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Yesterday I was taking registrations for a little Halloween 5km I direct when a police officer came up 15 minutes before the start and informed me there had been a serious accident just past the one mile point on the course, and the road would be closed for at least an hour, with lots of traffic re-routed onto other parts of the course. In about five minutes we came up with an alternative that was acceptable to the police, and figured to be about the correct distance. The runners were understanding when the situation was explained to them, and the times seemed about right. I'm off to measure the course this morning (the early darkness and the prospect of trick or treaters prevented me from doing so immediately after the race). We'll see how good my "eye in the sky" method turned out.
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In the early 90's, I was helping time the LA Marathon. With a friend, we went to the start line area and noticed a bunch of celeb impersonators mixing w/the runners. It was weird but harmless...we thought. There were also a bunch of balloons around and moments before what was to be the start, a balloon popped and a lot of front runners took off thinking it was the start gun. This was bad.

It was bad for 3 reasons: we hadn't started our time machines, the rest of the field was still being held back by a human rope and they started inching forward in the ensuing confusion. The early starters were rounded up after a couple minutes of running (including Greg Meyer) but the mass of runners were now about 10 yards in front of the actual start line. There was no way to move them back.

There were no Marathon officials around to deal w/the restart so...the other timer I was with took over, got all the folks behind a line across the road, looked at me and asked if the course certification would still hold up. I eyeballed the old and new start lines and determined it'd still be long enough (with the extra .1%). I told him 'yes' and, by golly, my friend from Bay City, MI got everybody's attention and yelled GO and we started the time machines. True story.

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