Many roads were closed to motor traffic and opened up to high(ish) speed bipeds last Sunday, for the Brighton Half Marathon. Runners who felt that the 13.1 miles seemed a bit more of a stretch than usual were right – the organisers managed to fudge up the measurements and added an extra third of a mile to the course, making it 13.42 miles, around 500 yards longer than it should have been. 7,427 runners took part, including elite runners who had been expecting to finish in under 1 hour 10 minutes, sabotaged due to the over-distance. Many runners twigged this from readouts on their GPS watches or Smartphones, forcing the organisers to apologise for the “human error” and adjust the “chip times.” A nice illustration of the power of technology. As the man said, information is power.
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