Atlanta 10-Miler: If you're gonna outkick me, try not to win an age group for the other gender

At the end of the race, this guy outkicked me. It turned out he won the 60-64 female age group.

Like I've mentioned before, all races are different. I mentioned in my recap of the Atlanta 10 Miler that I was outkicked by a guy at the end of the race and while I couldn't catch him to the finish line, I was thankful because that surge helped me beat a 17-year-old PR.

The photo proofs came up yesterday on MarathonFoto and while I didn't really want to see pictures of me being outkicked, I did look and was a little surprised at what I discovered.

In the Michelob ULTRA 13.1 atlanta earlier this month, I also got outkicked by a guy at the finish line. I almost wrote a post about it since it turned out that because of chip time I ended up finishing the course ahead of him by an entire minute in the race. It's funny that you never know how you will do until you see the race results.

So anyway, I decided to look up this guy's bib and see how fast he ran, etc. Only thing was I couldn't come up with a bib representing a guy. The bib matched a woman who ended up placing first in her 60-64 age group with a 1:19 race time.

But in the race, it was just me and this guy on the breakaway. And the bib number is pretty clear in this picture.

I ended up submitting the possible discrepancy to the Atlanta Track Club since I thought it would be unfair to the woman who placed second in that age group if she got beat by not one of her peers but someone of a different gender.

The track club responded today, saying they are going to flag this bib number for review and that official race results won't be finalized for two weeks after the race. If they determine someone else other than the person who signed up for the race ran with the bib, the race result (and presumably the first place award) will be disqualified.

It still raises questions. The most likely scenario is that this guy decided to run at the last moment and had to buy a bib from someone else since the 10 Mile race was sold out. But it also seems this guy was a pretty decent runner, too, and wouldn't you want your race time to count? I think in many cases I would just skip a race that's sold out and focus my efforts on one that is available.

And if it didn't matter to you, why sprint to the finish?