Worcester... England?

Sheila Pereira, a 42-year old American runner from the town of Worcester, Massachusetts, mistakenly entered herself in the Worcester City Half Marathon on 15 September thinking that it was in her home town – rather than 5000km away in the English Midlands.

Undeterred, she recorded a 21.1km route on Strava that she ran on the same day as the race and sent it to the organisers as proof of her ‘participation’ in the event. They responded by sending her a finishers’ T-shirt and medal accompanied by a message inviting her to come over for next year’s race.

No Boston Marathon entrant would make the mistake of entering the UK Marathon of the same name, which advertises itself as the flattest marathon in the country, but the Worcester event’s website uses the generic “.com” suffix rather than “.co.uk” which might have alerted Ms Pereira to the location. The name of the race organisers, “Events of the North”, may have served to confuse – as the English Worcester is very much in the Midlands, while there are only six states in the continental USA wholly north of Massachusetts.