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.
Hey, don’t laugh. I’m doing my thesis on “Waffle House and its impact on Southern culture”
Also, her initial mea culpa was still thoroughly dishonest — she made it sound as though she made a momentary “bad choice” because she was feeling nauseous and cut part of the course. But she had to plan and execute this very carefully in order to finish at just the “right” moment, and then she made aggressive efforts to “defend” her time with race officials and the public, even going back in the afternoon to bike the course in order to create GPS data to post online.
If she were really sick she could have just called it a day and returned to her hotel, but no, she was trying to snag unearned “medal” glory. Typical liberal.
Yes, very elaborate and scheming. Gosh it makes one think maybe she’s used to lying and covering her tracks!
Yep—a fundamentally honest person doesn’t step out of character with this kind of one-time “slip up”.
Her degree is in “Social Studies” — I thought that was a Jr. High School subject!
Liberal female=dishonest
As a food critic, she needs gravitas to go with her mashed potatoes.
She stole that medal from somebody else. It’s rightful and deserving owner.
Exactly. Anyone can have a off day when it comes to competitve sports. To take the extra effort to lie and try to cover it up indicates to me she's dishonest to the bone.
Perhaps it is a good thing that she is just a lowly HuffPoo blogger. I would hate to think the scumbag held a position of importance.
“...such harshness should be reserved for serious issues.”
It’s a race, what is more serious than cheating?
Her 7:09 pace the first 10K is nothing to sneeze at. Although that could also be fraudulent, though it seems more realistic. It puts her at around an hour 33 minutes, which is pretty fast but very realistic for a very fit young woman. I'm a relative slug with a best half time of 1:55, slightly above average.
This illustrates why we see timing mats at multiple places in longer races. It helps guard against someone going "rogue". Someone tried to cheat in the Chickamauga Battlefield marathon a couple of years ago - and got caught. I've run the half marathon there twice, and have helped set up the course twice.
No way this wasn’t planned ahead of time...she lives in NY/NJ - is in FL for a race and she just happens to have her bike with her at/near the race in order to complete the deception?
Thing is, why lie about it? Nobody cares. This example of lying and cheating hints at a deeper problem.
My thought process didn’t get much past, “hey, she’s got real abs!”
I’m lost as far as pace, time, etc. A former girlfriend used to run marathons and told me that I would have to at least be able to do a half-marathon. My response was that she’d better bone up on her CPR. Otherwise I’d be waiting at the Pearly Gates for her.
Good luck finding a job, bitch. Google is forever.
And veritas.
The top female time in the Boston Marathon last year was 17 minutes slower than the mens time, which means the lead woman is buried with a lot of men.
The top male couldn’t cheat obviously, but the top woman might have a harder time of it now too. They probably have a camera on the lead the whole time anyway now.
The difference in times between male and female is amazing...there were, and still probably are, women who say they can’t do as well in given sports because they aren’t given the opportunities men have, instead of admitting that physically, the men have a biological advantage they can’t overcome, namely testosterone.
By the way, I think that is Ed King in the picture with Rosie Ruiz...:)
Interesting, are marathon runners now required to post GPS data online? Or was this just something she did on her own to try and maintain the lie?
Also, I believe GPS data is time-stamped. That is, if you were to analyze the actual data stream, you would also have date and time information in there.
“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.”
Sins and evil are now called “choices” and “mistakes” and “diseases.”
I have noticed this for years.
“I made a terrible CHOICE and cheated on a race.”
“I made a MISTAKE and cheated on my husband.”
“I have a terrible DISEASE which makes me smoke crack.”
No, you are sinning, you are being evil, you need to name your enemy to defeat it.
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