Lucas McAneney wins Oakville half-marathon; Update: course length questions addressed

The Oakville half-marathon and 10K saw an excellent turnout of more than 2000 participants on a cool, sunny morning in southern Ontario.

Elite marathoner Lucas McAneney won the half-marathon in 1:10:56, with Predrag Miladenovic coming in second in 1:13:22 and Dan Way of Toronto rounding out the podium in 1:16:05.

Torontonian Allison Drynan won on the women’s side in 1:23:06. Elizabeth Primrose and Suzy Schumacher battled it out for second and third place, finishing 16 seconds apart.

CBC’s Scott Russell was on hand, as he launched a lead up to Sports Day in Canada (Sept. 29) by running the course and helping with the post-race ceremonies. Sports Day in Canada is a joint effort by ParticipACTION, True Sport and the CBC which celebrates sport at every level across the country.

There were participants who commented that the course was long. Runners indicated after the race that the course could be between 250m-400m long. A half-marathon is 21.0975K in length. There was also talk that the 10K was roughly 150m long and that the start line may have been moved, causing the distance change.

The Oakville Half-Marathon site does indicate that it is an Athletics Ontario certified measured course. According to the website coursemeasurement.ca, the course was measured by Peter Pimm, a Toronto area coach.

A certified course can not be short, but is allowed 0.1% leeway in being long. Course measurers add an extra meter to each kilometre measured, as to guarantee that the course not be short. Courses are also measured with tight tangents and it is the responsibility of the runner to run the tightest possible line through the course.

This was the second course over the weekend to have had runners wondering if they’d ran further than they needed. The RFH Marathon 10K was 150m long, although race organizers were aware of this and did inform runners in advance. Earlier this year, the Whistler Half-Marathon was over 1K short, causing frustration for those that participated.

Update:

Canadian Running spoke with Peter Pimm, who measured the certified course in 2008. Pimm is a coach and respected member of the Ontario running community and has measured many courses for certification. Courses are measured by a qualified measurer and then submitted to Athletics Canada/Athletics Ontario for certification.

Pimm compared the his course notes from the measurement with the course description on the website and two potential differences emerged. The first was a question regarding the exact placement of the start line of the course. The second was a deviation from the original course in the 2012 course description, where runners are to travel along Carey Rd. This aspect of the course was not in the 2008 measurement, and by Pimm’s estimate may have added 200m to the length of the course.

Race director Ben McCarty provided the following statement this morning about question regarding the length of the course:

I am investigating the route situation at the moment, but as it stands and as the route was set up, it was the correct Half marathon distance. We moved the start line for the half, approx 250 metres back on lakeshore Rd which altered the north-east corner of the route and this is to equalize the distance. The original route is certified by Athletics Canada and with the minor change it was re-measured by myself twice and my Technical Director twice. There were two female records broken on this route this weekend, by a substantial margin, so too criticize the route and have some runners upset, I hesitate to believe that the distance was inaccurate and too long. As I mentioned I am still investigating whether the course was set up as intended and will not make any further decisions at this point.

When asked about the deviation from the course from the measurement Pimm provided that certified the course in 2008, McCarty said via email Tuesday morning, “there was some construction on Linbrook earlier in the year and we were unsure if it would be completed, we also needed to get the start line for the 10K/half in the same spot. We used the 10K start line for both and had to slightly alter the Carey Rd. corner to equalize it. It’s the 2008 course with the slight change.”

McCarty has indicated that he is still investigating whether the course was set-up as was intended by the organizers and that he would get back to Canadian Running if there is anything further to report, but that at this point he believes the course was accurately measured. It does appear that the course is not the same course that was certified in 2008. The Oakville Half-Marathon site does indicate that the course is certified, with the Athletics Ontario certification number: ON-2008-001-JHC. This number matches the certification number from Pimms’ 2008 measured course. ON-2008-001-JHC