London Marathon runner covers nearly double the distance due to tech glitch
Woman runs 49 miles in ‘virtual’ event after app fails to record progress because of patchy GPS
WHEN Jodey Hopcroft set off on her virtual London Marathon, she expected to be back home in time for lunch.
Instead, the 38-year- old amateur ended up running almost 50 miles through heavy rain due to a problem connecting to the official app she downloaded to record her performance.
Ms Hopcroft was among 38,000 entrants who used the Virgin Money London Marathon app to record their own routes after coronavirus forced the cancellation of the mass-participation event on the streets of London.
But poor GPS reception on her mobile phone around her home on the north Norfolk coast meant that the app worked only intermittently. She ended up walking for more than 15 hours before the app finally registered that she had gone the official marathon distance of 26.2 miles.
When she returned home exhausted, she studied a map and found that she had actually travelled 49 miles. Ms Hopcroft realised that the app was not working properly within minutes of setting off from the Waxham Sands holiday park where she works, when it failed to record her first half a mile.
But she was determined to carry on in poor weather because she could only qualify for a digital certificate and medal if the app recorded her doing the full 26.2 miles. She also did not want to let down her sponsors, who were donating more than £2,100 to MS-UK, the multiple sclerosis charity. She collapsed into “hysterical laughter” when she found how far she had actually run.
“Once I had started I could not stop”, said Ms Hopcroft, who had expected to be finished around noon, but instead crossed the virtual finish line at 7pm.
“I thought it would be fine when I set off, but the GPS is pretty bad around here, especially when you get mist and rain, so I should have realised there might be problems,” she added.
“It wasn’t the app’s fault that it was only registering every now and then.
“The rain was pouring down so hard that there were deep puddles.
“It felt like I was walking in streams and I got really bad blisters. Believe me there were a couple of times I did have a bit of a cry, I was just in agony.”
A spokesman for the Virgin Money London Marathon said: “We salute Jodey’s strength, stamina and good humour and hope she raised plenty of money for MS-UK.”