foot mark on proper place. I had been on the zero-end during the measurement and Vince was on the 100 foot end.
I went on the Internet and purchased a certified 30 meter tape. The paper work that accompanied the tape had the statement: “The overall length will not be in error by more than 2.5 mm in 30 m or less.” (A 68 degrees F)
On May 31, 2014, the day of the measurement, I asked Vince to bring his tape. We pulled out the entire length and there it was – two extra feet. So Vince must have been holding the 102’ mark against the mark on the masking tape. The original calibration figure we had sent to Jim a year earlier was 300.250 m. The new measurement was 306.291 m. A difference of 6.041 m or 1.97%.
The lesson learned was to do a “sanity check” with a bike ride since we had on-site a bicycle that had done previous measurements.
Of course, I was very embarrassed to send the results to Jim who promptly canceled the previous certification of the calibration course and the courses measured by Diana and Susan. (They went out and re-measured.) Jim also issued a new Measurement Certificate for the Conklin Course.
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