OLY Distance Variances? (Page 2)

I agree that it gets less important to be exactly precise the longer the race gets....if you can get within 1% or less then yeah, good to go.  I may become a matter of which line you take.  BUT....if a HIM run is 1100M short then that is something that can be fixed.....so fix it.  Move the finish line, move the cone at the turn around.....something. 

Especially when you get down to Sprint and Oly races....make it right.  Even the training for those distances gets more precise......and looking at splits from one effort to another can become important as you look to another race. 

To REALLY top it off, when you look at race split results from  those races they are done on what the race is SUPPOSED to be.  That's kind of silly if you know the course is long or short. 

Bro.....if I remember right, 1500m is like 128 gallons, right?

Ironman does have a tolerance for their races. Forget what it was, though pretty sure it's well past 1% (5%, 10%?). Not sure why they can't say what the distance actually is. Well, beyond that it might seem to conflict with their "70.3" or "140.6". Both Muskoka and the old Calgary bike courses were long and said as such, listing as 94k (instead of 90k).

I do tend to use the Garmins more for race distances than the listed numbers as those have tended be more of a nominal value, though would caution about getting carried away with that. DC Rainmaker gives a decent explanation here. Trail runs always seem to come out shorter than they seemed to me. Also had some direct evidence of how far off they can go here. My sister and I ran a local 5k that was a certified course and both our watches came up with like 2.76 miles. Garmin 210 and 220, I think. I checked the map against what I saw and the two turns were in the right spots. Can't mess them up without construction equipment as they are fixed points. The start and finish looked about right too. Could be off a few feet, but not a quarter mile. The Garmins always had a signal, but still had enough interference from the tree coverage to throw them off even though I always had a signal (I check rather frequently).

m? The 1500 is in metric?

metre?  Is that the same as meter, or is that like 3 litres?  

We were told in grade school, back in the 60's, that one day we would have to know the metric system......major fail here.

Originally posted by StaceyK

Originally posted by simpsonbo Only the US uses the spelling 'meter' Just one of those things, even in metric you guys wanna be special :-)

or they just can't spell

I was joking.....of course we can spell meater.

Originally posted by jennifer_runs

Originally posted by simpsonbo Only the US uses the spelling 'meter' Just one of those things, even in metric you guys wanna be special :-)

What always confuses me is when people call 1650 yards a "swimmer's mile" because that's roughly 1500m. Isn't a mile a mile (so 1600m)? So in triathlons, if it's "half-mile" is that 825 yards, or 750m? And yes, I know a mile is actually 1609m.

That's for swimmers because they can't count.

Yes, and I know that if 10% is the tolerance, that would only bring it down to 1,350.  You do know that 10% of 1,500 = 150 right?

But bike is within tolerance and distance is categorized by the bike when different from swim (see link I posted above).  FWIW.

Originally posted by mike761

Originally posted by brigby1

Originally posted by jennifer_runs

Originally posted by simpsonbo Only the US uses the spelling 'meter' Just one of those things, even in metric you guys wanna be special :-)

What always confuses me is when people call 1650 yards a "swimmer's mile" because that's roughly 1500m. Isn't a mile a mile (so 1600m)? So in triathlons, if it's "half-mile" is that 825 yards, or 750m? And yes, I know a mile is actually 1609m.

That's for swimmers because they can't count.

Apparently swimmers are the only ones that can count, everyone else seems to be buying fancy watches to count laps. Us swimmers just use simple 1st grade math- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ......

What is a "lap"?

Originally posted by brigby1

Originally posted by mike761

Originally posted by brigby1

Originally posted by jennifer_runs

Originally posted by simpsonbo Only the US uses the spelling 'meter' Just one of those things, even in metric you guys wanna be special :-)

What always confuses me is when people call 1650 yards a "swimmer's mile" because that's roughly 1500m. Isn't a mile a mile (so 1600m)? So in triathlons, if it's "half-mile" is that 825 yards, or 750m? And yes, I know a mile is actually 1609m.

That's for swimmers because they can't count.

Apparently swimmers are the only ones that can count, everyone else seems to be buying fancy watches to count laps. Us swimmers just use simple 1st grade math- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ......

What is a "lap"?

I think it's 3 millilitres

The USAT site doesn't use the Sprint/OLY/HIM monikers which alleviates the issue I brought up in my initial post.

However another poster seemed to defend the use of the term OLY in the race distances I listed because it was within tolerance.  Regardless of whether the distance being advertised is based on the tolerance of the bike, I think it's misleading to cut a 1/3 of the swim out and still call it an OLY...

Yep

In the OP you were thinking of contacting the RD about this. If you still do, make sure to talk with with guy. See what the rationale was. The posts that seemed to "defend" use of the term weren't so much to do that, but maybe more to help understand what was going on and possibly redirect where you want the complaint to go. If the race is within the tolerance, then the complaint is more with those who set that tolerance though could still mention to the RD that being closer to the nominal distance is appreciated.

What I meant by confirming with the RD was whether the distance was a misprint rather than a complaint.   I now understand why it happens and going forward will pay closer attention to the breakdown of distances vs. the distance name...

I wonder how many OLY's I've done over the years where the distances varied and I had no clue..

Some years a blazing swim, other years not so much...