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Investigation of Trafford 10k 2016:

Three members of the AUKCM have been looking at the course for the Trafford 10k run on 13 March 2016. Here is a summary of our investigations:

The AUKCM decided two further investigations should be carried out:

4 Apr. Dene Townend carried out a check of the Middlewood Way Baseline, using his bike calibrated on his home baseline. He found the Middlewood Way baseline to be 0.5% short of the 400m length which had been used for its length. This would have caused any courses measured using the Middlewood Way Baseline to be short. Dene then met with Brian Porter and together they remeasured the Trafford 10k course. Conditions were wet with pools of water in some places. Dene carefully rode the shortest line going through the puddles where necessary and found it to be short of 10k by 100.8m. Brian followed behind observing Dene's riding line and confirmed he used the Shortest possible route. Brian did not follow the shortest possible line since he avoided the puddles so got a longer result, but still 85m short of 10k. Dene's summary is available as a pdf here

The way forward:

The original measurer retired 3 years ago and no longer has his records, so at present we dont know how it happened that the baseline was wrongly laid out. Although it remains a prime responsibility for the measurer to layout his baseline accurately with a steel tape according to the IAAF/AIMS international procedures. For detials of the layout procedure see this page from our training lessons. The AUKCM will investigate provision of making a baseline checking service available to its measurers.