Woman Runs 1st Marathon After Starting by Mistake

CLEVELAND — A woman finished her first marathon Sunday after mistakenly entering the 26-mile Revco-Cleveland Marathon instead of the 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) event in which she had intended to compete.

“I thought the marathon had already started,” said Georgene Johnson, 42, of Akron. “So I just took off with the rest of the pack.”

Both races had the same starting lines. The Revco-Cleveland Marathon started at 8:30 a.m. Sunday and the 10-kilometer race 15 minutes later.

About four miles into the race, Johnson said she realized something was wrong because the turnaround point was nowhere in sight.

“So I sidled up to a male runner and said, ‘This is the 10K, isn’t it?’ ” Johnson said. When told she was running in the marathon, she said, “I felt so dumb that I just stood there and started to cry.”

She asked a police officer to drive her back to the starting line to compete in the 10K but the officer didn’t have a patrol car.

“I thought about stopping--I mean, ME running a marathon. But right in front of me there was a man running and on the back of his shirt it had a saying, ‘Just do it.’ So I did.”

Johnson finished in 4 hours, 4 minutes, good enough for 83rd place in the women’s division. “I feel great,” she said. “As stupid as I felt on the course, I feel that good now.”