Originally published at: Illinois man wins marathon after two much faster runners from Kenya go the wrong way | Boing Boing
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Moreno said the race was planning to find a way to compensate Saolo and Kibet.
I hope so. Executive decision making is not always so easy when you’re “in the zone”.
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Maybe a hand-held GPS unit?
Exactly what I was thinking, I’m guessing he has a lot of tension about what feels right to people outside of the sport against the norms and value of participants. I believe in most long-distance races (at least cross country) you are coached to learn the course and take the advantage knowing the course brings you.
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Then why have a bicyclist riding in front of them at all?
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It could be worse.
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High-end running watches often have map capabilities but there is a general consensus that they don’t work well enough in urban environments where there isn’t always good line-of-site to the satellites for reliable foot navigation and it is a more common feature on watches meant for trail running.
Moreover it isn’t something that you should ever have to think about during a road race. It is important to be able to follow course marking in a trail race but there should always be enough volunteers at any road race that there isn’t ever a question of where to go, especially for a race that actually has a prize purse.
My last half-marathon I missed a turn but fortunately the person behind me called me back. It was exactly the kind of spot where there should have been someone pointing “go that way”. The person who called me back was in fourth place and had they not called me back it is possible they would have gotten on the podium (he eventually finished 5th) so it was a very stand-up thing to do.
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Almost nobody ever “learns the course” by actually running a full marathon course except in cases where they have run the same marathon in previous years or possibly if it is a very famous and stable course such as in a major like Boston or New York. Going through the course on bicycle or in a car tends to provide a very different perspective and isn’t really all that helpful and most people don’t even bother to do that because it isn’t supposed to be hard to follow a marathon course. In cross country it wouldn’t even by unreasonable to most competitive runners to do the full course as a warm up so it is a very different thing.
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The cyclists leading racers are supposed to prevent just such an event as this from occurring. Unfortunately they are still susceptible to human error, even as rare as that may be. From the WaPo:
By the time Saolo and Kibet got to the finish line, Moreno explained to the pair that they had been automatically disqualified for taking an unofficial route. The cyclist who accidentally led them the wrong way stood feet away from the pair close to crying.
“I messed up royally,” the cyclist said, according to the Quad-City Times.
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Yeah, most people don’t bother, but most people also don’t have a shot at winning a few thousand dollars by doing it. While driving it yourself isn’t great (too many other things to pay attention to while operating a vehicle), being a passenger in a car or even just running through the course using google streetview have been used by plenty of non-elite runners for a long time. Some marathons even provide helmet or dashcam videos showing the course for people who aren’t local.
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It’s been a pretty bad year for race directors. The Brighton Marathon ended up being too long. The Bristol Half-marathon was finished first by a guy who thought he was running the 10k course and they had to disqualify him. The Olympic Marathon had to be moved to a different city because of the heat. The year off of racing seems like it has made both the runners and the organizers a little rusty.
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Yeah, marathon runners don’t really seem to be using the old noggin much once they get deep into a race, and they usually plan for it accordingly. When my Boy Scout troop was volunteered to help out with the town marathon by handing out water, we were warned against holding onto the cups at all and instructed to hold them on the backs of our hands or in our palms with the fingers clenched on themselves, so that the runners wouldn’t grab fingers instead of cups of water. After the third broken wrist, a broken nose, and several knock-downs our troop pulled its members out and refused to assist in future marathons.
When I was hiking the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, the Mount Katahdin summit trail, we passed a sign at the trailhead stating very clearly the rules: keep to the right, pass on the left, people heading uphill have the right of way, and no running. Three-quarters of the way up the mountain, some guy in a mesh tshirt, running shoes, and runners hot pants comes barrelling through, knocking one of the younger scouts in our group off the trail, breaking his ankle. He got carried down by the ranger who was trying to stop the running guy, who was arrested by park police at the top of the mountain – he’d injured half a dozen people in his attempt to set some sort of personal record, and either hadn’t noticed or just hadn’t cared about the carnage. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been hit up for water, food, or first aid supplies by trail runners who didn’t think to carry anything with them on their fun run into the wilderness.
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Judging by the picture, the other problem is that they were starting in blocks, on a track, holding a baton. That’s not considered good form for a marathon.
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Yeah! USA! USA!
I was thinking perhaps the cyclist was also a pace-setter
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