Woman runs 2:42:55 at Houston Marathon, turned down for Olympic Trials because she was in Corral B

They hold for a few minutes between corrals A/B and B/C to thin out the crowd and create more room on the course. You can kind of see how they do it on the broadcast/live stream on the tv coverage. It's a really smart thing they do but don't advertise but makes the race better, especially for the ~4 hour folks like me.

Did she run in the vapor flys or next?

If so her time is 2:54.

If not, 2:42

That is how races should be done now. vaporfly-next runners go in corral B. Other non carbon super stack shoes corral A

This is so stupid, it makes more sense to deny someone with a chip time within 10 secs of the gun time than someone with a chip time more than 10 mins from the gun time.

In the first case the person clearly started at the front, thus gun time is fair. In the second case, the person clearly started way back, this gun time is extremely unfair.

ladiesruntex wrote:

They hold for a few minutes between corrals A/B and B/C to thin out the crowd and create more room on the course. You can kind of see how they do it on the broadcast/live stream on the tv coverage. It's a really smart thing they do but don't advertise but makes the race better, especially for the ~4 hour folks like me.

They don't advertise that because who would want do a race where they tack on 10+ minutes to your official time before you even are allowed to start for a large number of runners? A really smart thing to do would be to do a gun start for each corral, like people have said that many other races do.

zzzz wrote:

ladiesruntex wrote:

They hold for a few minutes between corrals A/B and B/C to thin out the crowd and create more room on the course. You can kind of see how they do it on the broadcast/live stream on the tv coverage. It's a really smart thing they do but don't advertise but makes the race better, especially for the ~4 hour folks like me.

They don't advertise that because who would want do a race where they tack on 10+ minutes to your official time before you even are allowed to start for a large number of runners? A really smart thing to do would be to do a gun start for each corral, like people have said that many other races do.

Looking st the faq that was posted, it is advertised.

Corral B starts at 7:13. Effectively a second wave.

Why not just take her 5k times for Corral A instead of making an athlete bother to pay money and find a random 10k training run? Or Is a low 16s 5000 time not quick enough for 52min 10k/sub 4hr marathon equivalent in the eyes of Haku Support? That’s really the ridiculous thing

dirty south runner wrote:

zzzz wrote:

They don't advertise that because who would want do a race where they tack on 10+ minutes to your official time before you even are allowed to start for a large number of runners? A really smart thing to do would be to do a gun start for each corral, like people have said that many other races do.

Looking st the faq that was posted, it is advertised.

Corral B starts at 7:13. Effectively a second wave.

The FAQ is not an advertisement. A proper advertisement/warning would be, "Sign up for our race! If you don't qualify for the top corral, we will tack on 12 minutes or 28 minutes to your official time before you even are allowed to cross the starting line. Have a great race!"

Also that FAQ doesn't clearly state that the 7:13 am and 7:29 am starts use the 7:01 gun time. Other people have pointed out races that have a gun time associated with subsequent waves, and don't rely on the first gun time as the only gun time. Actually, it doesn't explain why the 7:01 am gun time is used rather than the 6:50 am gun time when they started the athletes with disabilities. Those Elite times should probably be adjusted +11 minutes, and this woman's time adjusted +23 minutes instead of +12 minutes.

"This seems really unfair, hopefully a bit of common sense can prevail. Surely chip time is enough to prove someone is fast enough for the US trials?

It certainly affects female athletes more because of how many men will push themselves to the front."

Did anyone else see Fast Women's tweet about this?? Goes from a reasonable response to a really out-of-the-blue attack on men? Who hurt the lady writes their tweets?

ladiesruntex wrote:

Stop trying to make the argument that USATF should find some magical way to clean up the athlete's mistake.

This was not the athlete's mistake.

No intelligent person would sign up for a marathon and think the race directors would add 12 minutes to their times.

I have run MANY marathons, and no race that I've ever run has done that to people's times.

The fact is that the Houston Marathon screwed up by not submitting the gun time for corral B, which they actually DID have, because they started corral B exactly 11 minutes and 59 seconds after corral A. Therefore, that WAS the gun time, which matches exactly with the final time of 2:42.55. The problem is that they did not SUBMIT the proper gun time for corral B.

Also, USATF is aware of what Houston did, and should do the right thing and correct the mistake.

Neither of those things have ever been in the control of the athlete or her coach.

Of course, no runner in the future should ever run the Houston Marathon for a qualifying time.

If you check her public Strava, it’s pretty easy to see she bandited an NYRR half marathon in October. She would have been in corral A for Houston with her half time if she ran with her own bib. She didn’t follow the rules then, so she didn’t have a legit half marathon time to submit to Houston to get in the first corral. Now she wants an exception to the USATF rules because she didn’t follow the same process that every other OTQ athlete followed to get their spot in the trials. The rules were clear and it seems like Erin and her coach could have easily avoided getting into this situation to begin with.

Why would you even bother banditing Staten Island? Just pay the money if you want to run it.

There’s no magical cleanup or major rules bending.

A woman made a performance in a race that was better than others that will be entered in the Trials.

Just put her in.

There are tons of precedents of exceptions being made to allow athletes in.

I think even wejo even got into the trials on an exception.

It’s not like we are asking for someone to get bumped out.

Apparently the NYRR half in October she wasn't a bandit race, she ran with someone's bib and came in third. So, hard to feel sorry for her being left out here.

You’re totally right. There are race photos of her wearing an E corral bib passing a Central Park Track Club runner with an AA bib. Surprised the NYRR race directors didn’t catch that. I wonder if she accepted prize money or an age group award (since she wasn’t even in the right age group). Seems shady for the coach to claim she didn’t have the chance to run any NYRR races to get a qualifying time for Houston.

mr ? rip wrote:

Boy, this sport of running seems pretty complicated.

seriously what the fvck? I guess this means for any athlete who walks that fine line of being able to qualify for the trials you should probably contact the USATF and the race your entering to learn the specifics of what is necessary well I’m advance.. I really don’t understand why gun time would be supreme that makes no fvcking sense on the roads.. Most of these major city races can’t even hold more than 15-20 people at the starting line anyways.

acookrunner wrote:

Apparently the NYRR half in October she wasn't a bandit race, she ran with someone's bib and came in third. So, hard to feel sorry for her being left out here.

Ok, I agree that’s pretty crappy.

I’m having second thoughts of my defense of her if she has run at that level yet seems to have multiple issues properly entering races.

The prize money for 3rd place New York Road Runner Club Member at the Staten Island is $300 based on gun time (and her gun time was about 5 minutes slower than her chip time). So if she had joined NYRR (for $40) and paid for the race ($55 for members), she would have made over $200.

Are you a troll or just stupid? USATF's rule is idiotic, and they should absolutely bend the rules to allow her to run.

Athletics isn't about following arbitrary rules, it's about competing to the best of your ability.

Erin did follow the proper rules / process, and the Houston Marathon made a mistake by not submitting her proper gun time to the USATF.

Now that this is known, the Houston Marathon should correct their submission, and the USATF should approve her entry to the Trials. Additionally, this should be done without further delays.