Difficulties with verifying Ultra records

ThebitterLemon

http://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/runner-attempting-trans-america-record-denies-cheating-allegations


Interesting article, it's hard to know what to make of it but it does highlight some of the issues in verifying such record attempts.

TbL

UM1

ThebitterLemon wrote: »

http://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/runner-attempting-trans-america-record-denies-cheating-allegations


Interesting article, it's hard to know what to make of it but it does highlight some of the issues in verifying such record attempts.

TbL

Apparently caught by the nuts..

UM1

UM1 wrote: »

Apparently caught by the nuts..

in the final tally,

I am done because I do not want to be party to putting RY in the hospital.

last night, when he did go, was enough.

having seen his physical condition when we left,

I was afraid he might have serious issues.

the "run", for all intents and purposes, is over.

the required daily average, and his maximum daily potential met yesterday.

it was his second 60 mile day while we were here

and, this time it took the entire 24 hours to get it.

the death spiral was complete.

just to stay on pace he had to match yesterday's effort.

with no rest in between.

and he had to do that every day the rest of the run.

that is out of the picture.

looking at the tracker, he has still not moved today.

it is over.

I don't plan to ever write a report about everything I saw

or everything that went on while I was here.

suffice it to say,

that this was not always easy to watch.

this much I will say;

it seems to be a consistent part of this pattern

to make the claims that an individual is somehow "physiologically different" from everyone else.

they are not.

what I saw was the same thing I have seen from multiday runners for decades.

the bright eyed, chipper runner that I first saw last sunday

was reduced to a shambling, hollow eyed, shell.

there were times he was reduced to barely mumbling.

the days he ran his best, were the days he ran the way multi-day runners run.

not the first day, when he tried to blow out those sub-6 minute miles.

like everyone else, he went thru cycles.

during the up times, he moved pretty well.

yesterday was, overall, a really good day.

but, in the final measure, it took all 24 hours to meet the minimum.

and he was wiped out by the effort.

this thing is over.

RY is just a guy, like everyone else.

he looks like a 300 mile 6-day runner.

and that was about what we saw from him while we were out there.

maybe, with good preparation, and a sane strategy, he could run over 350.

having seen how purely tough he is,

I could see him having a shot at 400.

I guess the rest of this saga will play out however it plays out.

but, I gotta say, I found it offensive

seeing the handstand photos and the soccer ball video.

and all that crap early on.

that might have been more of a spur than any of the other stuff

to take a week out of my life,

and spend it on the side of the road.

driving from st Louis to Indianapolis at 2 miles an hour.

if nothing else,

I wanted to see them look like it was a real multiday.

and, for the past 5 days, we got that.

there was not time for anything,

except trying to get miles, or resting to try to get miles.

even driving to a motel a few miles down the road,

was time that was measured, and begrudged,

and often bypassed for the scant minutes saved by sleeping right where they were.

time, the scarcest, of the many scarce resources of the multiday runner.

in the end,

I am sorry I could not write a report about all the good things I found in those guys,

they were open and cooperative.

never made us feel like we were intruders in their show.

they are genuinely nice guys, that I enjoyed getting to know.

and I hope I get to see Robert in some regular multiday races,

where people accept him for who he is,

and he gets to be respected by his peers for the talent and toughness he does have.

laz

ThebitterLemon

This got serious traction and attention on letsrun message boards and shortly thereafter he pulls out injured...

TbL

El Caballo

ThebitterLemon wrote: »

This got serious traction and attention on letsrun message boards and shortly thereafter he pulls out injured...

TbL

Sounded fair dodgy at times, running sub-3 marathons and 12-15 miles at sub 6 minute pace at times during a 3000 mile run doesn't sound right. Maybe I'm putting my own limits on him but some of those splits were ridiculous and stopped happening as soon as the ultra runners showed up to supervise it.

ThebitterLemon

El Caballo wrote: »

Sounded fair dodgy at times, running sub-3 marathons and 12-15 miles at sub 6 minute pace at times during a 3000 mile run doesn't sound right. Maybe I'm putting my own limits on him but some of those splits were ridiculous and stopped happening as soon as the ultra runners showed up to supervise it.

Yep. And although not impossible he looks a little "chunky" for a 30.47 10k guy. Also seems to have made huge improvements as he only took up running 2 years ago...

TbL

walshb

No different to some of the logs here. Nothing wrong with a bit of embellishment!

Murph_D

walshb wrote: »

No different to some of the logs here. Nothing wrong with a bit of embellishment!

There's plenty of spoofing and hot air from some of the people who don't keep a log, that's for sure. :rolleyes:

Utdfan20titles

That fella ran 30:47 in the 10k. He should be in the olympics haha

demfad

Utdfan20titles wrote: »

That fella ran 30:47 in the 10k. He should be in the olympics haha

He shouldn't. If he did run that time its still a good 2:20x (most of a kilometer) slower than automatic qualifying time. He would technically be 2 laps slower than the slowest in the race. He shouldn't be in Rio unless he's in his van passing through and driving his GPS watch towards a North to South record attempt of the Americas.

rom

His x00 marathons in a year seemed crazy. He would "do them" before work on his own and still function for the day. From a guy who never ran until after London marathon 2014.... People have looked at the GPS data and somehow he was able to run the exact same route to the second on different days. Very impressive or he knows how to open a gps file in a text editor and do a find and replace all.

I saw him at 22 Miles in London and he was suffering. Having listen to this interview when it came out this guy clearly has lots of issues from his hard childhood. Its only strange and a bit sad that so many went along with his work of fiction rather than getting him help.

http://www.marathontalk.com/podcast/episode_249_rob_young_marathon_man_uk.php

Singer

Just like the way people slow down at a car crash, I read through the entire Letrsun thread. It's very clear that he's a spoofer. He ran DCM in 2014, somehow missing the 10k mat, though the rest of the splits look normal enough. The sub-culture of marathon spoofers is so baffling but totally compelling to read about.

Murph_D

Yeah.. I actually feel sorry for the guy myself. Obviously fake. Obviously deluded to think he'd get away. Amateur support crew too, to be fair. :rolleyes:

jamule

I heard his hero and inspiration is Kip Litton.

Enduro

The run is now officially dead. Unsurprising considering the medical issues that he picked up in his "observered" week. It would have been reckless to his long term health to carry on.

It's yet another classic though, with practically all the red-flag boxes ticked, and a few new ones added too!

- No racing history showing any kind of talent (The biggie)
- Its all for charideeeee
- A bit overweight - body shape doesn't look quite right for the training required to suceeed.
- has come from nowhere, but has tons of natural talent (allegedly)

- from what info we have, some of the tracking data shows him running incredible paces given the distance, with one 12 hour split that would potentially have him breaking the world record
- team claiming to be too busy to post tracking data, but team posted details showing them playing games and doing tourist trips early on in the run, just as the most questionable paces were being run
- pace went into a death spiral, followed by serious injuries being picked up, all in the week that trusted observers started following the attempt
- likely that a large number of his twitter and facebook followers are paid-for fakes. Proves nothing in itself, but isinteresting nonetheless.

And so on.

Having said all that, every now and again someone does turn up who is the real deal. Yiannis Kouros, and his first Spartathlon being one of the best examples of an outragous claim (He was DSQed for the implausibility), but turned out to be the real deal.

Ultra records in races have no more issues than most other distances really. It's much harder to cheat in races, but just as with marathons and triathlons, you get the occasional eejit who tries it on in ultras. In my (long) experience I've seen one race which has issues. (I'm fairly certain that I caught one of the podium finishers cheating, but had no evidence apart from what I saw) That race is mired in political issues currently, mainly as a result of those issues. Trackers solve some of the problems there.

It's when we get to non-race FKTs (Fastest Known Times) that the problems really kick off. My own view is that its not worth paying attention to FKTs attempted by someone who hasn't already established their credentials in racing.

robinph

He's down to be running as part of a two man team in the Thunder Run next month, wonder if he'll have recovered his composure to turn up for that or if the sponsors drop him before hand. I'll be running as part of a team there as well so will be on the look out for him.

UM1

https://m.facebook.com/LCR500/
And the circle of life continues.....

jamule

UM1 wrote: »

https://m.facebook.com/LCR500/
And the circle of life continues.....

Good bloke- Check
Charidee- Check
Makey up record- Check

Singer

Good article in The Guardian about Robert Young's efforts.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/22/robert-young-marathon-record-attempt-cheating-rumors

Murph_D

Singer wrote: »

Good article in The Guardian about Robert Young's efforts.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/22/robert-young-marathon-record-attempt-cheating-rumors

Agreed - very good article. Tells the story of the scuppering in such an understated and, well British, way. It's a curious thing, this desire for mega-ultra post-marathon fame. Sad but compelling.

Enduro

Interestingly he has now said that he will run the Sri Chinmoy 6 day race in New York next year. Hopefully he's telling the truth on this one, as running a 6 day race will establish his multi-day credentials more definitively. Will be also interesting to see does he take up Joe Fejes' thousand dollar bet challenge for this race (Joe has offered him a straightforward $1000 dollars one on one bet at any race of Rob's choosing).

ThebitterLemon

Singer wrote: »

Good article in The Guardian about Robert Young's efforts.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/22/robert-young-marathon-record-attempt-cheating-rumors

I'm completely shocked....you read the Guardian Singer, Jesus

TbL

Singer

Rob has started to dump a load of runs on Strava...

https://www.facebook.com/marathonmanuk/posts/1033074260110165
https://www.strava.com/athletes/15913659
https://www.strava.com/athletes/15913659/training/log?feature=last-4-weeks-calendar

Some pretty solid efforts being put in, going uphill in the desert: :eek:;):rolleyes:

https://www.strava.com/activities/617264865/overview

https://www.strava.com/activities/617268777/overview

Enduro

Plenty still bubbling along with this story, especially with the Independant Skins investigation.

One of the best posts on the subject was on FB recently. It started with one of Rob's fanboys posting this:

Don't extrapolate your own experiences. Steve Way
proves that some people can get from a couch potato to an elite level in a small amount of time. Rob is one of them.

Which prompted a response from.... Steve Way!

I personally believe Rob is not "one of them". Having reviewed the evidence and data and also witnessed Rob's online behaviour in the last month I can't see him being anything other than a complete fraud. Just looking at his inability to defend accusations of false PBs and cycling achievements is bad enough but having looked at some of his uploaded runs I can't help but feel he is just taking the piss out of the sport I love. For reference, I personally have some very similar PB's to what Rob is claiming for his 10km and half marathon and not only could I tell you immediately what year and race I did them in, I could probably tell you what the weather was like, who I was racing, show you a Garmin link, show you a Power of 10 link and even describe how good my pre-race sh1t was...... I wouldn't need a month to think about it.

Boom!

Singer

I'm sure most of ye have heard about the report into Rob Young's cross-America attempt...

http://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2016/10/RobYoungTransconreport.html

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2016/10/robert-young-inspiration-fraud/

TFBubendorfer

Singer wrote: »

I'm sure most of ye have heard about the report into Rob Young's cross-America attempt...

http://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2016/10/RobYoungTransconreport.html

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2016/10/robert-young-inspiration-fraud/

But have you heard the song?
http://picosong.com/T7fu/