Waterford...Report on the Waterford Viking Marathon - Sat 28th June 2014

The third Waterford Viking Marathon was held on Saturday the 28th of June 2014. This year saw the introduction of a new quarter marathon option.

A look at the numbers....

First off, you can see that the numbers in the marathon have declined over the three years. It's understandable that the first year would get a lot of entrants as many people from Waterford would want to run a marathon in their home city and it would have had a certain novelty factor. Still though, the numbers in the marathon were down 20% this year on the numbers for 2013. Interestingly enough, the numbers in the full event in the Cork City Marathon were also down this year so maybe it's just a choice of so many events?

In contrast, the half-marathon continues to grow. The numbers this year were up 13% on 2013.

Oddly enough, the percentage of women in each event seems to be dropping. In the marathon, the percentage of women went from 23.7% in 2012 to 17.4% in 2013 to 15.6% this year. In the half-marathon, the percentage of women also dropped....going from 53.3% in 2012 to 48.6% in 2013 to 43.2% in 2014.

The percentage of women in the new Quarter Marathon this year was 67.5% of the field of 576 finishers.

Report on the 2014 Marathon...I ran the full marathon as one of the 3:45 pacers having done it last year as well. This year, the course was changed again for the third time in as many years. It started off by taking in a loop in around the streets of the centre of Waterford City. This was a really nice section and took visitors to the city around historic areas that they may have never seen before.

The next section took in two loops around the south side of the city. I remember thinking at around the 10k mark that it seemed quite hilly as marathons go and I'm not sure if you would consider it as being a fast marathon course. As someone who doesn't really know Waterford City, I still thought it was nice to see various parts of the city like this.

After the 8 mile mark, we began the journey south to Tramore on the coast. Everything seemed fine up until after the 9 mile mark. There were two of us pacing and our group had a constant cushion of about 20-40 seconds over the target time.

Marathon Course Error.......Once we got to the 10 mile mark, our time was way out. Even though we had kept a reasonably even pace, we now had a cushion of about 3 minutes as opposed to something like 30 seconds. Either we had run the last mile in about 6 minutes instead of 8:30...which we hadn't...or the 10 mile mark was in the wrong spot....which it was.

i.e. The 10 mile mark for the half marathon and full marathon was actually at about 9.7 miles.

The graphic below shows the area around the 10 mile mark. On the left is the map that is on the race website. On the right is someones GPS plot of where they actually ran.

I'm a bit reluctant to believe everything that is shown on a MapMyRun map or to have completely blind fate in GPS readings but it does suggest a possible problem.

On the right, the plot shows how we ran towards the roundabout from the city (top).....then out about 200m and back 200m. From here, the half-marathon runners ran back in towards the city while the full marathon runners headed south towards Tramore.

It's important to note that we actually hit the 10 mile sign before we reached the roundabout. The map suggests that it should have been on the out and back section.

The map also suggests that the out and back section should have been about 400-450 metres out and the same back......instead of 200m.

For the subsequent markers...11 miles on....we found that we were out by about 400-500m.

As pacers, it was obvious at that stage that the mile markers were out and all we could do was to hope that a few were put in the wrong spot and they would correct themselves later on the course. This has happened in other marathons so it's not unknown.

In Waterford however, the mile markers were out all of the way to the finish line. i.e. the actual marathon course was at least 400-500 metres short. This seems to be borne out by others with readings of about 26.0 miles on their GPS watches. You would expect to see readings around 26.3-26.4 miles.

What this means for someone running say a 3:30 marathon was that their time was at least 2 minutes faster than it should have been.

I'm not sure what the story was with the half marathon, whether that course was short or not? They did however share the same 10 mile mark which came early for them as well.

For people that trained specifically for a time, having a marathon course that is short is unforgivable. In the 2013 event, the local council had put out some barriers in the wrong spot which resulted in the course being slightly too long. This year, it was too short. The problem is that Waterford will get a reputation as an event where the course is always wrong and one to avoid doing.

In conclusion........I just feel disappointed for the event itself. Just about everything else was really good. It feels kind of strange being able to run around the streets of Waterford and still manage to get to the coast...run around Tramore...and back and all in the space of the marathon distance. As a location and course, it's one of the better events in the country. It's a nice event with loads of positives about it and should be getting 9 out of 10. It should have the status as being the premier running event in the south-east of the country. However, the most important thing in any event like this is that the distances of each course has to be correct. Who wants to train for months and run a course that's short by hundreds of metres? Having a accurate course should be a given and it should be the number one priority. This year at least, the organisers failed in that regard.

Results.......The results are available on the Precision Timing website HERE

Comments......Did you run the full marathon or half? What did you think of the course? The measurements? Leave a comment...

Update...Sun 29th June @8pm : Thanks to the comments left here and on other sites, it would seem the following is likely...
1) The Half-Marathon course was accurate and was not short.
2) The 10 mile mark was on the wrong side of the road. It should have been on the other side of the road and would have been the 10 mile mark for half-marathon runners on their way back after the out and back section at the roundabout.
3) The full marathon runners should have been taken out further on the out and back section to make up that extra 0.3 miles or so. Their 10 mile mark would have been on this out and back section. The alternative would have been to make up the distance in Tramore.