Self reported times - BAA or otherwise. This guy's got a screw loose!

And we're using self-reported times to qualify for cash prizes? Oh wow, I think I just set a 20 minute PR on this course! And yes, Ribs, I can just hear the guys at BAA wondering if this nut is serious.... Thanks for writing this up, Tramps. It should go in the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" category...

First, I felt really, really bad for folks who had this as a target race. Imagine training for months, tapering, worrying about the weather, etc, and, minutes before you start, you find out about this fiasco! The deep disappointment was there; there was crying and anger but mostly people were just stunned. How could this be happening? Perhaps even worse, some runners started when the timing mats were still out, thinking they’d finish with an official time. The race was canceled while they were on the course and presumably they didn’t know it until they got to the non-finish line. When I headed out for my run there were people who had left almost an hour earlier, heading back and working hard to finish their "race." I don’t think anyone had the heart to break the news to them; I know I didn't. What do you say? "Hey buddy, ease up, it doesn't count anyway"? So on one level, this was an outrage. But if you set aside the tragedy for some runners, it was also hilarious. (Count on Ribs--the man who joked his way through heart surgery--to pick up on that fact.) I had little—beyond some money and a soggy Sunday morning—invested in this race. So I stood there in disbelief and pretty much alternated between looking like this: and this: I had dragged myself out of bed at 4:00 a.m.—and I’m not a morning person. It was pouring rain all the way up to the race (though it thankfully let up just as we arrived). DW and I gave each other the groggy “Why are we doing this again?” comments…and that was all before the thing fell apart. Then it turned mind-bogglingly absurd. We were watching this guy spout this nonsense and strangers would just look at each other and ask, “Is he serious?” “Is this for real?” I thought, “Well, I paid 60 bucks for a heckuva story.” I tend to deal with stuff like this with dark humor--as others there did as well. So, yeah, when the RD first mentioned self-reporting finish times, I was telling folks, “I had no idea I had a sub-3 marathon in me today!” The gallows humor abounded. One guy joked to me, "Heck, if I knew I could report my own time, I'd have gone out drinking last night and slept in this morning!" And on it went. It was just all surreal. Several times later in the day, back at home and still a little zoned out from the early morning, DW and I just shook our heads and said, “Wow, this has been a weird day.” And then this morning the new RD e-mail arrived with the “self-recorded” BQs idea. The hilarity just never ends! ETA: I posted this on the main racing forum too, as a warning to others. BadDawg there had a good line: "I wonder what percentage of the [Boston Marathon] elite corral next year will be from this race?"

I guess it wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibility to see Alan Funt come walking out from behind the Port o Potties, no?

The t-shirt from this event should become quite a collector's item.

To be fair, the RD responded to my report in the main racing forum: http://www.runningahead.com/forums/topic/a1d7160c51504fc5b0ba4fe736a81bba/1

I fixed Tramps' link below

Oops. Thanks, buddy. I fixed mine, too. One little extra space...sheesh.