Philadelphia Marathon on cheaters - who cares?

"I (mistakenly) assured my friend that they’d take care of it faster than you can say 'Kip Litton'."

Hilarious.

That event's management has been the second-tier marathon world's equivalent of an absentee landlord for years. The response posted on the blog is a joke, but I'm surprised you got any answer at all. To the people in charge, the Philly Marathon is nothing more than a revenue stream and a chance for a few city government officials to show their ugly faces and pretend they give a shit. As long as no bombs go off or the race isn't halted by some other disaster, they don't care about the results or cheating or age-group award or basic fairness. People flock to this thing because the course is fairly nice for a big-city marathon (especially given what an ate-up shithole Philly is), the weather is almost always favorable, and it's late enough in the year for people to use it as a back-up if they fail to meet their goals at TCM, Chicago, MCM and other October races, even NYCM for hardier types of those who DNF early enough.

Why spend time on outing hobby jogging cheaters? If someone does a Rosie Ruiz, call me. Otherwise, I'm with the 'who care' camp when it concerns slow azz people.

This is why we need MORE drones in the sky

zzzzzzzz... wrote:

Why spend time on outing hobby jogging cheaters? If someone does a Rosie Ruiz, call me. Otherwise, I'm with the 'who care' camp when it concerns slow azz people.

Yeah but aren't these road races USATF sanctioned? If so, people need to take timing seriously.

This reminds me of when id been assigned to read mile splits OUTLOUD AT A jogathlon road race. The people near the front and mid pack found it helpful, but for the people in the back walking by my mile marker it almost felt like i was of no use reading out the elapsed clock time to them.

This happens all the time in major marathons. Unless you actually saw someone cheat or the people won an award, who cares?

check out 3rd and 4th place in the 40-44 women's AG if you want to see someone who got cheated out of an award. And according to the blog, his "friend" did witness cheating first hand.

Everything City of Brotherly Bros just wrote is 100% correct.

I ran it once several years ago and the race could not have been more disorganized. There were so few porta potties that peopel just pissed anywhere they could find space. There was no bag check so people just left them around trees hoping they'd be there when the race finished (there was no security or fencing to protect the bags either).

I later found out that the same lady charged with organizing the race was also responsible for organizing the Thanksgiving Day parade to be held 4 days after the marathon.

The race is what it is - disorganized and frankly a do it yourself marathon. But it has good weather and a fairly easy course, and there is good enough competition to push you along the way. Also, the aid stations worked well too. Chicago/NYC/Boston/MCM it is not. But it's better than some of the other alternatives too.

curious jorge wrote:

check out 3rd and 4th place in the 40-44 women's AG if you want to see someone who got cheated out of an award. And according to the blog, his "friend" did witness cheating first hand.

Why isn't the woman in cuffs?

When did you last run it? I found the race to be well-organized, plenty of port-o-pots, and there was a bag check. I think it was revamped a few years ago to get rid of some of the old issues.

what does your AG ranking have to be before you're expected to behave in an honest and moral fashion?

Third place finisher in F40-44: Half way split 52:02. You go girl!

curious jorge wrote:

check out 3rd and 4th place in the 40-44 women's AG if you want to see someone who got cheated out of an award. And according to the blog, his "friend" did witness cheating first hand.

52min first half and 2hr20min second half? yeah, it's a bit of positive split, but this sort of thing always happens when you go out too fast. I predict that next time she learn the lesson and she will go out in a relatively pedestrian 1:08 to bring it home in 1:06 or something like that, should not be too hard for a 52min half marathoner

Losertown wrote:

Third place finisher in F40-44: Half way split 52:02. You go girl!

curious jorge wrote:

check out 3rd and 4th place in the 40-44 women's AG if you want to see someone who got cheated out of an award. And according to the blog, his "friend" did witness cheating first hand.

The 3rd and 4th place AG winners there are bananas. oh my god that's just insane to see.

Does it matter?

Lets be honest.

No one gives a sh_t about AG finishers. Some ladies running a 2:50 Marathon, great. But lets be real. They are so weak they could probably not do a single pullup.

They lack focus. They need to concentrate on the big picture.

No one wants to be scrawny.

Doesn't their excuse of very few people do it also apply to real-world crime. Let's get rid of the police because only a few people commit crimes.

Philly wrote:

The truth of the matter is that very few people actually cheat. Don’t get me wrong, some do and we see it but most don’t.

Isn't the race USATF certified?

Even if you are a back of the pack walker, at least you can say you walked the whole distance. Ignoring cheating and course cutting undermines the marathon from front to back.

rojo wrote:

Doesn't their excuse of very few people do it also apply to real-world crime. Let's get rid of the police because only a few people commit crimes.

For one thing, if they're not even trying to catch people, how would they know for sure that the rate of cheating is low? Sure, you can safely assume that more people than not complete the course legitimately, but where do you pin down the actual number and decide, as someone in charge of the race, whether it's acceptable to ignore it? 1 percent of the field? 5 percent? 10?

As far as "real" crimes vs. cheating in marathons, be it for monetary gain, to get a spot at Boston, or just for the hell of it, RDs are less inclined to follow up than police simply because the damage done naturally scales with the type of offense in question. These RDs who say that lack of evidence keeps them from going after age-groupers who skip chip mats and walk off with someone else's medal wouldn't be so blase' if instead, entrants were on the course physically assaulting other runners or taking their wallets or smashing car windows or setting fires; even if witnesses and photos were seemingly out of the equation, you could be sure that the "we don't have enough to go on" bullshit out of race officials' mouths would stop. But face it -- while any RD would intervene in any way possible if someone was deprived of money or a top OA placing, if someone winds up with a time of 3:30 and wins diddlyt, the RD isn't going to care if the splits show 1:45/1:45 or 2:20/40.