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This is what I saw at a marathon once: As the finish line clock approached 6:30:00 (the race had a 7:00:00 cutoff), some charity coaches were talking back and forth on a radio to a car that was shadowing the last charity runner on their team. The runner was about three miles from the finish line - she had hit the wall hard, but was still moving. The charity coaches realized the runner would not make it in time so they radioed to the car to pick up the runner and transport her two miles to a point one mile from the finish to let her do the final mile and make it in time.
In this case, I have mixed feelings. The runner put in a lot of effort and it would be unfortunate if she arrived at a locked up finish line in 7:20:00. She tried, she hit the wall, but she was still moving.
Does it hurt anyone to have this runner appear in the results as having finished at 6:58:03 (a made up time), having really completed 24.2 miles. She would have completed all 26.2 miles, but not gotten a medal or final time due to logistical reasons. She put in a lot of work, would have finished, but got tied up a bit....
I go both ways on whether it's good or bad to include that runner in the results - does it hurt anyone? (yes, some will say she didn't make it, but I'd say she just picked the wrong marathon, she should have found one with a longer cutoff time).
It gets more complicated when this becomes an institutionalized program - when charities know that they can point runners en masse towards a shortened course. Now, that does seem just wrong when this is planned ahead of time...
To get more complicated (and I don't know if this really happens like this): If a charity comes to a marathon and says: "I will bring 500 charity runners to your race, but we want to make sure (wink, wink) that they all get to finish." What's a race to do? The race needs those runners to pay the bills, so if one or two don't quite finish in time, should the race turn a blind eye or risk losing those runners for the next year?
I'm impressed that the Marine Corps Marathon disqualified the charity runners - but am surprised that this is the first year that they noticed this. As the newspaper article stated in a quote, the shortcut used by JeansMarines was one well known to Team In Training...
It's unfortunate that the charities were not told in clear terms ahead of time that this would not be tolerated - it seems that at the Marine Corps Marathon JeansMarines was caught doing something that they've undoubtedly done before and might have thought was acceptable. They should have known better, but if they've seen other charities doing this at various races - might they have thought it was part of their deal as a charity team?
Wow, so many questions...
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