Free Press Marathon: Runners fight brief congestion as rental car strays across finish
The 45th annual Free Press Marathon made history Sunday with big and welcome course changes, a continued rebuilding after 2020’s virtual race and some quirky appearances at the finish line — three vehicles strayed onto the route, amid swarms of runners.
The motorized trio included a rental car whose occupants abandoned it after race organized forced them to park.
The marathon's new course added slices of downtown's Brush Park and entertainment district, snaked through Eastern Market and sliced up the Dequindre Cut — a former sub-surface railroad route, now a landscaped and art-studded exercise path. Each of the new course segments was a popular addition, said George Dubrish, director of the marathon's Disabilities Division for handcyclists who start their racing two minutes before the runners.
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"Pretty much all the comments I heard were positive about the course changes," Dubrish said, adding: "I don't think anybody really missed going on Belle Isle," a long-time feature of the Free Press Marathon, going back to the event's very first running in 1978. Although chockful of water views, Belle Isle is generally bereft of spectators and often buffets athletes with the strongest winds of the race.
Another historic addition was the Military Mile on East Lafayette, where military vehicles and veterans groups convened to cheer on the racers while providing a unique diversion for runners, book-ended at each end by huge American flags draped from elevated crane arms.
Those are sights that everyone seems to want to see again, said Aaron Velthoven, Free Press Marathon vice president and executive race producer.
What he hopes not to see ever again is an ordinary car compete with tired marathon runners for space on the pavement, Velthoven said. This was not an official pace car, not a police squad car, not an emergency vehicle. Instead, in a marathon first, an ordinary Chevrolet Malibu with what appeared to be rental plates strayed onto the course near its end, then crept across the finish line at about 10:30 a.m. Inside, two bewildered individuals peered from its windows, while outside race officials yelled frantically at the driver to stop.
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After the car crossed the finish line, race officials got the driver to pull to the far right of the marathon finishing area, then conducted the car for ¼-mile until it was out of the most congested stretch. At that point, they directed the driver to park. As officials called police, the male driver emerged from the car, loudly objected to being photographed, then gave a two-sentence explanation to bystanders about driving away from the nearby Fort Pontchartrain Hotel unaware of the race.
Moments later, he walked briskly away from the crowd gathered around the car. About a minute later, his female companion in the front passenger seat did the same, disappearing just before several police officers arrived on foot, who then set off in the last-seen-direction of the errant motorists.
Race officials said they never heard whether the driver was cited after apparently abandoning a rental car in downtown Detroit.
"We did our best to keep the runners safe" throughout the incident, Velthoven said. A spokesman for the Detroit police said later that any report of the incident would need to wait until Monday.
An hour later, another surprise drove up to the finish line. Two open-air, four-wheeled utility trucks lumbered across the finish line. These were the kind seen on golf courses and farms, sometimes called ATVs for "all-terrain vehicles." Like the Malibu, they too were flagged down and directed to the side of the course, then followed by stunned race officials on foot as the ATVs crept away from the runners and out of the finish-line chutes. They were vendors who oversee portable generators on the race course, Velthoven said.
"It seems like they made a wrong turn and just decided to keep moving on the course," instead of trying back out with a sea of runners behind them, which might have been hazardous, he said.
At a marathon? "Never a dull moment," Velthoven quipped.
Contact: blaitner@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Free Press Marathon: Historic day includes new course, mystery car
