Worst running time lie?

There was a dumb girl that I worked with (biochemistry lab at that) that knew that I was a runner. She was about 4'11" and from central kansas. she asked me my 400 time, and followed up with a "I ran a 55 in high school." Not even worth checking the stat. She didn't run high school, of course, because she 'didn't like it.'

What is funnier, someone who you know is lying or someone who is so ignorant they don't know the difference?

I worked with a woman about 6 years ago who bragged to everyone that she ran a 3:07 or so at the Bermuda marathon. About a year later, I did a search.....she actually ran 3:07 for a HALF marathon.

3:07 HALF marathon is pretty funny that defiently deserves a nice punch in the face.

Kid on my high school team, is a senior now. Claims to have run a 5:10 mile, which is nothing impressive. But, he has never run under 5:25, turns out he was using the spilts from a 400 meter workout in which he ran 4 400s and the times came out to a 5:15, a week later when he was boasting again, the time had somehow magically lowered to 5:10. By now he is probly at 3:49.

On an easy run with Gerry Lindgren at the park across from Waikiki. He told my friends and I a fabulous story about a trip to Russia. He went there for a race and then got thrown in jail because he lost his pass port. So he was there for several weeks and then one day all the cell doors opened and all the inmates started marching and singing in a line. He stayed where he was cuz he didn't know what was going on. So when everyone was gone he left his cell and snuck out a window. Then he saw an American Air Force plane. He ran after it for a hundred miles or so until he came to the air base and was saved.

Obviously a huge lie, but then again it was Gerry Lindgren and I'm pretty sure it was mean to amuse the girls.

skylon wrote:

I worked with a woman about 6 years ago who bragged to everyone that she ran a 3:07 or so at the Bermuda marathon. About a year later, I did a search.....she actually ran 3:07 for a HALF marathon.

I have one just like that...I used to be a finance/accounting recruiter and one of my candidates kept talking about how she was planning on "doing a marathon" in Hawaii. I was training for a race also, so I would check in and see how she was doing. Come to find out that she was just walking the marathon. That's cool, whatever. So a couple months go by and I ask her how she did...she's like "Great! I did it in 3:47!" Needless to say, I'm floored, thinking she must be a really fast walker. I looked it up and, sure enough, it was a half marathon. I even asked her if it was a half and she said no!

I was the new track coach and this boy came up to me and said he was a 400 meter runner.

I asked him about his career and he said that he didn't run as a ninth grader but in eight grade he ran 39 seconds.

I asked him if he was sure and he said yup I ran 400 meters in 39 seconds.

When track finally started he didn't come out because he got a new job which was true, but I sure could have used that speed on my track team.

We would have a hell of a 4X400 relay.

I travelled from Ireland to run the Boston Marathon in 2002. I was on my own and in the States for the first time. I'm reasonably self-sufficient and so it didn't really worry me to be on my own all of the time. I arrived two days before the race and up until race day hadn't talked to one other person apart from the hotel receptionist. I picked a place in the tent at the 'athletes village' on race morning and read a book waiting for race time to roll around. As it started raining and the tent filled up people moved closer and closer together and I eventually found myself in a conversation with a group of seven or eight people all of whom were either on their own or in pairs. Passing time we introduced ourselves and talked about the race. Inevitably after a while the usual questions about how people expected to run cropped up. One by one people volunteered their 'target' times and talked about all the hard miles they had run in training. Even to my inexperienced eye some of the predictions looked optimistic. It was a very mixed group age and gender wise.

After the race and with the conversations fresh in my mind I was able to trace most of the people I had talked to in the race results. Without a single exception every one of them had run between thirty minutes and an hour slower than their 'target'. What baffled me was that they didn't have any obvious need to impress me or anyone else in the group as most likely we'd never meet again. Even if we did cross paths afterwards a quick check of the results would have exposed each one of them as having been very optimistic about the race.

I, of course, had been honest.

Seriously.

I was.

ok, i'm sure that is sarcasm... because in all honesty i'm sure that i have been off by 10 seconds when quoting a marathon... in fact i don't know if i could get down to the second the last marathon i ran

This one guy.... wrote:

I know this one lying bastard who I would love to see get called out for his cocky bull. He said that he ran 2:45:32 at Chicago Marathon. I looked up his time and he'd only run 2:45:39. Total lying prick.

In a 2 mile indoor high school race, I told a couple of friends I ran 9:10 (10:00+ PR in high school). A minute later I told them 9:10 was my time when I got lapped and ordered to step off the track.

Sometimes people make mistakes, too. I remember in high school wrestling before I took up running thinking that I could run a mile in 4:36 because we ran some outdoor course that was a "mile." The first time I ran a mile in a race later that year I ran 5:10. Boy was I surprised!

A number of kids on the soccer team thought they could break 10 min for two miles because their coach had them run a course that was supposedly 2 miles long for their conditioning. We had a field day at school and one of the events was the cross country course. I don't think any of them broke 19. A friend of mine went into the Army Rangers and told me that their conditioning included a 3-10 mile run in the morning at 5:30 per mile pace. He visited home and we went for a run - he had a pretty hard time running 6 min pace for a couple of miles.

So I don't think people are always lying about their times. In many cases they have run a short course or something and just don't know it.

The best one I ever heard was this guy who claimed his niece ran a 3:30 mile in the special Olympics. Apparently, they would not count it for the world record because it was in the special olympics, though. Amazingly, no amount of logic could convince this man he was wrong.

Guy in college claimed he'd run a sub 4:00 mile in high school. I argued with him for an hour saying there had only been 2 or 3 guys in the whole history of high school mile running who'd gone under 4 and he wasn't one of them, but he was so sure he'd done it that he started getting pissed at me for even suggesting he hadn't done it. Also claimed he'd ran a 48 quarter.

Nothing annoys a true track runner more than a chronic exaggerator.

the 1500 is often called the metric mile. maybe he got confused.

Otherwise known as GIMP. He was running 14 min for 5km in high school came to school and was running 19 min and our girls lapped him in a 10km race. We call him gimop becuase he supposedly tore his ACL and MCL. Which was why he ran so fast. He doesnt look like a runner, he looks like a guy who eat too many ding dongs. HE keeps telling this team he wants to run in the olympics but he has no athletic ability. He was on crutches for a long time, more then expected. He is the all time liar and no one i mean no one can beat this guy in lies.

Can someone attempt this link and let me know if it displays??

In my case, it shows 'page not displayed' but am unsure if individual PC problem. Thanks. I ordered $60 of boxing dvd's and haven't received them. In addition, my emails haven't been returned....and now the website isn't displaying. Hopefully it's just being maintained or there's a PC problem.

ttc wrote:

http://www.ufovideo.net

Can someone attempt this link and let me know if it displays??

In my case, it shows 'page not displayed' but am unsure if individual PC problem. Thanks. I ordered $60 of boxing dvd's and haven't received them. In addition, my emails haven't been returned....and now the website isn't displaying. Hopefully it's just being maintained or there's a PC problem.

Never mind. Now a page does surface, saying temporarily unavailable.

There used to be this huge dork named Bill Bellamy who went to my school...He swore he broke 9 min for 3k in some indoor meet, so I looked him up. Turns out he ran like 9:30 and even when I called him out on it he said they had the time wrong. haha, what a loser.

My number 1:

Any baseball, basketball, football, etc... athlete could run a 4 min mile. It just goes to show you that people are dumb, and have no clue.

A close 2nd:

Any 40 time run by a football player and then having that time compared to track sprinters. No comparison. For one, the clock starts on movement and two, football coaches are using stopwatches. So add at the very least .5 to the time.