Posted on 02/26/2017 5:40:00 AM PST by csvset
Jane Seo blazed across the finish line at last weekend's Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon with a stellar time of 1 hour 21 minutes. The professional New York food blogger's blistering 6:15-per-mile pace earned her second place among the thousands who raced. Seo paraded around the finish line while grinning and gripping a gaudy medal.
But her pace, it turns out, was too good to be true. Seo has now been disqualified for cutting the course — a crime she confessed to only after a computer sleuth crushed her elaborate coverup. A lengthy post published on marathoninvestigation.com documented her lies in exquisite detail. She later posted a four-paragraph apology to her 34,400 Instagram followers.
“I made a HORRIBLE choice... what an idiot I was!” she wrote in a post that's since been taken down. “I am extremely ashamed… I am so sorry everyone.”
Suspicions arose almost immediately after Seo, who is 24 and writes regularly for the Huffington Post, crossed the finish line in the 13.1 half-marathon division Sunday. Race timer Josh Stern quickly noted that her timing chip logged unusually fast miles in the second half of the race, when runners often slow down rather than dramatically speed up. He confronted Seo, who persuaded race director Matt Lorraine to keep her listed as the number two finisher, with her time just under 1 hour 22 minutes.
But after the race, someone tipped off Derek Murphy, a business analyst by day who has become the world's best internet sleuth at busting cheating runners.
He began digging into Seo's time and soon came across a prime piece of evidence: a photo of her at the finish line that clearly showed her race-tracking Garmin watch. He enlarged the photo, which showed the watch matched her time of 1 hour 22 minutes but also indicated she had covered only 11.65 miles — nearly two miles short of the full race. Murphy also posted the math on what Seo's mile-by-mile splits would have been:
10K - 44:22 13.1 - 1:21:46 These results would equate to a 7:09 minute/mile pace for the 1st 10k and a 5:25 minute/mile pace for remaining 11.08 kilometers.
Very few, if any, runners could shave a minute and a half off their splits in the second half of a race. But there was more evidence.
Seo, who like many runners posts her activities on Strava.com, later in the day posted mile-by-mile records of her traversing the entire 13.1 miles, most of which run along Fort Lauderdale Beach. But Murphy discerned that the cadence numbers were more in line with a person on a bicycle rather than a runner.
Through the Flyby screen, I was able to confirm that she actually covered this course in the afternoon — long after the race was complete.
Seo later admitted she'd gone back and biked the whole course to cover her tracks by GPS.
Murphy's site has been blowing up since exposing Seo's lies, and commenters on the web are excoriating Seo, a Harvard grad who regularly writes about food and culture. Her trip to South Florida was partially sponsored by Fort Lauderdale tourism site Sunny.org, Murphy said.
“Had she just admitted what she did, I never would have heard of her, nor written about her,” Murphy said. “But going back and biking the course to cover up... that’s unheard of.”
One poster wrote to Seo: “You are an embarrassment to the running community and the runners who slug away to get a sub 2 [break two hours over 13.1 miles]. You're just greedy.”
And another: “You are not a good person regardless of how fast you may or may not be.” But a third noted that such harshness should be reserved for serious issues.
Murphy, based in Ohio, began his site two years ago to investigate claims of malpractice by runners aiming for the Holy Grail: attaining a qualifying time fast enough to be eligible for the Boston Marathon. He has even used Google Earth in one case to prove a runner’s “innocence” to claims of course-cutting.
He said he spoke to Seo Monday, who maintained her innocence, and traded emails with Stern and Lorraine. He broke his story of her cheating Tuesday.
“While I am glad that she eventually admitted to cutting the course and trying to cover her tracks," Murphy wrote on his site, "she only posted this after information was relayed to her regarding the extent of the evidence against her.”
He also noted her Instagram post claimed she wasn’t feeling well, “but she had the energy to bike 13.1 miles later that afternoon” and she didn’t look distressed in any of the race photos on the marathon’s site.
The listings for the half marathon now show Jillian Pollack placing second in a time of 1:23.38.
Yea, her non cheating time was/is very respectable. To put in the training and miles, and then cheat. Bizarre.
Good memories. All of this was so long ago. 1980 was also the year that the U.S. Olympic hockey team won the gold medal. I remember being at Mike Eruzione's parade in Winthrop, MA.
yeah, I don’t do this stuff so I don’t know how it works with the GPS data. I would not have thought it could be faked later in the day, but maybe there is some kind of “manual” entry option that allows a website to be updated without time stamps?
What does seem evident is that she had to execute the “cut course” very carefully in order to “finish” in anywhere near the desired time... i.e., if she wasn’t carefully planning the details she could either “win” in a very implausible time or else lose by far more of a margin than she wanted. There would be no point to the subterfuge if she came in at either +5 min. or -5 min. relative to where she hoped to be. She had to do this with planning.
But Seo is too young to even remember Rosie Ruiz. Ruiz's hoax occurred 13 years before she was even born.
Hillary Clinton, a known public liar and purveyor of made-up events during her whole career, is more likely this food blogger's role model for deceit.
Liberals lie- it’s what they do!
Good points.
Ah...seems like a different time. I used to play hockey at the rink in Winthrop!
They idolize cheaters, vote for cheaters, help them cheat and cheat themselves. No surprise from these types.
It’s a way of attempting to minimize what they did wrong. That just means they truly aren’t sorry and will do it again if given the chance. I see these fake apologies all the time.
The Boston Marathon,for a spectator,is no fun anymore.
.
And she would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for that meddling Garmin GPS!
I guess I don’t understand technology. You can not run the last two miles of a half-marathon, and say you did, and no one notices, but then go back and bike it later and GPS records it like you actually ran it earlier? Huh?
Did she at least get a cup of coffee when she finished?
She’s a blogger. She excerpted her run. What’s the big deal?
Or in the Venn diagram, the set of all bloggers is completely contained in the set of dishonest people.
Zactly. ..
The bitch is just sorry she got caught.
I think we know which party she votes for.
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