Reading between the lines, possibly wrongly, the distances don't seem to have been amended appropriately with the move from straight line distance to optimum distance.
I'm not sure on the difference between 11.5.4 "Course lengths are given as optimal distances" and 11.5.5 "Guidance should be given on the entry information as to the approximate distance competitors will actually be expected to run." Are we to assume no competitor runs the optimal route?
As a frequent runner of "black" in urban, the distances quoted in 11.6 are wide of the mark, even if they are merely suggestions. They need upping to 8-12k if we are talking optimum distance. I can't remember doing an urban where MO ran less than 8k, probably 9k even.
Perhaps then the ratios will be more appropriate.
Urban Course Lengths
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Re: Urban Course Lengths
Len wrote:Reading between the lines, possibly wrongly, the distances don't seem to have been amended appropriately with the move from straight line distance to optimum distance.
I'm not sure on the difference between 11.5.4 "Course lengths are given as optimal distances" and 11.5.5 "Guidance should be given on the entry information as to the approximate distance competitors will actually be expected to run." Are we to assume no competitor runs the optimal route?
As a frequent runner of "black" in urban, the distances quoted in 11.6 are wide of the mark, even if they are merely suggestions. They need upping to 8-12k if we are talking optimum distance. I can't remember doing an urban where MO ran less than 8k, probably 9k even.
Perhaps then the ratios will be more appropriate.
Which is pretty much the point I was making at the start of the thread. Interestingly, I found this in another thread from 2019, when the change was first proposed:
DJM wrote:I had a hand in making this Rule change and it's clear to me that not deleting 11.5.5 was an oversight.
There aren't going to be many urban areas where the "optimum route" as specified in the rules (i.e. shortest legal route) isn't also the optimum (or a near-optimum) route in practice, with the possible exception of very hilly areas. Of course there's a need for more flexibility in course lengths than for forest events, but if you compare the guidelines for urban against those for (quote) "a typical urban sprint" (where the expected winning time is 12-15 minutes), the suggested ratios do look wrong. For example, on the men's open course the ratio is from 1.5 (shortest to shortest) to 2.2 (longest to longest) while for men's ultravets it's 1.25 to 1.85. Of course people will run slightly more slowly over a longer distance, but on the other hand the control density will probably be lower as well. Either way, it does tend to make the urban courses too short, in my view. Taking an example of two events where I thought the length of the MUV course was about right - the ASOM race in Leuven and the London City Race - the course lengths were 7.3km and 6.9km, which gave winning times in the 45 minute region (a bit shorter for London because some legs were removed).
I also wonder about the length ratios. The table in Section 7 gives the speed ratio for M65 vs M21 as 0.64, with a note saying that these will be slightly higher for sprint/urban. Yet for sprint races (where the winning time should be the same for all categories) the course length ratio is 0.6, and for urban it's 0.5.
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