Did Mike Rossi (viral marathon dad) cheat his way into Boston?

routemaker wrote:

Here is a link to the route on mapmyrun. This was as close as I could get with the limited knowledge of the area. I had him looping around that top part on his way out multiple times to match the distance.

http://i58.tinypic.com/2hwcqki.png

While I don't think that potential training inaccuracies such as above are the most relevant piece of data to the main issue ofcourse cutting, I'd just comment on this Nike+ training image and previous points about how easy it is to forge GPS logs. You don't even need to tweak the file as you can fake a lot of it right in the watch.

Many watches will use the footpad as the primary measure of distance, over GPS, even while using the GPS concurrently for plotting your route on a map.

Footpods are pretty accurate once dialed in to the specific person but only once you've calibrated them. So, you can adjust the footpod calibration and tell it that the 5 miles you just ran in 40 minutes (8:00 pace) was actually 6 miles. When you upload your files to Strava it will show the actual 5 mile route that you ran on the map, but will say it was it 6 miles at 6:40 pace because it is using the recalibrated footpod to measure the distance.

This happens to me on my Polar watch if I switch shoes and forget to recalibrate the footpod to the new shoes. I'll upload my run to Strava and the map will show up correctly but the distance and pace will be way off. On my watch it's as simple as going into the settings and changing the footpod calibration from 1.00 to 1.20 and all the sudden I've run 20% further and faster, while retaining a map of my actual route.

2012 and 2013 it was kip litton threads

2014 Allison the moon walking triathlete

2015 it has to be this thread

Training Logs wrote: I'd just comment on this Nike+ training image and previous points about how easy it is to forge GPS logs.

I never doctored my logs, but one time runkeeper showed my long run with the correct distance but a shorter time for some reason, leading to an average pace that was realistic for a sub 3 hour marathoner but not for the much slower me. I posted it online in a group I'm in and got kudos for an awesome run. A couple hours later I revealed what really happened and that I was just posting it as a joke.

Has anybody bothered to check his other races? I looked at the results for the 2014 Rock and Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon and there is no record of his time at the 10 mile mark. I'm not a runner, but I am pretty good at math and if I understand the split times properly he seems to get faster towards the end of the race, which just seems odd to me.

I hated the letter. Hated it. I'm a runner in New York, have run tons of ultra distances but my marathon time is slower than a BQ.

I've also bandited Boston, many ago when I was in college. Have at me.

So his letter was shared on my facebook feed by 4 separate people: a runner I tangentially know in NYC, a high-school friend who was just answering a question of whether her kids go to the same school, an aunt who likes home-schooling, and a non-runner friend who likes human-interest stories on the Today show.

I just thought he seemed like the biggest douche. The Boston Marathon is a once-in-a-lifetime event? He threw his kids' schoolteachers under the bus in the very first paragraph? He couldn't run a local race, or a race in summertime or on a weekend, or volunteer with his kids instead? Ew, ew, ew. A couple years ago the WSJ published this cranky article where a non-runner went off on how annoyed he was by runners with 26.2 magnets on their cars, and I didn't get the animosity. When I read MR's letter, finally I got it.

I hate-followed it, though. I remember him commenting under his own name on Phillymag too, and his comment about the 3:11 when someone called him out on the slower-than-BQ time in Boston. I thought, huh, okay, he's fast.

For me the evidence that he cheated just clicked with a feeling of, oh - now the pieces fit together. It's just speculation but I also wonder if he skipped his grandmother's funeral, and followed through on the Boston trip instead.

Bucks non-runner, I am so very sorry for the loss of your boy.

Maggie2 wrote:

I hated the letter. Hated it. I'm a runner in New York, have run tons of ultra distances but my marathon time is slower than a BQ.

I've also bandited Boston, many ago when I was in college. Have at me.

Cool story bra

I felt the same way about his letter. He claims he didn't mean for it to go viral, but when it did he sure did't do anything to stop it. And he certainly made no attempt to curtail the harassment that the principal received. He very easily could have told reporters that he didn't want to elaborate. But he even went on Fox News, a national 24 hour news station.

And on Fox News he revealed that the death in the family that he overcame actually happened the day they left for Boston. What a great lesson to teach your children. Their great grandmother dies and instead of canceling a trip to be with loved ones in their time of mourning they just press on and go see dad run a race that he could run next year, or the year after that.

Now we know why he didn't want to cancel. Cheating the same race two years in a row would be just pushing his luck. And actually qualifying for Boston is going to become more and more unlikely as he gets older.

LoserMikeRossi wrote:

Has anybody bothered to check his other races? I looked at the results for the 2014 Rock and Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon and there is no record of his time at the 10 mile mark. I'm not a runner, but I am pretty good at math and if I understand the split times properly he seems to get faster towards the end of the race, which just seems odd to me.

There's a river in the middle of the course so he would have to skip before mile 6 to cross the river but he crossed the 10k mat. It looks to me like he went out too fast and had to recover between 5k and 10k

Yeah, sorry. :)

saldkjf;lksadjflkdsajfks;dajf wrote:

Cool story bra

You've got the route wrong. He turns on the Pennypack trail, takes that down to Shady Lane, and repeats that. The distances match up pretty much exactly, except I can't figure out where the hell mile 18 comes from. Bottom line is that this is a non-issue.

http://tinypic.com/r/29bit85/8

Yep. It can be done. I ran 3:09 in my first marathon. Obviously nothing spectacular.I did my first run in 15 years in May of that year, decided to run a marathon in June (That was back in the days when registration stayed open more than a few hours or days), trained through the summer, and ran MCM in October. At the time I was 190lbs with a peak mileage of 120 miles...one month. I did have being only 27 going for me and being only about 5 years removed from being a DI swimmer. Also, had a couple of 1:30 half marathons that summer to demonstrate progress.

mileage_man wrote:

Really? I always thought that when I was running at 5 minute pace I was burning way more calories than when I was running at 7:30 pace. Honestly I don't care about calories that much, but I'm curious - RunningPhreak, could you elaborate, or could someone else chime in on this?

There is an argument (usually put forward by x-fitters and the type) that you take longer to recover from a fast run and burn more calories than you normally would in that time. But the difference in calories burned during the run is negligible.

Seems like the letter got a lot of positive attention from right-wingers and mommybloggers. That is, people who go psychotic if they think someone (worst of all the public schools or the government) is trying to tell them how to parent their kids.

dreamin wrote:

We pretty much have this., but it's not clear to ones who haven't seen the photos. Which is why I would like to put together the "video" with the downloaded photos from the bridge to more clearly demonstrate it. It seems though nobody (including myself) wants to take the time to download them, or to even organize a crowdsource download to a community dropbox.

How many photos would a person have to download to get all the pics from the bridge you need? Any guess how long each pic would take me to download?

Can you set up a dropbox and give me a link to the dropbox & the original pics?

Maggie2 wrote:

I've also bandited Boston, many ago when I was in college. Have at me.

I purposely entered Boston for the sole purpose to sell my bib that ended up being Wave 1 Corral 1. I didn't need the money, I don't have a good reason, I just did it to do it. I've run Boston three times between 2:35 and 2:48 but I have that one other time under my name for over 5:30. Who cares?

777618 wrote:

SaraB wrote:

I can certainly send them a link to the evidence spreadsheet. it has everything on there except the dumb funny things. Will see if I can find a contact email address although they make be getting bombarded with emails so will most likely ignore it

Contact the brojos, they're interested in this case and can forward the spreadsheet, or can establish contact with the RD to give him a heads up that you have a great spreadsheet documenting the evidence.

If they haven't reached out to the Race Director by now, there is NO WAY I would rely on them to do it. The only thing rojo promised so far (an article by "tomorrow") hasn't happened.

One active, responsible person from this thread (SaraB would be great!), should make sure the info has made it into the Race Director's hands.

It would be a shame to find out after their decision that they weren't aware of the most important evidence from this thread.

LOsreMikeRossi wrote:

He claims he didn't mean for it to go viral, but when it did he sure did't do anything to stop it.

The "I didn't want it to go viral" is as big a lie as the 3:11 marathon. He never sent the letter to the school. It was solely created for Facebook: "Mike posted the letter to Facebook with his own biting response to the principal. It was never sent to the school, but went viral online and shared thousands of times."

bucks non-runner wrote:

The only reason I've been here since last Thursday is because of how much the letter annoyed me.

[quote]

Seems he's found someone else to undermine and throw under the bus:

[quote]SaraB wrote:

There's some type of balttle going on between Mike and a wedding photographer. Mike posted a couple of links

http://levittownnow.com/2014/07/26/wedding-videographer-makes-settlement-after-83-consumer-complaints/

and

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/11/20/pa-attorney-general-goes-after-bucks-wedding-photographer-for-failing-to-deliver/

. I guess to descredit the guy speaking out against him

This is what the wedding photographer wrote on Hal Higdons FB site:

"As somebody who knows Mike Rossi personally I can tell you that your analysis of his personality is spot on.

I only knew his casually because we are both in the wedding industry and I would see him a couple times a year at a wedding. He was always nice to me, but then again he really doesn't have a choice. A Dj that is not cooperative with other vendors looks very bad to couples having weddings. So when a few of his fellow DJ's described him as a complete douchebag and the worst human on the planet I just laughed it off.

And then I did him a couple favors related to his business, and I found out the hard way that those descriptions were accurate. I won't go into detail except to say that he screwed me over and turned out to be one of the phoniest industry "friends" I have ever met.

Most of the couples that he DJ's for will tell you he is a swell guy. And that's because he is swell if he needs you to make money. But to everyone else he is a complete ass and will throw you under the bus without a blink of an eye - just as he did to that school principal.

He did offer an apology to the principal, but not until way after the damage was done. And it was just a quick blurb on his Facebook page and Blog, but of course he made no attempt for his apology to go viral. because he could never publicly admit that he was wrong. And a public letter from the superintendent of schools backing the principal was vastly ignored as well.

And just like he would never come out and admit to the world, or his family, that he was wrong about the principal's letter, he will never admit to the world, or his family, that he cheated to get to Boston. He will stay in hiding and try to convince the people around him that others are just jealous of him, and the marathon officiants are idiots who planned a bad race, and the photographers along the race route and morons or they would have done their job properly and gotten a photo of him.

We'll have to wait to hear from the marathon organizers and they will DQ him. And then I imagine Boston will have to DQ him since he doesn't have a qualifying time. But you'll never hear an admission or apology come out of his mouth. Because he is a sociopath."

Don't get blindsided wrote:

777618 wrote:

Contact the brojos, they're interested in this case and can forward the spreadsheet, or can establish contact with the RD to give him a heads up that you have a great spreadsheet documenting the evidence.

If they haven't reached out to the Race Director by now, there is NO WAY I would rely on them to do it. The only thing rojo promised so far (an article by "tomorrow") hasn't happened.

One active, responsible person from this thread (SaraB would be great!), should make sure the info has made it into the Race Director's hands.

It would be a shame to find out after their decision that they weren't aware of the most important evidence from this thread.

I've sent an email to the race director.