A few days ago a runner posted something on social media that managed to turn into one of those running-internet moments that spirals far beyond what the original comment probably deserved. She had run a sub-3 marathon and didn’t get into the New York City Marathon through the lottery. Her post basically said that charity runners shouldn’t be running races like NYC and that those spots should go to faster runners instead. Runner’s World ended up writing about it, which of course pushed the whole thing further into the algorithm.
The take itself wasn’t particularly thoughtful. Complaining about charity runners has been floating around competitive running circles for years and it never lands well. Charity programs raise a huge amount of money for nonprofits and they’ve been part of major marathons for decades. Anyone who has spent even a little time around races like New York, Boston, Chicago, or London knows that charity teams are deeply baked into how those events operate financially. It’s not some recent development and it’s not going anywhere.
But the reaction to the post quickly went way past disagreement. People started screenshotting the post and sharing it everywhere. Then came the threads dissecting every sentence. Then people started digging into who she was. Eventually it reached the point where people were contacting her employer and trying to get her in trouble professionally. Within a couple days she had deleted her social media entirely.
That whole progression is the part that made me pause a bit.
If you’ve been in the sport long enough, you’ve heard some version of this debate more than once. Every few years someone complains that charity runners dilute the majors. Then someone else says Boston should eliminate charity bibs too. Someone else says big city marathons should be entirely time-qualified. The same arguments come back around like clockwork and then fade out again when everyone moves on to the next topic.
It’s not even that rare of a sentiment among competitive runners. Most people just don’t post it online in a way that goes viral. If you’ve stood around a start corral long enough you’ve probably heard similar comments muttered quietly between runners comparing training cycles. Usually someone makes the comment, someone else pushes back a little, and the conversation drifts somewhere else. It’s not usually the kind of thing that ends with thousands of strangers trying to dismantle someone’s life.
The New York City Marathon in particular sits in a weird place in the sport. It’s not really built as a purely competitive race. The identity of that event has always been the massive scale, the crowds, the five borough course, the feeling that the entire city is involved. Hundreds of thousands of people apply for the lottery every year and only a tiny percentage actually get in. That means plenty of fast runners miss out every single year. A sub-3 marathon doesn’t change the math there.
New York has never positioned itself like Boston where qualifying times are the central entry system. It leans heavily toward the mass-participation side of the sport. Charity teams are a huge part of that ecosystem and have been for a long time. Entire nonprofit fundraising strategies revolve around marathon teams. A lot of organizations depend on those race entries to bring in money that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
None of that means runners aren’t allowed to feel frustrated when the lottery email shows up and it’s another rejection. Anyone who has tried to get into a major through the lottery knows that feeling. You put together a training idea in your head, you start thinking about fall races, and then suddenly you’re back to square one. It’s disappointing, especially when you’ve been putting up good times and still don’t get a slot.
But frustration about a race entry doesn’t really justify turning another group of runners into the enemy. Charity runners aren’t the reason someone missed the lottery. The race simply isn’t structured around performance entry in the first place.
Still, none of that really explains why the reaction to this one post turned into such an intense pile-on. Disagreeing with someone’s opinion is normal. Running social media is full of disagreements about everything from super shoes to race pricing to course records. Most of those debates stay within the boundaries of arguing about the topic itself.
This one crossed over into something else entirely.
Once people started contacting her employer it stopped being about charity bibs. It became about public punishment. And that’s the part that feels pretty uncomfortable to watch, especially in a sport that constantly talks about being welcoming and supportive.
Running is already a fairly small community compared to other sports. The same names show up at races year after year. People know each other through local clubs, Strava segments, Instagram posts, or random marathon weekends. The circles overlap more than people think. When the internet decides to collectively target one runner it doesn’t just disappear into the void. Real people are attached to those accounts.
The strange part is how much energy gets poured into situations like this while other issues in the sport barely register. Entry fees have climbed steadily for years. Some races are pushing well over $300 just for registration. Prize money at many events has shrunk or disappeared. Professional runners are constantly juggling side jobs because the financial structure of the sport is still incredibly fragile. Those topics rarely generate the same level of outrage.
But one poorly thought-out opinion about charity runners somehow triggers a full internet trial.
It’s hard not to notice that imbalance.
The marathon world has always held a mix of motivations and identities. Some people show up chasing Olympic Trials standards. Some people show up chasing a personal milestone after years of training. Some people show up because they’re raising money for a cause that matters deeply to them. Big races like New York manage to hold all of those motivations in the same event.
That tension has existed as long as large marathons have existed. It’s part of the landscape of the sport now. The majors aren’t going to suddenly pivot into elite-only competitions and they’re not going to remove charity programs that raise millions of dollars every year. The structure is set because it works for the races and the organizations connected to them.
Which brings things back to the original moment that kicked this whole thing off.
Someone posted an opinion that wasn’t very well considered. People disagreed with it, which is completely fair. The disagreement then escalated until the person disappeared from the internet entirely. At some point the reaction became bigger than the original comment.
Watching that unfold just makes me wonder what people actually hope to accomplish in situations like this. No one suddenly learned new information about charity programs. The structure of the New York City Marathon didn’t change. The sport didn’t become more inclusive or more competitive.
One runner just got chased offline.
And maybe that’s worth thinking about a little before the next running internet controversy shows up next week, because if you’ve been around this sport long enough you know there’s always another one coming.
Philosophers have written about the scapegoat mentality probably since before the days of Pheidippides. Somebody needs to suffer the collective guilt and its consequences. The trickiest race to get into is the human race.
when you post, I guess your expecting a response, but you never know what that response is going to be. I’ve been on the wrong end, lost a few friends because of that…sounds like this one instance went beyond what it should have been..disagree, or agree and that’s enough. I try not to respond to responses, because sometimes it’s never a debate or a dialogue it becomes like a virus that never goes away….