Finding cheaters at the Chicago Marathon 

3:19 is 7:35 per mile, wym

That's an elite pace.

😂I thought the same. I guess average is relative.

6min kilometer not mile. 6min km would average out as a 4 hour 13 min marathon - definitely not average but I understand what he means

You dirty, dirty cheater

Unlikely that would flag you as potential cheater. People look for unusual splits or times as a flag so if your pace was relatively constant or fell throughout known time mats that's not worth flagging even if you missed one. It's only if you miss quite a few and your pace is unusually high between the mats then it becomes suspicious. That's when you look for other information usually race photos to see if they were actually on the course and also look for people who were near them at various points as people will generally run even pace so finish near others who were near them in photos. Cutting a corner by a few feet is cheating but it's inconsequential and only makes a few minutes difference if that which is just within random noise. Course cutting is blatantly cutting multiple miles usually on out and back sections and gives unusual splits.

This is like how I envision my 7-year-old son talking to the priest during reconciliation.

It is the responsibility for every runner to hit the timing mat. No excuses.

​@@mikepeligrodid making this comment make you feel better?

make sure you coach purpose, too - it's why most speedrunners for video games celebrate their PBs, with a WR being a secondary accomplishment. you can't ever take away your own personal best by cheating.

True although boston marathon is not exactly flat, however 1hour slower definetly needs good reasoning.

Actual results for "time qualifying" races crack me up. NY is supposed to be like 3:10 qualifying yet only like 10% of the finishers finish under 3:10 .Hilarious how many illegiimate runners are in these races...whether hiring mules or running downhill courses or whatnot. To me its pretty meaningless getting a "qualifying time" Ho hum. Only thing I care about is how I'm performing vs my prior results and expected fitness level. Besides I don't run in the cheat shoes which are worth like 10-30 minutes lol. So ridicuious what is legal in running. Literally a spring plate in the shoe is legal. Most of these runners would be 20 minutes slower if forced to run barefoot on grass without their cheat shoes to spring them along. Reminds me of the cheat swimsuits from 15 years ago in swimming.

Are you the one that distracted the top comment guy?

Not easy or cheap, us from Houston working class,💯

Thank you for this comment. I was a 5:30 finisher. Yes I slowed down at the end but I ran a consistent pace throughout the first 20 miles and didn’t hit a wall. I trained very consistently all spring/summer/fall. Kinda annoying to hear him say someone like me didn’t train 😒

I am not a big runner, and never ran more than 15k in one go, and I really don't understand why elite runners keep a certain pace (for example if there's a bridge why they use up more energy running up to keep the pace but then not running faster on the way down) but I don't think he meant to hurt anyone by calling a category whatever he called it. The point of the video is to show that looking at the data one can put runners in some categories based on the data pattern and if one particular runner's data looks like they belong to a category, except that in a few data points they are outliers, then it's worth to have a deeper look. Besides if you run and are not cheating then the name of the category you find yourself in is really not what should bother you after seeing this video. BTW I saw a woman a few months ago on youtube. She said that by the time she finished usually the organizers already take down some of the infrastructure. That really hurts to hear! Though it wasn't clear if those races had an official cut off time (or whatever it's called. In some races the organizers post in advance what time the runners have to beat at certain points and if they don't arrive on time then they can't/ shouldn't continue the race) so it might be that she wasn't aware of that or that she was and that's exactly the point she was making, that casual runners should be given more time, cause being slow doesn't meant they can't finish the distance.

There was a guy who disappeared behind a portapotty and later we found out he descended down a manhole and followed a narrow sewage pipe a few hundred meters only reemerge behind another portapotty cutting 5 miles off the course.

Hahaha as soon as he talked about the wall I was like “yep been there”

Per KM not per Mile!

he means the marathon end time@@tomcat1319

@@tomcat1319 3h 19 was the finish time for that line. i cna only dream of goign that fast

Thank you. I may go over my cheating algorithm in a video.

You're so welcome!

can a person swap shoelaces ? asking for a friend

They think anyone cares that they "qualified" for Boston. I'm more impressed by times/courses than "qualifiers". And its pretty obvious if a "friend"/acquaintance is lying about a time. Hint: If he's 200 pounds and has a dad bod and claims he ran sub-3:00, he lyin.

Appreciate it. Subscribe to follow along on our journey to put on races

As a runner myself I kind of know how people have cheated or the possible ways they could cheat. The photo one I feel with current technology is possible using facial recognition tech. I pretty much just scoured the images till I found one to use as an example. For my actual presentation I shared the name but for this I don't want to call anyone specific out. The bib mule one was one I knew existed and was super happy I was able to find some examples of it in the data and was able to showcase a "possible" cheater. I applied an algorithm to the Houston Marathon and wasn't able to find a bib mule.

I agree!

This was a fantastic video! Thank you so much!!

Yep, maybe also there should be a whistleblower email address, where people who have this kind of data could send the data to the organizers and trigger an official inquiry. Maybe it wouldn't help others who finished after the cheater in that race, but disqualifying them from other future races does have at least some positive effect.

You got this!

GO GO GO!! In those last 10km just remember... if it hurts to run and it hurts to walk, you may as well run!!

How'd it go?

This^^ pretty much every race these days uses chip timing which is going to pick up the mat crossing even if you have a jacket on

I know on all the trail races I do they tell us the bib needs to be on the outside layer of clothing to make sure it gets picked up

When looking at the data I was trying to find out why all those runners missed the timing mats. I looked into some of the runners who did missing timing mats. Looking at that specific runner who had all her timing splits missing was my starting point then looking at other runners pictures who had missing timing mats I noticed they shared similiar qualities. Wearing heavy clothing.

Some races have people wear a bib number AND a timing chip on their shoe/ankle, but I believe as of late the chip is attached to the back of the bib. Open question as to how well chips will work if under clothing, but a general takeaway should be that "missing a timing mat" could be due to covering clothing or a faulty chip.

I'm a bit perplexed by this. Most race bibs have a sensor/RFID chip affixed to the back. Berlin marathon, for one, still uses a timing chip that's attached to the shoe. In Chicago this year, there was a warning to have your bib visible and not covered, but I figured that was more related to photography and perhaps visual identification for fast runners/age group winners. In a big race like Chicago, where you're going to get more recreational runners, they may not know to have bibs visible. Also, a couple timing mats seemed kind of narrow this year, and it's possible that someone could inadvertently run around it. If heavy outer clothing interferes the bib RFID picking up the electromagnetic wave from the timing mats that energizes the runner's RFID chip, this is something that should be more heavily emphasized at races where cooler weather is anticipated. Great research!

@colinmcc8564 definitely missing timing mats could be due to faulty chips, person did not go over matt, and covered clothing. My premise why I put clothing as my reasoning was due to the fact after the first missing timing mats the runners times start getting registered. This data set is from 2018 Chicago Marathon. I am curious if I could find similiar results again.

@@3BrosRunning It would be interesting to apply the same type of analysis on Chicago 2021 because it was hot that year. I would not expect many runners to be wearing heavy clothing. If there were little or no runners who missed timing mats, then either less people cheated that year or the chips worked properly. I would lean towards the chips working properly given the no heavy clothing.

Yeah no I'm not signing up for a race that wants to publish regular pictures of me for their AI model. Get your priorities straight. That's so unhinged. The damage caused by an average person (non-elite/pro) cheating in a marathon is *not* enough to justify this.

I think if u do that it would take more work to cheat then it would be to just just run the race normally. There is this instance of a person who did something similiar during a trail race. They would hide in a Porta potty then run when it was appropriate and keep doing that till the finish. It made his times look legible until he was caught. Person used this technique to place in trail races.

well ultra runners have plenty of time for data analysis during the run.. do you take your laptop on the runs?

Maybe put air tags (that correspond to their bib number) on their shoes to prevent some cheating?

If you can ran 5 k under 20 min, you should be a 1:30 HM runner....

@@yongdongyou3128 I wish I could maintain that pace for a half marathon.

I would guess that most of the slower runners in front of you in the faster corrals just cut into a faster corral and covered their bib, yes? At the Philly Half Marathon, they didn't check bib colors that carefully, and I remember mid-race passing a bunch of runners who were supposed to have started in a slower corral than mine.

@@mmj1342The event is very thorough about checking bibs and keeping people fenced in the right place. Very strict marshalls on every fence line. No corral jumping, unless you want to jump backward which is allowed. I think all the cheating went on in the provision of evidence to get the corral position. I have recently been to organized half marathon events with less than 50 runners where I know no women finished in front of me. But when the results were published there was a Susan who finished just in front of me and wasn't even the female winner! The guy in front of me didn't look like a Susan. Possibly hard to say these days though. If there is no prize for the event I don't think anybody checks.

Something I was working on. To make an effective machine learning model I would need more data. I was able to scrape just one year of data but I think I would need 10 years or more to create an effective machine learning model. I have an algorithm I created based on certain parameters. I may release that video soon.

@@3BrosRunning that would be wonderful to see. I have a data science background myself.

​@@rashaadratliff-brown2734love it. It's interesting how much you can find by looking at data.

@@3BrosRunning Great video. In my opinion, I think 40,000 runners should be more than enough to create a decent model (though perhaps it would be good to have representation from other races if you really want it use it). Would love to see another video on how you went about it. Seems like a perfect use case for anomaly detection.

My bib worked in a few races covered by windbreaker. It was in the 30s!

​@@frankshorter449wow! You ran in the 1930-s and are still around? If that is not cheating, then I don't know what is :)

The marathons don't care if they have cheaters they are money making enterprises.

It's really about insuring that runners get shirts, medals, foods, etc... we can only estimate how many runners we will have before timelines for shirts and medals come close to the deadline. How to prevent this? sign up early and for our races we will normally let people transfer but for bigger races I can see the issue it can cause.

yes!

First name starts with lo last name ends with rose

Thank you

To be fair running in Mexico City with the high altitude and poor air quality is absolute hell. I was coughing up blood after a run when I visited there

@@SuperFuzzyDunlop I understand that I ran the half in Mexico city nothing justifies cheating no sir egocentric bastards r to b ashamed publicly

Very!

So true. Knowing you did your best should be enough.

Good point. How many mats would Rosie Ruez have skipped when she cheated at Boston in 1980? I think she jumped in the race in the final four miles?

thought it was windy

Chicago's race configuration (essentially three out and backs in three different directions) is really ideal for those who want to cut the course. But you better know where the timing mats are (but apparently, ya can't check the results of all 47,000 runners).

Bib mules. Backup evidence

Yes. He’s wrong on this point