Comment by dtparr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dtparr | Hacker News Reader

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So, first off, I don't think anyone, least of all in the running community wants to take anything away from Gary's accomplishments. He ran an amazing race, no question about it.

That being said, this race has its allure and mythical status specifically because it has a variety of rules/challenges that must be precisely followed. Not meeting any of them means you are not a finisher of the Barkley Marathon. If we start bending the rules because someone was close or from the emotions of things we start to devalue the accomplishment itself.

Ok, so if we say 6 seconds, that's really close enough. What about 6 minutes? What about 60?

What if he ran the right distance but took a wrong turn? Should we give him time credit for the extra couple miles?

What if he had the wrong page from a book? He still made the checkpoint... What if he had 3 wrong pages?

Eventually, being a finisher becomes a very confused and confusing accomplishment to even understand. I think it's far better to be very clear as to the rules, and then follow them, even if heartbreak ensues.

> Not meeting any of them means you are not a finisher of the Barkley Marathon.

Article is scant about anything other than the >60hr time. It doesn't say he would not have qualified had he come in under 60. (So the fellow who finished under 60 hours met all those other requirements to the letter? Not a single wrong turn, etc?)

> Ok, so if we say 6 seconds, that's really close enough.

Close enough to what? Nobody is saying change 60:06 to 60:00.

> What about 6 minutes? What about 60?

It's very simple. Any time should count as a time, if anyone official is there at all to witness and record it. At the cutoff time they prepare to go home, and then leave. Nobody owes you a recorded time after the cutoff.

When the last timer packs up leaves, any subsequent finishers can simply be left not recorded. The status is something like "they are not officially noted as having finished". That's a big difference from saying "did not finish". If one person claims "did not finish" and another "finished", one of them is lying or mistaken. But there is no contradiction between "finished" and "not recorded".

They were there; that's why they (and thus all of us) know he was 6 seconds over. It's effectively recorded.

If Gary is not going to be on record as a finisher, then shut the fuck up about the six seconds. Just say "Not recorded! I saw someone that might or might not have been Gary at some time after the 60th hour; I had reset my stopwatch by then in any case ..."

The six second precision with which we know that Gary supposedly didn't finish is the laughable contradiction here.

There's traditions around this race, and it's okay if you don't agree with them but not being part of the community that embodies these traditions means you cannot come in and redefine them.

Also, no offence, but you clearly don't know enough about the race to really be talking about how it should be operated.

This race is full of obscure rules and insanely harsh conditions, it's just how it goes.

Ahh but the parent poster is part of the community that doesn't believe that the Barkley community is fair, so you cannot come in and define that community because you clearly don't know enough about it to really be talking about how it should be operated.

You can defend the race without telling someone else that he has no right to his own opinion.

That's not what's being said. What's being said is that 'kazinator's opinion does not count here, which is a different and much more reasonable assertion. Telling other people how to be is never valuable and always rude.

The article is pretty scant on the rules details, I agree with you on that. It's not just that he took a wrong turn (which is common and small deviations are somewhat expected), he went a couple miles off course. Laz (who runs the race) made that point in the video that was linked from the article.

Laz made it even more clear in a post on facebook per [0]:

“[…] gary had just come in after having run off course and missing the last 2 miles of the barkley. that is, of course, not a finish. […]

i never expected the story to somehow become that he had missed the time limit by 6 seconds. he failed to complete the course by 2 miles. the time, in that situation, is meaningless. […]

now, the class with which gary handled this terrible disappoinment at the end of a truly magnificent performance… that was exceptional, and is, in and of itself, a remarkable achievement.

but he did not miss the time limit by 6 seconds. he failed to complete the barkley by 2 miles.”

As far as a hypothetical counting times of someone who correctly completed the course but came in over 60h as someone who finished, we'll have to agree to disagree. Finishers must touch the yellow gate in under 60 hours. Arriving after that point means you didn't finish the race in the allotted time. If you would prefer that Laz refuse to check his watch after time elapsed hits 60:00:00 so we wouldn't know how late anyone arrived, I don't have a specific problem with that, but that would seem to be up to Laz and the runner involved.

[0] - http://trailrunnermag.com/people/news/2017-barkley-marathons...

> he failed to complete the barkley by 2 miles.

That's very different; in that case, the finish line crossing time has no meaning (and perhaps shouldn't even be quoted around).

Going for another two miles to cover the missing distance could take an hour or more in that body condition (even on an ideal, flat surface, never mind the actual one). Especially given that he calculated his remaining physical resources with regard to where he thought the finish lied.

I accept responsibility for getting carried away with an article that is lacking in crucial details and helping to perpetrate the wrong story.

> Arriving after that point means you didn't finish the race in the allotted time.

In the eyes of the world, you finished. If we drop the "in the alloted time" part, the remaining statement's face value interpretation in the world at large is false. (The unqualified statement may still be understood properly in the narrow context shared by a group of people, in which the condition is implicit, but carrying that statement over to the world at large without context is equivocation.)

> In the eyes of the world, you finished. If we drop the "in the alloted time" part, the remaining statement's face value interpretation in the world at large is false. (The unqualified statement may still be understood properly in the narrow context shared by a group of people, in which the condition is implicit, but carrying that statement over to the world at large without context is equivocation.)

So perhaps this is the root of our disagreement. People who complete the Barkley marathon (including within time) are not called winners, they're called finishers (e.g. see the wikipedia page). Therefore the term 'Barkley marathons finisher' implies 'within the allotted time' in this context. Admittedly, when a domain-specific publication like this gets posted to a more general audience, that sort of terminology difference from standard English can be lost.

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