Amateur hour according to this.
Was anyone in the race? Did you know? If I was a runner and they told me at the start, I'd be ok with it. But not telling you? No way.
Race organizers for HOKA Chicago Half Marathon cut 1k off course and tried to hide it from runners including Matt Baxter
LRC Community/Where to Run/Race Reviews
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"We paid for a half-marathon, not 12.6 miles" - this is the most hobbyjogger thing ever.
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That's honestly hilarious how bad they screwed up. Baxter thinks he Pr'd by like 45 seconds and instead he probably hit like 1:04 or something.
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It happens. I ran a race in 2019 that ran on an APT. Rain the night before washed out the last .75 miles so we had to turn around early making it 1.5 miles short. No one said anything but it was obvious based on our watches.
It sounds like the police made them change the course last minute. Not enough time to reconfigure another portion to absorb the shortage. I feel bad for the runners and know what it is like. I ended up just doing one a few weeks later to really test my fitness. That is the beauty of a half, you can recover for a few weeks from an all-out effort and go again.
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weak wrote:
"We paid for a half-marathon, not 12.6 miles" - this is the most hobbyjogger thing ever.
And the people who pay for and run in mass events are who again?
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It's not the fact that they had to shorten the course that is at issue. It's the fact that they attempted to hide it from everyone and not tell people is the real problem. For that reason alone I would demand a refund.
They probably figured now-a-days no one would care since "races" are for the instagram crowd anyway.
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The article only says it was done for "safety reasons." I wonder what those reasons were considering this is Chicago, the violent crime capital of the US.
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Nah, Matt edited his Strava upload right after the race and included “course was a little short” in his activity title. There is no way he thought he ran a legit 61 for even a second.
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DC101GDub wrote:
It's not the fact that they had to shorten the course that is at issue. It's the fact that they attempted to hide it from everyone and not tell people is the real problem. For that reason alone I would demand a refund.
They probably figured now-a-days no one would care since "races" are for the instagram crowd anyway.
This ^^. Even finding a 5k that is actually 3.12 miles is not as easy as it used to be. Race organizers cater to the masses and forgot that it's called a "race".
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As someone who has gone through the USATF course certification process, there's no way they accidently mis-measured. I remember having to get a bike with this special equipment to measure wheel rotations and wheel diameter, etc. It was ridiculously thorough.
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A 5K is 3.107 miles, little grasshopper.
It is also 3.125 1600s, if that’s what you were doing. lolol
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Everyone i know that ran it said it was about a half mile short.
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certy wrote:
As someone who has gone through the USATF course certification process, there's no way they accidently mis-measured. I remember having to get a bike with this special equipment to measure wheel rotations and wheel diameter, etc. It was ridiculously thorough.
They didn't mis-measure. The police forced them to cut the course short for safety reasons. This doesn't look like a deliberate choice but something they were forced to do last minute.
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Still counts as a PR for instagram.
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Word on the street is that it was due to the Bears game, which was scheduled like a year ago? Anyway, a spokesperson for the race said that the change was "minuscule." 😂
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A number of years ago the Pgh. Marathon and Half Marathon had to re-route the course due to the discovery of an unsupervised package on the course. It turned out to not be a bomb. this was before the Boston bombing
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asdfhdsjf wrote:
It happens. I ran a race in 2019 that ran on an APT. Rain the night before washed out the last .75 miles so we had to turn around early making it 1.5 miles short. No one said anything but it was obvious based on our watches.
It sounds like the police made them change the course last minute. Not enough time to reconfigure another portion to absorb the shortage. I feel bad for the runners and know what it is like. I ended up just doing one a few weeks later to really test my fitness. That is the beauty of a half, you can recover for a few weeks from an all-out effort and go again.
I recall back in the 70's when one of the first big versions of the Vulcan Run 10K was run in downtown Birmingham, AL. Lots of international stars were there. Somehow a lot of people got off course but it seemed like most of us just shrugged it off. To make matters worse, the KKK marched through the streets during the awards ceremony. I'm not making this up! Maybe some of the other old-timers will remember this.
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it's a scam. if you want a refund, just email customer support. you're pretty much guaranteed to get a refund because they know if anyone files a lawsuit, they're guaranteed to lose.
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DC101GDub wrote:
It's not the fact that they had to shorten the course that is at issue. It's the fact that they attempted to hide it from everyone and not tell people is the real problem. For that reason alone I would demand a refund.
They probably figured now-a-days no one would care since "races" are for the instagram crowd anyway.
Exactly. All they had to do was inform the runners BEFORE the race so that people could opt not to run or decide not to run all out. If this is your goal race you've been training for for the last 3 months, you'd rather just know they had to change it and re-target a different race the following weekend or something. Not find out on the finish line you'd been shorted!
I am so sick of short courses. Good luck finding a half that's actually 13.1 in my city.
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