Twenty participants from 17 countries attended the Road Course Measurement Seminar held in the IAAF Regional Development Center (RDC) in Cairo from 3-5 June.

The accurate measurement of road courses is one of the fundamental requirements for IAAF approval (and for membership of AIMS), and is essential for ratification of records and recognition of qualifying times for participation in the IAAF World Championships and Olympic Games. For road running to expand successfully it is essential that an international pool of qualified measurers is built up, with each of them able to accurately measure a course and document that measurement.
Africa lacks qualified measurers and this seminar for measurers from the Arab-speaking countries was part of the IAAF response to this need.

IAAF/AIMS ‘A’ measurer Hugh Jones, General Secretary of AIMS (Association of International Marathons and Distance Races), who is the International Measurement Administrator for English speaking Europe and Africa, was the course lecturer.

Participants had various degrees of experience, but all were taken through the full range of procedures required to accurately measure first a simple and then a more complex course and a typical ‘lap’ as used for race walking competitions.

After a brief explanation of the principles of course measurement, the first step was to fit the ubiquitous Jones/Oerth counter to the bicycles. The counter is the essential tool of road course measurement, providing an extremely accurate reading of distance when correctly calibrated. This is done by means of a calibration course – a flat piece of road with a similar road surface as the course to be measured, that has been measured using a steel tape to determine its exact length.

The bicycle wheel is placed over the starting point (a nail driven into the ground) and the bicycle is ridden in a straight line to the end of the calibration course. The number of counts registered during this ride is noted before returning to the starting position and again noting the number. This procedure is repeated. The average number of counts registered during one ride is divided by the length of the calibration course (in this case 350m) and yields a “constant” indicating the number of counts registered for each metre.
This number is then multiplied by 1.001 to build in a correction factor which accommodates the known margin of error in the measurement method.

After calibrating their bicycles, participants then measured a straightforward course, with step-by-step tuition through all the procedures needed to achieve an accurate result, including re-calibrating the bikes after the course measurement to account for any change in conditions during the measurement. The initial “working” constant and the later “finish” constant are averaged to produce the figure to be used in the final calculation of the course distance.

With these elementary procedures well instilled in the students, the course ended with the more complex task of measuring a 2km lap course, where they learnt the principles of creating a course with a precise length, requiring the adjustment of start and finish points and the calculation of turns.

Following the completion of the course, Hugh Jones commented to the IAAF RDC Cairo Director Dr Abdel Rahim Hamdi: “I think that the seminar went well, despite my early fears over the number of those participating. It was a difficult task to manage so many people but proved possible because of the excellent facilities and organisation, and also because of the attitude, attention and aptitude of the participants.

“I felt that they came away with a working knowledge of how to measure a road race course and that they would be able to do this if given the possibility. Of course, it is always different to work in the „real world“ (with traffic!) than it is in a seminar situation, but I think the group have a solid understanding of the principles to follow, and may be able to apply them.
A number of the students show every indication that they will go on to become accredited measurers, and I hope that this will indeed happen.”

Recognition also came for the great help provided by the RDC Director and his Staff: “The success of the seminar was in no small part down to the help given by you and your staff – the translators, the bike mechanics and the backroom administrative staff.”

IAAF
Sean Wallace-Jones
Road Running Coordination
IAAF Monaco
www.iaaf.org