Analysis of the Schmidt photo from a runner's perspective

Earlier I commented on the Schmidt post and said I thought it was much ado about nothing. I'm going to amend my comments and say this might be a fake (yes, that makes me a flip-flopper, if you can't deal with that bite me). I'm going by personal experience on this, so bear with me. Blow up the photo to see it in larger view.

First of all, the pose itself looks a bit too perfect for someone that just ran 26.2 miles. Notice how she's looking straight at the camera. None of the other runners seem to know where the camera is. And if she ran it in 3:19 (which I’m not necessarily disputing, she is a very good runner in her age group), I’d think she’d be a bit more haggard than she looks. Maybe she was running that well that day and didn’t struggle at the finish, who knows.

Now let’s go to what I think throws up the biggest red flag in the whole mess: the t-shirt (WARNING: some of this discusses items you might not want to think about with old Schmitty. Turn your eyes if you have a weak stomach).

First, she wore a white t-shirt for a marathon. You sweat during a marathon, even in cooler temperatures in October. Anyone that’s worn a white t-shirt and sweated too much knows that it becomes somewhat transparent. Ergo, one would expect to see some sort of support garment through the shirt (yes, I’m admitting I just looked for bra straps on Jean, but only in the name of reporting).

Secondly, I’m assuming the t-shirt in question is a cotton blend of some sort. Any runner worth their salt knows that cotton t-shirts become somewhat, ummm, uncomfortable, over the course of a marathon. As experienced as she is, I would think she would have worn a garment that better suits a runner. I wasn’t an avid runner back then, so I can’t speak to what might have been available at the time; this part is a bit of speculation.

She might say that she wore that specific t-shirt because she was trying to get her name out in the electorate. But in 1993 she was running for a position in Clermont County. So why would she be wearing a campaign t-shirt in a Columbus marathon? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Third, check out how tightly that t-shirt is tucked in. No way can someone run 26.2 miles and not have their shirt loosened up somewhat, no matter how far you tucked it in before the race. It’s literally impossible. Maybe she tucked it in right before the finish line to look purty for the cameras, though at her speed I would say that’s extremely unlikely.

The damning part, to me at least, is the fact that the Columbus Dispatch just happened to not print her name in the list of top finishers by age group. Heck, most papers print the list of every finisher in their local marathon (at least the ones I have had experience with). If she ran a 3:19, she would have been at worst a top 10 finisher in the 40-44 female age group; I would expect most likely it would have been a top 5 time. Hell of a coincidence that she just happened to be the one omitted, don’t you think?

As happens with all circumstantial cases, each point in and of itself could possibly be refuted. But taken in totality, along with her history of strange coincidences (it was my twin sister at the convention, I don’t have the diploma because I didn’t walk for graduation, etc.), it looks pretty shaky at best. It’s funny how these sorts of situations always seem to find her.