CINCINNATI, OH – The average finishing time of the Flying Pig Marathon was significantly lower this year than in years past. Experts are blaming the drop on large amounts of time runners took using Twitter and posting selfies on social media.
“Last year I was running fifteen minute miles,” explained runner Katie O’Brien. “This year I averaged about forty. My new phone has such a fantastic camera, I did not want to miss the opportunity to document how great I was doing in the marathon. It might have hurt my time, but now I have over a hundred awesome shots of me posing with cups of water, bananas, and people cheering for me. My Facebook page has never looked so great!”
Experts say that the incidents of using social media during marathon runs are on the rise throughout the running world. “Even professional runners are getting into the habit,” said Runners Age Magazine editor Kevin Wolfe. “Those people worked hard to obtain their three dozen followers on Twitter, so I guess they feel compelled to keep them up to date with content. It also explains why runners from Kenya remain so dominant. They usually don’t have good smart phone technology to use.”
Not only has this trend produced higher than average finishing times, it also has been attributed to some potentially hazardous situations. “This year the Pittsburgh marathon is an example of the worst of this trend,” explained Wolfe. “There was a fifty runner pileup at the nine mile marker as dozens of runners stopped to take selfies with a guy in a pierogi costume.”