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Record-eligible road course criteria

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A world record can only be set on a road course that satisfies two geometric conditions in addition to being certified for distance. The straight-line separation between start and finish must not exceed 50 percent of the race distance — for a marathon, about 21.1 km. And the net decrease in elevation from start to finish must not exceed one metre per kilometre, about 42 m over a marathon. Neither rule is about difficulty. Both exist to stop a course borrowing speed from something other than the runner: a strong prevailing tailwind on a long straight point-to-point route, or gravity on a net downhill. The rules are the reason the oldest annual marathon in the world can never produce a world record, and the reason two flat city-centre loops have produced most of them.

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Assembled from 18 blocks · 1 evidence · 23 related

  1. Story
  2. A world record can only be set on a road course that satisfies two geometric conditions in addition to being certified for distance. The straight-line separation between start and finish must not exceed 50 percent of the race distance — for a marathon, about 21.1 km. And the net decrease in elevation from start to finish must not exceed one metre per kilometre, about 42 m over a marathon. Neither rule is about difficulty. Both exist to stop a course borrowing speed from something other than the runner: a strong prevailing tailwind on a long straight point-to-point route, or gravity on a net downhill. The rules are the reason the oldest annual marathon in the world can never produce a world record, and the reason two flat city-centre loops have produced most of them.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Record-eligible road course criteria
  5. World Athletics
  6. Connections
  7. World Athletics
  8. Boston Marathon
  9. Tokyo Marathon
  10. Tokyo redesigns its course for speed
  11. Record-eligible road course criteria
  12. Carbon-plated road racing shoe
  13. The marathon distance (42.195 km / 26 miles 385 yards)
  14. The international federation is founded
  15. The 1908 distance becomes the world standard
  16. World Athletics regulates the racing shoe
  17. Evidence
  18. A record-eligible road course must have start and finish no further apart in a straight line than 50 percent of the race distance, and a net elevation decrease no greater than 1 m per km. V55 verification basis: read through an attributed search summary; the current World Athletics rule number and revision date were not confirmed.
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/atlas?object=CONCEPT_RECORD_ELIGIBLE_COURSE&experience=CONCEPT_RECORD_ELIGIBLE_COURSE