Philadelphia Marathon on cheaters - who cares?

Integrity of the sport. How can some RDs not care about this?

If you don't want to run a marathon, don't run one. And if you find while on course that today is not your day to run one, DNF like an adult and try again next time.

I have a co-worker who hopped a ride to the finish in the sag wagon at Space Coast. Sure, her time is still over 5 hrs - but to hear her say she "still got her medal" and "at least she ran 20 miles..." makes me furious.

I can control where I race, and I will now choose not to consider Philly or Space Coast along with the RnRs I avoid for so many reasons.

But until more runners raise issue with this with RDs, the for profit races are going to destroy the integrity of the sport.

I can deal with walkers that finish a full in 7 hrs if the course chooses to offer a 7 hr cut off. I can NOT deal with folks who run less than the full distance.

I agree. The culture of these things is getting to be like mud runs where teamwork is involved and everyone is a winner and everyone gets a medal no matter what! Lol

mopoff wrote:

Maybe this was true years ago, but it's not true now. I ran Philly this year (two weeks ago). It was very well organized in every way. I also lived in Philadelphia for a long time (until 2006) and am used to people who know nothing about the city criticizing it. It was a bad place to live several decades ago, like most other large US cities were decades ago. It has been a very nice place to live, almost too gentrified in fact, for decades now.

I'm not commenting on the main issue of this thread: whether people cut the course and whether marathon officials did enough to prevent that. I didn't see any course cutting and doubt the situation in Philly is different from that of any other US marathon of that size.

Philly is a shithole and you know it bro. Stop denying it. Maybe it's gotten 1% to 5% better but a shithole is still a shithole. 99 times out of 100 you'd pick a better place to live at random in the USA than Philly.

I ran Philly this year, and absolutely loved it. It was definitely well organized, and the city isn't that bad. I'm happy I did my first one there, even if it didn't go as planned (went out too hard, died even harder).

mopoff wrote:

Maybe this was true years ago, but it's not true now. I ran Philly this year (two weeks ago). It was very well organized in every way...

...I'm not commenting on the main issue of this thread: whether people cut the course and whether marathon officials did enough to prevent that. I didn't see any course cutting and doubt the situation in Philly is different from that of any other US marathon of that size.

Based on their reputation in the industry, along with the nature of the course (long out-and-back), the last part of your last sentence would be incorrect. Philly is about the 10th largest marathon in the US, if you look at any marathons in the Top 25 largest in the US nobody has as many cutting the course as Philly does, not even close. Every year I take a look through their results for entertainment value. I started doing that in 2003 when one of the guys I coach told me 2 runners cut over from one side of the out-and-back to the other right in front of him. It's never changed, including this year.

If the RD cared, she could easily put practices in place to drastically decrease the cheater rate. First off, all you have to do is go through the results and toss out the cases where entrants have ridiculous splits. Do that for a couple years and the word would get out to those who plan to cheat, a big deterrent in itself.

But the RD doesn't have a background in race management so don't expect anything to change. Their priorities are elsewhere, namely on how can they bring the maximum number of runners to this race. The press release when she was hired last spring tells you all you need to know, "...I plan to continue guiding the Philadelphia Marathon’s growth through a mix of marketing, social media, traditional approaches and other strategic avenues, showcasing the race

not only as athletic event but as a platform highlighting our dynamic city as a destination place."

In a lot of ways they are doing a good job. I had a bunch of friends who ran, some fairly competitively. Many have gone down to Philly numerous times to do this race and all would go back. All say it gets better every year. But the fact that they are ok producing results that are that fictitious blows me away.

Here is my suggestion for dealing with this.

First, if you are going to get the RD to care about cutters then you got to cast a dark cloud on the event.

Second, here is how I suggest how.

(1) Get a group of LR posters who care about this to sign up for the Philly marathon. It might help if you have a mask on (maybe Rupp will lend us all some).

(2) Once the race starts, wait around at the 8 or so mile mark until the first few elites pass.

(3) Start the race, the splits will be all off.

(4) Have shirts that just read "Philly Marathon doesn't care about Cheaters" and "CHEATER" in all red on the back (or something of that sort).

(5) Finish with that dope AG ranking. Look for anyone giving interviews.

Seriously who cares about people who run a 3:30? Who cares who has a finisher's medal. Finisher's medals are for communists anyway. I would be embarrassed to tell someone I got a finisher's medal. You should get a f*king medal when you win something.Sure the race needs to be reasonably fair, but why does it really matter to you if a few of the 10,000 or so that run this face lie to themselves about their time? Nobody who sees your fat lazy coworker cares if she ran 20 or 26 miles, they are all just laughing at her.

D2xcCoach, nice points. BTW didn't Kip Litton manage to get by your cheater controls at 2010 Vermont City?

ranphilly wrote:

Sure the race needs to be reasonably fair, but why does it really matter to you if a few of the 10,000 or so that run this face lie to themselves about their time? Nobody who sees your fat lazy coworker cares if she ran 20 or 26 miles, they are all just laughing at her.

On the whole, you're right. She'l add them to her "bling wall" and we will all go on with life.

But it's more the principle of the issue than her specific case.

Everyone complains about hobby joggers/slow times/the lack of appreciation for the difference between a sub 3, sub 4, or sub 6.

When we get to the point that anyone, 3:30 or 5:30 starts to consider it a perfectly normal and acceptable choice to run whatever part of the marathon course they wish to and call themselves a marathoner, it's just a bridge too far.

I understand there will always be cheaters out there, and if one or two 5 hr finishers cheat, you're right, whatever.... no one cares in the long run.

What bothers me is that it's becoming more than one or two. I know RDs don't have time to review splits and results in great detail. So, fine, lets focus on those keeping others from awards. We have here in Philly someone who missed an Age Group award to cheaters.. This is not some little 100 person field. It's Philly. When you don't DQ sub-world-record-splits, you haven't even made an effort. I think even a volunteer RD at a small local volunteer run marathon would be able to pick up that one with minimal effort.

Outrageous.

[quote]rojo wrote:

Doesn't their excuse of very few people do it also apply to real-world crime. Let's get rid of the police because only a few people commit crimes.

[quote]

I think this approach would kill the prison industry?

The Philadelphia Marathon website features a blog, with many posts entitled "Why I Love the Philadelphia Marathon." Anyone with better writing skills than I want to post an entry entitled "You don't have to run the whole course to be eligible for an age group award!!!!!"

http://philadelphiamarathon.com/blog/

Awesome!! I'm signing up next year. I can feel a HUGE PR coming my way. I may drop a sub 2:15....don't wanna get carried away though and draw attention to myself.

Someone I know recently DNF a marathon but showed up in the results with splits something like 2:20 and :58. Honest mistake although person claims they were nowwhere close to finish mat afterwards who knows. Either way, person called the RD the next morning only to get laid into for screwing up the results, pratically insinuating cheating. Actually refused to remove the result. It was still in the official results a week after.

But sometime since then it was removed. Maybe caught a tired RD on a bad day. Its a lot of work. Think of all the many places your results live once posted (coolrunning, active, marathonguide....) but in the end thats the job. Incorrect results reflect poorly nf you and everyone that works or volunteers for your race. Take pride in them.

I did Philly 2012 and all of sudden the results got screwed up.. so even though I jogged to a 4:46 finish, the results tell me I ran 4:06 and split a 19:12 10k and a 1:26 half.. yeah.. I wish.

You could email the timing company and let them know your results are messed up. (I looked just now at the Phila marathon results page, and there is a tab for "Help" and an email link there.) Mine were screwed up once in a different race and when I let them know, they were fixed. I didn't know what they did to fix them, but they got fixed.

maybe i should have been more clear... ALL the results are messed up (well not all but pretty much)

do the work your paid for wrote:...Think of all the many places your results live once posted (coolrunning, active, marathonguide....).

CoolRunning is easy to make changes on, for up to a month. Active, no idea. MarathonGuide has been frustrating for me. They pull up your results pretty much right away as soon as they get posted anywhere, even if the results are not official yet, then are difficult to get in touch with when you need to correct/update your results. And I even have the direct email for the guy who owns that site! I've been trying to get them to fix our results from this year for nearly 6 months.

Lol lol lol nice wrote:...D2xcCoach, nice points. BTW didn't Kip Litton manage to get by your cheater controls at 2010 Vermont City?

Yeah he did, that one still bugs me to this day. I have posted extensively elsewhere on what our concerns are with Kip's result at our race so won't cloud this thread. We ended up at "strongly suspicious". I'd be shocked if Kip ran our whole course, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how he pulled off a course cut if he did so.

And yeah, his chip (not saying "he", saying "his chip") hit all our mats, published and unpublished that year. Starting the next year we added 2 additional published chip mats and we continue to move around unpublished mats and cameras. That's the trend, isn't it...back before chips we tried to catch cheaters manually, then we added chips for the start and finish, then we added midway chips. How soon before we have the technology available to record every step your racers take?

midpak wrote:

Awesome!! I'm signing up next year. I can feel a HUGE PR coming my way. I may drop a sub 2:15....don't wanna get carried away though and draw attention to myself.

Yes! You will get an OT qualifier right there!!!