Media coverage of the 27.2 miles marathon
As mentioned here on Monday, I took part in the 'extra mile marathon' on the Lakeshore. At the time of my fairly immediate post-race blog entry, I was speculating if and how the organisers would respond to the fact that most of us with GPS devices found the distance to be wrong: we ran 27.2 instead of 26.2 miles.By Monday afternoon when the chip time results were first posted, it was indirectly acknowledged: the average pace for the total time had been calculated with the augemented distance of 27.2. But nothing else yet...
By Thursday we received the usual email telling us about the availability of results as well as this brief admission: There were however some operational mistakes and shortcomings that tarnished the experience for many. In that regard, additional feedback and a post event survey will be forthcoming.
Well, it got more interesting yesterday. The Chicago Tribune had both a cover page story, and an entry by blogger/journalist Eric Zorn, with quotes and links. Apparently, national print and TV media had short coverage too as Google News shows. The race founder and organiser made symbolic amends by resigning as race director. He may have to relinquish more -- we'll see. Those who ran trying to qualify for Boston are probably the maddest.
I'm still more bemused than outraged about the whole thing. I ran my
'just under' 8 min/mile pace for 26.2, then slowed a little and ran the final
1/2 mile with my older daughter. Courtesy of the professional photographers,
we even have some nice pictures of us crossing the finishing line after 27.2
and 0.5 miles, respectively:
