Consipracies Abound

First the Chinese gymnast age controversy ... now the CDC controversy.

I mentioned the other day that there was a post about the elongation of the course, and a friend mentioned to me this morning that he could no longer find it. Hmmm...interesting. So I did some searching and its totally gone. I talked to people who ran the race, and they were never informed about the race distance change. Now there is no mention of it on the site. What is going on? Did I miss something? So I did some searching and found some chatting on RunnersWorld, which includes responses from John "The Penguin" Bingham. As the actual "owner" of the 1/2 marathon, I believe his words and responses speak on behalf of the race itself. Since information has been disappearing, and this might be similar to the China controversy (where documents are no longer available) I am going to do some copying and pasting here.

First, the link to the forums where its discussed.

Second, a copy of the post by John where he posts the entire letter from the course certifier, dated August 12. This is pulled directly from the forums I link to above.

You can click to open the post if you want to read it better, but I am also pasting the body of it here for your reading enjoyment :)

John,

I verified the turnaround and overrun distance, per my mistype on the Chicago Distance Classic Half marathon certification turnaround point description, last night Monday 08/11/2008 around 7:15 PM.

Here are the results of my finding:
The turnaround point was extended approximately ~.1668 of a mile (~880 feet = ~268 meters) per my mistype of the turnaround point on the course description. It should have read: Turn around: Lakefront Trail (LFT), 40' 7'' South of 4th light pole (W) NORTH of N.E. corner of Science Dr. and Lakeshore Drive. With that, the complete half marathon distance of 13.1094 miles was extended approximately ~.1668 of a mile to ~13.2762 miles.

As the error elongated the course and did not shorten it, there should not be a need to remove the course from the certified courses list and replace it with a new course and number. I will make the correction on the course map description and send it forward to USAT&F (copied on this email: Jay Wight) to be filed as the correct certified course so that if this course is run in the future it can be laid out correctly.

I apologize for this mistype and any problems it has caused. I take full responsibility that my mistype of the turnaround point description caused misplacement by course officials of the turnaround point on race day and extended the length of the race.

Please let me know if there is any other information you need from me, or anything else I can help with to clarify further.

My sincerest apologies,
Neyl A Marquez