Well I was at the Garden by the Bay East on Sunday taking photos of the runners doing the Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore. (SCMS). This was roughly at the 35 km part of the race. The first runners came by around 7 am roughly 2 hours after the flag off. Those were the elites. A rough back of the envelope calculation - the average 4 hours runners will reach this area around 8.20 am and indeed the 4 hours pacers came pass me at 8.19 am.
But way before that I had already noticed a very usual thing. As a regular runner and active photographer for the past years, I can recognise a fair number of the local runners who can do sub-4 and there aren't really a lot of them here in Singapore. And even if I don't recognise them, I can tell by the way they run that they are seasoned runners and used to that type of timing. But what was interesting this time was that I could see many unfamiliar faces and people who pardoned my saying so, do not look like runners who are capable of doing this type of timing. Now I know looks can be deceiving but it is kinda difficult to believe that these following people can run sub 4 marathon.
And true enough, my instinct was right. A quick search at the event site and these are their race splits. Looks like all of them skipped the distance between the 10 km checkpoint and the 30 km checkpoint slashing a cool 20 km off the total distance.
Cheaters ???? Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore 2014
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