calibration course certificate

Include the map! With the certification number.

I would like to move my calibration course to the other side of the street or maybe to the middle of the road because of cars being parked on the side of the street where my calibration course is currently. Do I have to measure a new course or I seen something about an offset where you take the width of the road and multiply it by 1.5 and get 2 points on the other side of the road and the half way point should be across the road where the original point is. What have other people done to move there start and finish point to a different point on the road.
Thanks for the input.

I had a course like this that I used, that occasionally had the parked car problem. I eyeballed as best I could the endpoint marks out to a little more than a car's width away from the curb.
I then immediately made 4 rides of the original cal course next to the curb, and 4 rides away from the curb using the new marks. The rides using the new marks averaged out to be about 1 count more than the rides using the original marks, so I was confident the new marks defined a course at least as long as the original.
The trick to this of course, is that you can't wait until you have a parked car problem to do it!

There were several articles in early issues of Measurement News showing how to do such an offset using triangulation w/ a tape measure. It's good to use in a pinch.

But for a 300m cal course that is going to be used many times for measurements, I wouldn't feel confident without a steel-tape or laser layout.

You can avoid or lessen this problem by locating a course on a "No Parking" street. My own "home" course seldom has parked cars on it (all the houses have driveways) but every so often there will be a visitor or landscapers parked on it. This happened more frequently on one side than the other so when the street was repaved I remeasured on the quieter side of the street.

Before you do anything please run it by your Regional Certifier and get his input.

Mark's idea is interesting. However, I say how difficult is it to just do it on the other side if the street with a steel tape.

I could live with Mark's idea if the counts are within .25 of a click, but more is asking for long courses. A click is just over 3". In my opinion that's way more than I want it to be.

Here’s how I did my Kirkham Road cal course. See it as OH05028PR.

I began at the south end. I measured 8 feet from the joint between the concrete curb and the asphalt, at a point about 70 feet north of the original mark. I put a nail at this point.

I then measured from the original nail to my new nail, and recorded the distance as “X”.

I moved to the north end of the cal course, and swung an arc of radius “X” centered on my original mark. At the point where the arc was 8 feet from the curb I put in a nail.

Scores of comparative rides have never detected a difference in the calibration lengths of the two resulting cal courses.

You will get the best results if “X” is as long as practical.



This is not a new thing. Discussion first arose in 1985 and was written about in early issues of Measurement News.

Anyone curious can go to www.rrtc.net and navigate to the archive of Measurement News which Alan Jones maintains on his Runscore site. Download the index and you can search for “offset” and find good historical material.

See esp. 1985 issues #11 and #12.

My course seldom has a car on it as all the houses have drives to but there are are times when they also park on the street so I wanted to have one on each side because try has yet to be a car on both sides of the street.
I think the consensus is I should just lay another course using a steel tape.
Maybe I will find another street altogether so when the times I need it becasue of parked cars I will have it.

Pete's way appears to be very good. Try it and then do a comparison with cal rides on each. This should be acceptable to Mike.

Okay Thanks everyone. I will check with Mike Wickiser and see if he will allow me to do this.