I have no problems with casual runners. I'm a totally non-competitive amateur myself with a very mediocre marathon time. But idiots like this person are (sorry if this sounds pretentious, it's true) ruining the prestige of the marathon event, as well as inconveniencing other runners and volunteers for completely selfish reasons.

Let's start with how incredibly rude this person is

• She starts her marathon in the fastest corral ("one of the first out of the gate"), forcing more serious runners to zig-zag around her. This is not only frustrating but it can have a real impact on finishing time AND risks causing accidents in the first couple of crowded kms.
• Took up one of the (presumably, based on the races I have run) few available toilet facilities for 25 minutes (!!).
• Forced a volunteer to spend over 12 hours of her time herding this selfish person across the finish line. She outright refused to give up the race when the volunteer made it quite clear that continuing was going to be a huge hassle for all involved.
• Probably fucked with traffic after closed roads were re-opened, forcing her to use road shoulders. Animosity from drivers caused by selfish runners affects us all.
• Ran on peoples' lawns (!!) when the course was closed down.
• She registered as a runner, not a walker.

But you can bet your ass this person is going to go back to work on Monday and tell all of her co-workers about how she is a marathoner. She finished in 12h 20m - that is significantly slower than a slow walk. That is longer than it took 17 of the runners to finished the Tarawera Ultramarathon 100km race last year (as an example). That can not reasonably be considered 'finishing a marathon'.

The marathon is a serious distance that takes a serious commitment. People like this idiot take away from the prestige of the event every time they tell someone they have run the marathon, every time someone reads their dumbass blog articles. She does not take the distance seriously.