some of a rehash, some more in detail, just all in one place:
Breaking news. I think I just made a breakthrough on the Desert Day. Take a look at this screenshot of the TomTom data from that day and consider these two entries:
1) top entry, 2016-05-18, 7:31 4.61 mi, 48:07, 10:26 min/mi. Look at the shape of the curve, a NE route bearing about 60 degrees, then with a slight straightening to 90 very briefly before a hard left to about 350 degrees.
2) second entry, 2016-05-18, 4:47, 3.81 mi, 2:50:30, 44:45. Notice it's NE direction bearing about 55 degrees with a little wobble to the north right at the end.
If you look at the path leading up to where they got stuck:
http://imgur.com/BpEkYyqyou will see that they were off the highway running on some dirt roads that stairstep along the highway. I think Entry #2 above corresponds to this, and the little jog to the north is where the road unexpectedly deviated from the highway, then they got lost, driving up the wash instead of the road, and got stuck in the sand.
That segment took 2:50:30. He had just come off a 2.87 mile stretch where he clocked 6:18 pace over 18:08. We don't know if he started entry #2 at this pace or not, but it's only 3.81 miles. It could have taken anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes but that entry shows he was with the van for at least an hour, probably closer to 2, while it was stuck.
Next segment shows that he didn't return to the highway. Instead, he took off across the desert. I found the dirt road path from where the checkpoints show the RV was stuck and see that he followed them straight across the desert to where 95 and then proceeded north for a couple miles to the end of that segment. That's segment #1 in the screenshot above. Here are some images from google earth showing the dirt road through the desert as well as my reconstruction of his path:
http://imgur.com/a/OzDL3Remember the tracker is in Eastern, so the times below are converted back to local Pacific time which is what the EXIF and TomTom data are.
Notice that the tracker passes his route between 9:42 and 9:54 going the speed limit, a stretch of about 10 miles done in 12 minutes. The next stretch, which includes a full stop and hard right turn to the west at Hwy 163, was also 12 minutes, but they covered 12 miles. The following stretch, starting at 10:06, did some weaving through the mountains. They covered 11 miles in 12 minutes. Putting it together, unless they stopped for 2-3 minutes on the straight stretch heading north on 95, that was their slowest of the three segments.
From a timeline standpoint, where do you think RY was? Well, at 7:31 he was leaving the RV. 48 minutes later, he was headed north on 95. That would have been 8:18 in the morning, about 90 minutes before the RV came by. This is the last TomTom segment summary we have of him before Laughlin, heading north on Hwy 95 at 8:18am.
So what about RY’s next few segments? That would be helpful to have, wouldn’t it? In the Facebook album, there are segments missing for this stretch. The previous photo in the album (https://www.facebook.com/marathonmanuk/photos/pcb.1024345907649667/1024345614316363/?type=3&theater) has the last segment cut off, so we can’t see what time it started, what it looked like, or
The next entry is a 21.97 mile stretch over 3:42:16 averaging 10:06 miles (see bottom of the photo). We don’t know what time it started or what it looked like, but I think it is from the last part of the run INTO Laughlin because of the next segment times and shapes.
Check-in timestamps have them leaving Laughlin at 00:00 Eastern (21:00 Pacific), which coincides with the 9.71 mile run starting at 20:55 on 5-18. The shape of that run also shows a slight jog to the north coming out of Laughlin and then east as 68 curves east. The next 3.38 stretch corresponds to the little mountain pass centered at
http://bit.ly/1UVsnbL. The next 13.8 mile stretch is over a long flat stretch, and then the 7.96 is obviously going through Kingman, AZ. Timestamps match up.
So back to the missing segment(s) heading north on 95… We know that he was at Laughlin sitting beside the pool at 12:52pm. It is about 35 miles from the end of his last known TomTom segment on Hwy 95 where he was at 8:18am. So 4:34 later he is sitting by the pool with his flip flops after playing roulette but before taking a shower. Forgetting the roulette game, that’s a 7:49 pace.
Ok, they say he went off the highway (unsupported, and how was he carrying water?) and ran 21 miles to Laughlin. This lines up with the cut off segment of 21.97 miles. From a timeline standpoint, this would have been right on 12:00 noon for an arrival time. Timestamps show a 13:42 Eastern/10:42am local time arrival of the RV. Departure wouldn’t be for another 10 hours.
The main issue here is that the data and their story kind of line up, but the story is preposterous. He was unassisted in the Mohave Desert back country for 4 hours under 95 degree heat running 10-minute miles... and that's the segment they don't show us.
The alternative to the unassisted 21 mile crossing of the desert at 10:06 pace is that they picked him up on Hwy 95, then either ran the watch while he was in the car, or drove the mileage afterwards, and let the watch run for an acceptable duration. Both scenarios are somewhat fantastic, but more probable than the crossing imo.
This doesn’t really answer the question about how RY got to Laughlin, but it helps resolve the timeline and shows us where RY could have been picked up. I think it also shows he _was_ running solo across the desert (at least up til 95). It also shows that they covered less ground on that straight stretch where RY would have been trudging north along the highway alone, in the 90 degree heat than on the two following stretches, which had turns and weaved through the mountains.