You splendid readers can believe this or not, but the morning after the 2014 Boston Marathon the hardworking staff said, “The Kenyans tanked the race yesterday.” (Ask our suite mate at BU!)

The winning time (2:08:37) was too slow, and the timing was too perfect – an American wins Boston one year after the Marathon bombings.

Now comes this Wall Street Journal piece by Kevin Helliker and Sharon Terlep:

Boston Marathon Mystery: Why Didn’t Anyone Beat Meb?

How Meb Keflezighi ran his fastest-ever marathon only days shy of his 39th birthday is a mystery that will inspire other runners for decades.

Also certain to endure is the mystery of how Keflezighi’s less-than-spectacular time succeeded in winning last week’s Boston Marathon, amid a field of Kenyans and Ethiopians who completed that race several minutes behind their usual pace.

“It’s hard to explain why several Kenyans and Ethiopians didn’t run quite a bit faster,” said Ambrose Burfoot, an editor at Runner’s World and winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon.

Burfoot sees nothing conspiratorial about the outcome, which gave the U.S. its first male winner of the Boston Marathon since 1983.

But some others do.

Among them, the folks at LetsRun.com, where, the Journal notes, there’s a comment thread called The Boston Marathon Was Fixed.

The back-and-forth on this is really engaging.

But we’re sticking with our initial reaction.

Sorry, Meb.