08/06/2026
Let’s touch on a topic that comes up every year…
”my watch distance doesn’t match what’s advertised on the course map”…
Trail race distances are rarely exact and typically vary from runner to runner and one tracking device to another. There are many factors that play into your tracked distance being “off”. Some of that has to do with gps signal quality under the waterfalls and in the deep canyons, apex points for every runner being different (one runner might choose to go around puddles, another might go straight through), or runners using different tools to track their run.
The picture we are sharing is an example of how using different tools can affect the distance tracked. This is a small example, showing our actual course verses what Strava and Garmin captured during our run. This is from the same exact run, one runner wore a Garmin watch, the other wore both Strava devices. This is a snippet of our run under Lower South Falls and stairs following. You see Strava tracked differently on the Apple Watch than it did on the iPhone. Because of the way the devices tracked the run, the total distance was different between all three tools, ranging from 3.19 to 3.56 miles and this was just for the 5K course, so you can imagine what the differences might look like for the longer courses.
We know distance is an important data set when you are running a race. Unfortunately your tracking device might be misleading you. The distances we advertise are approximates based on park maps in addition to various mapping tools to verify those distances. We encourage you to leverage and rely on the aid stations and mile markers (as applicable) as the rough source of truth.
