Blogger in Ohio discovered runner in Florida cheating in a half-marathon (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Blogger in Ohio discovered runner in Florida cheating in a half-marathon (2017)

washingtonpost.com

48 pointsluu31 comments

Some years ago I accidentally cheated in a short and fast 6k run, resulting in a second place. The route markings on the road were that bad and misleading that I accidentally cut the route by about 300m, which is quite a lot at a 6k. I did not notice, couldn't actually believe it, but proudly received my medal. At home I compared my run with the other runners on Strava and noticed the abbreviation. Oops! I immediately wrote an email to the organizer and the medal went to the earned other. :) I wasn't disqualified though, but just placed more or less correctly at the bottom of the first third. It was a nice feeling to stay on the stairs, because at this point I did not know it was incorrect. :)

In 1980, the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington was run on a short course. First, the lead motorcycle followed the press truck around a cutoff just before the tip of Hains Point. Then the guides directed runner across grass rather than keeping them on the road near the Tidal Basin. Runners received a finisher's certificate with a clock time and an adjusted time. (About 2 minutes if you were in the lower 2:5x range.)

> Derek Murphy, an independent marathon investigator. Murphy, a former distance runner himself, has dedicated his time away from work trying to bust cheating road warriors by using the 21st century’s best tools: data collected in our interconnected world. He posts his findings to his blog, Marathon Investigation, which he maintains from his home in Ohio.

Remember this next time someone says you have a weird hobby.

Not like the noble pursuit of insulting people who didn't do anything wrong via HN comments.

Is "weird" an insult? Or is there a greater context I'm unaware of?

It's not. I've noticed this misunderstanding before and it's very frustrating. Not every word with a negative connotation is an insult.

It is. The comment provides it's own context to show it. It is not internally consistent any other way. See my other response. I likewise am frustrated by things, like lobbing such casual insults and then playing dumb/innocent when called on it.

"what's wrong with weird?" Nothing is, and they know that's a misdirected disingenuous question.

This is ascribing an incredibly negative attitude to me and frankly it is unnecessary. I don't deserve to be attacked just because I do not understand what you meant, especially because I took the time to ask you for clarification.

Clearly I feel like what you have to say could have merit and I would like to know what that merit is.

There is no other way to interpret this use of "weird hobby" than as ridicule. Otherwise what was the intended point of the comment?

For instance, the part "next time someone says you have a weird hobby", why does the reader supposedly care if someone does say that to them?, and why do they need to remember anything when that happens? What is this memory bolstering them against?

Is it meant to keep their heads from getting too big from the compliment?

In fact I consider weird a virtue, and when someone calls me weird, I usually say "thank you" whether they meant it as a compliment or not, but in fact most people do not intend that charge as a compliment, and this comment in parficular can be trivially unpacked and can not be interpreted as either a compliment or even neutral, without ignoring the actual words and context. It doesn't hold together as a rational string of words any other way than as ridicule.

And I decline to believe that you don't know that, which makes this comment disingenuous.

You seem very emotional about all this, I must apologise - I simply don't see this. I read the comment as specifying that this is a very specific and unusual hobby, so when people think this about your hobbies you have something to relate to. It is not negative or positive, it is just providing context.

Just arguing point and responding to same.

I read it as "quirky".

I read weird as “curious” “odd” or “interesting”. Not inherently bad or “weird” like a 3rd grader would say it.

you seem pretty worked up about correcting people who don't need corrected yourself

From the HN Guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) -

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Indeed.

Direct link to the findings: https://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2017/02/runner-disqual...

TIL: independent marathon investigators exist. What a great read and brilliant sleuthing on the investigators part. It is crazy how far the cheater went to cover their tracks.

Does anyone else get a weird vibe from that deleted Instagram post? It reads like something someone else would post using the cheating runner's credentials to out her, not a personal apology and admission of cheating.

The overall wording and use of all-caps in some places is also pretty weird.

The vibe I get is anguish, shame, and regret as someone is trying desperately to salvage their reputation and finding that they can't. I can definitely picture someone writing that; if it was forged (which I have no reason to believe) it felt convincing to me.

But what did she do? She took a shortcut and no one noticed? Is not the track surrounded by staff and spectators?

> She cut the course about 3/4 of a mile from the turnaround – cutting a total of 1-1/2 miles.

Yeah that's the weird part, that she was able to leave the course and cut off a chunk of it without apparently being noticed.

I would imagine - well, depending on the formality of the event - that there would be frequent 'checkpoints' to log intermediate times and calculate average speed, like once per kilometer or so or even more frequent. If cheating is that big of an issue, of course.

If you read the post the timer from the race flagged her and the event owner said she could stay in.

So the system did flag her and those in charge ignored the recommendation of race officials.

I don't think most races of this type are on tracks. They are on big loops through the city and/or countryside, and the runners do one lap. At most places one might spectate you'll only see the runners come by once, which unless you are a very hardcore fan is not going to be interesting except if you are near the end of the course or if the event is something exceptional enough such as the Olympics that simply seeing any of it live might be interesting.

For an event that seems to be held regularly and seems to be just one of the nearly 3000 half-marathons [1] that happen each year in the US I'd not at all be surprised if there are parts of the course that don't have any spectators.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/280485/number-of-running...

Lesson to be learned: if you want to cheat, don't have smart watches, invasive fitness apps or even a phone on you.

I’m glad this person got caught. It’s really too bad how asymmetrical it is - it is much easier for the cheaters to cheat than it is for the others to catch them.

If she cheated in this race, what else has she also cheated? In the end she's only cheating herself. And that's sad.

https://archive.ph/VwCIi

Note: 2017 article

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