Jane Seo's inspiration?
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.
Amen......
She is the Huffington Post encapsulated.
Jane Seo's inspiration?
I did two half marathons last year. Her times without cheating would have been pretty good.
Why would someone cheat; they will never get away with it.
It’s a “resume enhancer” for the libtard. She’ll be a HuffPoo editor soon enough, not just a writer.
Well, she’s certainly fit and trim.
More very “FAKE NEWS” from the left.
A Huffington Post lifestyle writer and food blogger saw her blazing-fast marathon time go up in smoke after an investigation revealed she cut part of the 13.1-mile course.
Jane Seo — a 24-year-old Harvard-educated writer who covers food in New York and contributes to the Huffington Post —
Winners Are Not Cheaters
She’s a perfect “journalist” for HuffPo, the lack of integrity means she will never be disturbed by writing falsehoods.
A Harvard graduate who wrote her thesis about NYC food trucks, I wonder how much of her “data” she made up for certain desired effects?? It may turn out to be a very “creative” thesis with some food trucks and menu items that never existed.
I’m guessing that if she had placed 6th or 7th nobody would have noticed or even cared. When you’re going after the hardware, you’re going to be more closely scrutinized.
Yeah, that caught my eye, “I made a HORRIBLE choice” = “I thought I was SO smart I’d never get caught by you yay-hoos!”
Honest people do not consider it a CHOICE to cheat whenever it suits them.
Rosie Ruiz was competing in a women's category. She "won the marathon" only against other women.
Is there any reason to believe that women are more prone to cheating on races than men? After all, there has been all sorts of male cheating in bicycle racing, with Lance Armstrong being a prominent example.
Maybe it's easier for women to cheat on a marathon in this particular way, because they can get lost in the crowd of men who are ahead of them.
Thank you for raising the level of conversation.
Then Rosie Ruiz tumbled across the finish line and was crowned the woman's winner before they realized she spend most of the race on the subway! This was before everybody had video cameras so the scam was much easier to pull off. Also, not many people in those days paid much attention to the women in the race.
It was the end of a era as the Boston Marathon was mostly dominated thereafter by men with un-pronounceable names from Africa and I lost interest in marathon racing. I liked the race when it was much smaller and usually local guys placed in the top ten if not win the race outright - as Rodgers did four times.
I do wish I could be transported back to that time however. Ronald Reagan was on his way to the presidency that year and though I didn't know it at the time, I was just beginning the best decade of my life. Would love to live those years over again.
Cheater-chan is a fraud and tries to play it off.
That was my point. Much easier for a woman to get away with this because most people don’t pay attention to the women in a major race. Not implying a man wouldn’t try it if he felt he could get away with it. But much harder for men because from the very start of the race, much attention is paid to the men in the leading pack. It’s virtually impossible for a man to insert himself into a race near the finish line and get away with it.
Here’s the key phrase:
“a Harvard grad “
She learned to cheat with the best. Typical Ivy League morality.
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