There was much discussion afoot during the day about the length of the CSML course, a variant from the typical Monument Valley Park course.
I personally heard reports of 3.20 and 3.23 miles from GPS watches of people either attending or racing. It's a known fact, though, that GPS watches have a tendency to run a little long, up to 2 to 3% long. So, curious about how to understand the results for my own kids, I took a wheel to the course this morning. Specifically, I ran wheeled the tangents on the turns and kept the wheel close (probably about 18 inches away as an average) to the inside edge of the course. When I got all the way around the course, my wheel (which reads 99.9 meters when I roll it down the 100 meter sprint straightaway of our track), registered 5056 meters.
Honestly, 5056 meters isn't all that much long. For someone taking 20 minutes to run 5K, that comes out to 13.44 extra seconds. I'm not saying my wheel measurement is void of error, but the actual difference between my measurement and actual was probably not more than 20 or 30 meters either way.
My hunch is that, back in days of yore when this was the standard cross country configuration at Monument Valley Park, the start and finish lines may not have been pushed quite as far south as they were on Thursday.
In any case, it was not a day of exceptionally fast times. Some days are that way.
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