Philadelphia Marathon on cheaters - who cares?

For a race like Philly the cost would just be incredibly high to police the entire out and back carefully when the huge crowd of 3:30 - 4:30 runners are going by.there are almost 12 miles of road where it would be very easy to cut at any point. And there's no good reason to enforce that strictly.I haven't looked at the splits, but it's a pretty thin set of runners until about 3:00 or even 3:15. Under this time it would be very hard to cut the course and not get noticed by other runners and race personnel. I suppose to maintain respectability it's reasonable for them to enforce course-cutting strictly up until the women's Boston qualifying time (3:35?). I sympathize with the idea of fairness, but the "rules must be strictly enforced for everyone" mentality just doesn't make sense after a point. It's not what I'd want my race fees to be spent on (okay, maybe that's more worthwhile than finisher's medals). From an RD's perspective I just don't see how it makes sense to be agro about shaming someone who cut the course to run 4:10 rather than 4:20.

Also, can we start a movement to get rid of finisher's medals? It's a symbol of everything that's wrong with hobby joggers (and perhaps America?).

Not sure what can be done.

Ideas?

And... "itegrity"? wtf?

Agree bro

ranphilly wrote:

For a race like Philly the cost would just be incredibly high to police the entire out and back carefully when the huge crowd of 3:30 - 4:30 runners are going by.there are almost 12 miles of road where it would be very easy to cut at any point. And there's no good reason to enforce that strictly.

I haven't looked at the splits, but it's a pretty thin set of runners until about 3:00 or even 3:15. Under this time it would be very hard to cut the course and not get noticed by other runners and race personnel.

I suppose to maintain respectability it's reasonable for them to enforce course-cutting strictly up until the women's Boston qualifying time (3:35?).

There are three hairpin turns on the Philly course. A good start would be to put down timing mats at the second (after crossing Falls Bridge) and the third (in Manayunk). But that costs $, and I don't think anybody wants to see Philly charging NYCM-level entry fees.

Even if the race did take splits at those points... so what? If an RD is not going to bother to use that information to certify results, we're back the square one.

Speaking of which, who IS the actual RD of the Philly Marathon? I know that Desiree Peterkin-Bell is the Executive Director of the race, but I think part of the problem is that there's no Race Director in the traditional sense charged with addressing these sorts of issues. Peterkin-Bell's work for the city is as a communications strategist, not an athletics coordinator, and she is not part of the Parks and Recreation division (which hosts the Broad Street Run).

Though I have to wonder about who exactly is minding the store, even on the communications front, when the race's website waited until several days after the race to add a button for the race results to the homepage.

Based on the prices I get charged by our timing contractor, adding 3 chip mats at Philly should cost them less than $2000. They had 29,000+ finishers, so probably at least 32,000 entrants, in the full and half. That's 6¢ extra per entrant, so I don't buy that their entry fees would go up due to adding a few more chip mats.

What it comes down to is a lack of understanding on the part of the RD that this is important in this sport. How important, I'll leave that to everybody else to debate. Personally I say it's important. Thing is, it's not that hard to publish nearly 100% accurate results if you care to. If somebody on their staff took an hour or two the day after the race to scan the results they would find 95% of the issues. I'm not saying it's easy to do that kind of job live or right after a race happens (for a race of this size) because RD's and their staffs have a ton going on that is time sensitive on raceday. But the next day somebody should look for the obvious issues...missing chip splits and 1st half/2nd half splits that make no sense.

I've been at industry conferences with Ms. Peterkin-Bell. Based on the conversations I've had with her and the roundtable discussions I've been in on with her I would have thought she was RD. They may be organized differently than a traditional arrangement, but my impression was that she was both ED and RD.

d2xccoach wrote:

Based on the prices I get charged by our timing contractor, adding 3 chip mats at Philly should cost them less than $2000. They had 29,000+ finishers, so probably at least 32,000 entrants, in the full and half. That's 6¢ extra per entrant, so I don't buy that their entry fees would go up due to adding a few more chip mats.

What it comes down to is a lack of understanding on the part of the RD that this is important in this sport. How important, I'll leave that to everybody else to debate. Personally I say it's important. Thing is, it's not that hard to publish nearly 100% accurate results if you care to.

I'm completely with you there. I think the timing company is up for it, but the push needs to come top-down from the RD.

I actually had an issue with my 30K split this year -- the 30K mark is on the way out to the Manayunk turnaround, and somehow, my initial split reading missed me on the way out but recorded me on what must have been my return trip, leading to what looked like a head-spinningly fast final 12K. One brief note to SAI Timing (via the Philly Marathon website) and it was quickly fixed and updated in the official results by noontime on Monday.

The participants with the questionable splits probably could have gotten their results updated in much the same manner, if they had inquired. But that presupposes they care about the integrity of their results, which may be a bit much to ask.

Maybe instead of calling them athletes or competitors or racers, these road races should just call them "participants"

All "participants" get medals - even those who attempted a marathon and only slogged 18 miles and took the bus back to the start.

+1

I particularly like the woman who "ran" 3:01:50 after 2:08:47 for the first half. She even got written up in her local paper as the top finisher from her town.

d2xccoach wrote:

Based on the prices I get charged by our timing contractor, adding 3 chip mats at Philly should cost them less than $2000. They had 29,000+ finishers, so probably at least 32,000 entrants, in the full and half. That's 6¢ extra per entrant, so I don't buy that their entry fees would go up due to adding a few more chip mats.

Good in theory, but the timing company isn't going to go out and buy those 3 additional mats unless they see they're going to get them rented out more than once a year. That may mean they'll sublet mats from another company with compatible equipment. Can't necessarily count on pricing once you exceed the inventory of the primary contractor.

Now what i don't get is why the results aren't scanned in an automated fashion for outliers that require investigation. I know part of it is there is no much pressure on the timing companies now to have near real-time results that anything that could possibly delay posting them is avoided. I've been there at the finish line with the RD or announcer standing over my shoulder waiting for results more times than I can count so I know the feeling, and in general the process of changing the results (particularly awards) after the fact is painful. Absolutely no way to do it without someone getting pissed off.