There was some confusion at the end of the Modesto Marathon. Here’s what happened
A runner was disqualified from Sunday’s Modesto Marathon due to an error at what was assumed to be the marathon turnaround point.
Benjamin Enowitz, a 36-year-old from Los Angeles, was the first to cross the finish line after running the 26.2-mile race in just over two hours but later found out that he had been disqualified from the race after he did not run the full length of the marathon.
Enowitz was following the race’s lead bike, but the lead bike had him turn around at the 13-mile mark instead of the regular race turnaround point, which is just over the 13-mile mark.
In the first decade-plus of the Modesto Marathon, police were lead bikes, but Modesto Marathon director Bree Fitzpatrick confirmed with The Bee that motorcycle police stopped volunteering and have not served in the role since 2024. The 2025 and 2026 marathons were led by volunteers. Last year’s marathon ran without hiccups.
The runner disqualification Sunday was reminiscent of the 2022 marathon. Fresno native CJ Albertson won that year’s race after initially being disqualified because he was led an extra 400 meters by a police motorcycle officer who was leading the runners. He ran the marathon in 2 hours, 12 minutes and eight seconds, which shattered his previous course record.
Albertson was disqualified and reinstated as the winner because he ran more than the marathon distance. He also finished first in 2019.
This year, because Enowitz ran less than the 26.2-mile distance, he cannot be reinstated as the champion. Fitzpatrick confirmed with The Bee on Monday that he will be offered free entry into next year’s marathon.
As is the protocol with any official marathon, results (chip time and gun time) are confirmed at the end of the race. So when a runner does not hit the turnaround point, it is not possible to pull them off the course. Enowitz says he crossed the finish line, received his finisher’s medal after the race, got back to his local hotel and received congratulations from friends who were tracking him.
“The next thing you know, I got removed from the results and then I saw someone else announced the winner, and I’m in my hotel room confused,” Enowitz said.
He did not find out he had been given the DNF (did not finish) until he returned home to Los Angeles.
Enowitz tracked his race with the Strava run tracking app. He ran 24.64 miles in about 2 hours, 20 minutes at a pace of 5:41 per mile, he said. He likely would have been on pace for a sub- 2:30:00 marathon time, almost guaranteeing a place in the Boston Marathon.
The official male race winner, Lupe Palalia, 39, of San Jose, also showed up as disqualified immediately after the race until both chip and gun times were confirmed, when he was then recognized as the first-place finisher.
Race see’s post-pandemic participation record
Fitzpatrick says Sunday’s 2,714 runners were the most participants since before the COVID-19 pandemic. The race had its biggest field across the four events (marathon, half marathon, 10K and 5K). The first year after the pandemic, she said, the races had just under 2,000 runners but participation has grown to numbers that look to continue to climb.
Two initial DNF’s were fixed
Those tracking family members and friends who participated Sunday may have noticed additional DNF’s, but those, Fitzpatrick said, were just a computer error and were fixed by the timing team.
During initial registration, some runners signed up for the full marathon and were given full marathon bibs with numbers, but then changed to participate in the half. Fitzpatrick said the tracking system glitched and some participants did not get changed over to the half-marathon. When they crossed the finish line, it looked like they ran a full marathon in a half-marathon time.
“Some of the runners were disqualified then reinstated because their bibs hadn’t been changed from a full to a half so (according to the timing system) they came in an hour and a half into a marathon. But we fixed it since we knew they had only run a half,” she said. “We adjusted it to the right distance and they did hit all of their marks and were reinstated.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2026 at 2:05 PM.
