ecoAnPac wrote:
The way that I've always seen it is this: if you're on the course, you're your own problem. Generally, running rules break down to about four different core principle components:
1) that you should not impede the other runners around you, and generally physical contact is disallowed beyond accident.
2) that you should not materially cheat, i.e. - everything from using a car (looking at you, 1904 olympic marathon if I remember correctly) to PEDs (hooligan booligan).
3) that you should not organizationally cheat, i.e. - gaming points systems in meets, start line placement, paid off officials that DQ other runners, etc.
4) that you should not systematically cheat, i.e. - handing off your bib to another runner who takes over for you, cutting major portions of the course, starting the race early, etc etc etc.
When regarding these four categories of rules, we have to operate under two base assumptions. First, that race directors will do everything they can ahead of time to prevent rules conflicts between the athletes running the race and the rules governing it. Second, that there will be a majority of runners acting in good faith and a minority of runners acting in bad faith (more on this in a moment).
Other runners aren't supposed to help me. Handing off a water bottle if someone looks thirsty falls under both the second and third above categories. Lifting someone to help them across the line? Again - that's a rules violation. While most people won't be mad at this, we're obligated to build-out that social contract. I am supposed to run the race as an individual entity in the context of a large number of other individual entities. The Race director (and the race-facilitating-organization, whether that be the same entity as the RD or a different entity) is not able to be in control of all of those individual entities. You corral them and hope for the best. This is not a consignment of the impossible, rather a natural limitation on the size of races and the human ability to control/manage the directed chaos that comes with that. Your obligation as an individual is to do your best to avoid violating those rules. The course and route themselves are one of the core elements to the social contract that is running a foot race.
We all agree that we're going to try to see which one of us can run from A-B the fastest, and we all agree we want as fair a shake at that as possible.
It's not my job to cover for your stupidity. It's not the RD's job on race day to make sure you don't take wrong turns. They're obligated by that same contract, as the facilitator of it, to provide you with the means to attempt the task that you're paying them for.
TLDR; It is not an RD's job to know the course for you. It is your job to stay on the course you agreed to run on.