Fastest woman at Lakefront Marathon DQ'd for taking water between aid stations

everyone is entitled to their opinion (this is America after all) but without a doubt the LAKEFRONT Marathon sounds like one of the worst in the USA as far as their lack of common sense. If I cared to carry the USATF rule book in any marathon, I'm pretty sure I could find conclusive evidence to disqualify 1/3 of the field at the Boston Marathon every year. (for taking aid outside of official water stops). Heck, there is even a running club that sets up an unofficial water table near heartbreak hill, and thousands drink.... meanwhile Chicago is Sunday thousands will be wearing i-pods, if they DQed them all they might as well cancel the race because the outrage would extend well beyond 10 pages on letsrun.com, yes, rules are rules, thankfully all of us live in a society where in most cases they are applied with discretion even in the case of the police who are trained to take time to look at the whole picture when appling our laws. Meanwhile some half cocked race director at Lakefront Marathon thinks she is hosting the god damn Olympic games and needs to rescue the sport from we cheaters. She should resign for not taking time to consider her poor decisions.

llllassss wrote:

She should resign for not taking time to consider her poor decisions.

ditto here: Kristine Hinrichs the race director of the Lakefront Marathon needs to step down. She clearly has no clue what to hell she is doing.

I have run this race and will tell everyone to avoid it if she remains the RD.

thumbs down to her. her's should be the next head to roll, actually her lack of common sense is a far worse offense than the woman who took an extra sip of h2o and the other who listened to some music, just like many of us do every weekend. word..don't be a race director if you don't know how.

gladiator man 1 wrote:

actually her lack of common sense

Again with the lack of "common sense" thing!

Ok, that's fine and I totally understand why you and all the other complainers don't think it is fair and showing a lack of "common sense".

But why won't anyone define where they would draw the line between ignoring the rules due to "common sense" and enforcing them as they are written?

And it's further silliness to be arguing for "common sense" in the application of the rules and then complaining that race directors haven't exhibited even more significant lapses of "common sense" by DQ'ing anyone and everyone wearing an ipod.

Simple question: how much rule violation is too much to be ignored?

After seeing all the facts I believe the officials did use common sense in making their decision.

The woman apparently took aid several times from her friends and then won by only 44 seconds. If she had taken aid from her friends only once, if she had taken aid several times from an unofficial "citizen" water stops rather than from her friends, if she had won by 5 minutes, I think you use discretion and give her a pass. As "Um Yeah" says, you have to draw the line somewhere. I think she crossed it.

Once they disqualified her they had no choice but to disqualify the second place finisher. If they hadn't there would be 20 pages of posts on letsrun calling for the RD's resignation for enforcing the rules for the first person but not the second. If the second woman had crossed the finish line first, I very much doubt anyone would be been DQed.

All the crap on here about half the field was wearing ipods and taking aid from the friends is irrelevant. None of them was winning the race. If you're winning the race you have to pay attention to the rules more closely. That's life.

I do think the race made two mistakes:

1) Don't even suggest that the woman was a cheater. Just say that she inadvertently broke the rules, but we can't pay prize money to someone who broke the rules.

2) Don't pay her the $500 and take away her Wisconsin championship (I'm sure she's crushed by that), but leave her, and the second place woman, as official finishers. Removing them is completely arbitrary. If they had finished 10th and 11th they would still have their official finish and their times.

dukerdog wrote:

After seeing all the facts I believe the officials did use common sense in making their decision.

The woman apparently took aid several times from her friends and then won by only 44 seconds. If she had taken aid from her friends only once, if she had taken aid several times from an unofficial "citizen" water stops rather than from her friends, if she had won by 5 minutes, I think you use discretion and give her a pass. As "Um Yeah" says, you have to draw the line somewhere. I think she crossed it.

Actually you are completely wrong. She took aid once from an 8 year old boy in front of his house, which was determined later that this was legal, and then she took a sip of water from her friend at the 19 mile mark. After the race when questioned by officials, she admitted to doing both of these things. Later, another runner in the race, claimed that she had received aid several times from her friends throughout the race. She never had a chance to defend herself on this claim. Later, this person posted on the badgerlandstriders board that he was the one that had seen her do this several times, but the frustrating thing is that he admitted he was 30-60 seconds in front of her the entire time. He helped get an athlete DQ'ed for something he only assumed was going on. Because he was 150-300 meters in front of her, he would often see her friends and family get out of their vehicles to cheer for her (perfectly legal) and then made an assumption that she was continually receiving aid, since an official saw her do it once. That never happened. It was a cool day with tons of official and unofficial aid stations set up and extra water was not needed.

Hope that helps clarify things for you.

Still the best point of the thread....should 1/3 of the field been DQ'd? And this was in the marquee meet of the year. Rules apparently, are not rules.

What is important wrote:

should 1/3 of the field been DQ'd? And this was in the marquee meet of the year. Rules apparently, are not rules.

Of course there is subjectivity in the application of the rules. That's the whole theme of this thread. But no one who has been saying the rules should not apply to this 3:02 marathon winner has said where THEY personally would apply them.

The best they can do is come up with other examples where the rules haven't been applied, but they can't seem to make up their minds whether they are arguing for all rules to be ignored all the time or all rules to be enforced all the time.

In this case, you apparently think DQ'ing a 3:02 marathon race winner is not a good move, but you also think NOT DQ'ing 1/3 of the women's Berlin 10,000m field was not a good move.

So where between those two extremes do YOU draw the line?

ggggddtdd wrote:

...tens of thousands of runners are handed fluids outside of official water stops every single year in marathons held all over the US...

Tens of Thousands of runners do not have their friends pull up next to them in a van, pass them a bottle and run along with them. Do you honestly think this is an acceptable practice?

Milwaukeean wrote:

She took aid once from an 8 year old boy in front of his house, which was determined later that this was legal, and then she took a sip of water from her friend at the 19 mile mark.

Did she ever explicitly say that she took no other aid? I don't remember seeing that but maybe she did. Once it has been confirmed that she did it once, it is perfectly reasonable to assume it happened more than once when the same group of people was seen on the course at several points. The burden of proof shifts to her, or at least the expectation of a clear statement from her that she did not, shifts to her.

And I don't think you are completely wrong. I think we are two people with a difference of opinion.

It seems like this thread has gone on long enough and its time for this whole thing to die down. Let's all move on to some awesome college XC action and elite marathoning in Chicago.

I am Cassie's fiance and coach so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the situation. Cassie is completely over this whole thing and has moved on to other more important things in her life- PhD program, wedding planning, training for Club XC nationals, etc. Cassie was more bummed by the fact that she didn't break 3 hours than the disqualification. The win was nice, but it wasn't her primary goal. She was upset when she learned of the DQ, but she freely admits that she broke a USATF rule. She'll also admit that she should have done a better job of understanding the rules. As her coach, I should have done a better job of advising her on this type of situation. We all learned an important lesson. Despite the DQ, Cassie had a great experience with this marathon. She told me she loved the course, enjoyed all the spectators, and thought everything was well organized. Overall, she's over the disqualification; time to move on.

With that being said, these are the facts of the case so everyone can know exactly what happened. A lot of rumors are flying around, so hopefully this will clear things up for everyone and we can move on. We all have different opinions of how things were handled, but this is what happened during the race(according to Cassie).

1) Cassie received water(aid) from two individuals during the course of the race who weren't official aid station workers. -A little boy who was standing in his yard with his father handing out cups of water. -A mutual friend of ours who gave Cassie a drink from her water bottle around mile 19.

2) The friend who gave Cassie a drink from her water bottle jogged along with Cassie for about 50 yards while Cassie was taking a drink. Cassie at first had trouble opening up the water bottle. This happened near the 19 mile mark. This was NOT planned. The water was offered and Cassie took it without thinking anything of it. The friend did not run alongside of Cassie for any significant amount of time, about 50 yards.

3) There was no "van" following Cassie around on the course. The friend drives a 2-door chrysler and there were 3 college kids along with her that were cheering Cassie on. They met up with Cassie around the 13-14 mile mark and they would drive about 2 miles down the road and cheer for her each time. They cheered for her at 4 different spots between 13 and 20 miles. They were also cheering at the finish line. The ONLY time that water was given to Cassie was at 19 miles.

4) Cassie learned of the DQ right before the awards ceremony was set to begin. The race organizers called her up along with the other top three women and informed her of the DQ. Cassie filed an official protest later that night around 6:00pm. The protest was rejected about 90 minutes later. And that was that.

Hi Mike - Thanks for bringing the facts to this thread. I apologize for my incorrect remarks about how the bottle was passed. I was passing on info (which ultimately wasn't important info) that I had read somewhere but that I didn't have the facts about. I'm glad Cassie has this experience in perspective and I'm glad she had a good experience at this marathon, despite all the broohaha. As a young runner with some talent just starting with this marathon thing her best racing is ahead of her and I hope she keeps developing.

ksw wrote:

llllassss wrote:

She should resign for not taking time to consider her poor decisions.

ditto here: Kristine Hinrichs the race director of the Lakefront Marathon needs to step down. She clearly has no clue what to hell she is doing.

I have run this race and will tell everyone to avoid it if she remains the RD.

I'm reading the new RRCA newsletter and it says this race has been awarded staus as the 2010 RRCA National Marathon Championship.

Let the comments begin...

Thank you for posting this message. Good luck to you and Cassie for a bright and successful future! Looking forward to seeing many great things from her.

-Matt De Witt

P.S. You should also post this same message to the Badgerland Striders board, so it dies down there as well.

Um, yeah wrote:

gladiator man 1 wrote:

actually her lack of common sense

Again with the lack of "common sense" thing!

Ok, that's fine and I totally understand why you and all the other complainers don't think it is fair and showing a lack of "common sense".

But why won't anyone define where they would draw the line between ignoring the rules due to "common sense" and enforcing them as they are written?

And it's further silliness to be arguing for "common sense" in the application of the rules and then complaining that race directors haven't exhibited even more significant lapses of "common sense" by DQ'ing anyone and everyone wearing an ipod.

Simple question: how much rule violation is too much to be ignored?

beep boop beep I am a robot

dukerdog wrote:

Milwaukeean wrote:

She took aid once from an 8 year old boy in front of his house, which was determined later that this was legal, and then she took a sip of water from her friend at the 19 mile mark.

Did she ever explicitly say that she took no other aid? I don't remember seeing that but maybe she did. Once it has been confirmed that she did it once, it is perfectly reasonable to assume it happened more than once when the same group of people was seen on the course at several points. The burden of proof shifts to her, or at least the expectation of a clear statement from her that she did not, shifts to her.

And I don't think you are completely wrong. I think we are two people with a difference of opinion.

It did say in one of the articles that she had admitted to taking the water from the 8 year old boy and then her friend at the 19 mile mark and then it talked about this other runner saying she had gotten aid several times. This is what frustrated me the most about this situation is that this runner told the race directors something that was completely false. He never saw her get aid, he just assumed it based on his comments on other message boards. Basically he called her a liar and she is far from that. Anyway, Coach Nelson had a great post and that should hopefully put an end to everything.

racer99 wrote:

I'm reading the new RRCA newsletter and it says this race has been awarded staus as the 2010 RRCA National Marathon Championship.

Let the comments begin...

Hurry Hurry Hurry

Don't miss out on the 2010 RRCA National Championships at the Lakefront Nazithon. Be the first in your running club to get DQ'ed from a major championship. Bask in the glory of Letsrun infamy. Make your months of training mean absolutely nothing. Earlybird registrants by December 31, 2009 will receive commemorative water bottles and be eligible for one of 50 Apple Ipod Shuffles to be given away.

Don't forget to make sure you are part of an official RRCA club so you are eligible for any awards. For males with times under 3:05 and females under 3:25, please submit times for inclusion in Elite start corrals.

ps, we will not be requiring drug tests at this event, but you may provide your own if you so choose.

Thank you and hope to see you there!!!!

Krisssstine Hinricches wrote:

Don't miss out on the 2010 RRCA National Championships at the Lakefront Nazithon.

add this to Websters, Nazithon; thanks for calling a horse a horse, this race should be cancelled.