Benny Vansteelant is a superb athlete, and so are the other five duathletes who completed the hilly, tough first run essentially together in last week's World Duathlon Championship. But as good as these athletes are, I raised an eyebrow when I saw they ran 29-and-change for 10km on that course.

So I asked an observer who was there on site, and who'd been at virtually every world championship in tri and du over the past decade. "The run at Du Worlds was short about one-and-a-half minutes and the bike was long by about five minutes," he said. "Both [courses] were crazy hilly and conditions on race day as you know were horrendous."

This doesn't surprise me. Why would it? "I can count more Worlds that were long or short," my friend added, "than those that were on the mark."

Yes, the ITU bears some blame for this. It's unacceptable that I'm more confident in the course accuracy of any local 10k footrace than for the course in a triathlon world championship. But the ITU is not alone in this. Our sport has been cavalier about its distances since its inception, and why would the ITU take seriously an issue that nobody seems overly concerned about?

If we treat precision as a nuisance instead of a virtue, however, should we be surprised when the single-sport athletes and observers don't take our sport and its athletes as seriously as we think they should?

I raced a triathlon earlier this summer that advertises a 1-mile swim. This event archives its prior years' results, including splits, and one can see that, from one year to the next, the fastest swim times vary from 15 minutes-and-change to times approaching almost 30 minutes. The swim starts and stops at roughly the same place, so currents ought not to have much bearing. Where the buoys are placed determines the times.

Ironman organizers can be just as inaccurate. For years, a popular Ironman in Europe routinely was the site of the fastest historical times over that distance. Any contestant with a bike computer knew, though, that the course was only 106 miles, not 112 miles. I have my suspicions about the distance of another European Ironman as well. But what of it? If you get to advertise that yours is a PR course and neither the WTC, the sanctioning NGB, nor anyone else is going to dispute it, what of the picky detail that your Ironman isn't really an Ironman?

I acknowledge that there are real logistical concerns that accompany the setting of a triathlon course. If your bike course consists of three tidy loops of 8.5 miles, or 38 miles, and you end up with 25.5 or 114 miles respectively, what are you going to do? Move the transition area out onto the bike course a bit, creating a long swim-to-bike run in order to make the course the right distance?

When it becomes obvious that a course is grossly mismeasured it begs the question, did the race organizer know beforehand that his course was long or short? In some cases no doubt the answer is yes, especially when he realizes it's mismeasured and yet continues to hold the race on the same course in subsequent years. But I've also heard stories of course-measuring techniques that bespeak spectactular carelessness or hubris, like the race director who said, "I know it's 10k because I know just now long it takes me to run 10k, and this course runs out about the right time."

Whether it's a Worlds, an Ironman, or just a local triathlon, here's what I think really happens. It's easier to apologize than to ask permission. I think a race organizer at Worlds might know his course is long or short, but apologizing for this after the fact has immeasurably fewer consquences than asking the ITU before the fact, "My World Championship 10k is really 9k, is that okay with you."

Therefore, I propose we just be honest with ourselves and say that in the case of our sport, courses are hard to get right, because the transition area must be where it is, and the bike and run courses are therefore doomed to be what they are in distance. So here are virtues I propose we espouse:

1. Finding safe, proper courses are more imporant than finding courses that are precisely 40km and 10km.

2. Olympic, Ironman, and other "set" distances ought to be exactly 112 miles, 56 miles, or 10km, etc. But when they're not these distances, let's agree on an acceptable range (an Ironman ought to have a distance of 112 miles, but if not, it must have a ride between 111 and 113 miles; an Olympic distance bike course cannot be considered that distance if its ride isn't between 39 and 41km, and so forth).

3. By all means, our organizers ought to be expected to both measure their courses beforehand, and tell the truth as to their distances. (I don't mind a course that's advertised as 1.5k/41k/9.5k and is in fact that distance. What I mind is a course that's advertised as 1.5k/40k/10k yet turns out to be 1.5k/41k/9.5k).

4. World Bests ought not to be considered so unless they're contested on Record Certified courses, and perhaps "certified" ought to be broken down into two designations. Distance Certified would mean the advertised distances are accurate, and if applicable that the distances fall between the paramaters allowing a race to be considered a true (let us say) "Olympic Distance" or "Half-Ironman." Record Certified means the distances are not only accurate, the course conforms to a much tighter standard—i.e., it is exactly Olympic Distance—and therefore qualifies as a course on which a World Best could be set.

5. Underpaid USAT officials could make some real money if they're trained as course certifiers, and a head ref might charge $500 to an RD who feels it's a marketing benefit to have his course certified.

A race local to me—a large, expensive one—advertises its "40k bike ride" as being "24.5 miles." What am I supposed to glean from this? That the organizer doesn't know how to convert? Or that "40k" is a generic term that means that the distance is more/less Olympic, but is actually a half-mile short of that?

When viewed against the standards I suggest above, maybe that organizer who advertises his 25-mile bike course as 24.5 miles isn't dumb, but the most honest RD in our sport (at least in regard to noncomforming race course distances).