More Meat Volume 2 - Getting Off on a Tangent

The second meaty entry is all about racing smarter and not harder.

Certified race courses are measured on the tangents (the straightest line between the corners -- while still being on the pavement or trail). To not add anything extra to the race distance, you want to take the inside of every corner and a straight line between alternating corners. Crowded races make it hard to do so, but even in the Boilermaker, I have plenty of places on the course where I shake my head wondering why the racers are such sheep? Why do they make such baaaaad in race decisions?

Well, it is sheepish, but it is human nature as well. We tend to follow the group in front of us. Plus we are so used to driving on the roads, that we take a similar path that we would in a car - and pull into that right hand lane and run in that lane as soon as we turn a corner, instead of looking up at the next turn in front of us and running directly towards it (and staying in the left lane for a while in the process.)

To demonstrate just how much difference this can make, I did a test at Onondaga Lake Park. I did multiple loops of "Angela's Try-angle" with two different mindsets. The first was to run it as if it was closed off to traffic and I was running it attempting to do the shortest path possible. The second was to run it as if it was a training run and I was being polite and staying to the extreme right at all points. I did just over 3 loops each - just enough to get to 1.25 miles for the optimum path case. The results are very telling.

First check out the optimum (tangential) case:

And then the right hand side case:


Click around on those pages to see the details. I attempted to have them as close as possible but went a few steps further in the right hand side case. It worked out that if I had stopped at the same point I think I would have nailed the exact time for both, but this was close enough.
The summary -
Optimum path: 1.26 miles in 10:15 or 8:10 per mile.
Right hand path: 1.32 miles in 10:17 or 7:49 per mile.

If this was a race course I would have gotten credit for crossing the same finish line in both cases. But just on the choices I made - I added .06 miles to my race distance. That may not seem like that much, but it is a huge difference - I'll round down to a 4% increase. In a 5k that would be an extra 1/8th of a mile. In a half marathon that would be over an extra half a mile. Then obviously for a full marathon that would be over a mile extra that you would be adding.

The other way to think about it this is even easier to visualize the difference. I finished the same exact race in the same exact time but due to the path I ran, the dumber me had to run almost 20 seconds faster per mile faster than the smarter me just to keep up. If I had thought ahead I would have wore my heart rate monitor to show exactly how much harder my body was working, but I didn't, so I'll just say that there was a major difference. Sadly, I was basically dieing in the dumber case and couldn't wait to stop. (Even Escalade could have seen how much I was huffing and puffing.)

The test I did was extreme and I wouldn't expect anyone to actually make that bad of decisions in a race, but from what I see people doing, I have no doubt that people add 2+% to some race courses. (Depends on the number of turns taken and the width of roads, etc.) For those of you with GPS watches, you quickly learn that you need to run further than the race distance to finish the race. The goal is to keep that extra to a minimum.

Since you are an enlightened TRYer if you are reading this, please do yourselves a favor for me. When race day comes, don't run the roads like you drive them, or even how you train on them. When the roads are closed off, they belong to you. So, do what you can to run the optimum path through the course. It can easily make the difference between finishing a long race strong or fading at the finish. And it can even more easily make the difference between a PR or not. The best part, is that the gains are for free. You don't need to do anything extra to save 2-4% other than to use your head. Your legs take enough abuse on race day, lighten their load by abusing your brain a little too. :-)

(Unrelated comments - for those of you who don't have a GPS watch, definitely click around on the page that "View Details" takes you to. The map and the splits and the details available can be really helpful to keep track of your training and your racing -- and as I said above I forgot to wear my heart rate which would have been a graph as well. So, think about what you are missing out on and realize that the price of the GPS watches like mine - are dropping by the day.)

[Editors note, as I proofread the entry above, I decided that it wasn't quite meaty enough, so here is an addition to bulk it up.]

For a more real world example, I grabbed a portion of the Boilermaker course where its cleared out enough to maneuver and where I always see a herd of sheep as I round the corner. The lesson, once again, is don't curve into the right hand lane just because the person in front of you is. Or because that is what you would do in a car. (Don't be yellow!) Turn the corner, look up, and pick as straight of a line as you can for that upcoming right hand turn. (Be red!)



As for the blue line on the map? All I can say is, "It's electric! Booogie-woogie-wooogie-wooooh!" (But unless you are dressed up as a cow, you don't want to be that guy either. Line dancers make for some of the least efficient course runners you'll ever encounter.)