I am not sure what to think about this. However, things have been getting fuzzy recently as to the hard and fast "rules" of the cut off time.
Originally, it was finish whenever. I think Walt Stack took over 24 hours years ago. He went home napped for a bit woke up at dawn went back to the point on the run course where he left off and then ran it in.
Then they instituted the midnight/17:00 hour cut off. I recall them being fairly strict with this year's ago. Midnight would come, and the power cord was pulled and they would start tearing down the finishline minutes after midnight. Then the whole last finisher celebration started to gather momentum to the point that the last finisher was getting more appreciateion and hype than the first finishers - Fair enough - and the whole party-at-the-finishline right up until midnight became a big deal, which is cool! This worked particularly well when the very last finisher and last person out on the course, almost on que, approached the finish line as the clock ticked down to midnight - the perfect and dramatic ending to a long day. Now as race fields get bigger and actual average race times get slower!( an interesting phenomenon to be addressed some other time) as fate, there are often quite a few people who are still out on the course at midnight and if the 17:00 cut-off has come and gone with no dramatic rush to the line right at midnight, it seems a bit anticlimatic. So, things seem to get extended a bit these days. The "last" finisher at IMC this year was after midnight.
It's a tough call. Are you going to tell the guy/gal who finishes at 17:02, in front of several thousand madly cheering spectators that they have NOT done the race?
Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog