Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Half-marathon runners go extra 4 miles due to re-routing error

A lot of runners in the Bangkok half-marathon had to be asking themselves more than usual, 'When is this race gonna end?' while thumping the pavement Sunday.


That's because instead of running the usual 13.1 miles, the participants had to run four extra miles after race officials, responsible for pointing the half-marathon runners in the right direction, inadvertently directed them "to make a U-turn at the wrong place," thus adding more than 1.8 miles to each of two laps.

The Jogging Association of Thailand, one of two organizers of the race, admitted to the error late Monday.

"It added more than 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) to each lap, therefore more than 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) were added to the whole half marathon," Surapong Ariyamongkol of the Athletic Association of Thailand said. "We have rebuked the association but we could not do anything else."

But the extra-winded runners were not amused: "The marathon's Facebook page filled with comments on Sunday and Monday from runners who called it 'ridiculous,' a 'massive miscalculation' and 'incredibly dangerous' for runners who had trained to run just 21 kilometers."

Look at the bright side angry runners, you just ran the world’s first — and probably last — 6/10 marathon ever.

And you will also get commemorative T-shirts.

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