Sad News: Frank Meza Found Dead In LA River

kmaclam wrote:

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190706142723-01-frank-meza-exlarge-169.jpg

I think it was the 2014 CIM that he admitted, "I don't run that kind of time" and that he wouldn't protest the DQ.

So the 2016 CIM medal is included in the collection but there is no 2014 CIM medal.

from the CNN article:

"In 2014, when Meza was in his mid-60s, the Sacramento area's California International Marathon threw out his time of 2 hours 52 minutes because of what looked like anomalously speedy split times over the final miles, the paper reported.

Meza told The Times that when race officials approached him about those splits, he gave them no explanation.

"I don't run that kind of time," he said, according to The Times. "I actually told them, if you disqualify me, I won't protest. I don't want any doubts to be there.""

People will find it shameful to display a medal from a race which banned him.

Buttcoin, when you put the two quotes together it seems rather interesting that the CNN people can't figure this out. Even if you're not a runner, can't you (as a writer) figure out that these two statements completely oppose each other? sheesh.

"I don't run that kind of time," he said, according to The Times. "I actually told them, if you disqualify me, I won't protest. I don't want any doubts to be there." (the split time was around 6 flat pace (give or take a few secs), IIRC)

"His son, Dr. Francisco Meza, said...the elder Meza would often clock 6-minute miles and run 100 miles a week"

not my real name wrote:

Buttcoin, when you put the two quotes together it seems rather interesting that the CNN people can't figure this out. Even if you're not a runner, can't you (as a writer) figure out that these two statements completely oppose each other? sheesh.

"I don't run that kind of time," he said, according to The Times. "I actually told them, if you disqualify me, I won't protest. I don't want any doubts to be there." (the split time was around 6 flat pace (give or take a few secs), IIRC)

"His son, Dr. Francisco Meza, said...the elder Meza would often clock 6-minute miles and run 100 miles a week"

Yes. It just lend credence to the fact his family knows the truth and now they are also wrapped up in the lie/deceit he created. This is why people thinking it should just be let go are deluding themselves. It was not just a simple mistake and harm was really done. He spun a web of lies so intricately that he implicated people around him. As some have noted, this is not the work of someone who had strong moral fiber.

It is confounding as he seemed to do such good donating time and resources to under-served communities in his medical practice. That alone should have been enough. He didn't need to also be some wunderkind runner who was also an elderly marathon savant. Maybe he thought it made is deeds and message all the more powerful. However, I tend to think quality medical care for those who can't afford it would have sufficed. I don't even want to try and get into the psychology of what was going on in his mind. Sad how it ended and how his family is now seemingly continuing this sage of lies. They can't even expunge themselves from it.

not my real name wrote:

Buttcoin, when you put the two quotes together it seems rather interesting that the CNN people can't figure this out. Even if you're not a runner, can't you (as a writer) figure out that these two statements completely oppose each other? sheesh.

"I don't run that kind of time," he said, according to The Times. "I actually told them, if you disqualify me, I won't protest. I don't want any doubts to be there." (the split time was around 6 flat pace (give or take a few secs), IIRC)

"His son, Dr. Francisco Meza, said...the elder Meza would often clock 6-minute miles and run 100 miles a week"

We Don’t know if that really means sub 7s, 630something miles vs low 6’s...or like, cranking out one really hard 6flat min mile almost all out very frequently within the hard training runs

The LRC needs to take the high road here. It's a tragic end to a sad story. Let the family say what they need to in order to remember their husband/father/grandfather/etc how they would like to remember him, and remember we all grieve in different ways. Let it go - the truth is obvious to anybody with half a brain, and someone who is grieving such a deep loss will understandably try to hold on to the positive memories of their loved one. I assume the family isn't trying to petition the races to get him an AG world record post-humously, so let it go and let them grieve.

Sadly it’s those associated with cheating who try to harm LetsRun for being against cheating.

Well said, you literally covered everything I had planned on posting.

Do we know anything about his training partners? Is what you say true? I always thought they should know as well but then was thinking about myself. I was injured in college but had a roommate who was a sub-4 miler. After college, I got into and went all in. I was training for my first marathon and he asked me if I was going to try to break 3 ? I was and did break 2:30 but he had no idea as he never paid any attention to marathons as he was a miler. Now he had paced me to a 15:30ish 5k so you'd think he'd know I'd run way faster than 3 but apparently he didn't.

You raise an interesting point about why people are into this. I've always wondered why many on this board are WAY MORE UPSET by marathon cheaters like Meza rather than dopers in pro running. It shocked me at first. The amateur cheating seems to bother people A LOT more than the pro runners.

I think it's because people can understand a poor African cheating for money but for some reason they don't see tolerate it for amateurs but I don't really totally understand it.

Rojo

PS. As for the 6 minute miles. I sure hope he ran 6 minute miles as a 2:53 marathon is 6:36 pace the whole damn race.

PPS. Can someone tell me if he'd ever run a race before the first CIM? I mean one thing I don't get is how someone could anyone show up at a race with chip timing and think they would get away with running absurd splits. And when did he get DQd from those races? Did he get DQd years after the fact? Maybe his family didn't know about it.

I was going to post my thoughts regarding this tragic matter, but I have not read anything approaching the entire Meza thread, nor ever posted on it, so I opted to refrain. I do feel, as a long-term member of this site, that I should read it. Once I have, I will try to compose a response accounting for all I can.

For now, what I would like to do is to pass my condolences onto the family and friends of Frank Meza. I know that is almost meaningless, but it is truly meant.

rojo wrote:

You raise an interesting point about why people are into this. I've always wondered why many on this board are WAY MORE UPSET by marathon cheaters like Meza rather than dopers in pro running. It shocked me at first. The amateur cheating seems to bother people A LOT more than the pro runners.

I think it's because people can understand a poor African cheating for money but for some reason they don't see tolerate it for amateurs but I don't really totally understand it.

My guess:

A pro runner is better than almost everyone on this board with or without PED use. When a road race cheater does so, he or she is trying to be better than one of "us" by cheating. It's more personal.

The Fokus wrote:

My guess:

A pro runner is better than almost everyone on this board with or without PED use. When a road race cheater does so, he or she is trying to be better than one of "us" by cheating. It's more personal.

I don't agree with this. When Martin Fagan was guilty of taking EPO this really pissed me off. There was someone who was so talented and then he wanted to cheat. Personally it is the brazenness of some cheating that gets me, such as Robert Young or Frank Meza. Whilst the outcome here is very sad, multiple years of cheating with red flags all over the place and race organisers trying to bury their heads in the sand can really frustrate.

Whether or not a young Kenyan whom we have never heard of is taking EPO is slightly secondary because they seem to disappear so quickly. I am still mightily angry about Makhloufi and whichever doctor agree he was injured after he jogged 200m of his 800m heat in the 2012 Olympics (I would like that doctor banned for life from sporting events).

Smoove wrote:

Sad. Nothing to be done about it now - but maybe this will temper our collective bloodlust in the future. Back people into a corner, and predicting how they will react becomes impossible. Food for thought for all of us.

The far more important issue of the original LAM 2019 thread is the cyberbullying that occured...and the end result. AND we were all participants and/or witnesses. Many posters tried to reduce and/or eliminate this clear cyberbullying. We really did need an adult in the room. LR could and should have done far more along the way. Especially after we seemed to find enough photo and video evidence to reach a reasonable conclusion on the primary driver of the thread. Allowing this cyberbullying from posters with a childlike level of maturity was a gross abuse of this platform. AND had one of the predictable consequences. My wife and I watch Korean dramas. Many asian stars that we watched have killed themselves after being publicly shamed. It is no joke. Mainstream media may have picked up on this story anyway. BUT we pushed it to them hard, and it was a bloodlust. Seems some heartless people will never "get" how unimportant it was to have the rest of the world on "our" side in this far lesser but also important issue of Frank's alleged cheating/or not, no matter how hard some worked to get an accurate provable answer. A human life and that persons impact should be considered at all times. Sad is right! Ponder this..please...I am

+1

Was it cyberbullying? Frank Meza didn't have a presence of LR and this is not a social media site. For it to be cyberbullying, wouldn't all parties need to have a presence? "cy·ber·bul·ly·ing - the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature." MI didn't threaten him. In fact, it was MI who was threatened.

I think the thing that became untenable for him was he never thought it would become such a big deal as he had done this for 10 years and no one really brought it to the world at-large. It got large enough that media outlets started asking questions. It was now not just Frank having to convince people in his circle, but having to do it for people who probably didn't care or know about the fact that he did so many good things. They only wanted to know about this one thing that he seemed to be doing repeatedly and with great forethought.

I think what pissed people off tremendously here was it was par with Ed Whitlock and not Gene Dykes, who are by all accounts truly humble people. I think people on this thread are making valid points and addressing real questions. However, the running community isn't going to all of sudden be ok with cheating. I think MI did a good job of simply stating facts. That is also not cyberbullying. His times/cheating was meticulously thought out. He had to know this was on par with times that would catch notice. So although I agree as one poster noted, we don't race/run for public consumption. However, if you do something like this, it is going to be consumed and scrutinized. I doubt anyone would have picked this up if the time wasn't so drastic. The news keeps pointing out the disparity between his time and 2nd place. So the habitual nature of it and the time was too much.

Agreed, cyberbullying is BS. But asking questions, pointing out facts, and noting them on here is not bullying. If someone said reprehensible things, called his offices, posted stupid things on his professional profile, I am on board with saying that falls into that category. However, the later is not. So, LR for their part should maybe create an algorithm that flags this or be more attentive to personal attacks. But, if your qualms are about the fact that people are posting and talking about this, we are talking about times that got Ed Whitlock and Gene Dykes press. Is it your contention that this shouldn't have or that it should have simply gone away? He is in that sphere of performance where it defied logic. I just don't know of any culture that is ok with deception of this kind. Certainly not the running community. By its very nature it is based on hard work. That is why people are so fascinated with it. The personal attacks being propagated by a small number should stop, but you cannot expect that people are simply going to drop the topic altogether given the performance level it was supposed to be.

Some people think it was unfair that his work colleagues, family members, and fellow coaches were named in the thread. This was unavoidable, however, as Frank ran in many of the same races as his son, fellow doctors, and fellow coaches. Some of the evidence of his cheating is tied to how he would run a sub-3 marathon, then go back on the course and jog in again with a friend or family member. He appeared in numerous finish line photos with them.

His race results on Athlinks go back at least to 2004. The consensus was that he cheated to get a BQ in 2007, ran an honest 4:26 marathon at Boston in 2008, and gradually lowered his marathon times each year for more than a decade. He was DQ'd from CIM soon after the race in 2014 and 2016, and then banned. CIM hasn't shared all of their security measures, but looking at 5K splits was one. There were also unsubstantiated reports that he was DQ'd from the Ventura Marathon in 2014. His technique improved over the years so that in his later races he never missed timing mats and had fairly consistent splits. For those races, it was the obvious photo evidence that proved he was cheating.

There really aren’t enough cases in California on cyber bullying involving adults to get a good definition of what constitutes it. There’s a statement in the law about statements serving a legitimate purpose (which would not place one in violation of the law) that I believe would be a key determining factor. The thread in question was about a 2:53 marathon time at the 2019 LA Marathon. So does anything relating to that topic equate to a legitimate purpose?

I am not going to blame anyone or anything for Mr. Meza's death. There is not enough information yet.

However, I will address letsrun.com in the idea of what journalism is or is not.

Letsrun.com and its "personnel" seem to publish " investigative articles about controversial subjects.

But, unlike the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, etc., there is no governing body which regulates the ethical side.

As a result, it uses people's real information and offers no protection as to what is posted.

On the website alone, there have been attacks on so many, but it all gets published. Any reputable journalistic site has filters that prevent comments that are line-crossing or inappropriate. Letsrun does not.

Honestly, why is letsrun.com even here? WHAT is the avail?

I trust that disclaimers and deniers will be thrown...but whether or not letsrun.com should be responsible is in question because Meza did not come here, apparently.

However, someone affiliated with this site did come forward. Access Hollywood did their story. And a man is dead.

No, cheating is never okay.

But neither is shaming.

I have said this before and will again.

Serious filters need to be put on what is posted here.

It can't be a free-for-all

RIP Frank

The only problem with cheating is cheaters; they’re just greedy.