the most outrageous PR lie

My friends and I went out in Niagara Falls NY after the University of Toronto Last Chance meet a few years ago. Late in the evening, we met a girl at some taco stand who told us she had run 3:57 for 1500m. When we called her on it, she said, "Not a mile stupid, only 1500m!"

I always add one mile to any workout that I run, everytime I go into "Bigfoot" gas station after the workout and buy a big cup of pepsi for the drive home..If I've run 21, I'll tell the lady i've run 22, If I've done 18, I'll tell the lady 19...I have no idea why I do this..I guess only Freud would know. She always asks because i'm drenched and all the drool and stuff runnin down my chin and side of my face from spitting......

Thanks for allowing me to clear the air..It's been weighing on me the last couple of decades.

Was it Suzy (by God) Favor-Hamilton.

I have the king - I swear this/these cant be beaten.

I run professionally in Germany for 6 months of the year, and my trainer this year took on another athlete - also about my age - I think he may have just turned 20 now. Things started when we were in the training camp in Italy - we had a set session to of 6 x 1000m with a 3minute rest in the forest - pretty standard aerobic capacity training. For me - this session is run at about 2min50-2min57 pace. So we did the first rep, and I ran about 3min flat, and he was right behind me - fair enough. But then things went bad for him - I started getting into it - running the next reps in about 2min55-57 I think, and he was honestly running times like 3min40, 3min20, back up to 3min50 - it was really that bad. My trainer got a flat tyre on his bike whilst on his way to the course, so he didnt make it - and when he asked Stefan what times he ran - he told him 6 x 1000m in 3min02!!! OK - so I dont give a shit what he reckons he runs in training but it was funny - and a good prelude. I could honestly write for hours on this fool - like how he blew 10,000 marks - about 5000euro on hiring Mercedes Benz cars to drive to school with EVERY day of the year - but I wont. Anyway - throughout the season he would frequently be heard yelling at my trainer - "You will see - I will run 1min45 this year!!!" - and honestly - he believed it. He ACTUALLY ran 2min02 for the 800, but what the heck. He even screamed at our trainer once - "you are a bad trainer - you cant get me in the top meetings" - and by top meetings - I mean Dortmund, Berlin, Zurich - no shit - this guy was f%$cked up. But the classics used to come if we ever ran 400m. The other guys at the club would come up to me the weekend after a race, and say "Did you hear that Stefan ran 46.5 in the 400 on the weekend" - and Id be like "EEEHHH???" Since I was running at the same meeting and in the same race with him trailling by 60m when I ran a poor 49.0. Turns out - this is what he told everyone - that he was on pace for 46.5 at 200m, and then the meetings electronic timing f$#ked up - leading to his time of about 53ses. Consequently I was stoked, and disappointed that my 49.0 had now turned into a 42, and had not been recognised as a new World Record. In summary - this guy BELIEVED and TOLD everyone that he had PRs of 10.49 for 100, 21.5 for 200, 46.5 for 400, and 1min45 for 800 - when his PRs were really 11.8, 23.8, 50.9, and 1min57.8. Now is that not the biggest set of porkies you is ever heard - it has to gain weight cause this guy used to bullshit to VERY important people to - like the head of the DLV (German athletics president) I swear, he is a pyscho - and surely one of the biggest liers of all time

I met a cute chick at a party last summer who found out I ran and told me that she'd just run 20 flat for the Corporate Challenge in Central Park (3.5 miles). Such a time is possible, and I hadn't been at the event, but I knew it was pure BS. But she was cute and I wanted to work it, so I went along forteh show, asking about her training, inquiring about her favorite events, where she likes to run, etc. We even made a date to go running.

I looked up results the next day and learned that only three women had broken 21, and she wasn't one of them. But did I care? I now felt justified in lying myself to achieve my personal ends.... But after a few weeks of back and forth /can't coordinate, etc., the whole thing flamed out.

My HS students know I run, so they occasionally have stories. I've had a student in my class tell me that "My dad ran 2 miles in about 7 minutes in the Army." When I told him that that was faster than the world record, he asked if a world record had to be run on a track or would just any old place do. A senior girl told me that she had a friend at Texas Tech who ran "15 miles a day just to warm up." I don't think either of these people were consciously lying; they just didn't get it.

I myself have been scrupulously honest ever since I won the Heisman Trophy.

???

In college, I met this outrages punk of a Young Republican--Molho was his name--who walked around the campus for the first 2 or 3 weeks of his freshman year telling everyone that he ran a 4:08 mile in highschool. Most people believed him and the girls loved him. When I started asking specifics (when, where, etc.) he clammed up, and evaded the questions. The bragging stopped soon thereafter, but the bravado didn't, and for my last year or so of college he remained a punk Young Republican and popular with the girls.

My guess is that he never broke 4:50 for the mile, if that.

This old guy told me about when he was training for the trials. All the miles he put in. Found out later is P.R. was 2:47.

This other old guy told me. He would have been th top age grouper in the country if Bill Rogers and Frank Shorter weren't around.

Portland Runner's was very good!

I have four that are opposites of liars!

1.) I met this 6'3 stocky guy on the track at an LSU meet

and he sat next to our team and started talking. After the

100m run-he said he could have won that and that he ran a 9.8 100m (hand time in High School in the early 1990's) with a legal wind. I later show a picture in a old article and it was the same guy.

2.) One of my old teammates when anyone asked him if he

was any good, he always replied, "not me, I am not very fast"-he was an 8:10 steepler!

3.) 5'9, Hulk looking guy walks on the track and someone

as him what event and time he runs, "he says 100m about 10.3 in HS, its was 10.15 in High School (Henry Neal)

4.) One of my friends who ran for an another school and

was very friendly; however, when people asked him what he

ran the mile in he always said 4:10-4:15 and could crank

out 4:02-4:05 every meet.

Those are the type of lies I ran into mostly (nice people being too modest).

Vipam

i work at a running store and i once had this guy come in in his early 40's and he was talking about his running and races back in the day. we got on the topic of marathons. he knew a good amount about running..people's names/times things like that. he then told us that once he set out a 26.2 mile course around his neighborhood and ran it in 2:13. I told him if he had run that fast he would have been one of the top American marathoners in the country at that time. he said that was about right. he never entered a official race.

While that German guy may actually sneak in as the champ (and I'm sure he'd love to be the champ of something) I was thinking that for sure that the #1 PR Liar is:

DJ Howard!

Anyone from the Philadelphia are can back this up I'm sure.

Question: Does anyone know if the high school athletes he coached bought his load of lies?

I got you all beat.

We had a guy from Dominican Republic on our team in college who ran about 16:00 for 5K. A few months before the 84 Olympics he took a trip to the Dominican Republic for their Olympic Trials. When he returned to the states he was very silent about his trip. After being asked numerous times how he did, he finally told us he ran 29:00 for the 10K and 14:00 for the 5K, won both races, and qualified to run in the Olympic 10K. No, I'm not talking Special Olympics, I'm talkin' the real Olympics.

I asked him sincerely how he went from a 16 min 5K runner to a 29 min 10K runner in two weeks. He told me, "I'm not sure, they may have stopped the race a lap short."

I went to the Olympics in LA that year (as a spectator of course) and sure enough, there he was in one of the heats of the 10K. He dropped out after coming through the 5K in about 16:30.

Once, some baseball coach told me I was 12 (I was really 15, and sometimes I use that as my handle). I said, "OK", and about 3 mos. later all these people started having hissy-fits about it.

Haile Gebreselassie did say once after his 26:22,"I think I could go faster than last night, they didn't give me much space. I'm thinking of doing 25 min"

And he even never did sub 27 since last year.

And he said it in the press conference.

That was...outrageous.

Completely on the flip side of this, I've learned recently that every now again some friend of my wife's will ask her about my running. One wanted to know if I'd done any marathons and my wife said that I had. The friend wanted to know my best time ( it's below 2:40) and my wife answered, "about five hours."

I know DJ Howard. When I raced Radnor in high school he told me he ran 1:44.

Oh cmon - but do they really beat a 53 second 400 runner saying he actually ran 46 but the electronic timing stuffed up? - or a 1min57 runner telling the head of his national federation that he had run 1min45??? They are all classics, but for sheer psycho-ness, and audacity, my sauer-kraut eating fool cannot be beat.

"High school records are actually better and more accurate than the worlds."

"were' the king of the world"

- young buck.