Daddy Pig Is Running The Berlin Marathon, But He’ll Have To Watch The Cutoff Time

Daddy Pig is entered for the Berlin Marathon on Sept. 27, where the time limit is 6:15:00. The Peppa Pig character finished the London Marathon in April in 5:51:53, which leaves 23 minutes and 7 seconds of margin.

The whole announcement is a single Instagram post, published Aug. 20 by the Peppa Pig account with the Berlin Marathon’s own account attached as co-author. That co-authorship is the only official confirmation of the entry. Hasbro owns the character and has issued no release. The race’s news page carries nothing either; the most recent item there is the Aug. 11 elite field. No charity is named, no fundraising page is attached and the entry route is not stated. London came with more: a Hasbro release on March 3, a named charity, a fundraising page and a tie-in episode.

In London, Daddy Pig finished one second ahead of Joe Wicks, who ran 5:51:54. The race’s own celebrity quotes page carries a line attributed to Daddy Pig describing a finish under six hours with “a small amount of walking.”

Berlin publishes the consequences of missing the limit, though not consistently. The 6:15:00 runs from the moment a runner crosses the start line, and anyone outside it, or outside an intermediate cutoff, is removed from the marked course. The race-day page says they get a ride to the finish in what it calls the broom bus. The event FAQ describes it differently: those runners either carry on along the footpath or take a bus to the finish. Either way, a medal and an official finishing time go only to runners who make the limit.

Where the intermediate cutoff falls depends on which of those two pages a runner reads. The race-day page sets it at 33K (20.5 miles) by 3:40 p.m. The FAQ puts 33K at 3:50 p.m. and adds a second cutoff, 38K (23.6 miles) by 4:35 p.m., that the race-day page does not mention. Both pages were checked Aug. 20. The finish line shuts at 5 p.m.

Both cutoffs are clock times rather than elapsed times, so they bind hardest on the runners who set off last. Berlin’s blocks start at 8:45 a.m. for A, B and C and end with block K at 10:27 a.m. A block K runner who reaches 33K at 3:40 p.m. has been running 5:13:00 and has 1:02:00 left for the remaining 9.195K (5.7 miles). A block A runner arriving at the same moment has been out for 6:55:00. That is already past the overall limit, so an early starter is stopped by the 6:15:00 long before a clock cutoff can reach them.

London publishes less. Its event FAQ gives an eight-hour pace reference and finish-line closing times. Runners behind that pace may have their bibs scanned by hand once some timing equipment has been taken in. The FAQ lists no intermediate cutoff and no sweeper vehicle.

The race expects roughly 60,000 athletes from about 160 countries across the Berlin weekend. Both world record holders will be on the marathon start list: Sabastian Sawe and Tigst Assefa. Sawe won the same London race in 1:59:30, which was 3:52:23 faster than Daddy Pig’s time, and that run was the first sub-two-hour marathon in a record-eligible race.

The National Deaf Children’s Society was the London charity, chosen after George Pig was written as moderately deaf. Hasbro set an ambition of £54,000 (about $73,600), matching the number of deaf children in the U.K. Daddy Pig’s own fundraising page has a £10,000 (about $13,600) target and sits at £10,400 (about $14,200) from 364 donors. More than 50 charity runners ran alongside him, so that is not the campaign total. Berlin has no charity attached at all.

Block assignments have not been published, and neither Hasbro nor the race has named a charity or said how the entry was obtained.