A half-marathon in Thailand that was supposed to be an inspiration to good works and Thai tourism turned into a hashtag and a bit of an embarrassment, due to a route-planning error.
Activity Trackers Discover an Extra Four Miles in Half-Marathon
When a run went awry, the organizers were hoisted on a technical petard.
Facebook
As reported in the Bangkok Post, The Standard Chartered Bangkok Marathon had three components to its event on Sunday: A full marathon (42 kilometers or 26 miles), a half-marathon (21 kilometers or 13 miles) and a mini-marathon, which was an easy-breezy 10K (6.21 miles). The three routes had a common starting point; each wended its way through the city, past landmarks noted on the route map. All together, the three races had registered 7,157 participants (1,903 women and 5,253 men).
Each run involves a U-turn, which was supposed to occur at each race’s halfway point. Trouble arose when a planner put the U-turn for the half-marathon in the wrong place, adding seven kilometers (four extra miles) for a total of a 17-mile half-marathon.
Ouch!
The whole thing might have been lost to history, with runners blaming their sore knees and blisters on the heady Siamese air. Unfortunately for the marathon planners, many of the participants were wearing activity trackers — and they took to social media to complain.
It’s entirely possible that people were complaining in Thai, but the Facebook translator also had trouble along the route.
Instagram user @tahisto was all “#WTF.”
But in the end, it was all okay, because everybody who ran the half-marathon gets a t-shirt reflecting the new route length. Yay! T-shirt!
https://twitter.com/amsasiwan/status/666291152715317248
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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