Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Extra (Half) Mile

If you read my race report from Saturday, you may notice a discrepancy when I told you that I was running 8:20's as my average down the canyon versus my finish time of 1:55:48, which is just under an 8:50 min/mile average.  I would like to clarify that.  And do a little grumbling.

First: I lost about 90 seconds waiting/using the Honey Bucket.  That adds 10 seconds to my average pace making it the 8:30 that my Garmin has recorded.

Second: My Garmin says that I went 13.7 miles.  And I believe it to be pretty darn accurate.

This course was certified for the distance, and that means they had to measure based on the tangents.  When you are running down a canyon, there are a LOT of curves in the road, making for a longer run, if you are hugging the center and side lines (like everyone was doing  because the road was open to traffic and we were told to stay to the right).  I'm pretty sure everyone went well over the 13.1 miles that we should have been running.

I found myself taking the "longer" route more than a few times in the race when I wasn't focused on the course ahead of me and was just following the lines.  And the one time when I didn't stay to the right and ran the tangent, I got weird looks from the people behind me (and in front of me that I passed because I got ahead of him on the curve).  I wanted to tell them that I wasn't cheating!  I was running the shortest legal distance that I could. 

I wish that the entire road would have been open to this.  I probably could have shaved another minute off of my time.

Do you run tangents in races?  Ever had someone give you the stink-eye for "passing" them on a corner?

All posts are better with pictures.

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