There is no way to spectacularly fail a marathon. Hell even if you didn't finish in the alloted time you still did something healthy. The author is just trying

There is no way to spectacularly fail a marathon. Hell even if you didn't finish in the alloted time you still did something healthy. The author is just trying to inflate his personal goal, to achieve some self set time, big enough so he can turn it into a self serving post that he can post to HN. I don't really blame the author to be fair, nowadays this is kinda the thing people do, but I do get tired of the constant hyperbole.