James Adams wrote:
Blimey Gary. Never heard that happen before. Being subpoenaed for your opinions on a guy you've never met who is currently 8000 miles away from you.
I have met the guy once. I gave him the buckle for finishing the NDW100 in just under 24 hours. Not a special time but not bad and apparently he had already run a marathon before the start of that race and was off to do another one. His recorded time for the latter is 6 hours or something. This was while he was doing that marathon every day thing. I had no reason to doubt and I didn't. But it's not like I thought about him all the time anyway.
Then there was the "longest run without sleep" or whatever run. I had doubts about this, mainly because there was no definition as to what he was actually doing. Also at this point I thought "RY seems like an incredible athlete, what a shame he is going in for all that "WORLD RECORD!!!!" and "most consecutive yada yada by a left-handed blonde guy with asthma" bullshit instead of just doing some races fast and competing.
You could say he was the UK's Dean K. Shunning competition to do silly stunts.
The Mark Vaz thing came along and RY was very vocal about this being bullshit, as it was. Simple physics. No one that shape could run what is close to a world record 6-day 10-day kind of race in a puffa jacket.
RY said he was going for the Trans AM record. I believed he was capable of this. Mostly because I think this record is soft. The JOGLE 9 days or the Appalacian trail or the Bob Graham or Nolans 14, these are records that are beyond any normal man. It would take a world class athlete to get these broken.
2900 miles in 46 days on pretty decent highway? What's that, just over 100k a day. Hell I reckon I could have a stab at that. I was doing about 70k a day when I did it. If I could run at night, had an RV and people waiting on me and lost a bit of flab and spend less time writing shit on the internet I could probably find that 30k each day.
This record will be broken by someone with the cash to do it. It's not got to the stage yet where you need to be Scott Jurek.
Anyhoo, clearly RY was not providing the data needed to satisfy anyone that he was doing it. But I did not take this as "definite cheating". I am now in a position where I do not believe he has done what he has done but also can't quite believe he has cheated. It would be so brazen.
So right now I am happily in a Schrodinger state of uncertainty where I think he has neither done it nor he hasn't. The box is not open yet. I know there are videos of RV's and stravas and such. I could dig into all this and make my mind up.
However I am not, mainly because of one thing.
I just don't give enough of a f**k.
I don't believe the actions of one person doing bad things needs to harm "our sport". Let's face it, "our sport" is basically a bunch of middle aged men schlumping around fields all day stuffing our face with sausage rolls and then blogging about it. Why does that have to be affected.
Right, that's me done. I'm off to the URC now. Someone just posted "I'm a bit nervous about my first ultra, any advice on steadying the nerves" and I need to call them a f**ktard before anyone else gets in with a proper answer.