Sandra Vi going for record across America

First day? wrote:

Is this the first day you've been monitoring Mimi? I feel like this (the inexplicable gaps) may have happened at least a couple of times before, but people haven't been scrutinizing her run the way they have Sandy's (see the last of activity in the thread dedicated to Mimi).

^this is correct. It has only come to light here today that Mimi is trying to give some appearance of realtime tracking, that she is well aware of its necessity in this effort, and has blatantly chosen to try and get away without using it.

Brit support wrote:

She simply isn't providing enough evidence and is well aware what she needs to do, though she is thick.

She's a bored rich housewife who is rather dim and not very clued up about dodgy people.

How do you know the 'thick' part is not just an act to try and get away with cheating here? Realtime tracking is the necessity on these type of efforts, she knows it, her crew knows it, the ultra community knows it, and so she appears to be trying to play 'dumb and cheerful' in order to discount it; maybe even put 'plants' on the forums out there to say "it is easily spoofed so we shouldn't even worry about it."

First day? wrote:

Scam_Watcheroo wrote:

It has now been 7 hours since we saw Mimi's GPS tracker turned off and it is still off while the support car is now moving again with its tracker on and the RV having its GPS tracker turned off. This is not the proper way to document a transcon.

Is this the first day you've been monitoring Mimi? I feel like this (the inexplicable gaps) may have happened at least a couple of times before, but people haven't been scrutinizing her run the way they have Sandy's (see the last of activity in the thread dedicated to Mimi).

I have been watching since Sandy's fourth day. Her data upload has been excellent. Mimi I started following a few days later. My interest was about the data tracking methods they were using.

At first I couldn't figure out where Mimi's real-time data was. It is not on her webpage like Sandy, and she is not sharing Garmin data line Sandy is. In the last week I occasionally checked Mimi's page and eventually realized it seemed to be posting only start and ends of runs. There is no real-time data.

My conclusion is: Pete K's data posting method which Sandy Vi is using is the Gold Standard. Anything else gets an asterisk and should be considered unofficial. There is no excuse not to post real-time data so the running community can see it. Sandy's data is real-time and shows all the warts. Mimi's data is hidden. One runner is an open book. The other is closed book with the pages between chapters glued together.

Mimi only has herself to blame for people questioning her data. For such an experienced runner she has no excuse.

At 7:30 pm Mountain time Mimi is still locked in the same place she has been since before Noon Mountain time. He evening runs have been about 7-1/2 hours. She should make a sudden leap soon. But she appears to ready to jump to the support car which is 33.4 miles (53.8 km) from her locked position. That is longer by ~10 km than her usual afternoon run. She has not posted morning run data yet.

itself a problem wrote:

All this gps spoofing has made me think that the Pete guy's run was faked too.

Problem is that not many people actually met up with him.

It has already been proven that gps data, even live tracking, can be spoofed.

The legit runs need complete video footage with gps data at the same time. Otherwise, they are bogus.

^Here is a classic straw man post to try and get ALL GPS observance thrown out the window, which is simply MINDLESS!

Realtime Tracking is the GOLD-STANDARD in these efforts. It allows surprise visitors to compare the realtime logging with what is being observed, so cheats can quickly be exposed in-situ.

It makes sense that a fraud that 'forgets' to use their tracker, would try and play simpleton "ah well, no big deal", and/or get 'plants' on the forums to come in and try and argue it is worthless anyway. NO, it is not easily spoofed. It IS the GOLD-STANDARD, it is readily doable these days, and there is no valid excuse or reason not to use it when trying to garner the exposure of setting a World Record!

Agreed! The "GOLD STANDARD". You beat me to it.

excuze me wrote:

Realtime Tracking is the GOLD-STANDARD in these efforts.

Mimi's run should be considered unofficial and not eligible for any record consideration. There is no way to go back and fix the prior 18 days of data.

excuze me wrote:

Agreed! The "GOLD STANDARD". You beat me to it.

I think several knowledgeable runners have reached the same conclusion.

Major Kudos to Pete K for coming up with the method--any anyone who helped him--and proving it out.

Unofficial Mimi wrote:

Mimi's run should be considered unofficial and not eligible for any record consideration. There is no way to go back and fix the prior 18 days of data.

Agreed. She needs to start over, and then start using the realtime tracker that her sponsors, evidently, provided her.

First day? wrote:

Scam_Watcheroo wrote:

It has now been 7 hours since we saw Mimi's GPS tracker turned off and it is still off while the support car is now moving again with its tracker on and the RV having its GPS tracker turned off. This is not the proper way to document a transcon.

Is this the first day you've been monitoring Mimi? I feel like this (the inexplicable gaps) may have happened at least a couple of times before, but people haven't been scrutinizing her run the way they have Sandy's (see the last of activity in the thread dedicated to Mimi).

Yes, it's my first day paying this much attention to Mimi's tracker.

excuze me wrote:

Agreed. She needs to start over, and then start using the realtime tracker that her sponsors, evidently, provided her.

But is she going to start over now? Probably not.

This needs to go viral. Does anybody here use Facebook or Twitter? This needs to get major attention so that she will start using that tracker immediately, or to stop the effort until she does.

C'mon BroJo's? Can you elevate this on your Twitter and Facebook? They might delete the posts on Mimi's Facebook.

Mimi's morning run has just been posted to Strava. 52.6 km (33 miles) in 8:12.

Is she really going to run where her support car is and add another 53.8 km to her day???? That would make it 106+ km for the day (66 MILES)!!!!

It looks like Sandy Vi has ended her run for the day. She is at 835 miles overall. Subtract 30 miles her her backtrack. So ~805 miles in 15 days; 53.7 miles per day average.

excuze me wrote:

^Here is a classic straw man post to try and get ALL GPS observance thrown out the window, which is simply MINDLESS!

Realtime Tracking is the GOLD-STANDARD in these efforts. It allows surprise visitors to compare the realtime logging with what is being observed, so cheats can quickly be exposed in-situ.

It makes sense that a fraud that 'forgets' to use their tracker, would try and play simpleton "ah well, no big deal", and/or get 'plants' on the forums to come in and try and argue it is worthless anyway. NO, it is not easily spoofed. It IS the GOLD-STANDARD, it is readily doable these days, and there is no valid excuse or reason not to use it when trying to garner the exposure of setting a World Record!

I don't think you have anything to worry about me being a plant/mole/counter troll. If you go through my post history in other cheater threads you will see that I pursue cheaters to a very detailed level. Putting my conspiracy hat on, who's to say that you are not a mole sent to deflect attention from the issue of how easy it is to spoof GPS?

Real GPS time tracking can only be a good standard of proof if there are boots on the ground every so often to verify. It is not to say that GPS tracking is worthless but that it needs to be augmented by independent witnesses.

The threat of real time and offline GPS spoofing is very real. It doesn't take much skill to spoof the real time GPS using a pre-generated GPS file. And as I've already shown, I ran a mile in 3 min 30 sec on Strava. It's akin to how people in the cycling community mocking whistleblowers who said that the threat of electric motor cheating is real. And then we find concrete evidence that it is possible and has been used to cheat in races.

Look guys, it can't be emphasized enough that there is a problem here with the Mimi effort. She is fully aware how necessary the GOLD-STANDARD of realtime tracking was to this effort, judging from her own words below:

Mimi's Quotes wrote:

Mimi: “I have a tracker with me as well, which I will carry myself."

Interviewer: (interjects) “Yeah!”

Mimi: "… so that’s there, so you can see this very slow dot going across America.

Interviewer: (chuckles)

Mimi: "... I will also have a tracker in one of the vehicles, and there will be another one in the RV, so people will be able to see where the RV is at any one time..."

Interviewer: (interjects) ”And where you are.”

Mimi: “Yeah…and so they’ll know where I’m sorta heading, so that will be good."

Where is the realtime-tracked, slow-dot moving across America, Mimi? Why are the trackers in Powered Off Status throughout the day?!?

excuze me wrote:

excuze me wrote:

Agreed. She needs to start over, and then start using the realtime tracker that her sponsors, evidently, provided her.

But is she going to start over now? Probably not.

This needs to go viral. Does anybody here use Facebook or Twitter? This needs to get major attention so that she will start using that tracker immediately, or to stop the effort until she does.

C'mon BroJo's? Can you elevate this on your Twitter and Facebook? They might delete the posts on Mimi's Facebook.

I think we should take a step back with our pitchforks here and ask questions first about all this odd tracker behavior to Mimi's team and let them provide an explanation. I think the best person to do this is Markus.

Scam_Watcheroo wrote:

It's akin to how people in the cycling community mocking whistleblowers who said that the threat of electric motor cheating is real. And then we find concrete evidence that it is possible and has been used to cheat in races.

Interesting. Maybe using an electric motor bike is a way to fake a run, or at least long parts of a run. A Segway might even be programmable to maintain relatively constant speeds depending on terrain.

Scam_Watcheroo wrote:

I think we should take a step back with our pitchforks here and ask questions first about all this odd tracker behavior to Mimi's team and let them provide an explanation. I think the best person to do this is Markus.

Mimi does not show Markus as a team member. He would have to be really disappointed with how she is going about it.

Meanwhile. Mimi has not completed her evening run per her webpage. It is 8:30 pm in Colorado and has been dark for the last 1 to 1-1/2 hours. She is running on a narrow road with tiny shoulders. Very dangerous.

I agree with most of what you said, but I want you to reconsider what is going on here. Your spoofed Strava effort was after-the-fact. You did NOT spoof realtime (i.e., NEAR-realtime for the techies). To do so takes a much more brazen effort to cheat, and it is readily exposed with one or two simple surprise visits, because it is not going to be something to be readily transitioned over from spoofed-realtime to accurate-realtime. For the purposes with Mimi's effort, it is a straw man. She is not even doing the necessary realtime tracking. It one (several?) orders of magnitude in logging transparency. At least if someone tries to spoof realtime-tracking, they nonetheless are still making the effort to actually get the realtime data logged/uploaded realtime, and thus opening themselves up to the potential of immediate fraudulent exposure from surprise visitors. One avoids that bugaboo if they don't upload the realtime data in the first place. That is why the latter is several orders of magnitude less in transparency.