London Marathon runners who took >7.5 hours given free spot in next year’s race

But you were being an ass about the obese runners who were actually making an effort to do something about their weight. Surely you have to admit that what you said was douchey. I don’t understand your point, how can one be lazy and do a marathon? Obviously these women are trying to better their health and settimg an example of for the obese community.

The smaller local marathons I participated in have a 5 hour or 5:15 cut-off.

And no pace groups slower than 4:30.

Boston, the only major I have done, closes after 6 hours.

Even a person jogging slowly should finish in 5 hours. Longer than 5 hours mean frequent walk breaks.

If one has to take walk breaks, one has to train harder for the marathon or stick to turkey trots.

Besides, the London marathon has to reject tens of thousands of runners each year, they should NOT give spots to 6 hour pedestrians.

pr100 wrote:

The main issue was that there were official pace groups all the way down to 7.5 hours. If you provide those pace groups, then people have a reasonable expectation that they can participate properly "running" that slowly; so the infrastructure should still be in place for those people.

Whether it's wise to have such slow pace groups is a different question.

Yeah, if you have a 7.5 hr pace group, your cut off time should be something like 8 hours.

Kerrie Aldridge would have still missed the cut off by more than one hour.

If these people were serious about running, or their health, they would properly train and get in shape before ever toeing the start line. They obviously have just minimal training, but again when you take 9 hours to finish, your training wasn't even minimal. They are not setting a good example for anyone. They are overweight, out of shape, don't train, and cry when they take too long to finish a marathon due to cutoff times.

just train wrote:

If these people were serious about running, or their health, they would properly train and get in shape before ever toeing the start line. They obviously have just minimal training, but again when you take 9 hours to finish, your training wasn't even minimal. They are not setting a good example for anyone. They are overweight, out of shape, don't train, and cry when they take too long to finish a marathon due to cutoff times.

This elite athlete ran 370 training miles for 20 weeks before her first marathon. You don't respect her dedication and hard work?

Healthy at Every Size wrote:

just train wrote:

If these people were serious about running, or their health, they would properly train and get in shape before ever toeing the start line. They obviously have just minimal training, but again when you take 9 hours to finish, your training wasn't even minimal. They are not setting a good example for anyone. They are overweight, out of shape, don't train, and cry when they take too long to finish a marathon due to cutoff times.

This elite athlete ran 370 training miles for 20 weeks before her first marathon. You don't respect her dedication and hard work?

https://danceswithfat.org/2013/12/03/my-big-fat-finished-marathon/

370/20=18.5 miles per week. The top marathoners do that daily once in full swing of training.

You don’t know how hard those people have worked to get to the point of being able to even walk a marathon without stopping. A lot of obese people have chronic fatigue and chronic pain and most cannot walk 200m without stopping, you don’t know what they have to fight through to finish a full marathon, and again, belittling them for doing it for charity is completely brainless and ridiculous. Being on your feet for 7 hours at their size is tough. Very, very tough. Stop trying to invalidate other people’s achievements just because you are bitter that your own get no recognition, that is the real problem here. I can assue you there are far worse people in the world worth having a tpxic opinion of than people who take 6+ hours to complete a marathon.

2:40 guy wrote:

You don’t know how hard those people have worked to get to the point of being able to even walk a marathon without stopping. A lot of obese people have chronic fatigue and chronic pain and most cannot walk 200m without stopping, you don’t know what they have to fight through to finish a full marathon, and again, belittling them for doing it for charity is completely brainless and ridiculous. Being on your feet for 7 hours at their size is tough. Very, very tough. Stop trying to invalidate other people’s achievements just because you are bitter that your own get no recognition, that is the real problem here. I can assue you there are far worse people in the world worth having a tpxic opinion of than people who take 6+ hours to complete a marathon.

I agree obese people like this put in a lot of work before they get to the London starting line. Massive amounts of reps of fork-to-mouth have been completed, 2-3 times the daily suggested amount for years on end. That's double or more the work I put in each day, mad respect!

2:40 guy wrote:

You don’t know how hard those people have worked to get to the point of being able to even walk a marathon without stopping. A lot of obese people have chronic fatigue and chronic pain and most cannot walk 200m without stopping, you don’t know what they have to fight through to finish a full marathon, and again, belittling them for doing it for charity is completely brainless and ridiculous. Being on your feet for 7 hours at their size is tough. Very, very tough. Stop trying to invalidate other people’s achievements just because you are bitter that your own get no recognition, that is the real problem here. I can assue you there are far worse people in the world worth having a tpxic opinion of than people who take 6+ hours to complete a marathon.

Definitely don’t have a problem with the people. Have a problem with VMLM sending mixed messages and setting a precedent that the point of the marathon is not to run as fast as you can, but rather to finish, which wasn’t the spirit in which it was created.

I don’t understand this mentality that LetsRun has that just because a couple of 7.5 marathon women complete a marathon and get some recognition that it is going to stop runners from trying as hard. Do you think kipchoge is going to stop training as an elite because “why bother running a 2 hour marathon when i can just do it in 7 hours?”. Why does it matter? Somebpdy enlighten me. People here say “these 7 hour marathon runners are making our sport look like a joke” - that isn’t a fact, it’s an ego problem. My consistant 70 mile weeks while only churning out 2:40-2:45 efforts must be making elite marathon runners look like a laughing stock then, no?

I don’t understand what people on here have against people who just want to entr marathons socially and run a crap time, it’s still drawing money and attention to our sport and the serious runners still take it seriously. Not only that, it does raise a lot of money for charities which I personally see as a good thing seeing as I lost my Mother to cancer while I was still in school.

It's called a Marathon RUN for a reason. Running is involved.

Sorry a 6-7 hour Marathon is not really a Marathon run, it's a hike.

And for all these obese people doing it, I would say. Stop it. It's really unhealthy for your joints. You don't get slimmer by "running" you get slimmer by eating less. And eating the right things too. Of course nobody wants to hear it.

Don’t you want to grow the sport & allow more people to try it, without them being held back by the fear of being bullied? A marathon is hard, and even at that pace is hard for some people. Maybe they’re just starting to run or just starting marathons. I see no harm in allowing people to join the sport without being bullied. It also helps people become healthier, bringing obesity rates down and health care costs down as well. I know this isn’t going to be a popular opinion amongst a majority of you, but I actually think it’s pretty nice of the London Marathon to do this for runners that were made fun of. They may take this free entry and shave a lot of time off for next year’s race.

Runner 475 wrote:

It's called a Marathon RUN for a reason. Running is involved.

Sorry a 6-7 hour Marathon is not really a Marathon run, it's a hike.

And for all these obese people doing it, I would say. Stop it. It's really unhealthy for your joints. You don't get slimmer by "running" you get slimmer by eating less. And eating the right things too. Of course nobody wants to hear it.

Funny. I’ve never heard anyone refer to a marathon as a “marathon run” - most people just call it a “marathon”.

Walking isn’t running, though.

It seems weird for walkers to expect to be accommodated, unless the race directors have specifically arranged to accommodate walkers?

BOLDERBoulder is nicely structured to have start waves for jogwalkers expecting to finish in 15 min per mile pace. Also waves for walkjoggers expecting to average 17 min per mile pace. Also for walkers who will go at 20 min per mile. Their website says the cutoff is walkers expecting to go slower than 22 min per mile pace.

That kind of pace accommodation could be reasonable for a 10K, and yet ridiculous for a marathon. Common sense says maybe the roads shouldn’t be closed for 7 hours — let the decent people of london have their streets back!

It seems reasonable that folks wanting to run a marathon, but who cannot jog about half of each mile, should train some more before walking up to a start line. But after the reported name calling, now it seems like discrimination, hence this weird pandering.

The issue here is that they had pace groups for 7.5 hour runners, they were under the time cut off, and these slower runners were treated differently than other runners by race staff and contractors. (The 2020 London Marathon has a time cut off of 9 hours. )

So the event is comping their entries to make up for it.

I would also expect a marathon event to offer free entries to everyone under 2:30 if those faster runners had problems with aid stations not being set up when they arrived, the course was not yet clearly marked, and/or those working the event had told those faster runners to 'slow down' or 'stop and wait till we are set up and ready', or told them they were too skinny.

If they are going to allow 9 hours to finish they should provide the same amenities and treatment to everyone who enters and completes the event in under 9 hours.

Whether or not they should allow people to finish in 9 hours is another thing altogether. I believe its actually harder and more costly for them to accommodate slower runners than faster runners, but if they want to do it that's ok.

Look, Coevett can be a bit brash, I'll readily admit that. But I think I have to agree with him here. It is definitely better that obese people take charge of their health and get active. I fully support that and I would never run down an obese person in the gym or out running since they are trying to better themselves.

My main issue is that people that are hideously out of shape, so obese people, people that can barely run a mile, smokers, etc, have absolutely zero place in a marathon. If they want to run/walk a half marathon, that's fine. But marathons aren't something that should be done on a whim by the average Joe. Hell, people have died during marathons. They aren't a joke.

People can walk race for charity all they want. But to pretend taking an entire work day or more to complete the distance is anything more than foolish is asinine. However, I'm someone that doesn't understand walking any race because I think that if you're going to go out an walk a 5k/10k/half marathon, just save yourself the money and do it in private.

Coevett wrote:

Surely it's impossible to 'run' a marathon in 7 1/2 hours?

They walked most of it and waddled parts of it.

Two tonne lard arses who thought they could do couch to charity marathon in 12 weeks.

Agree but the official 7:30 pacer was abused. The cut off is 7 hours before runners move to pavement. The intention was not to immediately hoof them off the course.

London also didn't take into account start to chip time crossing start line which can be over an hour.

These contracts calling people fat are the same rednecks abusing all runners. Years ago someone once said wanker to my mate a sub 15 runner. He walked back and decked him.

I agree it's a hike not a marathon which by definition is run not walked but everyone knows London is a jog fest.

On the other side good club runners in night of 10,000m were getting their running shorts in twist on IWOAAR after someone pointed out 35 DNF on the day.

The same runners look down on slow runners in London when this link was on IWOAAR but can't take criticism for dropping out because it's 'hot' and were struggling. 23° max is not hot for July Half of those just couldn't hack getting beat and being slower than their pb!

On a different issue some charity runners do it got heartfelt reason.

The club runners I know fail to get in London (1/20 chance of getting in) and really only run for charity to get an entry.

Charities pay big money to London to reserve places. Its s big racket taxes should go up and most charities scrapped as a massive amount goes to making directors rich. To done of them it's just a tax free business. People vote for governments with low taxes then give £10 to charity and claim they are compassionate helping people.

Club runners have no reason to complain about any slow runners though as they should be able to enter on good for age times.

Just Another LRC Idiot wrote:

pr100 wrote:

The main issue was that there were official pace groups all the way down to 7.5 hours. If you provide those pace groups, then people have a reasonable expectation that they can participate properly "running" that slowly; so the infrastructure should still be in place for those people.

Whether it's wise to have such slow pace groups is a different question.

Yeah, if you have a 7.5 hr pace group, your cut off time should be something like 8 hours.

Kerrie Aldridge would have still missed the cut off by more than one hour.

There is no cut off. The rule was move to pavements after 7 hour plus

Problem is the 7:30 pacer was also abused. She finished in 7:28 & did a good job. This is the main thing that made London give the free places. London. They stuffed up.

Anyone can use the tube in London and everyone knows the day is a write off for cars. Business makes good money off London so they can put up with some inconvenience.

An hour here or there is not going to make much difference.