Robert Young fakes run across America

Go ahead and keep hitting refresh there armchair cowboy, you're doing a heck of a job!

searcher of answers wrote:

There is no data he could post which would explain his previous lies about his PRs and the desert incident. Not to mention the speeds with which he achieved some of his daily totals.

If he cheated even a little bit earlier on then in my eyes finishing it is worthless. If you really loathe cheaters and liars then there should be no redemption for Rob.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I will dig until my hands bleed to expose his earlier pointless lies or inflations of the truth, especially if he has defrauded people in the process.

But that doesn't mean I can't admire someone who has what seems to be running talent. Hopefully that is someone who confesses to the fraud at the beginning of the run, or posts GPS data with cadence & HR to prove it is genuine instead, and then completes an epic run. As opposed to someone who does a Vaz and slinks away with his tail between his legs crying foul and injury.

I think Asher deserves a statue in Boston right next to that other running guy. Whatever the hell his name is.

I hope by the time this trans con walk is over we will have the terminology corrected...Ultra walkers not Ultra runners.

Vaz is giving Rob some advice: https://twitter.com/mark_vaz_legend

I for one think Trans Con runners should be able to use whatever bathroom they want to.

Engrish wrote:

From that post of his, I don't think 'laz' would understand your questions.

You'd be a fool to underestimate laz.

Don't let his lack of sentence structure or capitalization get in the way of the message.

Several. And they are all linked together.

And there have been people exposing them for years.

DRobertsIMG wrote:

How is this guy winning races of any significance and getting written up in real publications without any of this bubbling up to the surface before?

He isn't winning races of significance. His big claims come from solo project which are very hard to verify.

How he ends up in the press? Make some bold statements and the press will eat it all. The press is not known for being a good judge of what is a mediocre performance, a good performance and an amazing performance. There are a lot of fantasising clowns with bloated performances, self-invented world records, self-declared world titles and so-called superhuman average performances in ultrarunning. We've seen our share of them. If you bring it somewhat convincing the press will buy it. And they will happily inflate the story a bit more. Anything that sells is fine.

Ulister wrote:

Engrish wrote:

From that post of his, I don't think 'laz' would understand your questions.

You'd be a fool to underestimate laz.

Don't let his lack of sentence structure or capitalization get in the way of the message.

So just throw out some word salad out to the interwebz and don't expect anyone to notice?

What about using ultra hikers. Just give them a new name then they can decide which bathroom to use

Bosses Boss wrote:

Go ahead and keep hitting refresh there armchair cowboy, you're doing a heck of a job!

Hitting refresh? I don't hit no refresh button. I do nearly all the damn posting in this thread.

Listen kid. I was out running just over an hour (10 mi) today and when I got back you guys hadn't even managed to add a single page to this thread.

Thanks to me and all my handles this thread is now again progressing at a decent pace.

So just throw out some word salad out to the interwebz and don't expect anyone to notice?[/quote]

Lighten up francis. This board has enough going on without the spell check police attacking Laz.

wouter wrote:

He isn't winning races of significance. His big claims come from solo project which are very hard to verify.

How he ends up in the press? Make some bold statements and the press will eat it all. The press is not known for being a good judge of what is a mediocre performance, a good performance and an amazing performance. There are a lot of fantasising clowns with bloated performances, self-invented world records, self-declared world titles and so-called superhuman average performances in ultrarunning. We've seen our share of them. If you bring it somewhat convincing the press will buy it. And they will happily inflate the story a bit more. Anything that sells is fine.

That makes sense, but one would have expected his earlier claims to generate scrutiny once they started getting written up, or even sometime during his first 20 days of running miles at Maserati pace on this expedition to raise an eyebrow. And, yet, it took a (at the time, apparently entirely credulous) LRC forum member to go for a 1:00 a.m. jog in the middle of nowhere to blow this apart. Perhaps that's what Rob was depending on, but it strikes me as somewhat unsettling. Even if no one physically verified it in person, shouldn't someone, somewhere, have looked at his daily times as they were rolling in, generating tons of interest, before this and raised questions. I mean, in baseball, if a guy's OPS jumps up by 10%, you get 10,000 articles insinuating he must be using steroids, but here's a guy who gets written up for being maybe the best distance runner ever despite an apparently thin resume (so thin it was largely self-invented, per your reply), bizarre diet, etc etc. Again, I'm a purely recreational runner. I have no idea how people can run a 4 hour marathon, let alone sub-3, let alone ultra. But I am a natural skeptic and it seems like no one applied any skeptical thought here until Asher shot a video.

swimandbikeandrun wrote:

Several. And they are all linked together.

And there have been people exposing them for years.

Could you give some names and the place where they are being exposed?

And yes, Asher deserves a statue!

I’ve been passing on forecasts to Laz for a few days, here is my latest:

Since entering MO, averaging 46.76mpd. Using midnight to midnight ET as my “day”.

6-Jun 17.5

7-Jun 71.2

8-Jun 48.3

9-Jun 43.2

10-Jun 39.9

11-Jun 41.3

12-Jun 30.2 current, 41.78 forecasted.

Currently still at Innkeeper Motel according to tracker. Needs to average ~56.41mpd to arrive at Times Square and shave a minute off of record assuming ~210 miles to Indy and ~936mi to Times Square.

Other stats:

ST miles days mpd

CA 272.0 4.58 59.35

NV 20.3 0.46 44.29

AZ 404.0 6.07 66.53

NM 170.0 2.22 76.62

CO 306.0 4.01 76.27

KS 426.0 6.11 69.75

MO 295.1 6.31 46.76

Overall 1,893.4 29.76 63.62

6 day average across each state:

CA 356.12

NV 265.75

AZ 399.17

NM 459.70

CO 457.60

KS 418.49

MO 280.57

For those really into the numbers, this would be a ‘short’ route of less than 2900 (closer to 2830-2850) but still sufficient to satisfy Guinness requirements.

Enjoy the stats!

Email earlier to Laz directly:

Is it really just serendipity that he has covered this entire distance so quickly and has just began to sputter? I have daily mileages from Frank G. and Marshall U. and am interested in comparing Robert’s to that.

Anyway, staying objective, here are the latest:

He’s currently at Innkeeper Motel off of Hamel Dr. (38.908857, -90.323579). Side note that it amazes me they are stopping a lot at hotels/motels lately. RV must not have AC or can’t get safe places to pull off in shade. He’s at 30.2mi today with a forecast of 45.25mi at midnight ET.

~210 miles to Indy. Arrival 6/15 13:16 to 6/17 15:00. (70mpd to 41.5mpd)

I think 70mpd can be thrown out now. Probably 60mpd as well. If he tops out at 55+ I’d be amazed.

~936mi to Times Square. Arrival for record is 7:37am ET on 6/29/16. That would be 46d 8h 35m.

Currently needs 56.22mpd to arrive on time. That will likely raise to 56.75-56.85 by 2am ET 6/13 when I do my nightly calculation.

If he is over 60mpd south of Pittsburgh, I don’t see him getting through Appalachia in time. My guess is he’ll be at 65mpd needed at the OH/PA border.

Happy observing. 93º and thunderstorms coming in. Don’t envy you guys one bit but happy someone is out there monitoring!

John

1) Letsrun doesn't care about ultras.

2) People at this ultralist forum where laz is coming from were already skeptical and planning their trip.

Horsehocky!

The mighty Ulisters have been questioning him since mid-May.

Marcus wrote on May 21:

"Update on Robert Young

What a man. On day 5 due to difficulties with his support van, Robert takes

off on his own and runs 36 miles of his approximately 68 mile day without

support.

Day 1 81.4mi in 25.5 hours

Day 2 51.1 mi in 16:53hours

Day 3 51,0 mi in 24 hours (

Day 4 51.3 mi

Day 5 68.0 mi

Day 6 52.0 mi

Day 7 68.0 mi (5/20)

Total 422.8 miles in 7 days

Average 60.4 miles/day

Information is from the tracker in Robin's RV and google maps.

Definitely not 100% accurate.

It seems that Robert runs from approximately 11pm to 3pm each day now.

On his videos and photos he appears a lot less exhausted than I would

expect he would be at that stage.

No idea what to make out of all that."

MightyUlist wrote:

No idea what to make out of all that."

Yeah, with that kind of "questioning" it's not surprising that it took a month before anyone got off their butt.

Next time you have a possible cheater on your hand, start a thread on letsrun and the guy/gal will be exposed in a couple of days.