Marathon winner disqualified for wearing iPod
I have no idea why people run marathons.
It seems a peculiar act of masochism in which people actually die. (As evidence, might I point to two deaths in the recent San Jose, Calif., half-marathon.)
But many humans seem to enjoy the pain and the sense of achievement they feel when they finally get wrapped up in BacoFoil like a Sunday chicken.
So why should they be prevented from humming along to a little Jo Jo Gunne or being soothed by a lecture from Dr. Sanjay Gupta along the way?
I only ask because in the recent and extremely celebrated Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee, Jennifer Goebel was disqualified from her rightful position of winner.
According to the Journal-Sentinel, Goebel was garlanded with victory only after Cassie Peller, who actually ran the fastest, was erased from the podium because she accepted liquid from someone who was not manning an official watering station. Which does seem to be on the wrong side of fastidious.
Goebel was then declared to have won. But her afterglow of superiority only lasted a couple of days.
Some no doubt anally mean-spirited individual examined a photo of Goebel taken during the race and noticed an iPod discreetly tucked into her shorts.
Goebel, a massage therapist in real life, was competing in the elite part of the marathon and these highly tuned women are subject to the whims of the USA Track and Field bureaucracy.
These waxy eared folks frown on the use of iPods while sweating. Well, at least I think they do. It appears that the rule was changed not so long ago to allow race directors the discretion to ignore the rule if they so choose.
Goebel is, understandably, somewhat miffed.
"I wasn't listening to it earlier in the race," she told the Journal-Sentinel. "I wasn't going to put the music on unless I thought I needed it."
And of course she needed it. Running a marathon is the athletic equivalent of knitting a wedding marquee.
As Goebel herself so eloquently put it: "If you're bored, it pumps you up a little bit. Sometimes, on a long training run, I'll bring it along for the last half hour. When I run marathons sometimes I carry it and never put it on."
She only listened between miles 19 and 21, which--if you ask most runners--is the time that you are ready to eat raw elk and physically assault a mail box.
Anyone who believes it will improve their life to don a pair of New Balance and run until their knees squeak like wounded varmints should not be subjected to silly little rules. They should be allowed to eat, drink and listen to whatever gets them to the other end of the experience.
Although perhaps there should be a no Kenny G rule? For safety's sake, you understand.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
As with any rule, breaking it subjects the participant to disqualification. Next time you criticize something, make sure you know what it is you are talking about beforehand. Chris Matyszczyk obviously knows nothing about competition and decided to bless us all with his ignorant rant.
You're a tool, it's a dumb rule. If it was about safety, they would ban people cheering loudly for the same reason. Rules have to be content neutral: if they want to ban noise inhibitors, they have to ban ALL noise inhibitors, regardless of the source.
Are deaf people banned as well then?
this is rather vague. were the rules explicit? did she go out of the way to take the drink? any evidence it was not her friend with a cup full of red bull?
it gives you wings.
sorry that was pretty bad.
hey, somebody had to say it
Or maybe I dreamt that bit?
I think you should cut somebody a break who wants to listen to music, even Kenny G, in order to make running a marathon SOMEWHAT more enjoyable.
And nice blog Chris, it made me laugh while reading it with all your parts about anyone who actually WANTS to run a marathon.
There comes a time when the 'rules' are illegitimate and should not be enforced because they infringe on another person's rights.
Not within the realm of a competition. Competitions are, by definition, contests where everyone entered strives to win while following a set of rules. Stupid or not, all must follow the rules in order to remain qualified. It's called leveling the playing field. It has NOTHING to do with your "rights" as you are volunteering for the competition.
Now, the reality that the rule is only enforced sometimes, and at the discretion of the director, is a different matter. Then it becomes a matter of inconsistency and potential bias.
There's one thing to not liking a rule, and lobbying for change. It's another to acknowledge the rule, accepting it, and then ignoring it.
So by teaching your kids they can ignore rules that they agree upon, you're creating more morons in our society....we have future Darwin award winners in your neck of the woods.
teach them right - they can move to get things changed. But I'm betting you guys don't play boardgames that you buy either - because of all the STUPID rules ;P
Going 65mph in a 45mph zone is not analogous to wearing an ipod during a foot race. The consequences and reasoning behind the law are very different. It is a stupid rule because, (as the article stated) it has optional enforcement clause; however, the article does not say if the racers were informed of this optional enforcement. If the racers were informed, then yes she knowingly broke the rule and must face the consequences. If the racers were not informed, how can you hold someone accountable for a rule that is only sometimes in effect?
FYI if my kid went 65 in a 45, he'd pay the fine and he wouldn't be driving w/ out a parent in the car.
IMHO willful disobedience to CERTIAN rules/ laws is SOMETIMES necessary, I hope I'm successful at teaching that to my children. The application of that willful disobedience must be well thought out and defensible.
True, rules are rules, but I'd imagine there is reasoning to this "iPod" rule not related to the listening to music part. Just like not being able to take water from non-official watering stations is not that water is an unfair advantage, but the potential for sneaking in performance enhancing substances like the aforementioned Red Bull is too great.
One of the other "rules" was to allow race directors the discretion to ignore that particular rule if they so choose. If the director had that discretion, there is probably a good reason. Maybe it's because the real competition is someone's ability to cover that long distance in the fastest time, and that is what they are supposed to be judging first and foremost. That this judge chose to strip a victory for this reason suggests some severe anal retentiveness he needs to take care of, not an ability to determine the real victor of the competition. If the "unofficial water" was a similar circumstance, maybe that victor was actually Cassie Peller, not Jennifer Goebel.
The point of athletic competition--particularly an Olympic-historied event going back to ancient Greece--is to pit the skills and abilities of the athlete against the challenges put forth, whether from the other athletes, the course, the weather, the distractions. It's the endurance--both physical AND mental--of the marathon runner that's being tested here. No, the material on the iPod won't make Goebel an inhuman athlete like a few hits of 'roids can do, but it CAN be used to provide pacing and a set cadence for her to follow, and that's seems to me as artificial and fake as any human growth hormone is. She didn't use her own mental toughness and bring it from WITHIN herself her imagination and memories to drum up the same music to pace herself; she knowingly used an outside stimuli (the iPod) to keep her going through those "tough" miles...she said it herself. And I say: how pure to the spirit of personal endurance and real to the history of individual competition is that?
And what about everyone else who DID abide by that very same rule? "Technically" (I love the irony of the word with regards to this column) she gave herself an unfair advantage, even if many of you see this as something trivial. Goebel is the one whose "incorrect" here, and so is Matyszczyk for not knowing ANYTHING about the spirit of competition and assuming the disqualified runner was the one who was wronged because he feels iPods can never do anyone harm.
Having said that, the race director should also use some judgement in deciding when and how to enforce these rules.
Also worth noting, I've heard two reasons why music may not be as good for runners - one of them is mentioned as a positive in the article above, actually.
1. Safety for others. As runners (and cyclists) get tired, they have to focus in order to not sway into other runners. If a runner is yelling "On your left" and you don't hear them, then you can hurt them and yourself.
2. As Goebel says "it pumps you up a little bit". That's very true. Music pumps you up! It also helps keep the pace for you. But doesn't that give you an advantage over the others who are not hearing the pumping music that you are listening to? To make it fair, everyone should be encouraged to bring music or asked not to.
Btw, I don't run with music, but I don't mind people who do. Music is just a distraction for me.
Yes CLEARLY unfair! I feel my lucky socks give me an advantage so this is clearly unfair to everyone I race with?
...I don't know if I have enough lucky socks for everyone in the race, crap.
I guess to make it truely as fair as possible we should all run in our birthday suits on the exact same route while consuming the exact same quanities of water at exactly the same place. If someone wanted to listen to music set to 120 beats per minute for the 3-6 hours it takes them so what. If you really wanted to keep pace you'd just carry a metronome (anything in the rules about that?).
"Yes CLEARLY unfair! I feel my lucky socks give me an advantage so this is clearly unfair to everyone I race with?"
That argument doesn't really hold up because your lucky socks aren't proven to be an enhancement the way music has been proven (by doctors and scientists much smarter than I) to enhance a workout.
I was mocking the logic. FEELING you have an advantage does not mean you CLEARLY have one.
Just an FYI my lucky socks have been scientifically tested and proven to give me an edge, its not my fault that none of the scientists survived to publish their findings.
seriously though, rules are rules, and when you enter a contest, you should know the rules. if you don't, it's your fault when you're disqualified.
Second the first runner of the marathon(the battle of marathon) Died on completion of his task. his dying word Nike(the word for victory, though maybe his feet were just killing him).
as for the story rules are rules sometimes rules suck. Though I agree who cares if she was listening to an i-pod it's not like she snorted a line of coke or did roids.
Even though we can all agree that the basic iPod nano or classic doesn't allow wireless communication with others, there are many small devices that could allow this form of communication. To look at it from a race directors perspective, would you like to check every runners device to make sure that it doesn't allow communication from an external source? I sure wouldn't.
Also, I will agree that when running, music does help push me along, and if I were running a marathon, I might try to break the rules too. That said, I know that there's no way I will actually compete to win the race, so if they DQ me, oh well. Those runners who fall under the elite status should know the rules and abide by them or suffer the consequences.
Again, this has nothing to do with whether runners can listen to music or not (except for maybe the reasons toosday gives). It's about not allowing forms of technology that could possibly give one participant an advantage over the other. Much like we still can't use cell phones on airplanes, it's not because our cells at the moment actually interfere, but that technology is something that is hard to police in these types of situations, so a blanket rule is made instead.
Also just a thought what if runners had an ear piece that was tuned into a common freq. that gave race info, updates, water location (you could tune it in or out)?
She also said that the track association, which oversees 4,000 events a year, would have to pay higher insurance premiums if it did not enforce the headphones ban.
Also, for the original poster, marathon deaths occur around 1 for every 50,000 runners, which is a very low number, and almost all of them are due to pre-existing conditions that weren't discovered before.
Just a thought.
<ducks>
:D
Leave Kenny G alone!
that aside, this woman knew the rules and signed a disclaimer which stated that this was a rule. no one forced her to run the race ... if she didn't like the rules, she should have done a race.
do NFL or NBA players lisen to personal music devices during a game? maybe they can't hear the ref's whistle? blah, blah, blah ... this lady knew the rules and chose to violate them.
if you are a middle or back of the pack type runner, then it is no big deal ... but if you are someone for whom it matters, then you need to play by the rules, no matter how stupid you think they are.
#1 That "little surgery" does not, and never will within our lifetime, make a deaf person equal to a hearing person. I mean that of people who were once hearing and had the surgery to regain it, there is a lot they get back for conversations and so on and so forth, but there is also a lot missing. So, implant makes a person more like Hard of Hearing. Would you let a hard of hearing person run?
#2 That bull about safety issues, oh Pulease. That was used last century (early on), to keep Deaf people from driving cars, and we have better records over all, thank you very much. Now if you take a hearing person, kill their ears, and throw them into the race pronto, you will have a serious safety issue. A deafened, hard of hearing, or Deaf person, no. Why? Because with time or from birth, one or the other, we learn to use our eyes and train ourselves to have a heightened sense of observation. For us, this is a normal mode of operation and does not take any extra effort on our part. We do not depend on our ears at all, we can't. But eyes, smell, vibrations and so on and so forth. Running with a pack of people is safer than the usual running on the road alone many do on a regular basis.
So.... Banning Deaf is not legal, ADA and all that.
Nancy Louise
- by kalel130 October 12, 2009 9:22 AM PDT
- "She only listened between miles 19 and 21, which--if you ask most runners--is the time that you are ready to eat raw elk and physically assault a mail box."
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- by Mr_fleabite October 12, 2009 10:47 AM PDT
- This was a good line, might I also suggest "if you ask most runners--is the time that you are ready to physically assault an elk and eat a mail box."
- Like this
-
Showing 1 of 4 pages (118 Comments)Classic! Thank you for making my day with this article.