Shakespeare Raceway Half

I am really keen on getting people's opinion on the distance of the Shakespeare Raceway Half. My garmin clocked it at 13.3 miles instead of 13.1 which was disapointing as I thought I was running at a certain pace and on for a certain time however I was over a minute slower than expected.

I would have just put this down to an error from my watch but having read previous threads about this race I have noticed that many other people have flagged this up over the last couple of years.

I know the course is twisty and some people have suggested that overtaking etc would add on the extra miles but I have never had this problem on a road race half marathon and we still overtake and twist and turn!

Any insight would be welcome?

p.s. the race is great with friendly staff, very well organised and has great pb potential. I do not wish to criticise the race.

I think it is hard to say.  Throughout the race my Garmin was being more 'generous' than the markers. It ended up meaureing 21.53k instead of 21.1.  It is only a 2% difference and I read on another site that GPS margin of error for measuring distances travelled can be as much as 4%. So I do not think there are any grounds for complaint. However if I had not had to run those extra 430 meters I would have got a PB.

Still its got to be better than the Wyre Forest 10k earlier in the year which everyone agreed measured 11.75k!

If the course is certified it's measured with a wheel and therefore accurate on the racing line. If you want to check your average pace in a race using your Garmin the best thing to do is manually press the lap button at the mile markers.

I'd be quite surprised to finish a race with the exact distance on my Garmin and usually allow up to half a mile extra when calculating pace with it for marathons.

I agree it would be unrealistic to finish the race with the exact distance, and usually my garmin is about .05 out. But the reason i posted is because i noticed lots of people (add yellowmag to that list) have measured that half marathon about quater of a mile too long.

I would not have batted an eyelid until i heard other people said the same thing. I think there must be an issue if it continually crops up in discussions which it does.

I've been in touch with the organisers and they are having the course measured again. Measuring the course accurately is the responsibility of UK Athletics, who have agreed to do a re-measure in time for the next race in March. It's only the Half Marathon - 10k and 5k courses seem to be ok.

Hey guys, that's good news, hopefully this can take place relatively soon and they can change people's official times. I know its not the end of the world but when people have gone through training programs etc, 1-2 minutes is a large ammount of time to gaining! I assume we all train  for pbs.

It would not exactly take that long to do. Just take people's average pace for whatever the distance turns out to be and calculate what their time would have been if they had ran 13.1 miles at that pace.