Awards at races are given out based on the TIME that you cross the finish line.
Personally if you want to improve your running speed, shouldn’t you be looking at PACE not time. After all, some 5ks are calculated at 3.03 miles and others at 3.15 miles. The same goes for 10Ks, 15ks and Half Marathons.
Naples Half
Santa Clarita Half
Obviously, the longer the course, the slower your finish time will be.
So I thought that I ran faster for my 5K on Nov. 24 than for my 5K on Nov, 26. I finished in 27:58 on Nov 24 and in 28:11 on Nov. 26.
As you can see my PACE was faster on Nov 26 (8:57/mi) even though my time was slower. The 5K course was longer!
So maybe I should re-calculate my PRs and revise my future racing goals!!
Happy Running! What’s more important to you – time or pace?
My First 5K and More... 
Wow…I don’t run a lot of races like you do, but that is a very interesting perspective and one that I don’t think many consider. I think most of the “rank and file” honestly believe that a “certified” course means that if one runs all the tangents, the distance covered will be scary-close to the posted amount. I like the way you’re thinking though…it makes a lot of sense.
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for me: time
the courses may be the exact same lenght and you ran it differently and took the turns differently also…wider instead of closer to the curb…also Garmin is not 100% accurate…2 people can run next to each other for a half and in the end one will have 13.13 and the other will have 13.19 using same model of Garmin. I have seen it before.
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I second Carolines comment above.
GPS has noise always (which can get worse in the rain and with trees/skyscrapers blocking ) and you have to run perfect line to get the true course distance…anything else and the distance goes up.
Assume it was a chip timed race, the race time is correct.
I find I usually have to run about 5s/mile faster on my Garmin to hit a pace I want in an actual race. I use pace bands during longer races (13+) to see how I’m doing in reality vs the garmin and then I know how far off the garmin is. Of course after hours of running the ability to do simple math goes right out the window! 8-D
But yes, I also think it terms of pace ….I barely remember my PR times, mostly I remember the paces.
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I don’t race races, so I go by pace. However, on the off chance I actually race a race then it is all about my finishing time. What are you going to go by?
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