Mr_Incr3dible
50 miles at 55!
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2021
I've seen discussion online elsewhere and on our Dis forums about how far our GPS watches said we ran vs 26.2 miles.
First of all is the accuracy of our GPS watches. They are good, but not nearly precise enough to go griping to a race director that the race is 100 yards too long. There is also the aspect of running the tangents and how much of a difference it makes, which is what I was focused on.
Being an engineer and wondering about the numbers, I decided to investigate.
Process: I looked at the course map and put into Excel most of the turns in the marathon course. These range from the very tight turns winding through under-construction parts of Epcot to the on-ramps to the overpasses to the large sweepers and more medium size turns. I also assumed a standard road width of 12 feet, plus I used maps of Disney to get some of the turn radii.
Since I know you want to know, there are around 100 turns in the Marathon course. Some of them in the parks, particularly the Epcot construction areas are so tight that I discarded them as having little difference between running the tangents or not. So my raw data was 71 turns left and right.
My former running habit was to pick one side of the road or the other and stay there throughout the race instead of running apex to apex in the turns. The question is how many feet are saved over the course of the marathon by hitting the apexes (tangents)?
Of the 71 turns that were significant enough to discern and map, 38 of them were left turns and since the whole course is more or less counter-clockwise, I counted only the LH turns, with the assumption that for someone on the RH side of the road, they were already minimizing the distance for RH turns.
Ready for some numbers?
For one of the large 270-degree loops onto or off an overpass, staying on the outside of the road will add appx 75 feet!
For one of the large sweeper turns, about 20 feet.
For a 90-degree turn from one lane to the other, about 75 feet (this one I went out and measured in my neighborhood. Cutting that corner saves a lot.)
For the more medium size turns, I used a local traffic circle and figured on 1/4 turn of it. You save 23 feet.
My grand total over the course of the race: 1368 feet, or .26 of a mile!
Admittedly this is very imprecise vs staying on one side of the course and measuring with a measuring wheel, but the assumptions should even out from where corner distances are over/under assumed, plus this was on the conservative side by not counting some of short twisty-turns in the parks, especially Epcot and HS. So figure at least 1/4 mile you can save by hitting all the apexes at Disney. That is 2.5 minutes of extra time for a 10 min/mile pace.
FWIW, I hit nearly every tangent and my Garmin watch logged 26.28 miles for the full marathon. YMMV, but this is what I came up with.
First of all is the accuracy of our GPS watches. They are good, but not nearly precise enough to go griping to a race director that the race is 100 yards too long. There is also the aspect of running the tangents and how much of a difference it makes, which is what I was focused on.
Being an engineer and wondering about the numbers, I decided to investigate.
Process: I looked at the course map and put into Excel most of the turns in the marathon course. These range from the very tight turns winding through under-construction parts of Epcot to the on-ramps to the overpasses to the large sweepers and more medium size turns. I also assumed a standard road width of 12 feet, plus I used maps of Disney to get some of the turn radii.
Since I know you want to know, there are around 100 turns in the Marathon course. Some of them in the parks, particularly the Epcot construction areas are so tight that I discarded them as having little difference between running the tangents or not. So my raw data was 71 turns left and right.
My former running habit was to pick one side of the road or the other and stay there throughout the race instead of running apex to apex in the turns. The question is how many feet are saved over the course of the marathon by hitting the apexes (tangents)?
Of the 71 turns that were significant enough to discern and map, 38 of them were left turns and since the whole course is more or less counter-clockwise, I counted only the LH turns, with the assumption that for someone on the RH side of the road, they were already minimizing the distance for RH turns.
Ready for some numbers?
For one of the large 270-degree loops onto or off an overpass, staying on the outside of the road will add appx 75 feet!
For one of the large sweeper turns, about 20 feet.
For a 90-degree turn from one lane to the other, about 75 feet (this one I went out and measured in my neighborhood. Cutting that corner saves a lot.)
For the more medium size turns, I used a local traffic circle and figured on 1/4 turn of it. You save 23 feet.
My grand total over the course of the race: 1368 feet, or .26 of a mile!
Admittedly this is very imprecise vs staying on one side of the course and measuring with a measuring wheel, but the assumptions should even out from where corner distances are over/under assumed, plus this was on the conservative side by not counting some of short twisty-turns in the parks, especially Epcot and HS. So figure at least 1/4 mile you can save by hitting all the apexes at Disney. That is 2.5 minutes of extra time for a 10 min/mile pace.
FWIW, I hit nearly every tangent and my Garmin watch logged 26.28 miles for the full marathon. YMMV, but this is what I came up with.
