There have been rumblings for some time that Katie Holmes couldn’t possibly have run the full NY Marathon during the day and gone out with heels on that night. Katie drew some skeptics when she was seen at her husband’s side that very night wearing heels at the premiere of his film Lions for Lambs. She could easily obtain custom made sneakers as well as those insanely expensive Louboutins that are made from a mold of your foot, so maybe her feet were immune to the wear and tear that plague average runners.

Katie also ran 26 miles on concrete in 5 and a half hours wearing a camisole-type top with just a built in bra and no sports bra. Many female runners say that would chafe and be extremely uncomfortable, but Katie told David Letterman that she felt “strong” afterwards. Others note that her pants seemed to drag on the ground and looked too long. Five and a half hours is not an incredible finish time, and a 12 minute mile is not a brisk run, but it’s very physically grueling and it seems like you would need to wear a sports bar.

There are hardly any photos that I could find of Katie Holmes running the race apart from when she crossed the finish line. That could be explained by the fact that she wasn’t recognized until the end. The NY Daily News says that husband Tom Cruise met her halfway through the race to give her an encouraging kiss, but there are no photos of that. She is seen in just a camisole in the few photos of her on the course and is in a jacket when she finishes.

A “mystery” guy was seen running with Katie with a bib number, 6074, that was not registered in the marathon. He is widely assumed to be her bodyguard, which doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I’m mentioning him because he figures in some of these stories.

It sounds ludicrous to use such flimsy evidence to suggest that she would fake running the marathon for publicity purposes, but there are some real indicators to suggest she may well have.

Defamer had a tipster send them in the “split times” of Katie Holmes compared to another runner from the NY City Marathon, as found on the official marathon website. The split times are registered electronically at specific stations on the route using the chip for each runner. She has the exact same times, down to the second, of this other guy for most every benchmark in the middle of the race. Even if someone was running alongside her the entire time, would they have the exact same time down to the second like that?

The other guy is registered as Paul Vincent, bib number 28994. He was seen running near her in several photos at the finish line and is shown above in the header image. Katie, the unregistered guy who is thought to be her bodyguard, and the guy with the exact same “split times” as Katie are all wearing similar black jackets.

A commentor on Defamer notes that they finished just two minutes behind Katie and never saw her:

OK…I ran the NYC marathon too and came in about two minutes behind Katie…however, my first half of the marathon was better than the second half due to a bathroom break gone bad in Fort Greene…(I know TMI) However, this would mean at some point Katie and her many, many handlers would have passed me. And the people I was running with. And I never saw her—and people who are running in entourages are extremely obvious. My take…she was dropped in somewhere around Long Island City where no one would notice and ran about half the damn thing. Her “chip” was actually worn my someone else who did run the whole thing…(whether it is this guy, who knows?)

Not like I’m bitter or anything, but she beat me by two minutes. I still smell a conspiracy…

[Comment from Defamer]

Maybe it’s possible that Katie and her bodyguard did cross specific markers at the exact same time down to the second, another commentor on Defamer says that the same split times are possible:

I’m all for a good conspiracy theory, but I ran NY and have to disagree. There were so many people running that it is very possible to have exact spit times b/c several people cross the markers at the same time.

[Comment on Defamer]

Also, Katie was 28 at the time of the marathon in early November, not 30. It is thought that she raced in the higher age bracket in order to receive a more favorable finish rating.

It’s a real accomplishment to run a marathon, and Holmes deserves a lot of credit if it all went down as she claims. This could just be a far-fetched conspiracy theory and maybe she did run/walk the entire marathon without a bra, and one of her bodyguards was close enough to her the entire time to mirror her finishes down to the second.

A story about how Holmes was able to register for the Boston Marathon despite not having a qualifying finish time in the NY Marathon was quickly removed from US Weekly’s website. They decided to delete the post instead of issue a correction.