Last week, a woman won a marathon by mistake. She had registered for, trained for, and started the 1/2 marathon. Somewhere along the way, she took a wrong turn, and ended up on the full marathon course.
Once she realized her mistake, she thought she’d just drop out after 20 miles and call it a long training run. Then she noticed that there were no other women around or in front of her. She found an official, who contacted the race director, and found out that they would honor her as an entrant to the full marathon.
Is this controversial? Should it be? It seems some people feel she should not have been awarded the first place prize for a race she didn’t enter (although she did pay the price different between the 1/2 and full afterwards). Will this encourage people to register for other distances and then “accidentally” run the one they wanted, that perhaps was full? I’ve never actually run a race where multiple distances started at the same time, which seems like it would have to be, for the 1/2 marathoner to be finishing and getting a chip or gun time when crossing the finish.
Some folks seem to be concerned about the woman who would have won. Should she have lost her win? Did she know there was someone in front of her competing in the same race? It’s possible she saw someone she thought was running the 1/2 or that she was just back enough that she thought she was ahead of all the marathoners. Would she have run differently if she had known another woman was in front of her? A lot of people are arguing that they both ran the same course, therefore it doesn’t matter. First is first. But running is such a mental thing, and I’m sure there’s a difference between running your best while you think you’re in front, the leader, and running your best when you think you’re close behind the leader.
You can read more about it at The Windsor Star.
PS. I would probably die (literally) if I set out to run a 1/2 marathon and ended up running 26.2.
Wow- yea, this was quite the topic of controversy wasn’t it?
To be honest, I never really gave it much thought beyond “holy crap… she accidentally ran a marathon????!!!!” I was slightly depressed at the fact as I would never be able to do that… but I also think it’s pretty cool that she could do it.