Questionable results from Harrisburg Marathon in the Female Division.
Winner based on gun time was Shelby Joslyn in 3:11:02.55. Interesting side note, her husband, Fred, was the overall winner and has now claimed 2 marathons (Steamtown & Harrisburg) & 2 halfs (Hershey & Gettysburg) in the last 5 weeks!
2nd place was Britta Dempsey, 49, from Sterling, VA in 3:11:48.59, again based on gun time. However, based on chip time, Ms. Dempsey ran the fastest female time overall in 3:10:05.16 vs. Mrs. Joslyn's 3:10:57.73.
I was initially going to post here to just ask a fun question of how often this happens in a marathon? Obviously not going to happen in a major, but for a mid-sized? I cannot imagine it happens more than once or twice, but I could be totally wrong.
HOWEVER, the bigger issue is that it appears that Ms. Dempsey is not capable of legitimately running a 3:10 or 3:11. Second side note, if she did, in fact, cheat, I think it is an amazing coincidence that she also dropped a 3:11 like that on-air personality/wedding DJ/family man/egomaniac from Philly
She has an Athlinks accounts with a claimed best marathon time of 4:05:27 from 2010; her best claimed half is 1:50:35, also from 2010.
Under unclaimed results, her best marathon, excluding Harrisburg 2015, appears to be 2010 Baystate Marathon in 3:54:51. These PRs strongly indicate that Ms. Dempsey's time in Harrisburg was not legitimate. But most damning, in my opinion, is that also under unclaimed marathon results, Britta Dempsey, age 49 from Sterling VA, ran a 4:41:44 in the Freedom's Run Marathon in WV on October 10, 2015
It strains credulity to believe that anyone, let alone a 49 year old woman with no history of going sub 3:30, let alone sub 3:20 or 3:15 could PR by at least 40 minutes (using Baystate as PR) and, more amazingly, shave off 1:30 in less than one month! I don't think that type of short-term improvement would be possible even if she were on the best doping regiment known to man.
I was not at the race, but hopefully an investigation is launched and Ms. Dempsey will be disqualified or, in the alternative, have to prove she legitimately ran the race.
Full gun time results from HBG 2015 marathon -->
http://www.parunners.com/2015%20RESULTS/Harrisburg%20Marathon%20AG.htm
Full chip time results -->
http://www.parunners.com/2015%20RESULTS/Harrisburg%20Marathon%20Overall.htm