You’re a gluttonous pig with an Oreo dependency.
Damn it. Morton’s site does not have an RSS feed. That dude is so old school.
I was talking with someone over the weekend who is looking to do the 50 marathons in 50 states thing. We started going through which states he had left and what races he would do to get those done. On one of them I proposed one of the Rock N Roll marathons and he scoffed disgust with that organization. When I asked why, this very accomplished marathoner found it ridiculous that Rock N Roll actually allows participants to fall behind cut offs in the marathon, get picked up by a sag wagon for a ride, start the course later on down the road, complete the marathon and get a finishers time and medal for that. Curious, I went and checked if this practice was actually the case by poking around on the RnR website. In several locations on their website (for the various races) they state this approach for cut offs (blod and yellow emphasis is mine).
If a participant’s pace falls below the course time limit, they have a few options:
- Increase their pace to stay within the event minimum pace;
- Board a “sag wagon” shuttle to move forward on the course, where they may continue to participate in the event, maintaining the minimum pace required; or
- If the participant cannot continue, they may board a sag wagon to be dropped off at the next shuttle location, at a nearby medical station. The participant will be seen by a Medical Team captain to be cleared for the medical shuttle to transport the participant to the finish line.
Admittedly, part of me does not care. It is not like that person is taking someone’s podium place or prize money, and I see some benefit in their participation. And really, I have no direct skin in the game if they get a medal and certificate stating they did the marathon in 6 and half hours. But … THEY DID NOT DO THE MARATHON. Why is that even considered acceptable?
I got an email for results from this past weekend’s race that had a link to a video of the finish. Interesting thing is that the link was customized to bring the video to just about where I finish by adding a “#t=4m11s” to the end of the youtube tag. That is pretty cool. So if I want to bring you to the incredibly cool Matt Bellamey guitar solo from “Invincible” in their Wembley concert, I don’t have to give you the whole video but I can just tag that like this. Maybe that was generally known but I just picked that nugget up.
The bad news is I get to watch that finish and pretty much relive how I was running with nearly all the folks that finish from about 3 minutes on in the video up until about halfway into that race.
Pretty unmotivated to fight the snow and wet today. Easy easy with the dogs. 7.2 miles. Got my ass kicked by Hans and after he dragged me through a slush puddle I was REALLY unmotivated. Dinner, a couple of glasses of boxed wine later, I got out for another 3 in the slush with Lucy.
Holy cow on that SAG wagon thing, never would have imagined.
ReplyDeleteGood on your friend for avoiding RnR for that reason and others.
I don't know how to quantify it best, but it seems like bad karma.
I'll throw out the idea that people pay money for an experience in which there's "shared suffering", and people near the cutoffs that push through and finish still draw a valid sense of competitive achievement and effort. Someone that blows by, artificially "fresher" from not having run the actual distance, would be discouraging to a person pushing their limits.
Another extreme possibility: Riding a SAG and jogging a few miles in a DC or Vegas (cutoff 5.5 or 5 hours) would result in a Pikes Peak qualifier -- yikes!
Good point on the Pikes qualifier. I had not thought of that. If such a thing were to happen, I guess karma would show up in spades somewhere around Barr Camp.
ReplyDeletePretty crazy to me what Morton is doing, flying out to CA each weekend.
ReplyDeleteNo kidding. Makes me feel bad for griping about getting down to Pikes.
DeleteBut to be clear, I am pretty happy on whole with that choice for me ... just not my thing to haul around 200 miles to go run 10.
DeleteRnRs are just in it for the cash (evident by their heftier than most registration fee), so they cater to the marathon wannabes by making them as "easy" as possible and hype it up as so, so they buy into it. Look at the overall avg pace of RnRs and other honorable marathons and you'll see big differences (something they wouldn't publish). But I do like Denver's half, one of my favorite courses.
ReplyDeleteWhen I did Chicago last year, I read someone's blog after who admitted, out loud, that she ran 16 miles of the marathon then her husband (boyfriend? Who cares) ran the last 10 so they could make the cutoff and get the medal. I'm not sure I could sleep at night knowing I cheated. Hopping on the SAG to skip part of the race would be the same thing - I don't care if I were in dead last place. I'd drop before I did that.
I don't know anything about youtube tagging...I'm just stalling writing my next blog post... :)
I think I have a rant chambered up on how this is yet another indication of the "everyone is a winner" mentality that plagues much of our society, but it would just fall into the "grumpy old man monologue" category.
DeleteRnR, total BS. They should have the option to downgrade distance on the fly, like they do at Collegiate Peaks 25/50 for instance.
ReplyDeleteCarolla would love this, it would fall under his Participation Trophy rant: (warning, explicit language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeZ1OgJnE7w&list=PLF7397B0D23142F13&index=2
I think I heard that one on the original show.
DeleteJeff your suggestion had me recall that Pikes apparently used to be that way years ago. You could choose at the summit if you were doing the Ascent or the round trip.
Gotta have that finisher's medal for dinner party conversation... Kids birthday party mentality: everyone goes home with a prize (even if you suck).
ReplyDeleteI usually like a race shirt, but yeah, I feel pretty silly when I finish and get the finishers medal, especially after a crappy race. Though well meaning, the enthusiastic congrats when "awarding" me with the finishing medal after said crappy race kind of adds an ironic feeling of failure and disappointment with myself.
DeleteI am wondering if this is how that VP candidate ran that sub 3 marathon.
DeleteMedals have always felt a bit weird to me. I mean, what am I going to do? Wear them all at some party? I get what they mean and all but I always thought medals were really reserved for Olympians and military folks and maybe the occasional civilian that did something really special.
Does Rock 'n Roll have a 'Just Drive To The Finish' option? Because I'm pretty sure if they simply handed me the medal I could convince myself that I ran it, and could just drown my suppressed shame in beer.
ReplyDeleteSign me up for that one Jeff! But only the 5k version.
DeleteGeorge - GREAT POINT. Maybe Eddie Munster did run a sub 3 marathon...by RnR criteria. I'm glad you dug that up - I'll be sure to make fun of anybody I cross in the future contributing to that silliness.
ReplyDeleteRE: Morton, yea those updates are intriguing to me for a few reasons:
1) He is obviously quite healthy again.
2) He is obviously making WS a key focus race.
3) He has obviously been planning out this for a long time - he had to line up sponsors to pay for this and save up leave to miss those Fridays and Mondays for quite awhile.
Will be interesting to see what he does at Keys100 in a few weeks and then if he lines up at WS healthy. He has also won Massanutten before, so its not like he's a slouch in the mountains.
And he was the prior course record holder at WS, right?
DeleteAnd he ran up that last uphill at Badwater pretty well, right?
The level of commitment the guy has is a bit mind boggling to me.
His 'website' says he still owns the course record at WS for the route he run. I thought last year replicated that route, but dunno.
Delete