The Meb Experience wrote:
Holy crap. If "Some Things Should Be Obvious" and "ConspiracyTheorist" aren't trolls, then they are actually crazy. It is disturbing to realize that people like this are in the running community.
And yet more substance from the no conspiracy crowd...
Some Things Should Be Obvious wrote:
The Meb Experience wrote:Holy crap. If "Some Things Should Be Obvious" and "ConspiracyTheorist" aren't trolls, then they are actually crazy. It is disturbing to realize that people like this are in the running community.
And yet more substance from the no conspiracy crowd...
Yeah, no one here is offering much substance. It's mostly name calling. But the hilarious thing is that you think you are offering substance. You think you are making substantive arguments that everyone is avoiding. You aren't self-aware enough to realize how little sense you're making.
Chooomsky wrote:
Super Jay Five wrote:Good point about people commenting on an area of expertise that they may have not studied much if at all. I remember one time I made a number of posts saying that "Jackie Kennedy killed JFK" (it is right on the Zapruder video if you want to look). Of course I had studied it for years and was familier with other theories so I could back up what I said. Anyhow someone posted a link with a psychic that had NEVER SEEN the Zapruder film and admitted she knew NOTHING about the assassination but she claimed that the security guards did it! It is amazing how the less people know the bigger experts they are.
Great point. There have been a lot of studies done regarding being an "insider" and an "outsider" to a discourse community (forum w/ the pretext of being runners). Sometimes an outsider will see things that insiders don't but sometimes outsiders will miss obvious discourse cues (trolling, Rupp jokes, etc.)
In this case, being an insider myself, I think that my students were right on with a lot of their assumptions. In the case of the debate (I am not a debate coach but I did it in college) the burden of proof does indeed rest w/ the conspiracy theorists. They are basically saying, "It was a fix and I am going to believe so until someone proves it wasn't." This is faulty. The evidence that has been brought forth is only a retelling what is public knowledge through a frame of conspiracy. It sucks, but to make a case the conspiracy theorists will have to go interview athletes, race directors, sponsors, coaches, agents, etc. until documentation arises.
It is a lot of work but if you claim it was fixed you must be willing to see it through.
BTW, we had some lol moments reading this. Pure gold =)
On the "Business Insider" website runner Nick Arciniaga ADMITTED that him and Ryan Hall slowed down the pace so that the Africans would have to work harder to win the race. He said "if we want an American to win this is how it was going to be done". So an insider ADMITTED that there was a conspiracy! Of course that was just the Americans, the real question is did ALL the Africans have a bad day or did they just GO ALONG with the Americans plan? The odds are they went along with the plan because it was in their best interest to do so at least in my opinion.
Score Keeper wrote:
Star wrote:So what do people think the makeup of posters in this thread are?
There are two types of responses:
-Those supporting the conspiracy that it was fixed
-Those saying the race was legit
Of those saying that it was fixed, I think 90% of them are trolling for responses and really don't believe it.
And most of those debating the fix was in seem to be taking them seriously.
Does the OP really believe there may have been a fix or is he the lead troll on this great thread?
Thank you for your opinion as to "90% of them are trolling for responses and really don't believe it". Do you have something to back that up? Or are you simply pulling that out of your ass?
I am interested because I am the OFFICIAL score keeper here and if you can do more than talk out your ass then you might be extremely helpful in keeping score.
Well, I posed the question "What do you think?"
And then I wrote what I thought.
People don't have to back up their opinions. Just state them.
I know I was just trying to feed the conspiracy as a joke.
Just find it funny that anyone would get upset over it and it would lead to this many pages of discussion with some of it actually being serious.
I could probably sit out a bit and then post something again that would get a counter response.
So to speak wrote:
Well, if it was fixed, they didn't make it easy on Meb. He had to run a PR practically on his own. Wouldn't it have made more sense for the pack to run with Meb, then drop off one by one as the finish line neared? This "plan" was far too dependent on Meb being able to run a negative split PR in a solo effort.... on the Boston course of all places!!
By the way, I want to talk to the person who was in charge of ensuring perfect weather for this charade. He or she did a great job.
Not sure if you actually watched the race...Meb had a rabbit through the entire mid section of the race. It was a 2:14 guy. So he wasn't solo.
Incidentally, there's a flotrack video up right now where Renato Canova says that for his Kenyan guys, a 2:07 marathon is a jog. Makes you wonder why they held back so much in Boston.
Has anyone seen interview footage of the second and third place guys? I'm just wondering what they had to say about their performances. For example, did both of them say they bonked at mile 25?
asdfasdasdfasd wrote:
You don't fix a race for a handful of geeks. You do it on a one time chance to expand your brand to millions of new folks. And all it takes is that nice photo of Meb on the cover of every newspaper.
Putting aside for one moment the fact that few people read newspapers anymore, what is your point exactly? Now that Meb Keflezighi won the Boston marathon, "millons of new folks" will buy the Boston marathon brand? It's not like kids are now buying "Boston marathon" jerseys with Meb's number on the back. Just go slow for us retards: what, exactly, is the huge financial upside that justified the risk of an illegal conspiracy that, if discovered, would both ruin the reputation of the Boston Marathon, as well as subject the race organizers to criminal penalites?
No analysis needed for the masses.
Indeed.
I'm enjoying this thread and am not solidly in one camp or the other.
It's interesting to me how much both sides' arguments depend on assertions about what's "normal" or "usual" or "predictable" in marathoning, Boston Marathoning, Boston Marathoning by Africans, Boston Marathoning by Americans, Boston Marathoning on days when the weather is near-ideal, etc.
Many of these assertions, on both sides, have been well-reasoned and interesting. I've learned a lot.
That said, I've also RUN a few marathons, as have many of you, and if there's one thing that can be said of marathons, it's that they're not predictable. There IS no normal. There are some very broad trends, but you can easily find numerous exceptions to even those trends.
Think back on your own marathoning history. You've probably had a perfect training cycle that ended with a disappointing race. You've probably pulled out a performance that surprised even you. You've probably beaten someone who was faster than you on paper.
You've probably even had that rarest of all rare anomalies: a marathon where your training and the weather and the course and your mental outlook and what you wore and what you ate for breakfast and the sign you saw at Mile 16 and your ferocious desire to catch that guy ahead of you in the Asics singlet and God only knows what else all came together and yielded the perfect day.
Again, I have no dog in this fight. I just think the idea that marathons have any kind of consistent, predictable formula is borderline laughable. There are nearly always too many variables for an apples-to-apples comparison between any two marathons.
Holly Hobbiejogger wrote:
... and your ferocious desire to catch that guy ahead of you in the Asics singlet ...
The one with a skeleton painted on the back of his black shirt, that I passed much earlier on, and that caught me in the last kilometre. Or in a 10k, that guy that left me in the dust, running with one shoe in his hand.
Some Things Should Be Obvious wrote:
Trollie McSockpuppet wrote:Yeah, you're waiting for me to disprove your speculation that Meb's victory was the result of a conspiracy and not a genuine running competition. Like I said, you're like a parody of a conspiracy theorist.
And once more, oh-so-clever attempts to insult. Zero substance.
And by the way, I am not "waiting for (you) to disprove (my) speculation that Meb's victory was the result of a conspiracy and not a genuine running competition." I thought your reading comprehension level might have allowed you to see this.
Simple question remains: "How usual is it for there to be breakaways from the field of elites at a 2:10 pace before the half-way mark of a major marathon? Oh, and the guy breaking away clearly has credentials (please don't go for this 'old' nonsense when he is the reigning 4th place finisher at the Olympics)."
After all, it was your claim that there was nothing unusual about how the race unfolded.
So, I'll still be waiting for some substance from you. Not with much hope, of course. You have shown your true colors already. But I am hopeful you can do better.
This is good stuff.
Trollie is just stupified that anyone would step back and say "wait whaattttt? why did the foreign men do so crappy?"
That anyone that speculates there may be foul play involved is a complete whackjob truther blah blah blah 9/11 Obama CIA!!!
If you don't trust what happened in a sporting event you must be a whackjob that is completely unhinged.
Holly Hobbiejogger wrote:
I'm enjoying this thread and am not solidly in one camp or the other.
It's interesting to me how much both sides' arguments depend on assertions about what's "normal" or "usual" or "predictable" in marathoning, Boston Marathoning, Boston Marathoning by Africans, Boston Marathoning by Americans, Boston Marathoning on days when the weather is near-ideal, etc.
Many of these assertions, on both sides, have been well-reasoned and interesting. I've learned a lot.
That said, I've also RUN a few marathons, as have many of you, and if there's one thing that can be said of marathons, it's that they're not predictable. There IS no normal. There are some very broad trends, but you can easily find numerous exceptions to even those trends.
Think back on your own marathoning history. You've probably had a perfect training cycle that ended with a disappointing race. You've probably pulled out a performance that surprised even you. You've probably beaten someone who was faster than you on paper.
You've probably even had that rarest of all rare anomalies: a marathon where your training and the weather and the course and your mental outlook and what you wore and what you ate for breakfast and the sign you saw at Mile 16 and your ferocious desire to catch that guy ahead of you in the Asics singlet and God only knows what else all came together and yielded the perfect day.
Again, I have no dog in this fight. I just think the idea that marathons have any kind of consistent, predictable formula is borderline laughable. There are nearly always too many variables for an apples-to-apples comparison between any two marathons.
Sounds like you're more level headed and knowledgeable than the rest of us, so I'm wondering what you thought about the slow two man breakaway at mile 8 (one of them was a rabbit), and the second and third place guys who simultaneously slowed up and ran Meb's pace for the last mile of the race. Was that just part of the unpredictable nature of the marathon? I haven't seen anything like that, but then again I haven't done the marathon shuffle as many times as you. I just watch marathons a lot and study the athletes.
Also, considering your knowledge of stochastic processes, I wonder how you would assess the p-value of an event where ALL of the Africans underperform significantly under pristine race conditions? According to Renato Canova, who coaches the best Kenyans, a 2:07 marathon is a jog for the best guys (from yesterday's flotrack video).
asdfasdasdfasd wrote:Not sure if you actually watched the race...Meb had a rabbit through the entire mid section of the race. It was a 2:14 guy. So he wasn't solo.
Incidentally, there's a flotrack video up right now where Renato Canova says that for his Kenyan guys, a 2:07 marathon is a jog. Makes you wonder why they held back so much in Boston.
You'd have to assume that every single one ran the worst tactical race of their life.
They start out at a pedestrian 2:10-2:11 pace and let a guy break away...running that slow. It wasn't like Meb threw down some 2:05 pace 5k's in this break away.
Then all of a sudden the foreign men start dropping down to 2:06 pace over the hills. If they weren't paid to ditch the race, what the heck were they thinking out there? Take it ridiculously slow on the first easy section and let a world class marathoner with a rabbit get a minute up on you and then hammer as hard as you can go over the hills trying to catch him?
And this isn't one world class marathoner who usually is a front runner doing that, it's an entire group that made the same exact tactical error and randomly decides not to front run with the pace setters? What?
Has anyone mentioned that, excluding the heavily wind-aided 2011, Meb's 'pedestrian' time is actually top 7 or 8 since 2004 (and three those times were by Cheriyout)? In other words, Meb is one of the fastest victors on this course in the past decade. So it's not like a dozen Kenyans were jogging it in to let him win.
Nevertheless, theorists, show some evidence. A shred or two would suffice. The owners of this site are the biggest muck rakers out there and they'd love to have the scoop on a conspiracy. It would be the biggest story since the Black Sox scandal, nearly 100 years ago.
Help them out. You CAN DO it! We're counting on you.
ConspiracyTheorist wrote:
And this isn't one world class marathoner who usually is a front runner doing that, it's an entire group that made the same exact tactical error and randomly decides not to front run with the pace setters? What?
Yeah, that was another weird thing about Monday. Meb has NEVER been a front runner in these big marathons. He's a tuck in and wait guy.
ConspiracyTheorist wrote:
This is good stuff.
Trollie is just stupified that anyone would step back and say "wait whaattttt? why did the foreign men do so crappy?
For what it's worth, I did post results from past races earlier in the thread, challenging the assumption that the East African runners performed "so crappy" in the 2014 Boston marathon. Collectively, their performance was consistent with other recent non-wind-aided Bostons. I also posted Meb's splits earlier, countering the assumptions some of you were making (perhaps not you--I can't remember) about his supposed collapse over the last few miles of the race.
All that stuff was ignored by the conspiracy theorists. It's ironic that the truthers are complaining about the "lack of substance"; the superficial insults (which I am admittedly hurling) are the only things you all seem interested in responding to.
Fox trusts no one wrote:
Nevertheless, theorists, show some evidence. A shred or two would suffice.
The biggest evidence is the race itself. It was completely abnormal. You should watch it. Then watch all those other Boston marathons since 2004 and compare.
Trollie McSockpuppet wrote:
Collectively, their performance was consistent with other recent non-wind-aided Bostons.[/quote]
Collectively consistent? How do you define that? Do you average their times or something? That seems like crap analysis.
Last I checked, the Africans run hard, and some of them bonk but some not. It's not some meaningless averaging nonsense. Yesterday, we just saw that none of them ran hard until the hills and then they slowed up when they saw Meb.
Like Hollie Hobbyjogger, I too have been enjoying this thread immensely over the past couple of days.
And also like HH, I have no dog in this hunt - I'm a Brit, so the dewy-eyed romanticism of Meb's epic win "for America" counts for little with me.
Look, Meb is a great guy, a gutsy guy, and you Americans should feel immensely proud to call him one of your own, but some of the conspiracy crowd on here are putting up a hell of a circumstantial argument.
I know it's tempting to deny, belittle, insult and hope the weirdness will just go away, but frankly, the more Conspiracy Theorist et al lay out the plain facts (and yes, sorry, Trollie and co, they're FACTS), the weirder the race seems.
Everyone bar a group of elite East Africans and the pious flake that is Ryan Hall seem to be setting PB's. And that doesn't have the BS alarm bell jangling ?
OK Trollie, let's say it wasn't a fix, there was no conspiracy, no black ops, no organised deal to throw the race. But the fact remains, it was a bizarre race - would you not agree with that statement at least ?
BTW, I repeat, Meb is a baller and a stand-up dude, one of the nicest guys out there, and I really don't want to take anything away from him. We need more like him in the running world. But in my view, it's incontrovertible that the was the most bizarre major marathon in living memory.
Trollie, you need to start refuting the nay-sayers with some actual substance of your own. Your just slinging mud now which suggests to me you know you're losing the argument. Simple question - would you agree it was a bizarre race ?
asdfasdfasdfas wrote:
Collectively consistent? How do you define that? Do you average their times or something? That seems like crap analysis.
Last I checked, the Africans run hard, and some of them bonk but some not. It's not some meaningless averaging nonsense. Yesterday, we just saw that none of them ran hard until the hills and then they slowed up when they saw Meb.
In case anyone is still reading, it's responses like this that explain why the "it's not a conspiracy crowd" gets so fed up with this dialogue. There's no effort to actually understand the arguments about past race times. Mr. sdfasdfasdfas doesn't even go back and read it; he just assumes that it's "averaging times" and then declares that it's "crap analysis."
And then he relies on a platitude ("Africans run hard") and then assumes that, because two runners slowed down in the last 1.2 miles of the race, it must be because they purposefully stopped trying to run hard.
Sorry, it just seems like many of you are desperate to reach what is a pretty remarkable conclusion--that Monday's race was a staged conspiracy. Believe it if you'd like. But don't fault others for failing to engage your non-existent analysis.
Trollie: I like the question from Frightened Inmate # 5. Would you agree the marathon was bizarre?