This race was not well organized and a mistake on the organizers part cost me first place in my age division.
It was an out and back course on a somewhat secluded trial (forbidden drive). From prior training runs on this trail, my Garmin has not been very accurate, mostly understating total mileage. Prior to the start, the organizer made it clear not to turn around at the 3 mile mark as there will be a volunteer at the 3.1 turn around.
The race started and I went out with the two leaders, the eventual winner and a buddy of mine who is quite a bit faster than me. They had about a 15 meter lead on me at the first mile mark. I crossed the first mile in 5:5x, but my Garmin had the first mile at 6:06. Similar to past 10ks, I went out too fast and it cost me some time overall compared to if I had stayed at my goal pace throughout.
By the time I crossed the 2 mile mark, I was alone in 3rd. There was no way I would catch the leaders. My Garmin read 1.86 miles at this point and I think I crossed the marker around 12:10. About .2 before the 3rd mile mark, I was passed by another guy and I tucked behind him. As we approached the 3rd mile mark, I was surprised that we had not seen the two leaders coming back yet. About 15 seconds later, we saw them with their arms raised in disgust saying that there wasn't a volunteer around and it wasn't clear where to turn around. Me and the guy in 3rd continued going, he had about a 5 meter lead on me. We continued to run until I saw my watch read 3.1 miles. I yelled ahead to him saying it was 3.1 by my watch. He said it was 3.17 by his and asked if we should turn around. We decided to turn around. About .1-.2 miles after we turned around, we saw the volunteer at the official turn around and it turns out 5 people had turned around before us so we were now in 7th and 8th although we could only see 2 of the 5 people. We quickly passed the two and I was again tucked behind the guy I had been running with since before the turn. At this point, I was pretty pissed off about what had happened so I surged and dropped the guy I had been running with. I continued at a good pace and around mile 5, I noticed someone wearing a bib about 50 meters ahead of me running at a good pace. I got within about 10 meters of him just before mile six, but he noticed me coming and put in a final kick and I could not catch him. He finished 9 seconds ahead of me and was the winner of our age group. The person who finished 3rd overall was the top female. Her time was just under 40 minutes so it's hard to say whether or not I would have beat her had I not run the extra distance. The 4th place finisher finished 27 seconds ahead of me so most likely would have beat him as well. The total distance my Garmin read for the race was 6.31 miles (6:39 pace), but I wouldn't be surprised if I ran a longer distance than that given my issues in the past with my Garmin on this trail.
My official time was 2 seconds slower than my PR, but had I run the true race distance, I would have knocked at least 40 seconds of my previous PR and probably more than that.
After the race, I complained and the first two finished also complained on my behalf. The race director personally apologized to me for the error, which made me feel a little bit better, but the overall results were not changed as a result. | 