Courses
Race courses are usually held on the streets of major cities and towns, but can be on any road. The IAAF recognizes nine common distances for road races: 10 kilometres (6.2 mi), 15 kilometres (9.3 mi), 20 kilometres (12 mi), half-marathon (21.097 km or 13.1 mi), 25 kilometres (16 mi), 30 kilometres (19 mi), marathon (42.195 km or 26.2 mi), 100 kilometres (62 mi), and Ekiden marathon relay. Other common distances include 5 kilometres (3.1 mi), 8 kilometres (5.0 mi), 12 kilometres (7.5 mi), and 10 miles (16 km).
Some major events have unique distances. The "Round the Bays" run in Auckland, New Zealand is 8.4 kilometres (5.2 mi); the Falmouth Road Race in Falmouth, Cape Cod is 7.1 miles (11.4 km); "City to Surf" in Sydney, Australia is 14 kilometres (8.7 mi); Honolulu's "Great Aloha Run" is 8.15 miles (13.12 km); the "King Island Imperial 20" is 32 kilometres (20 mi) long; and the "Charleston Distance Run" in Charleston, West Virginia is 15 miles (24 km).
Most road race courses are certified to be accurate to within 0.1%, that is, to within 10 m for a 10 km race. Certified courses are often intentionally lengthened by one metre per km to ensure that they are not short of the stated distance. A Jones Counter attached to a bicycle is used to measure course length. Remeasurement to verify the length is undertaken when a world record is set on a course.
Read more about this topic: Road Running
Famous quotes containing the word courses:
“All the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The inconveniences and horrors of the pox are perfectly well known to every one; but still the disease flourishes and spreads. Several million people were killed in a recent war and half the world ruined; but we all busily go on in courses that make another event of the same sort inevitable. Experientia docet? Experientia doesn’t.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)