While the Boston Marathon hogged most of the headlines on Monday, the Delaware Marathon made a strong bid for some attention.
A viral video posted on Instagram showed a shirtless man running towards the finish line with his arms raised and, by all appearances, feeling pretty good about his chances of winning the race.
The only problem with this is that, as the man approached the finish line, another man, farther back but running at full speed, gobbled up the distance and crossed the finish line before the would-be winner.
“He got it! He got it!” the man filming the incredible moment can be heard saying.
Joshua Jackson, 24, of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, was the man who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Jackson ran an unbelievable 2:43:11. The jaws of defeat, in this case, belonged to Carson Mello.
Jackson ended up winning the race by two seconds.
It is more than a little odd how Jackson conjured up that burst of speed at the end of the race. Most runners are very fatigued at the end of a marathon. They may not be crawling on their bellies, but they’re normally not running full sprints from a long distance.
Regardless, the race-tracking data says he ran it in 2:43:11, and that’s what we have to go with.
The Delaware Marathon has been run since 2004.