14 months ago when I had just bought my Kalkhoff Agattu, I posted about using the bike to measure the London Marathon course. In the very early hours of yesterday morning I was on The Mall again, this time to measure the course of the 2012 Olympic Marathon.
At 1.30 am I joined the assembling group: Katz who was the officially appointed IAAF measurer from USA, Jones from London who had done all the preliminary measuring to fit the course into the streets of Westminster and the City, (both on push bikes), a car with 2 event organising officials & a photographer from the Wall Street Journal, and fleet of about 8 Metropolitan Police motorcyclists with flashing blue lights.
We set off round the course, the police riding ahead and behind, blocking side roads and closing down the lane ahead when our desired measuring line, the shortest possible route, took us onto the wrong side of the road. The process they use is one of repeated leap frogging. Once our procession of 3 bicycles had passed the police motor bike guarding the side road weaved past us and took up position on the next unguarded side road ahead. I imagined that this must be what it is like to be in a Royal or VIP procession around Central London. Although the police bikes expertly weaving past we cyclists made me think also of the TV images of the Tour de France.
We had numerous brief stops to record intermediate distances, and for the police to clear traffic problems ahead. Central London is surprisingly busy between 2 and 4 am. On our second lap down the 4 lane Norththumberland Avenue, we were on the right facing some huge lorries stopped ahead of us. The police expertly shuffled the traffic around so the lorries could cross to their right in order to leave the shortest line clear for us to ride.
Here is the group assembled on the Mall with Buckingham Palace lit by the rising sun very overexposed in the background.
That box poking out of my pannier carries a retro-reflector which I used with a laser distance meter to check the length of the 328 metre long calibration course which Katz and Jones had marked out along the edge of The Mall. We calibrated our bicycle front wheel revolution counters using this calibration course. I had less than 1 part in 10,000 calibration change between my bike's before measurement calibration and the after measurement calibration.
So how did the measurement go? Our 3 measurements had a range of 10 metres, which is very satisfactory: an error of 42m is allowed when measuring the marathon (42.2 Km).
At 1.30 am I joined the assembling group: Katz who was the officially appointed IAAF measurer from USA, Jones from London who had done all the preliminary measuring to fit the course into the streets of Westminster and the City, (both on push bikes), a car with 2 event organising officials & a photographer from the Wall Street Journal, and fleet of about 8 Metropolitan Police motorcyclists with flashing blue lights.
We set off round the course, the police riding ahead and behind, blocking side roads and closing down the lane ahead when our desired measuring line, the shortest possible route, took us onto the wrong side of the road. The process they use is one of repeated leap frogging. Once our procession of 3 bicycles had passed the police motor bike guarding the side road weaved past us and took up position on the next unguarded side road ahead. I imagined that this must be what it is like to be in a Royal or VIP procession around Central London. Although the police bikes expertly weaving past we cyclists made me think also of the TV images of the Tour de France.
We had numerous brief stops to record intermediate distances, and for the police to clear traffic problems ahead. Central London is surprisingly busy between 2 and 4 am. On our second lap down the 4 lane Norththumberland Avenue, we were on the right facing some huge lorries stopped ahead of us. The police expertly shuffled the traffic around so the lorries could cross to their right in order to leave the shortest line clear for us to ride.
Here is the group assembled on the Mall with Buckingham Palace lit by the rising sun very overexposed in the background.
That box poking out of my pannier carries a retro-reflector which I used with a laser distance meter to check the length of the 328 metre long calibration course which Katz and Jones had marked out along the edge of The Mall. We calibrated our bicycle front wheel revolution counters using this calibration course. I had less than 1 part in 10,000 calibration change between my bike's before measurement calibration and the after measurement calibration.
So how did the measurement go? Our 3 measurements had a range of 10 metres, which is very satisfactory: an error of 42m is allowed when measuring the marathon (42.2 Km).
