Twin Cities Marathon / 10 Mile CANCELED?

One time I was signed up for a half marathon in a hot climate there was a rare small amount of snow predicted. As it happened, snow did fall. But there was no snow on the roads. Some grassy areas accumulated 1/8 inch. By the time the sun rose and the race started, all the snow had melted without a trace.

The race was still canceled and no refunds!

Their reasoning was, "We didn't want to make the volunteers stand in snow or something."

Keep a skeleton crew; the starter, timing crew at the finish. Let everyone else stay home. We'll deal with the rest. I don't need a volunteer to hand me a banana and a medal at the end, a band playing oldies at the turn, or pickle juice at mile 2!

It shows a gross misunderstanding of the toughness and dedication or runners, when they do this kind of thing. It still chaps my arse, to this day thinking about it.

I see that Grandma’s Marathon (June 22) saw a record number of registrations on the first day yesterday, probably somewhat connected to yesterday’s fiasco, and then there are a number of smaller marathons sprinkled throughout the fall in the Midwest, I believe including Mankato, Ashland and others which might benefit from yesterday for obvious reasons. Maybe Twin Cities should consider moving to the 2nd or 3rd Sunday, instead of the first one, in October. I am not sure if that is a good idea or not.

The OTQ group should have been doing that before Sunday. Cancellation or not, that was not going be the conditions to OTQ in for most.

Agree with this. Columbus ran the 1/2 and full in 2016 and 2017 with a race start time of 7:30 a.m. and 72'F/humid...nobody died and it went on without issues. But Darris and his team know what they are doing.

At least some runners made the best of the situation, and they can at least use it as a workout.

Columbus has sold out of both the 13.1 and 26.2 races...people are catching on

Signing a waiver doesn't necessarily mean a party can't sue.

Waivers are pretty much a big nothing. They might be used to discourage people from trying to sue but liability for gross negligence cannot be waived.

I really hadn't intended to get into a big tutorial about the effects of signing a standard waiver form, but there are a few very significant effects that, particularly in light of several U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the last ten or twelve years or so, can have a much larger effect than the distinction between waivable claims of negligence and unwaivable claims of gross negligence (which I discussed earlier). One is that a waiver form may include a consent to have a dispute decided by arbitration rather than civil lawsuit. Arbitration typically results in more favorable treatment for commercial or institutional defendants, and is especially useful for commercial or institutional defendants in avoiding ridiculously high ("runaway") jury awards. Arbitration awards can be attacked in civil proceedings, but the grounds for vacating rather than affirming arbitration awards in court are extremely limited.

Another important feature of many modern waiver forms is that they may include a waiver of the right to participate in a class action to resolve a dispute, so that plaintiffs must pursue common claims individually.

I don't want to go into great detail about any of this (especially since nuanced answers can receive more downvotes than simple but incorrect answers), but it crosses my mind that claims for refunds or damages resulting from cancellation of events may be subject to these rather typical clauses, assuming they're signed at the time of the payment of an entry fee, making refunds and damages awards more of a hassle. (A decision not to provide, at the very least, an automatic refund of an entry fee seems like a pretty terrible business practice to me, but I understand that it happens.)

They say they have no regrets. The wet bulb globe temp changed from 78 to 82. They made the decision at 2am.

runnersworld.com

Twin Cities Marathon Race Director Stands by Cancellation Decision: “We Saved Lives”

Due to excessive heat, participants in the TC 10 Mile and marathon found out race morning that the events were off.

Open link

"We saved lives" is a pretty bold statement, especially considering that only 6,000 finishers were expected in the marathon. (I had assumed that this was a much larger event. And even if were, I think it's unlikely that any marathon participants would have died in the course of running the race (or shortly thereafter, when the consequences are often more serious). Death by dehydration, heat exhaustion, and even exercise-induced heat stroke is rare in marathons. As earlier discussed, telling the participants to stay well-hydrated throughout the race would likely be significantly more dangerous than the heat.)

Having worked in this space, my experience was that commercial and institutional defendants mostly care about arbitration because it gets them out of class actions. In general, consumers fare pretty well in arbitration, and they can do so pro se. If anything consumer arbitrators tend to bend over backwards to help out the consumer (though astronomical awards are off the table).

Iowa and Detroit, Hartford and others are already the week after Chicago. Try running the TCM two weeks after Chicago.

Glad they shared their point of view and more details behind the decision. Agree with others that saying they saved lives is a bit much.

I'm not sure I understand your comment. "Vxied" was putting forward the idea of moving TCM "to the 2nd or 3rd Sunday, instead of the first one, in October," not in November after Chicago. But maybe you were just making a separate suggestion that TCM could be run two weeks after Chicago in future years, or perhaps even this year. I don't see why postponing TCM until mid-November couldn't work, but I also don't see a really good reason for postponing TCM at all. I liked having both TCM and Chicago as October options. (Many years ago, I ran both TCM and Chicago in October. I missed breaking 2:20 by less than 45 seconds at TCM, felt pretty good afterwards, so decided to run Chicago, breaking 2:20 by about 30 seconds. Although I hadn't planned it that way, it was good to have Chicago as a backup if things went wrong at TCM. They were both excellent races -- perhaps the two best marathons in the country back then -- with excellent competition.)

I'm mainly just sad and a bit angry to see that race organizers now feel either obligated or free to cancel races under circumstances like these. People don't merely lose entry fees. (Note that the TCM guy said that they're going to decide about whether or how much of a refund may be offered, as if there might be a legitimate moral basis for not refunding entry fees in full.) They also lose the cost of plane tickets, hotel rooms, time, and a lot of planning and scheduling. The self-serving "we saved lives" statement is infuriating.

Recent decisions from the Supreme Court (the majority of which loves arbitration and hates class actions) certainly support the likelihood that, at least in federal courts, a certified class will ultimately exclude individuals who have agreed to arbitrate any disputes. And I do think that, for certain consumer claims, there may be a sweet spot (where breach of duty, causation, and damages are relatively easy to prove) in which individual consumers may prefer arbitration, which is typically cheaper than a lawsuit in a court of general jurisdiction, especially if the arbitration is to held in a venue convenient to the consumer. But for the kinds of claims we were discussing (essentially, major medical claims, such as wrongful death, involving specific individuals and based on somewhat questionable allegations of gross negligence resulting in injury), plaintiffs' attorneys do not want to be forced into arbitration. (I doubt we have serious disagreement about any of this stuff.)

Yeah the race director clearly is engaging in self aggrandizing behavior here, which tells me he is a problem. When he says “we saved lives,” and that he never once doubted his decision, it does make him appear to be a sociopathic liar. If he had said “we potentially saved lives,” then OK it is hard to argue but his assertion of certitude makes one question his intelligence. These are the type of people who should not be in these positions, and yes he clearly is acknowledging that a full refund is not happening.

Where’s the gross negligence when the race does not force anyone to participate? Too hot? Then don’t run.