I got several angry emails from readers incensed about the decision. In case you're wondering, the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association does not care what you think. They refused to overturn the disqualification of a Hereford High harrier (Yeah, I ran a little x-country back in the day. Why do you ask?) who wore black shorts with white seams during a county meet, in clear violation of the National Federation of Track and Cross Country Rules. Hey, rules is rules! Honestly, I have no problem with that. The question is why is there a rule about stitching in the first place? No one seems to have a good answer for that.

The Hereford runner's outfit would have been OK a year ago, said Becky Oakes, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations in Indianapolis. But the NFHS then voted to bar runners from wearing visible undergarments of more than one color ... Oakes defended the new ruling, saying that conformity among team members is paramount.

"Your cross country uniform is supposed to say that 'I'm from high school XYZ,' " she said. "Philosophically, that's what 'team' is all about. The [multicolored] Spandex undergarment began to get away from that."

Yes, I can see the confusion. Except that uni-colored Spandex garments don't seem get away from that, since they don't have to match the team's uniform colors and everyone on the team doesn't have to wear them to stay in sync. It's an idiotic rule and judging by your complaints, I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Do you know who the official was who made this call? Or who to contact at whatever officiating body put on this event? I think they need to hear the public's opinion directly.

Yes, his name is "Steve Smith." (Yeah, right.) Trust me, he's aware of the public's opinion.

Out here in sunny California we had a situation a few years back when a kid on a relay team wore a headband, (in the schools colors) and once the team won the opposing team's coach made a big deal out of it. It was resolved in favor of the kid w/ the headband. Other numbskull penalties I've heard: for girls wearing the wrong color hair ties to hold their hair back, and an elite highschool runner during the T&F Masters Meet wearing a necklace with a cross that the CIF had not sanctioned... all of these idiotic punitive calls were over turned.

What does this teach people? Nothing but how to be a nit picking bean counter! Where does it lead: to bitterness.
Maybe with enough complaints the Baltimore school will be given its trophy back.

Actually, the coach of Towson (the school that won the title as a result of the DQ) says his team is awful broken up about it. Not enough to give back the trophy, but still they feel awful.

I used to be a huge track/XC guy back in HS (I have the jacked up knee to prove it). I can assure you, stupid rules absolutely abound in HS regulations of individual sports. It really makes one wonder where the brains are of the people who run these things. Among the idiocy of Massachusetts rules regarding XC/Track:

- 6 state rule: Schools could only compete in meets in which 6 or less states are represented, unless they acquire a waiver (6 states in New England). Most top athletes ran national meets anyway, just not for their school.

- Dual meets: because in track and field, the best way to settle who the best athletes are is make them run 8 individual meets a spring to determine a "league champ". And then have a league championship meet anyway, even though the MIAA recognized the dual meet champ as the official league winner. Thanks to awesome scheduling, in a span of 2 weeks, I ran 4 1 mile races (all around 4:50), 2 two miles, 2 800 meter races, and my coach put me in a B heat of the 4x400 meters cause I guess I hadn't raced enough. I was never the same and I wasn't the only one. And I never went under 5:00 in the mile again.

- Shorts, yep heard that one before.

- My personal favorite as an athlete was the ridiculous difference of standard for sectional qualifying for girls and guys. Distance races for guys in track usually consisted of 10-15 qualifiers. Girls races? Normally around 25. Apparently this was completely fair to the higher powers.....

Essentially, HS sports regulations are a joke.

And there you have it. Next time you meet a high school cross country rules official I suggest you spit in their face. (Or at least send them a strongly worded letter.)

Officials defend cross country uniform rule and
Losing by a thread [and photo via Baltimore Sun]
Earlier: Improper Stitching Costs Cross Country Team A Title

The Hereford boys dominated the Baltimore County championship yesterday, but one of their runners (who finished fourth overall) was disqualified from the race because he was wearing compression shorts under his uniform. Oh, the shorts themselves aren't a problem. (That might even make sense.) It's that the shorts were black, but the stitching on the shorts was white.

That violates Rule 9, Section 6, Article 1b of the National Federation of High Schools rule book, which states: "Items displaying seams stitched on the outside of the garment in a visible contrasting color to the undergarment will be illegal beginning with the 2009-10 school year."

Un ... believable. I imagine that the person who actually had to type this edict into the Hammurabi's Code of teenage racing underwear must have thrown themselves off a bridge once they realized how futile and pointless their existence had become. By losing the points for the fourth place finisher, Hereford dropped to third in the team standings and the trophy when to a rival high school.

But you know who the real loser was yesterday? America.

Uniform violation costs Bulls title [Baltimore Sun]
[Image via]

With just a quarter mile left, the lead runners came up against a train crossing the road. By the time it passed, almost a minute later, the pack was set for a sprint to the finish. Thank goodness Sawe ended up winning anyway, or we'd have a full-fledged controversy on our hands instead of a cute little story about those bush league Iowa marathons.

So who's to blame?

The train apparently was operated by Iowa Interstate Railroad. Tom Bernau, the president of the company that puts on the marathon, produced an e-mail thread from Sept. 15 that showed race director Chris Burch had detailed the course map and marathon dates to the railroad.

Mick Burkart, vice president of the Iowa Interstate Railroad, responded to Burch that "this should not be a problem."

Burkart responded in an e-mail Sunday night that his company was at fault.

"I sincerely apologize for this happening," Burkart wrote. "We were well aware of the race and our agreement to refrain from operating through this area during the race. Due to some miscommunication a train was allowed into the race area before it was supposed to. There is no excuse for this happening.

I'd actually be in favor of more of these things. Marathons are boring. People running? C'mon, this is the 21st century. Let's make it more like Legends of the Hidden Temple. Let's not just have trains blocking the way, but also Temple Guards popping out to drag runners off the course.

D.M. Marathon: Train Turns Men's Race Into All-Out Sprint [Des Moines Register]

Cassie Peller won the race on Sunday, but was DQ'ed shortly after for accepting a water bottle outside the designated water stations. (Dehydration is secondary to following the rules.)

That made Jennifer Goebel the winner, until photos surfaced online of her listening to an iPod while running. That is, like everything else, against race rules. After a hissy fit on this bulletin board, she was disqualified yesterday.

The crown and the $500 top prize then fell to Corina Canitz, who promptly donated the money to charity, wary of the Lakefront Marathon curse. So as of now, the fastest woman in Wisconsin is a 42-year-old mother of four. Until she's disqualified for, I don't know, breast feeding or something.

Second Lakefront Marathon Winner Disqualified For iPod Use [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]

I guess I should mention that the man is 81 years old and suffering from a blood clot that was preventing him from peeing. While running the Twin Cities Marathon this weekend, he stopped at a first aid station and asked for some assistance, but officials told him he would have to drop out and go to a hospital to get that kind of help. That was when a man in the crowd stepped up to say that he had a catheter that the runner could borrow. He retrieved it from the car, a first aid worker helped him ... uh ... insert it, he drained his bladder and was good to go.

This raises many troubling questions. One, who carries a spare catheter in their car? Two, who uses a catheter that he borrowed from a complete stranger on the street? Three, how much of a lazy ass do you feel like knowing that an 81-year-old man stopped for an invasive urinary tract procedure in the middle of a marathon and still finished in under four hours. And they want to take his prize money away? They should put this guy in the running hall of fame. (I'm assuming there is one.)

And yes, if all of that wasn't enough—the man's name is Jerry Johncock. Wait, let me get that for you......

/dick joke

Urine luck: Borrowed catheter aids marathoner, but he might be DQ'd [Star-Tribune]

* * * * *

Well, that's another Wednesday. Barry P. will see you on the flip side. Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. I hated you when you went away.

Coleman was minding his own business Friday, tweeting his innermost thoughts to the world while jogging to work, when the Tweeter guided his face directly into a tree's low-hanging branch, deposited him to the ground and left him with a black eye. The branch, he said, came out of nowhere.

"I guess you could say I feel a right Twit," he said.

Jogger injured after using Twitter as he ran [The Telegraph]

Nicholas Kurgat had never even run a half-marathon before he registered in that portion of Raleigh, North Carolina race last weekend. But when he reached the 13-mile mark, he missed the turn to the finish line so he figured he'd just kept going.

Nicholas Kurgat finished the 26.2 mile-course in just under two hours, 20 minutes, a time considered elite even for experienced marathoners. But as Kurgat was not officially a competitor in the full marathon, he was disqualified from the event. And, not having properly completed the half-marathon, he was disqualified from that as well. Both disqualifications are required by the guidelines of USA Track & Field.

Kurgat lives and works in North Carolina, but was not born there. Want to guess what country he was born in?

Half-Marathon Registrant Misses Turn, Wins Full Marathon [Finding Dulcinea]

Arien is a fifth-grade teacher, not a professional runner, so she didn't enter herself in the "elite" seeded group that started 20 minutes ahead of everyone else. However, she underestimated her awesomeness by so much that her finishing time was 11 minutes faster than the official declared winner—but when she pointed that out to race officials, they told her to go take a 26.2-mile hike.

No one seemed exactly sure what to do. The trophies had already been handed out and the official results announced. Now organizers seem to be hoping it will all go away.

"At this point," Nike media relations manager Tanya Lopez said Monday, "we've declared our winner."

O'Connell said some race officials actually implied she'd messed up the seeding by not declaring herself an "elite" runner.

"If you're feeling like you're going to be a leader," race producer Dan Hirsch said Monday, "you should be in the elite pack."

Setting aside the fact that there was no way Arien could have predicted that she would break her personal best by 12 minutes (Hint: That's a lot) or that it would be good enough to put her out front, the officials at USA Track and Field do have a point. Because she was in a different start group, the actual leader would not have known she was racing against someone else and could not have adjusted accordingly.

On the other hand ... come on. A freakin' elementary school teacher comes out of nowhere to absolutely destroy your "liberal elite" San Francisco runners and you want to act like it's her fault you're not giving her a medal? I think Jon Hendershott, the associate editor of Track and Field News, puts it best:

"That's pretty weak."

• At Women's Marathon, fastest time didn't win [SF Gate]

A few commenters in the Marshawn post drew my attention to this lovely headline currently appearing on tWWL's site. It's funny because hookers only usually run from cops, Patrick Bateman and the angry pack of dogs on my estate. They're bred specifically for their hooker-killing prowess.

Said commenter Brazil Thrill: "Even though she only ran for about 10 seconds, I bet she still charged for a full hour." Welp, can't top that one. Yours is the comment of the day. Help yourself to a Daulerio harem member of your choice.

When deciding whether to check out this year's race moving carnival, the deal breaker for me was the many naked male runners who usually accent the 7.46-mile course with their flopping extremities and pasty whiteness.

The bright sunshine turned to fog around Ashbury Street, but it didn't dampen many spirits — except, perhaps, those of a few of the naked men, who nevertheless soldiered on. One of the nudists, who identified himself only as Jack, was, by all indications, downcast during the post-party celebration at the Polo Grounds, where an icy wind joined the fog. He had by this time wrapped his manhood in a sock.

The winner of the actual race? John Korir, a Kenyan who clocked 34:28 for the 12-kilometer run from Howard and Beale streets to the Great Highway. He won $32,000, which was slightly more than this guy received.

Bay To Breakers [SF Gate]
Bay To Breakers: A Heaping Helping Of Crazy Since 1912 [SF Gay Examiner]

''The biggest logistical challenge is how to bring my family [wife and two children] with me,'' Karnazes said.

Yes. We're sure that's how your family sees the challenge: As "logistical."

50 Marathons, 50 Days, 50 States [Chicago Sun-Times]