MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:
That's quite Shitaye of the half marathon runner to do something like that.
Really nice wrote:
nice.
Thank you, thank you. Unfortunately I'll be here for a while!
MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:
That's quite Shitaye of the half marathon runner to do something like that.
Really nice wrote:
nice.
Thank you, thank you. Unfortunately I'll be here for a while!
Precious Roy wrote:
This is on the organizers of the race. The woman who made the mistake thought she was catching a rival relay team. The race organizers should have had better signage and race course marshals in place to wave the 1/2 and relay participants away from the marathon finish. All they needed was someone yelling "Relay left!" and a sign with an arrow. Relay runners should also have to wear a bib on the back of their singlet so people will know whether they are a competitor or not.
Dallas marathon has been very sloppy in how they have handled multiple events on the same course. Fast marathoners have to weave through a sea of slow half runners. Finish area is obviously not handled well. I think it is race director malpractice to have any incident like this that is clearly preventable with best race course management practices. At the end of a race, people are stressed and not thinking clearly. Race managers are 100% responsible for this kind of stuff, not the participants.
Finally. A LRC poster who elected to comment AFTER delving into the facts at hand. Nice work. (the rest of you may now crawl back to your fetid lairs)
This article wasted valuable space coverning the third place finish by convicted drug cheat Liza Hunter-Galvan. Not only did they use the space to cover her achievement, they failed to highlight her past transgressions.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/article/Hunter-Galvan-accepts-two-year-doping-ban-845588.php
After reading the whole thread, the OP is the one in the wrong.
This is not a "1/2 Marathon Jogger," but a pretty awesome runner, part of a very good relay team. Congrats to her and her team.
The fault lies on the organizers.
Funny how the person at the finish line starts to give her a Kenyan flag and she has to let him know that she's Ethiopian.
video is up at fittish blog
This appears to be on the race organizers - specifically the Finish Line operations team. It's their responsibility to have a "chute" for the male, female champion and a few volunteers to direct the runners. And it's not like they couldn't see this coming - hmmm, we have a relay going on at the same time as the marathon. They owe both runners an apology. If for no other reason, the relay runner is getting blasted on LR because the idiot in charge of the Finish Line operations didn't take the time to plan this out a bit. It's not that hard.
cmon, grow up a little.
solerevival wrote:
the relay runner is getting blasted on LR because the idiot in charge of the Finish Line operations didn't take the time to plan this out a bit.
Yes. Well that's because the idiots on LR readily fall for troll chum.
Not an innocent mistake, she PURPOSEFULLY jumped over to the full marathon course:
"We had another rival relay team we were trying to beat, and I felt like I was losing time," she says. "So I switched over to the full marathon area, which was almost empty. She came up behind me in a flash. I didn't even see the banner until I was there."
Good efforts, d2xccoach.
It sounds like you should really do one of two things, though:
1. Get a wider finish line
2. Make the relay runners wear the back bibs at the risk of a DQ.
Dallas arrogant organizers are a bunch of trust fund recipients who find this as this is their moments of glory. They ignore anyone in Dallas with experience who might actually help their race. They bring in people for TV and used to have an elite coordinator who was seen cursing at some children.
I file this under "Exposed incompetence".
ajdjffjfj wrote:
Not an innocent mistake, she PURPOSEFULLY jumped over to the full marathon course
Well, her relay team was running the full marathon... Why shouldn't she be allowed to be on that side of the road?
Hopkinton wrote:Finally. A LRC poster who elected to comment AFTER delving into the facts at hand. Nice work. (the rest of you may now crawl back to your fetid lairs)
I not sure why anyone would have reacted differently to the OP's post as that was the only information available with no reasonable assumption that more information was coming. It's not like that was an early report of an event where additional details were assuredly on their way. The OP said it was a half-marathoner breaking the tape in front of the woman's marathon winner... Not knowing ANY other details other than that, there are VERY VERY few reasons a runner would have done that unintentionally and not to just be a goober and get on TV. It just so HAPPENED that one of the very very rare situations DID actually occur after the stars aligned so-to-speak.
What are the odds that all of these occurrences happened at the same time:
-Woman's full marathon runner was totally alone in the last few miles. (relative to other woman elites in the full)
-Relay runner thought she had a chance to win the relay competition even though she was in 5th.
-Relay runner was also alone (no other relay runners within 4 minutes either way)
-Both the woman's elite runner and the relay runner are finishing within 2 seconds of each other but were running vastly different speeds as the elite was alone and didn't need to push it but the relay runner was pushing it because she thought she had to overcome the elite runner thinking she was in the relay and about to win the relay.
-The finish tape is being held in the middle of the road and no one tells the relay runner to stay off to the sides.
It sounds almost like a conspiracy theory if for example the second poster to this thread thought allll those random occurrences lined up just so in order to give the relay runner the benefit of the doubt and wrote that as a rebuttal to the OP.
And besides, 99% of the time some runner breaks the tape in front of the elite, it's just some hooligan trying to get some TV time or trying to win a bet or something. The fact that I and others early on in this thread did not even consider the 1% chance that it was an actual mistake is certainly something that I can live with... And I will take those odds every single time.
elephino wrote:
better photo:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/more-sports/running/headlines/20141214-strange-episode-at-end-for-women-s-dallas-marathon-winner.ece
Well, if you look at the picture, the woman actually looks like she's a fast runner... especially for her age. Was she in the marathon relay actually running 2:46 pace? Seems plausible. I think that could be an honest mistake.
Why have a rule that you don't enforce? It makes no sense. I can guarantee you if you communicated the 2 bib rule properly and enforced the rule, runners would have worn them. The first year we instituted a relay we had the same rule. Only 2 relay runners did not wear the bib on the back. Those teams were DQ'd and since then we have had 100% compliance over 7 years.I would revisit your communication strategies if I were you.
d2xccoach wrote:
Precious Roy wrote:This is on the organizers of the race. The woman who made the mistake thought she was catching a rival relay team. The race organizers should have had better signage and race course marshals in place to wave the 1/2 and relay participants away from the marathon finish. All they needed was someone yelling "Relay left!" and a sign with an arrow. Relay runners should also have to wear a bib on the back of their singlet so people will know whether they are a competitor or not...Easier said than done. The race I work for has a marathon and a marathon relay. We have a single finish line, we do not have the width available to have separate finish lines, and I suspect a lot of races are similar. The marathon and the relay start at the same time. We have debated about having separate start times, but no matter what you do you're going to have some fast marathoners and some slow marathoners, and some fast relay runners and some slow relay runners, so we don't see a way to make that work.
As far as bibs on the backs of relay teams, we tried that one year it was like herding cats. The relay runners tend to be a lot less experienced, so a lot of them didn't understand why they needed to wear 2 bibs and just threw out one of them. God forbid they should actually read the info sheet or emails we send them. One other year we only gave them 1 extra bib, for the last leg runner to wear, but I'd say less than 50% of the teams did so.
What we do is give the relay runners a yellow coil wristband to pass when they make their exchanges. It's a lot more subtle than a bib on the back but it gets the job done. The big thing we do is in our communication with our top entrants, both ahead of time and at our technical meeting the night before, we let them know that if someone passes them, or if they're catching a runner, look for the yellow band. Like Dallas, we have different color bibs for the relay teams so if a marathoner looks back they can easily tell if it's a marathoner or not. We also patrol the course starting after the last relay exchange to make sure the last leg relay runners are showing their yellow bands. We'll always find a few with the band tucked up under their shirt so our bike team let's them know "show it or it's a DQ". We only do that for relay teams that are going to finish in under 3:15 because at that point all the prize money winners are in.
The other thing we do, the escort cyclist for our top men and women, if a relay runner is coming up on them they have a duty to inform the marathoner that the runner is in the relay (they don't say anything if it's another marathoner coming up). That might not help our 4th, 5th, 6th place runners but our leaders tell us it's a big help for them.
26 years doing it, very few problems. Good communication and anticipating what can go wrong is the key. Not that hard to get this one right.