An interesting update on the Brighon Half Marathon

I've felt the aches and pains of the day today, getting to, and around work.  I've also felt it was well worth while for the effort of yesterdays race.  One thing I didn't mention of the race yesterday was something I noticed when I finished the race.  I linked my time yesterday, to the workout with the map, route statistics and all that boring technical stuff you can over analyse while training.  I doubt anyone has looked at it, but if you did you will see that my phone gps recorded a route of 22.27km.  A half marathon should be in fact 21km.

As I did really well, I kind of ignored the fact.  There could have been a little discrepancy with the gps location for the start and finish, I didn't start and stop the device right on the line.  But over 1km?  Yeah, I ignored it, I was a happy man.

Today, I went to the official website again, and they acknowledged this:

Brighton Half Marathon 2012 distance acknowledgement

Race Organisers of the Brighton Half Marathon have acknowledged today (Monday 20th February) that due to human error the course was extended to a total distance of 13.42 miles.

The Race Organisers have confirmed that ‘The Brighton Half Marathon is a UKA licensed course measuring exactly 13.1 miles, we have however received feedback from various runners that the total distance measured on their training devices showed a distance of over 13.1 miles. We can now confirm after investigation that the total distance covered by each runner in the Brighton Half Marathon on 19 February 2012 was 13.42 miles. This has been investigated and is human error due to a misplaced turnaround between mile 4 and 5.’

The Race Director said: ‘We take full responsibility for this human error and would like to issue our most sincere apologies to all the runners who experienced disappointment over this. We have taken all feedback into account, we will be implementing some new additional measures ready for the 2013
race to prevent this from happening again.’

Action has been taken to amend the runners’ times on the Brighton Half Marathon website, taking the extra distance into account. This will be live on www.brightonhalfmarathon.com at 4.00 pm today in the results section.

The Brighton Half Marathon is a hugely successful event with this year seeing blue skies and sunshine, welcoming 7,427 runners to the 22nd edition of the race.

The Brighton Half Marathon had been growing steadily over the last couple of years and the 2012 race sold out in record time with all 10,500 places snapped up by 18th November 2011.

The Brighton Half Marathon organisers hope that their sincere apologies to all the runners will be accepted along with amendments to the runners’ times and measures to prevent repetition of this in future races.

My bonus from all this is I now have an official time with the event of 1:38:55.

The modified time, taken from the Brighton Half Marathon results page

I feel even better, but feel like an athlete that gets given a medal after the one above has been disqualified.  I didn't do that time for real, and didn't get to feel that pride and satisfaction right after crossing the line.

Saying that, however, the event was well organised, the regular updates I received building up to the race itself, the organisation on the day, the smooth start and finish, all made it one of my favourites yet.  I hope it doesn't effect them too greatly, and it can continue to be a seasonal highlight.

But, for some people, they may not have hit their goal, and don't feel the satisfaction I feel in now absolutely smashing mine.

I'll have a wee dram to celebrate.