Marathon Weekend 2027

[LatebloomerultraF3]

THIS!!! Everyone has good runs, bad runs and everything in between. A training block can go perfectly and you are feeling peak and then you are slammed with the flu on race week. Or take a misstep on the course which leaves you with an injury. There are a million scenarios out there of why someone would be a DNS or DNF. I am fortunate to not have one under my belt yet, but know there will come that day. And I hope that any fellow runner would give me grace in that situation. Not shame me for it. Or shame me for my pace, whether that is because I’m super speedy or have to walk the entire thing!

I’m frankly disgusted by the judgements on the LA marathon. Like it or not, the race organizers made a call for what they thought were safety reasons. Could some of those folks that finished at 18 miles made it to 26.2? For sure. Would some of them had medical emergencies if they continued? Obviously no way of knowing that. But I have been on a course where a very experienced local runner was passed out halfway through with EMT working on him. I don’t want that for anyone. And the people criticizing runners for taking the easy out would be the same ones screaming that the race organizers needed to make it safer for the runners, if something tragic happened. I applaud the organizers for recognizing that it may not be the best day for some and the priority was safety. And the medal debate…they had the medals already. Would you rather they throw them away?

Truly…run your race, your pace and get whatever it is that you want to get out of it. Celebrate others wins, INCLUDING securing a bib, as others have done that for you before, and it’s the kind thing to do. And DONT walk 4 wide on ANY course. Or stomp your feet loudly behind another runner to get them to move out of your way. (This is another pet peeve of mine. I know you are back there. I have nowhere to go, dude. Throwing a tantrum back there doesn’t improve your scenario!)

And for every case of "signed up and didn't train" there are others who signed up and then busted their butt. Let's face it....based on how far out the rD registration is, there is a lot of time to prepare.

2024 MW was my first Marathon (as part of Dopey). Two years before that, the farthest I had run was a 5k. Midlife crisis (and a new baby I needed to take care of myself for) made me a runner... True, before I signed up, I went out on the local greenway and made sure I could run 26 miles (it was 5+ hours)...but that never would have produced a POT that I could submit to rD when I signed up the next week. I then spent 9 months working hard to make sure I could accomplish it--and talking the ears off of all the guys I run with about how excited I was to be challenging myself with Dopey.

Fact is, we can pull out bad examples and good examples from a field of 16 to 20,000 runners. Those are anecdotes and not statistics. But, in my limited experience (2024 Dopey and 2025 WD) the vast majority of people, slow or fast, are really happy to be there and are doing it for a wide variety of good reasons. It's a great crowd to run with.

(Incidentally, the earlier post about the best people having bad days is true...even the elites DNF or twist an ankle and walk the rest of the race....there is so much that goes into having a good race...you can't judge fitness and preparedness by one sample you take of someone on race day itself. Courtney Dauwalter is the ultra running GOAT--imho--and DNF'd Cocadona last year....if you go back and look at most ultra runner elites, their races are littered with DNFs.)

 

[nancipants]

(Incidentally, the earlier post about the best people having bad days is true...even the elites DNF or twist an ankle and walk the rest of the race....there is so much that goes into having a good race...you can't judge fitness and preparedness by one sample you take of someone on race day itself. Courtney Dauwalter is the ultra running GOAT--imho--and DNF'd Cocadona last year....if you go back and look at most ultra runner elites, their races are littered with DNFs.)

Yup! Sifan Hassan just dropped out of London because of Achilles issues.

 

[radiodome21]

During the Wine & Dine HF I witnessed a couple, who were walking, cussing out a female runner who passed them. Now I am a coral G guy so this was not in the front of the pack. She had said something to them while going around them and they just started swearing. We were in Galaxy Edge so maybe they were a little too into the whole First Order thing. Glad I had my earbuds in. I just did the Shamrock Shuffle in downtown Chicago (8k) which is sponsored by BOA, who does the Chicago marathon and a HF. Beautiful race though the heart of downtown Chicago. It’s the largest race I’ve run outside of a runDisney race. It was a great run and all I kept thinking was how nice it is not to get stuck behind a horizontal wall of walkers. Can’t wait for the SS 10k.