Congratulations! An enjoyable race (even in that icky weather!) with a negative split is yay! I totally know that feeling of wanting to walk, but not feeling like you have to, the "this could be over any time, really, I could be done" feeling.
The reason your watches read long is because 1) if it's a certified course, it's required to be at least marathon distance (which is some complex number actually in km) along the very shortest possible distance someone could run, so therefore it's going to be a little over to ensure this [at least in the US, I assume in Europe as well], 2) you are certainly not going to run every tangent perfectly and thus achieve that very shortest path, and 3) there's always a little GPS error.
Most of my certified-course marathons were 26.3 by my watch but a few were 26.5 and Baltimore was 26.8 - I figure that was because it was a hot day and I was running the shade rather than the tangents, and also, LOTS of turns and zigs and zags, and also it was an old Garmin 301 which wasn't all that accurate especially around the tall buildings of downtown.
How did ell do? I see her anticipatory blog post, but no results!
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The reason your watches read long is because 1) if it's a certified course, it's required to be at least marathon distance (which is some complex number actually in km) along the very shortest possible distance someone could run, so therefore it's going to be a little over to ensure this [at least in the US, I assume in Europe as well], 2) you are certainly not going to run every tangent perfectly and thus achieve that very shortest path, and 3) there's always a little GPS error.
Most of my certified-course marathons were 26.3 by my watch but a few were 26.5 and Baltimore was 26.8 - I figure that was because it was a hot day and I was running the shade rather than the tangents, and also, LOTS of turns and zigs and zags, and also it was an old Garmin 301 which wasn't all that accurate especially around the tall buildings of downtown.
How did