track lenght

ultraman1

whats the lenght of the of the second,third and fourth lanes on a 400 metre track(e)

dev123

A quick look on-line gave me this

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0141.htm

Hope this helps

Aimman

ultraman1 wrote: »

whats the lenght of the of the second,third and fourth lanes on a 400 metre track(e)

Tell you what. I'll run on each lane with my garmin and I'll get back to you

ultraman1

Aimman wrote: »

Tell you what. I'll run on each lane with my garmin and I'll get back to you

u know and i know those garming thingys are not accurate;)

xebec

Depends on the width of the lanes...

Calculator here: http://www.csgnetwork.com/disttracklanecalc.html

Aimman

ultraman1 wrote: »

u know and i know those garming thingys are not accurate;)

Second lane is for pussies anyway, stick to the fast inside lane and dont worry about the maths.:)

ultrapercy

ive always found Garmin to be very accurate, on all permited measured courses it reads to within 20 meters or .01 of a mile.Thats fairly accurate.

asimonov

ultrapercy wrote: »

ive always found Garmin to be very accurate, on all permited measured courses it reads to within 20 meters or .01 of a mile.Thats fairly accurate.

have you ever used one on a track workout? they're really inconsistent. I've run workouts like 6 X 800's at exactly the same time 2:38 and it would give length ranges from 795m - 820m

gerard65

ultrapercy wrote: »

ive always found Garmin to be very accurate, on all permited measured courses it reads to within 20 meters or .01 of a mile.Thats fairly accurate.

Not around a 400m track. Tracking tends to be all over the place. Garmins are good in a straight line but hopeless on bends.

menoscemo

gerard65 wrote: »

Not around a 400m track. Tracking tends to be all over the place. Garmins are good in a straight line but hopeless on bends.

Exactly, check out my track session from tonight (zoom into the track and hit bird's eye view).

theflash800

Correct me if im wrong...
measure the distance between the start line for the second lane of a 400 race and the main start line... and add 400... sumtin like 408m ish?

Aimman

GPS usually has a 40m tolerance inaccuracy. Because the GPS system iscontrolled by the US, the tolerance can be changed during war, threats etc. changing the accuracy to 100m in defensive manouvers and making it almost pinpoint accuracy when US military strikes are imminent. Dont think they make it ultra accurate for the likes of mini marathons etc.

ultrapercy

its down to how you take the bends, if you corner tight wearing unit on your left hand it will probably read under 400m.I think 2nd lane is 8 meters longer than lane 1 and unless your a 1st class sprinter your unlikely to run a consistant line, probably enough deviation to represent my afore mentioned 20 meters a mile.

gerard65

Aimman wrote: »

GPS usually has a 40m tolerance inaccuracy. Because the GPS system iscontrolled by the US, the tolerance can be changed during war, threats etc. changing the accuracy to 100m in defensive manouvers and making it almost pinpoint accuracy when US military strikes are imminent. Dont think they make it ultra accurate for the likes of mini marathons etc.

I don't think its works that way. Watching a program on GPS the other evening and without going into all the science its more to do with time rather than distance. The european system due to come into effect in the next couple of years will be alot more accurate due to better timing mechanisms on board the satellites. GPS is a very old system at this stage.
BTW since when has the US military strikes been pinpoint?

asimonov

I wear it on my left hand and probably corner consistently if not exactly tight. But if you were to judge your workout paces based on the garmin pace, you'd be all over the shop. This conflicts a bit with the claim they are accurate. The GPS part of a garmin is redundant on a track. Essential for road workouts though.

The Wee runner

I never thought there would be any difference in the length of the lanes. Why are ye being so scientific ? Ultra-percy i think you do more thinking than running!! Are you talking about a garmin for a car ? My rolex watch seems very accurate !!

BeepBeep67

My last 2 track races 1 mile and 1500 have shown about +100mts on the Garmin and that was pretty consistent when compared with a few others.

Aimman

gerard65 wrote: »

I don't think its works that way. Watching a program on GPS the other evening and without going into all the science its more to do with time rather than distance. The european system due to come into effect in the next couple of years will be alot more accurate due to better timing mechanisms on board the satellites. GPS is a very old system at this stage.
BTW since when has the US military strikes been pinpoint?

Without going off topic, I did work with in a project a few years ago which involved photos and GPS tagging. It was a known feature of GPS that the accuracy was desensitised for the majority of the time, but when there was an air-strike planned, the tolerance was greatly improved briefly to help US attacks.


I'm sure when the European system comes into operation, it should be a lot more accurate.

rainbow kirby

menoscemo wrote: »

Exactly, check out my track session from tonight (zoom into the track and hit bird's eye view).

Just like mine - some very tight cornering on one lap (and I did the entire session in lanes 2/3)

BeepBeep67

rainbow kirby wrote: »

Just like mine - some very tight cornering on one lap (and I did the entire session in lanes 2/3)

Nice jump over the Clinton building

RoyMcC

No wonder your times are so fast RK.

robinph

Warning: Random numbers pulled out of robinph's rear end approaching...but approximately this is what happened:

US puts up loads of satellites, uses them to help troops and bombs find their target.
Without the secret US codes the best anyone else can get with accuracy is to several hundred meters in any direction.
Clinton decides to reduce the inaccuracy for non-military uses, the consumer GPS market is born.
Consumer devices will have accuracy down to at best 3m'ish.
With a big fancy receiver that you'd not be able to wear on your arm you can get closer to a meter accuracy.
With a military sensor then you'll get less than a meter accuracy.

The variability that the US adds into the system does not improve when they are about to bomb people, if anything it will get worse as they will mess up the chances of the "enemy" being able to tell where they are so accurately. That does not effect the sensitivity of the US units though.

RayCun

rainbow kirby wrote: »

Just like mine - some very tight cornering on one lap (and I did the entire session in lanes 2/3)

In fairness, the pair of you had been drinking heavily beforehand

dna_leri

ultraman1 wrote: »

whats the lenght of the of the second,third and fourth lanes on a 400 metre track(e)

If you really want to know the length of the lanes with military precision, check where the 400m start positions are. These are the solid white lines in each lane about 8m from the finish in lane 2, about 16m in lane 3 etc. Measure the distance from the finish line (e.g. lane 2 = 7.95 m) as precisely as you need and you have your answer. I find pacing these few meters is as accurate as you need to know and still better than them garmin thingys which are not for real (i.e. track) runners.

Condo131

On the original Q. Use one of the calculators suggested earlier, or else use a rule of thumb of 8.75m longer for each lane, i.e. 408.75 in lane 2, 417 in lane 3 etc. Don't worry about higher accuracy - if you're that bothered, start at the sprint marks. That's ok for 200/400, but you're scuttled for anything longer. I use lane 3, line to line, and allow 3 secs per lap. Works for me.

Wrt GPS, if you use it on a track, take a look at your route in satellite view. That'll be an eye-opener!! All over the gaff! Furthermore, I'd be VERY surprised if you managed to get down to 1.01 times on an accurate course. As a course measurer, few people run their races as I do, yet I can't get down to 1.01 on an accurate course. I just check some recent runs: 5.09 (5 - Midleton), 4.07 (4 - Jannsen), 6.31 (10k - UCC), 4.07 (4 - Ballintotis) and 10.14 (10 - Ballycotton). There is only one accurate measurement - calibrated Jones counter.

shels4ever

You can use the markings on the track to tell where to start from but if your jus running laps in lane 3 you can et your calc out and do all the math

http://fulltext.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/1998/wa/dimplay/athtrack.pdf

rainbow kirby

RayCun wrote: »

In fairness, the pair of you had been drinking heavily beforehand

Only coffee and water, was behaving myself yesterday :pac:

menoscemo

RayCun wrote: »

In fairness, the pair of you had been drinking heavily beforehand

That doesn't explain me jumping the hedge and running down the N11 on my cooldowns

Krusty_Clown

A couple of points on the subject of GPS accuracy:
1) They're not completely accurate. If you didn't know this when you bought it, you didn't do appropriate research.
2) When looking at GPS tracks overlayed on satellite views, there is no guarantee that the image stitching performed by Google/Microsoft/other is correct or accurate.
3) GPS watches will never perform very well on circular tracks (I'm actually surprised by how good the above tracklogs appear). Even with 1 x second data recording, you're still dealing with up to 3-5m inaccuracy levels.
5) Tracks are typically very accurately measured. Turn your auto-lap off, and manually hit the lap button on each circuit of the track/interval. Pay attention to the time for each lap/interval rather than the pace (which will contain some level of error). In other words, use your expensive watch as a very inexpensive stopwatch.

Sure, your results will be skewed when you upload them to Garmin Connect, but you gotta remember: We train to run better, not to record better statistics on our watches.

robinph

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

We train to run better, not to record better statistics on our watches.

You might. All I'm after is the stats.

Just means I have to do a bit of training sometimes in order to get better numbers.

ultraman1

good to see iv started a thread with meaningful discourse:D...

gerard65

Anyone who still thinks the US Army can fiddle with the GPS accuracy should feck off to 'Conspiracy Theories':cool: Oh, and Bin Laden is still alive, no one ever landed on the moon and the world will end next year!

'Initially, the highest quality signal was reserved for military use, and the signal available for civilian use was intentionally degraded ("Selective Availability", SA). This changed with United States President Bill Clinton ordering Selective Availability turned off at midnight May 1, 2000, improving the precision of civilian GPS from 100 meters (about 300 feet) to 20 meters (about 65 feet). The United States military by then had the ability to deny GPS service to potential adversaries on a regional basis.'

misty floyd

Just adding this to the conversation in case people train on the polo grounds in the phoenix park.

I was doing 800's last night. The distance was marked out on the course by the coach with a meter wheel thing. My garmin recorded each rep as 0.50 or 0.51miles (804mts or 820mts). Four of the 5 reps were 0.51miles according to the garmin. There was a little weaving to avoid crowds so I wasn't positioned on the worn track part at all times.

A full lap was short of the km that I thought it was. I think it was around 880m but I could be wrong.

jlang

May not be true, but I understood that since Clinton's order and the recent ubiquity of GPS chipsets in "everything", the US military (and other uniformed/emergency services) use a very large number of commercial grade GPS units. So many of them that the effect of re-enabling the Selective Availibility feature would be worse for the US than any possible enemy - therefore they have never done so, and are very unlikely to. And it is safe to assume any inaccuracy encountered in Garmin tracks is not down to this feature.

ultraman1

does it count the movement of ur hands...if 1 runner ran with their hands moving naturally(as it would be countinga movement of about a foot in distance either way and while running about 2 metres)) and 1 runner ran with the watch strapd to their head,would the runner with the gps watch on their wrist have a longer distance on their watch?

RayCun

If your hands are moving in line with the direction you're running, it will make no difference to the overall distance recorded. (It might make a tiny difference to your calculated pace at any given moment, but that would even out over a couple of readings)
If you run along the inside track with your hand pointing straight out to the left, Garmin will say you only ran 393.6m :pac:

ultraman1

would the reading give the impression of the total distance of a race,say 5km,plus the distance of ur hands over 5km of ie,1 step forward 1 step back etc etc (hope im makin my self clear..ish:))

Krusty_Clown

As someone else corrected me in one of my moments of weakness, it really doesn't matter where you wear your watch, when the general accuracy is 2-5 metres. You could dangle your watch on a pole 2 metres to your right or swing it on a rope over your head, and still get near identical results. Let's not also forget that most Garmins only record a trackpoint every few seconds.

RayCun

ultraman1 wrote: »

would the reading give the impression of the total distance of a race,say 5km,plus the distance of ur hands over 5km of ie,1 step forward 1 step back etc etc (hope im makin my self clear..ish:))

Oh, I think I see what you mean.

If you had a race that was 1000m, in a straight line, and you ran forward 10m, back 5, forward 10, back 5... until you got to the end, then the Garmin would say you ran over 1000m, because it would catch all the back and forths.

But it doesn't record enough trackpoints to catch your arm moving forward 1.5m, back .5m, forward 1.5m... as you run.

shels4ever

RayCun wrote: »

Oh, I think I see what you mean.

If you had a race that was 1000m, in a straight line, and you ran forward 10m, back 5, forward 10, back 5... until you got to the end, then the Garmin would say you ran over 1000m, because it would catch all the back and forths.

But it doesn't record enough trackpoints to catch your arm moving forward 1.5m, back .5m, forward 1.5m... as you run.

Ah but as your arm moves back as your run , it is actually moving forward just at a slower speed and backwards in relation to your body but forward in relation to the ground unless you have freaky arms

RayCun

you could be a very slow runner with a very vigorous arm action :pac:

gerard65

This thread is just getting silly now:D How did it start, oh ye, the distance of lanes on a 400m track.

ultraman1

ultraman1 wrote: »

good to see iv started a thread with meaningful discourse:D...

:rolleyes:

BeepBeep67

RayCun wrote: »

you could be a very slow runner with a very vigorous arm action :pac:

Are you saying slow runners are [EMAIL="w@nk3rs"]w@nk3rs[/EMAIL]

BarrierReef

400m

if its not, a lot of people need to give back their medals.