Sandra Vi going for record across America

Markus wrote:

Regarding the estimates:

I am just projecting the average overall mileage towards the end.

Understood. And I respect your opinion, as probably the only person here who's attempted a run like this himself. I think extrapolating New York finish times from the overall average mileage since day 1 provides a poor prediction of what's likely to happen. Extrapolating from something like a 7 or 10 day moving average will give a better prediction.

For Mimi, it looks very unlikely she'll run her final 15 days with the same daily average mileage as the first 35 days. Her more recent runs show that she's clearly slowing down, and possibly struggling physically. I'd say it's almost certain that her next two weeks will have lower mileage than before, and it'll take her longer than your 50 day prediction to make it to New York.

For Sandy, the opposite is true. While her average mileage since day 1 is 53, she's averaged over 60 miles/day for a week now. That seems long enough to be a real measure of her capabilities, and not just a fluke or short-term surge. Maybe she won't be able to maintain 60 all the way to the finish, but I'd say it's quite likely she'll average better than 53 miles/day. So it will take her less than your 56 day prediction for New York.

In short, predicting that Mimi will finish 6 days faster than Sandy doesn't really fit with the results we've seen this past week. I'd say a 0 to 2 day difference is more likely. This is a tight race.

If Mimi manages to finish before Sandy can finish Mimi will claim she set the Guinness world record, even if Sandy runs up the NYC City Hall steps a few minutes behind her. But she can properly claim she held the WR even if she only held it for a few minutes.

OCT 12th:

Miles Done

Start Times: Sandy 3:07 AM / Mimi 3:03 AM

As of 5:17 AM: Sandy 10 / Mimi 9

As of 7:25 AM: Sandy 20 / Mimi 17

As of 8:26 AM: Sandy 25 / Mimi 21-1/2

Sandy? wrote:

Scam_Watcheroo wrote:

From Mimi's Strava, you can see that she basically walked for the entire afternoon runs, both before and after the hospital visit, not much attempt at any running

I don't know... the first of her activities that you linked to shows the same crazy alternation between 180 spm and 140 spm. So either she's alternating run/walk, or the cadence data is completely wrong.

Actually, Mimi's cadence data is MUCH crazier than what is shown on the smoothed graphs in Strava. I downloaded some of them to GPX and converted to CSV so I could plot the raw values in Excel without any smoothing.

Here is a screenshot of Sandra's cadence for her entire day's run on Oct 10, 2017, nothing out of the ordinary and she does most of her running in a narrow band of cadences centered around 160-170 spm:

Now contrast this to Mimi's cadence data from Oct 11, 2017 where we see she is regularly using a full range of cadences from 100 spm to a ridiculous 220 spm. So is Mimi really doing sprint intervals during her transcon to troll us or is there something seriously wrong with any "proof" she is providing? And the cadence data is MUCH more ridiculous from the first two weeks based on what I've looked at with Mimi's cadence values regularly between 200-500 spm. I will try to analyze more of her unsmoothed cadence data and post a report later.

Them's the perks of going first. If she finishes ahead of the old record she deserves credit, with an asterisk pending further proof regards her first two weeks.

So far today wrote:

If Mimi manages to finish before Sandy can finish Mimi will claim she set the Guinness world record, even if Sandy runs up the NYC City Hall steps a few minutes behind her. But she can properly claim she held the WR even if she only held it for a few minutes.

SCAM_ WATCHEROO

Re: cadence data

Cadence is done using accelerometers in the watch or a footpod. They are somewhat dependent on your foot/arm making the expected motion of good technique.

I have a Garmin footpod and have often seen cadence dropouts if I got tired or my technique goes a bit yucky.

Here's an example from my own running. These are the cadence numbers from every 4 seconds (which is the sampling rate) while running at 5:50/mile ... 178, 182, 184, 186, 186, 186, 186, 184, 144, 118, 114, 134, 140, 182, 172, 134, 174, 176, 176, 178, 178, 178 ... you can see the first 32 secs are reasonable, then there's 32-secs where it drops before coming back to normal.

Think Mimi has the inbuilt watch cadence. If her arm is swinging across her body or doing something unusual that could easily account for the discrepancies.

It's a possibility that the Mimi's crappy cadence data is due to some weird behavior of her's but it is hard to believe this happening in all her runs. Another possibility is that Suunto watches don't have good detection algorithms. We can see clearly from Sandra's data that reasonable cadence data is clearly possible.

The non-sensical cadence data from Mimi just adds to a long list of suspicious behavior or evidence. If it was by itself I could dismiss it but this coupled with everything else makes her run very unconvincing.

Totally agree with you.

If Sandy would run 60 miles per day to the end she would end up under 54 days.

If Mimi would run 55 miles per day she would end up with 51 days. That is not very likely to happen. With 50 miles per day it would be under 53 days. That might or might not be possible.

But Mimi has 16-18 days to go and Sandy 23, that is a difference of 5-7 days.

At the end you can't really make any good predictions over such a long time span, that's why I just used the overall average to get an idea.

Sandy's team -- especially Cinder and Jay -- are acutely-aware of her calorie needs, and make sure she's always getting enough so she maintains constant energy and doesn't lose weight. Cinder obviously knows what she's doing . . . on his transcon last year, Pete lost 4 lbs TOTAL in the 3067 miles from SF to NYC. Think about that for a second...

Cheeseburgers and deep dish pizza at every meal?

Also, everyone, I'll be running across Iowa with Sandy (arriving tomorrow night), and I'll be doing daily recorded chats with her during and after her runs. If any of you have any questions you'd like me to ask her, just PM me on Facebook (Dave Krupski) and I'll do my best to ask as many of them as possible. (I'll also post the videos to sandyacrossamerica.com each night...)

Finally, if you would like to help in any way, Sandy's transcon is truly a grass-roots, low-key affair, almost entirely self-funded, so any donation (however small) can go a long way to helping her get to NYC. Just visit the website and click on "support Sandy."

Best,

Dave

Mimi reached 2000 miles today but she does not look good.

https://www.facebook.com/649065219/videos/10159556735935220/

Zwitty wrote:

Sandy's team -- especially Cinder and Jay -- are acutely-aware of her calorie needs, and make sure she's always getting enough so she maintains constant energy and doesn't lose weight. Cinder obviously knows what she's doing . . . on his transcon last year, Pete lost 4 lbs TOTAL in the 3067 miles from SF to NYC. Think about that for a second...

Cinder is certainly a planning genius. She is much more than the mothership captain.

Mimi's team has allowed her to waste away. There is no putting on back the weight to avoid losing muscle at this point.

OCT 12th:

Miles Done

Start Times: Sandy 03:07 AM / Mimi 03:03 AM

As of 05:17 AM: Sandy 10 / Mimi 9

As of 07:25 AM: Sandy 20 / Mimi 17

As of 08:26 AM: Sandy 25 / Mimi 21-1/2

As of 09:34 AM: Sandy 30 / Mimi 25-1/2

Scam_Watcheroo wrote:

It's a possibility that the Mimi's crappy cadence data is due to some weird behavior of her's but it is hard to believe this happening in all her runs. Another possibility is that Suunto watches don't have good detection algorithms. We can see clearly from Sandra's data that reasonable cadence data is clearly possible.

I don't follow your logic.

If Mimi has an armswing that causes the cadence data to be crappy, then it's reasonable for it to happen consistency in all her runs.

What explanation do you have why the cadence is wrong? She's obviously not travelling in the RV with actual cadences occurring.

Are you suggesting they're faking data? In which case why fake it so badly?

Zwitty wrote:

Also, everyone, I'll be running across Iowa with Sandy (arriving tomorrow night), and I'll be doing daily recorded chats with her during and after her runs. If any of you have any questions you'd like me to ask her, just PM me on Facebook (Dave Krupski) and I'll do my best to ask as many of them as possible. (I'll also post the videos to sandyacrossamerica.com each night...)

Finally, if you would like to help in any way, Sandy's transcon is truly a grass-roots, low-key affair, almost entirely self-funded, so any donation (however small) can go a long way to helping her get to NYC. Just visit the website and click on "support Sandy."

Best,

Dave

Dave, you might want to consider collecting data for yourself to match what Sandy is collecting. This is a unique opportunity to look at trends of two runners side-by-side. So far we only have Mimi and Sandy to compare and Mimi's data seems to be all over the place. Personally, I think the data will match up for two runners running together on an identical course, and any differences will be reasonably consistent and related to physiology. In other words, you won't have Mimi style crazy data.

Crappy cadence wrote:

I don't follow your logic.

If Mimi has an armswing that causes the cadence data to be crappy, then it's reasonable for it to happen consistency in all her runs.

What explanation do you have why the cadence is wrong? She's obviously not travelling in the RV with actual cadences occurring.

Are you suggesting they're faking data? In which case why fake it so badly?

I would need to see evidence of this unique armswing since Mimi's arms are not doing anything out of the ordinary in the few videos we have of her.

You can't logically say she is not "traveling in the RV" based on this existence of this non-sensical cadence data. Mimi's garbage cadence data is NOT evidence of running. As well, how would you even know if the cadence data is faked or not? I proved I could easily spoof cadence data and my spoofs are easily more convincing than Mimi's data. I could also have easily done really crappy spoofs. The point is that Mimi's Strava/Movescount data are totally not acceptable or even reasonable evidence for a world record.

OCT 12th:

Miles Done

Start Times: Sandy 03:07 AM / Mimi 03:03 AM

As of 05:17 AM: Sandy 10 / Mimi 9

As of 07:25 AM: Sandy 20 / Mimi 17

As of 08:26 AM: Sandy 25 / Mimi 21-1/2

As of 09:34 AM: Sandy 30 / Mimi 25-1/2

As of 10:32 AM: Sandy 35 / Mimi 30

An 18 second clip. 7 seconds of another woman. 11 seconds of Mimi; 3 seconds of her running; 8 seconds of her walking. Mimi looks rather unhappy with the whole bit.

Forest Gump again wrote:

Mimi reached 2000 miles today but she does not look good.

https://www.facebook.com/649065219/videos/10159556735935220/