Japanese Course Measurement

My calculator says a marathon would be 844 pulls of a 50 meter tape.

Note the number of people in the picture and the notation that the measurement would be continued the next day.

It's not difficult for two measurers on bicycles to measure a marathon course in less than four hours.

I wonder what they gain in accuracy for their trouble.

When I was at a measuring workshop in Korea in 1989 the Japanese delegation described this measurement method. On my screen I couldn't read the words associated with the video url, but I remember that the Japanese folks told how they calibrate that steel wire carefully, and at curves they hold "stakes" at 30 cm from the curb or 20 cm from an uncurbed pavement edge, so that the wire can follow the SPR. I recognized the delegate in the video from that workshop in Seoul.
I don't think they used an SPR, but I could be wrong about that.
Bob Thurston

For some reason I opened this page and noticed the comment about SPR. What I meant to say was they don't use a short course prevention factor.

Sorry!