There were a few races in our region whose distances were not exactly as advertised; so we have reset their distances. This of course pulled many times from the 5000m list, relocating them to the shorter distance lists. Most of those athletes however do have other 5000m times, the best of which should then appear in the 5000m performance list.
This does not seem to have happened. And in checking those individuals, at the moment they do not have a PR 5000m time red-tagged in their personal histories.
Is it again a case of waiting for awhile while the system recalibrates everything? If it is, it will probably sort itself before you answer. But if not, what do?
Bruce Carrick
Correct, the site will update the athletes' best marks within a day.
Bruce Carrick: teams with sufficient runners with times at the 5000m distance, but the teams are not showing up in the hypothetical meets. All are more recent team additions, but other schools of similar time frame do appear.
teams with sufficient runners with times at the 5000m distance, but the teams are not showing up in the hypothetical meets. All are more recent team additions, but other schools of similar time frame do appear.
Problem found, though an issue still remains. A few years back I had put in a filter that knocked out athletes with un-known grades, because an Oregon team had entered alumni runners (at an annual alumni run) in that category. My had the above described side effect, along with another. I have removed the filter for the moment.
Thanks. And individual results seem to have righted themselves. And I just discovered the feature of highlighting all the runners from one or more schools on the lists. Love it.
Next matter, in the hypothetical meet. Several teams do not appear. I can not see a pattern, ie due to less than 7 runners. And I`ve checked to see if the missing teams have at least 5 runners with a time, and most do; couple cases only one gender is complete team. And these runners do show up in the above mentioned lists.
Teams in question: Guam High; KAIAC: (Daegu American, Osan American, Seoul American, Taejon Christian ); Okinawa (Kubasaki High); Pacific Rim zone: International Manila, Hong Kong International
Hope you can sort this out. Thanks
Bruce
One thing, I'll do is if the race was actually a little long and the host school isn't using A.net, I'll adjust the times of my athletes to reflect what they ran the "official distance". That way I don't have 5050 meter races in the results and the kids still have more accurate times online reflecting their true performances.
Here in Texas, where so many meets still do all their results by hand and don't feel the need to upload anything to A.net, there are some meets where I'm the only coach putting anything online about the meet.
Just thought the suggestion might help, especially when it gives the kids something to compare to throughout the season.
Andy - thanks. I am actually putting most of our regions results in. Until athletic.net came along, there was no clearinghouse for information in our region, so course length inconsistencies was a non-issue.
Now we realize some courses produce unusually fast times for the whole field, way out of whack with other times, particularly on courses with confirmed distances. Some mid season races had every single runner posting PRs that were 60-120 seconds faster than they ran on any other course all season. Many courses are inaccessible (too far away or on restricted military grounds), so it is inconvenient for outside parties to verify them.
Looking back from end-of-season, having seen what everyone achieved at their peak on "certified" courses, it seems reasonable to delist certain races as a 5000m contest and give them a more conservative 3.0 or 2.9 mile designation; then encourage the hosting coach to wheel the course and confirm the true distance if he wants the kids results to be posted in the 5000m category.
I am curious about how people practically deal with minor variations. Our league`s basic course has been for years listed as 2.9 miles but I`ve wheeled it several times and found it to be actually 8 meters short of 2.75 miles. So I have been listing it here as 4416 meters, but would most coaches feel it reasonably close and just call it 2.75 miles (there is no way to add 8 meters to the course; we`ve tried).
Bruce,
I understand what you're saying about courses being inaccessible and I have a suggestion that might help you out. Check out USATF's running routes online mapping program. It appears when you first glance at it to be US only, but I just performed an experiment and was able to map Narita International Airport's runways, by simply moving the map over to Japan and zooming in.
This works, because the underlying program is in fact Google Maps' satellite photos, so you apparently will have full access to the database of maps they make available online. In fact, I was able to zoom in to the point, where I could the signal beacon lights at the ends of the runways, which was the 2nd greatest magnification available.
While this may not be the case over military bases, I have a feeling you'll be able to map out some of your courses with just their hand-drawn maps and your memory as your guide.
With regards to your course being 8 meters short of 2.75 miles, there are a couple of perspectives to consider before you decide what you want to do. First, as USATF certified official and someone who has setup multiple courses in multiple locations over the last 7 years, I can honestly state that there is no such thing as a "certified cross country course". It will always be your best effort, which is the difference between that and road courses, which you can certify, because there is some uniformity.
Second, if having as accurate a published distance as possible is your aim, then I would say, shorten the course to 2.7 miles, call it that and don't worry about it. If there is absolutely no way to get it any longer, then go the other direction and be done with all the explanations to other coaches about how it's really this, or it's really that. Way more headache than it's worth, in my humble opinion.
Third, once you've setup a satellite map of your home course, send me the link, I'd love to see if I can help you lengthen it to a full 3 miles or even 5K. I'd need to see your existing setup before I could make any recommendations, but this is sort of a hobby of mine, course setups that is.
Fourth and final point I'll make. I always go for the roundest number, so if you want to have your course described in meters, go with 4400 meters, if you'd rather have in feet and miles, go with 2.7 or 2.75, with an explanation, if you care to explain it. Heck, if everyone already knows it's 8 meters short, but you call it 2.75 anyways, then most smart coaches will simply add the extra time mentally, and be done with it. That's what I'd do if I was to show up on a course that the coach admitted to me was 8 meters short, or 8 meters long for that matter.
Hope that provides some additional perspective.
Blessings,
Andy
Andy - thanks. I should have put certified in quotes; knowing that approximate is the norm; wasn`t thinking about any "official" certification; just can the host honestly say he has measured it.
I have put many of our training course and race course on the USATF site, as well as Google maps; and my GPS watch - but nothing beats taking the wheel. But certainly all the above are better than a guess or a drive by car. The problem courses are on Guam, Okinawa, Korea and various military bases in Japan - none of which I can have access to or have ever seen. The courses that my team runs on I have measured in the above ways; and so have a couple other coaches. That`s how we have accumulated some baseline performances.
Regarding our Tokyo league`s basic course, we`ve run it for nearly every meet since 1989. Any change breaks with tradition. We`ve made a 5000m version and have run it once this season but the politics of resistance to change are at play. Probably misrepresented the inability to add 8 meters - it is policy problems. 8 meters is not worth fighting for. Getting high school coaches to accept 5000m as the norm is the ultimate goal (girls run 3304 meters!). We are making progress in many ways - I am optimistic.
But my practical question was should I just call the present course on athletic.net 2.75 or 2.7 miles, the purpose being to allow our kids see their times in comparison with at least some runners back in the States. 2.75 seems a bit more popular than 2.7 miles.
Ah yes, resistance to change in Japan, it's been so long since I was there that I'd almost forgotten the situations that I'm sure you're encountering. Okay, in light of that and considering that the course is simply 8 meters short of 2.75 miles, that's what I would call it, but I would adjust the times that are entered into A.net by multiplying them by 1.00181.
For somebody who runs exactly 18 min., their time would convert to 18:01.955, which would of course mean that you'd enter either 18:02 or 18:02.0, depending upon how you wanted to present it. Since there is a conversion occuring, it would be preferred that you rounded the times up to the next whole second.
I was homeschooled when I lived in Chiba, Japan, and I remember visiting an "International" or "American" school in Tokyo once or twice during the 1988-89 school year, but darned if I can recall the name of it or even where it was located. That would be way too crazy if we're talking about the same place.
Keep in mind, the correct measurement of a course will differ depending on the size of the field, as the line measured should reflect that which the average runner in a crowd is forced to take. As such, an "official" measurement for a common course is a rather meaningless concept. Get it within a few meters and call it good.
Dan
So, perhaps a 10 meter variance is acceptable? Would calling a 4900m race a 5k contest be acceptable? How about 300 meters short?
Bruce Carrick: So, perhaps a 10 meter variance is acceptable? Would calling a 4900m race a 5k contest be acceptable? How about 300 meters short?
Personally, I can measure a course 3 ways and have an error larger than 10 meters between the measurements. This accounts for about 2 seconds error. Weather and terrain differences among courses accounts for WAY more than that, so I would see minor errors as insignificant/unavoidable. (We have hills on some courses, grass, bark, pavement, etc) Nothing scientific here, but I would personaly probably stop calling it 5k when the discrepancy is around 30 meters or more. Thoughts?
Project for someone: come up with an algorithm for rating courses in relation to other courses, in order to create an "adjusted time" for use in statistical purposes. It could look at runners and their relation to other runners on various courses. Early season vs late season induces a complexity. Probably need to eliminate fringe data that is outside of the error bars. Any takers? (Should probably start a new thread for this..)
In only looking at one aspect of this discussion, I am okay with calling a course a particular distance, when in fact it is longer, but not normally okay with calling it a particular distance when in fact it is shorter.
To take your example above, 3 measurements with a 10 meter, or greater, variance, if one of those measurements was exactly 5K and the other 2 were greater than 5K, then I would call the course a 5K course and be done with it. Having said that though, I know that I'm not following the rules used by USATF to certify road courses, because those rules are even more stringent.
Personally, some years I am more stringent than other years in attempting to make my courses accurate, but there is one rule of thumb I use, no matter what. Always err on making the course longer than advertised.
In other words, a course should never be advertised as 5K, but actually only 4970, whereas having it be 5030 would be "okay". Both are only 30 meters off, but one is preferred because it is a little longer than the advertised distance.
Finally, in response to your request for an algorithm, that sounds interesting and while I'd love to be involved, I'm not sure I have enough math, as college business calc was as far as I ever got.
David, seems my thread has taken on its own life; enjoy reading what others have to say.
Back to my main concern at this point: teams with sufficient runners with times at the 5000m distance, but the teams are not showing up in the hypothetical meets. All are more recent team additions, but other schools of similar time frame do appear.
Teams in question: Guam: Guam High; KAIAC: (Daegu American, Osan American, Seoul American, Taejon Christian ); Okinawa (Kubasaki High); Pacific Rim zone: International Manila, Hong Kong International
I agree that 10m is more than acceptable and 30m is probably okay. Most measuring wheels have a 1-2% margin of error, anyway. That's up to 100m of discrepancy even when properly measured. Calibrating your wheel on the track can help minimize that error, but you can see how trivial a few meters here and there can become.
David, interesting that you would raise the course comparison question... In case you haven't seen it, that's been a pet project of mine for a few years now.
http://run-down.com/state.php
I had thought about asking if you guys had any interest in building a tool like that into athletic.net, something which would produce such an analysis automatically, but it seemed pretty complicated when thinking it through. Having all the data at hand makes a lot of comparisons possible, but there would need to be some manual input as to which courses are worth comparing, otherwise the math would become endless.