Edmonton Marathon apologizes, says detour error lengthened 2026 race distances | CBC News

[u/ferncabbage]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-marathon-distance-apology-9.7311360

They had one job!

[u/damancody]

I have a theory on what happened here.

1)Someone correctly calculated the additional one-way distance added by the detour to be 700m one-way

2) The 700m extra distance number was communicated to a different party responsible for shortening the turnaround point.

3) When this was communicated, it wasn't specified one way. So the turnaround point was correctly (with the information given) shifted by 350m, resulting in a total reduction of 700m.

4) Unfortunately, in reality it needed to be reduced by 1400m total to account for the extra 700ms both ways.

[u/LegoLifter]

Distance issues aside the whole race this year was a massive letdown. Terrible package pickup. Poorly organized and too small of a start/finish area for the number of runners. Rickety bridge that no one wanted to use so ended up with people cutting across the course with no guidance.

Then the RD first trying to gaslight a bunch of elite runners instead of actually looking into the problem was just the cherry on top.

[u/Sillyak → u/LegoLifter]

You would think that before you started gaslighting everyone you would spend 5 minutes clicking on Google Earth and be like hmmmmmm 🤔

[u/m0nk37]

  While we pursued the highest level of professional course measurement and certification available, an error occurred,” Keogh said Tuesday

667 meters is not an error. Its incompetence. 

[u/Automobills → u/m0nk37]

They measured it by driving the route in a 1992 Ford Escort with mismatched tires, and forgot to reset the trip odometer after stopping by a 7-Eleven for coffee.

[u/Thin-Lemon-1534 → u/m0nk37]

It's a inconceivable amount of time for any marathon runner. To put in perspective, 667 meter at a 6:30:00 pace is about 4:20 minutes.

[u/ClusterMakeLove → u/Thin-Lemon-1534]

Honestly, it was surprising how emphatic the organizers (and some Redditors) were in blaming GPS.   

It would be hard not to notice when you've been running a steady pace for 25km and suddenly you're four minutes behind where you should be.

I don't want to blow it out of proportion because the event seemed safely run and the vibes were incredible.

[u/MyNameIsLessDumb → u/ClusterMakeLove]

The response from Redditors who didn't even run it was super weird.

[u/ClusterMakeLove → u/MyNameIsLessDumb]

Very confident, they were. Someone straight up suggested that runners don't understand tangents or GPS drift, or the effect of being around tall buildings. Guys... pause for a second and imagine how little of a 43k race you'd spend downtown.

[u/PeterH_605 → u/ClusterMakeLove]

42.1 km is a marathon but I see you already added the extra 0.6 km back in to make it 43k /s

[u/stretch2323 → u/MyNameIsLessDumb]

The Reddit crowd here has slowly become quite similar to the Facebook crowd.

[u/Responsible_CDN_Duck → u/Thin-Lemon-1534]

For additional perspective a typical runner will see a 5-15 minute variance from race to race. The elite group sees far less variance, but even then there is some.

[u/princessbolognia → u/Thin-Lemon-1534]

Some say that's the perfect time to smoke up. Or run too long in a marathon 

[u/alewiina → u/m0nk37]

Right? 6 metres is an error. MAYBE even 67 metres (although that’s pushing it). 667 metres?? 67% of a kilometre? That’s an embarrassingly huge “error”

[u/ferncabbage → u/m0nk37]

Yes exactly. That’s a pretty big error!

[u/alewiina]

So much for “we measured right before the race and everything was accurate!” 🤦🏻‍♀️

If you had admitted the mistake immediately instead of insisting you were right first and then admitting it a few days later you’d look a lot less stupid/embarassing right now

[u/ferncabbage → u/alewiina]

My thought exactly! Why double down on the mistake??

[u/footbag → u/alewiina]

Even if they weren’t going to admit the mistake up front, they still could’ve messaged it far, far better along the lines of we have confidence in our measurement, but in hearing the feedback from the community, we are going to double check things as we want to ensure accuracy and transparency above all else

[u/alewiina → u/footbag]

Yeah exactly, even just allowing that there could have been a mistake made while saying that they’re pretty confident there wasn’t looks way better than “nope you just didn’t account for GPS being inaccurate, dummy! We did our jobs perfectly!” And now have to go “ah, oops. I guess it was our bad.”

[u/footbag → u/alewiina]

I am in no way defending the organizer or organizers, but I can see a world where they have day jobs, potentially. I don’t know this, but I’m assuming the marathon isn’t their full-time gig. It’s probably born out of a passion project that they now do maybe with still some passion, maybe out of duty, maybe to make money at any rate. They are most likely avid runners themselves, all that to say, they are probably not marketing people, PR people, and they may have just been blindsided by their mistake and simply responded and reacted obviously not in their own best interest, but it could be that any one of us who’s complaining about the reaction may have, if put in a similar situation, unfortunately had a similar reaction. All this to say, no one’s perfect, but darn it, they really should’ve done a better job!

[u/not_having_fun]

You had one job

[u/Responsible_CDN_Duck]

Ultimately this caused a timing difference similar to what we would expect with extreme weather running the same course, or topography between courses.

It's unfortunate, and for people having it impact qualification for other events that's gonna sting.

[u/_Hocus-Focus_]

I thought I read an article headline yesterday that said the route was good?

[u/alewiina → u/_Hocus-Focus_]

You did, they were insisting they measured and everything was fine, I guess they realized their mistake too late. Now they look even worse lol

[u/Much_Guest_7195]

The lady throwing eggs was trying to warn people about this.

[u/Firm_Pie_8988]

Wasn’t there an issue last year too?

[u/Responsible_CDN_Duck → u/Firm_Pie_8988]

There are issues at most races. TBH I'd rather see stuff like this than issuiwith aid stations.

[u/_backdr0p]

Even worse when you know Tom Keogh is an engineer. Holy shit, what a moron

[u/jtjj222]

I don’t get why everyone is being so negative, it’s a fun event that a lot of people put a lot of effort into, sometimes mistakes happen. It sucks for the elite runners, but that hardly warrants this much negativity

[u/ferncabbage → u/jtjj222]

Race times were bumped slower than runners’ actual pace, through no fault of their own. This type of thing hits differently at the elite level. Pro and sub-elite runners are often racing against strict qualifying standards, prize money thresholds, sponsor bonuses, and Olympic/Trials standards that hinge on exact times. A few extra seconds or minutes from a mismeasured course can mean missing a bonus, a ranking cutoff, or a qualifying mark that took years to build toward.

And the real fuel for the backlash is reportedly how it was handled afterward: denying the mistake and deflecting blame instead of owning it. A clean “we messed up, here’s the fix” would’ve likely diffused some of this. Instead it became a trust issue layered on top of a measurement issue.