RE: Cheating at Marathons

Check out Lisa Batchen-Smith Facebook page and recent post. She is the most respected person in the sport of ultra running. Don't tell me that she now has it in for someone. The bottomline is that has finally caught up with PM. Honest individuals like her and Darren, who clearly have no stake in this, are finally speaking up.

It's getting out... wrote:

Check out Lisa Batchen-Smith Facebook page and recent post. She is the most respected person in the sport of ultra running. Don't tell me that she now has it in for someone. The bottomline is that has finally caught up with PM. Honest individuals like her and Darren, who clearly have no stake in this, are finally speaking up.

What did she say? Did this Lisa character also have a romantic relationship with PM? Hero worship? PM sure knows how to make 'em beg, but when things go south it's quicker than a duck in winter. Yikes!

Lisa is referring to a runner from a few years ago.

Illiterate - you must have written that comment in jest! Clearly, the event in question is a more recent one than a few years ago. The fact that she recently ran Badwater might lead one to suspect that the cheating she referenced in her post may be related to the same incident that #18 personally raised questions about upon completing Badwater. As we know, when he discovered that PM somehow passed him and his entire crew completely unnoticed, he confronted her about how she could have passed him completely unseen. As he reported, she did not respond to his question. He subsequently brought it to the Badwater Race Directors attention. There are too many incidents involving PM and many unanswered questions related to allegations that she did or did not run a specific marathon, altered race results to reflect the completion of marathons for herself and other individuals on a day that she was not witnessed running the event and the other individual void not have run it because he was physically running another marathon event at that same time in Idaho. I'm beginning to think that the allegations are indeed accurate and that her credibility has been tarnished as an athlete and Race Director. Of interest is the fact that she has actually moved this weekend races for her Iran marathons to El Paso for the weekend. Probably just a change of scenery, or to avoid local media and attention?

Truth, I suggest you reread Lisa's FB post. She specifically states in a reply to Alexa about suspecting a person "a few years ago." It seems that there have been many allegations of cheating at Badwater. Dean Karnazes was accused last year according to an old thread.

Not that hard to move a race if you are the only one running it. If past behavior is an indicator, she will probably be in California this weekend and post that she ran the race on friday in order to meet the cutoff.

I stand corrected. You are correct. I guess the fact that #18 posted a response thanking her for posting her comment made me incorrectly assume it was the same incident. I should have read every single post but didn't. Thanks for clarifying that as I want to deal with the facts and truth and I was incorrect in that she witnessed something at this recent race.

It's getting out... wrote:

Check out Lisa Batchen-Smith Facebook page and recent post... Honest individuals like her and Darren, who clearly have no stake in this, are finally speaking up.

Lisa didn't run the Badwater race this year and unfortunately she has DNF'd the past two years that she ran it. Her post discusses cheating in general. I am still looking for some smoke in this discussion. The accusers all seem to have some emotional reason for going after this woman and aren't presenting cold hard facts. As far as I can tell, no one has seen her cheat.

Here's an interesting observation: In the early days of this thread, only Concerned San Antonion was accusing PM of cheating, and doing it with much emotion. Since Concerned Santonion was accused to be an embittered Jason R, Concerned San Antonion has not posted. But a bunch of others have posted accusations or have claimed to be persuaded of the accusations and have done so with similar passion and very similar style. It's almost as if it really is Jason R, that he is still the only accuser, and he is now posting with a bunch of names as an accuser or as an objective observer who is persuaded by the overwhelming evidence that eludes everyone else.The wildcard is Darren the Badwater runner, who said he was asked (by whom?) to comment here. His story seems valid, and doesn't sound like something the accuser would make up, but it raises some questions and he did the old "you guys are mean I'm out of here" before we could get much answered.

off-topic wrote:The accusers all seem to have some emotional reason for going after this woman and aren't presenting cold hard facts. As far as I can tell, no one has seen her cheat.

You can do all the math you want. You can look at splits and speed differentials and all types of things. The bottomline is this: it is all relative to the course, the distance and your racing peers. So here are some facts. I have not yet completed some of the middle splits yet but I will. Out of the 87 finishers, let's look at ranking v. PM's peers and see if anyone really doubts that she cheated:

Split 1/Mile 23: PM ranked 87/87 slowest of all finishers

Split 2/Mile 45: PM ranked 87/87 slowest of all finishers

Split 3/Mile 59: PM ranked 87/87 slowest of all finishers

Split 4/Mile 67: PM ranked 87/87 slowest of all finishers

Final 2 Splits Combined/Mile 122-135 (finish) PM suddenly ranked 33/87 up the final 13 miles of the course.....the course hallmark toughest climb. WTF???!?!? Really?!?!?

So, her final split 122-135 she beat out the following over all finishers times: 12th place fiisher/time of 30:29, 14th place finisher/time of 30:38, 21st place finisher/time 33:07, 24th place finisher/time 34:20, 25th place finisher/time34:21. These are some of the best of the best in the world people. She goes from slower in the race for half of it to somehow going 33/87 in the final 13 miles? If her finisher peer group, she was faster than the 13 finishers in front of her and all of the runners behind her. In otherwords, of the final 13 finishers, she had the fastest final split from 122-135. Really?!?!? And there are numerous people that also "never saw her on the course or pass them". This all adds up to one word: CHEATER!!!!!

Do you really believe she did not cheat? Of course she CHEATED!!!! She is not even fit people!!! Why is this so hard to believe that she cheated?!?!? She is a 6-7 hour marathoner.....she is not about to throw down splits like that after being the races ass for so long.

Slight correction. She was the fastest split for miles 122-135/finish of the final 19 official race finishers (13 in front of her and 6 behind her). Wow.....really? Again, have you physically seen her? World's Greatest Cheater. LOSER!

I didn't care - this was just a fun thread.

But she is now asking for money and using past accomplishments, including Badwater, to help rais emoney for herself...

http://www.iranmarathons.com/parvaneh.html

dkny64 wrote:

Can someone who knows the Badwater course explain a plausible way she could have cut the course between the 6th time check at mile 91 and the 7th time check at mile 122?

Or for that matter a plausible way she could have passed Fortney and his crew without their noticing it.

It's not possible, except in the car. There is no plausible way for her to have passed Darren without him noticing it. Even if he happened to sit down for a while and wasn't looking at the road, he'd see her when he got back on course. At her pace, even if he took a 30 minute break without ever looking at the race course (essentially impossible), she would not be anywhere near out of view once he got back on that part of the course. So yeah, if that's genuinely Darren, the only possibility is that she got a ride in a car. This is how Dean Karnazes cheated last year... He got a ride in a car. If that genuinely is Darren posting, and not just some troll, I don't expect anyone to do anything about Parvaneh as it just makes the race look bad. When Dean was reported last year, the guy reporting him was simply called a "jackass spoilsport" and no investigation into the accusations was made, despite definitive and indisputable photographic evidence proving that Dean was lying in his response to being accused of cheating.

As for the splits, they don't seem that unbelievable to me. The first year I crewed at Badwater, my runner had very poor nutritional strategies (refusing to take salt pills) over the first 40 miles and was nearly in last place at Stovepipe (mile 42), but once we started putting salt in his water, his cramping legs recovered and he finished mid pack. I can't say that this happened with Parvaneh, but the splits don't seem outrageous to me at all. That said, if the poster claiming to be Darren is Darren, I don't see an honest explanation and she likely cheated.

When you break it out like that it makes total sense (or NO SENSE). And while all these amazingly fast splits are occurring it is EXACTLY the same time when numerous runners apparently got passed, yet nobody ever saw her pass them. I wonder how comfortable that van seat was during the free ride?!?!?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWpND8GhBuU

Well, I don't think that is a smoking gun because Badwater is always a very tactical race. PM was just doing the whole "Sit and kick" thing.

I thought it said Wheating at Marathons

cause I can't read good.

long time R wrote:

I didn't care - this was just a fun thread.

But she is now asking for money and using past accomplishments, including Badwater, to help rais emoney for herself...

http://www.iranmarathons.com/parvaneh.html

Same here, bizarre and hilarious. Supposedly intelligent and uni educated mature age people publicly outing each other and accusing and abusing like immature tweens for the whole world to see.

Ya gotta give it to this Parvaneh woman she can really stir things up AND at the same time make money out of it.

Question for her defender RunBigFoot, a.k.a. Steve Holehan what's been her reaction to all this? Also, you did a good good of identifying Doctor Commander* Terry but who is Denize?

*By the way you demoted Doctor Commander Terry (to be expected I suppose) she was a Doctor Captain.

And as for this Badwater thing, it's just a money making joke just like most ultra events.

Hi everyone. 1st time on this site. Darren had directed me to this forum. Btw, I was bib#42 at BW. First off, I have nothing to gain but only acting on a question from a very respectable ultra runner's question, "What would you do if you knew someone cheated in a race?"

Here's what I saw. PM caught up to me at the summit of Cerro Gordo then again at the base, Keeler. From Keeler, she went ahead of me and I didn't see her until I was about a mile away to the turnaround (Darwin) and she was on her way back to lone pine. It was about a few miles passed the 100mi marker that I saw her and the pacer making their way to their crew vehicle and stopping. Also, please keep in mind it's a descent from the darwin so I started running with some short walks in between. Eventually, we passed her and her team. We then stopped a mile ahead for a few mins. At that point, we never saw her or her crew pass us. As i continued on, I saw her crew vehicle zoom right by us. I looked back and no signs of PM. After that, the team and I never saw her again.

split rankings that sink in wrote:

Split 1/Mile 23: PM ranked 87/87 slowest of all finishers

Split 2/Mile 45: PM ranked 87/87 slowest of all finishers

Split 3/Mile 59: PM ranked 87/87 slowest of all finishers

Split 4/Mile 67: PM ranked 87/87 slowest of all finishers

Final 2 Splits Combined/Mile 122-135 (finish) PM suddenly ranked 33/87 up the final 13 miles of the course.....the course hallmark toughest climb. WTF???!?!? Really?!?!?

Go back and check your math. I am not sure what numbers you are using but PM wasn't last in any of the splits after the second time station. There were 97 starters and 83 finishers.

Since Darren brought it to our attention I'll compare him to PM. These are the "Time from Last Station" given in the Badwater results.

DF PM faster

TS1 5:28:00 6:53:00 DF

TS2 5:25:00 6:04:00 DF

TS3 5:42:00 6:44:00 DF

TS4 4:01:00 3:56:00 PM

TS5 2:55:00 2:18:00 PM

TS6 6:42:00 6:30:00 PM

TS7 11:52:00 9:19:00 PM

TS8 3:38:00 3:01:00 PM

Fin 1:32:15 1:21:10 PM

Timing shows that she PM knew the course, took it easy on the first day and ran a smarter race. DF went out hard on the first day and had it tough in the heat on the second day.