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

I believe that it is possible to manually edit the distance for Nike Plus runs. The theory is that the map likely matches his actual run, but he bumped up the distance manually which resulted in the lower Minutes/Mile calculation.

Some users mapped out the route on mapmyrun and similar programs and came up with less miles than the Nike plus log.

I live on the course that he uploaded on Nike plus. It's max 16 miles. The strangest part to me is that a large part of that run is pretty dangerous. A lot of it is roads with little or no shoulder or sidewalks. Most of it is heavily traveled and you rarely see see runners because of that. There are also a decent amount of large intersections with traffic lights. Hardly a marathon training course in my mind.

Hvrunner67 wrote:

I live on the course that he uploaded on Nike plus. It's max 16 miles. The strangest part to me is that a large part of that run is pretty dangerous. A lot of it is roads with little or no shoulder or sidewalks. Most of it is heavily traveled and you rarely see see runners because of that. There are also a decent amount of large intersections with traffic lights. Hardly a marathon training course in my mind.

Seems like a route that would be easy to drive, and not have to deal with driving a more runnable route - which would have lower speed limits, more stop signs and such.

Is thee a time for the run? I use to do a route that, because of traffic, was only doable about three early morning hours of the day. Could that be the case here?

It's an out and back but the elevation at the end doesn't match the beginning. That's how unreliable these watches are.

I agree, the graph makes no sense. I did a "MapMyRun" that I think is a little more accurate than the previous attempt that was linked here. I don't think he ran up the road at the start, I think he was running along the train tracks. Also, he came down the middle of that loop at the top, not down a street, so I'm quite certain he was running down the Pennyback Trail. Either way, the total distance comes out to 17.08 miles rather than 18. Also, the elevation plot and mile markers from my MapMyRun match his screenshot, so I think this is the legitimate route. Here is an image of it:

http://i.imgur.com/XDwMZ5y.png

If I did the privacy settings properly, you can also look at the MapMyRoute version at

http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/fullscreen/718656715/

It's called "Rosi" and it starts in Jenkintown, PA.

In the original Nike+ shot, the y axis has markers at 7'37", 10'35", and 17'18", and the markers appear to be spaced evenly. However, there are 178 seconds between 7'37" and 10'35", and 403 seconds between 17'18" and 10'35", so that graph is not very helpful in determining pace. It looks like the scale is off.

Still, from my very basic research, it looks like only the distance is editable in the app, so I'm guessing he ran the 17.08 miles in 2:22:21, which is an 8'20" pace. If you can get someone (tech support for Nike+) to explain the weird scale on the graph and confirm exactly what is editable by the end user, that might help nail some things down.

Since a few have requested that I post about Mike (probably because you think I'm Mike), here you go.

http://marathoncheat.blogspot.com/2015/05/mike-rossi-viral-letter-writing-dad-and.html

rojo wrote:

Can someone explain how this 18 miler supposedly went? I'm not familiar with Nike +.

http://i.imgur.com/wATc8eJ.jpg

That chart makes no sense.

7'37

10'35 etc is pace per mile.

The vast majority of that run is below what would be 9'00 (midway between 7'37 and 10'25) and yet the average time is 7:55? THat makes zero sense.

Do walk breaks not count?

He edited the data and added 2 extra miles.

Mike/Doubler - you are a savvy guy!

Your attempt to turn this into a positive for yourself may actually work!

What a story:

1. Radio DJ get's positive national media attention.

2. Then he get's caught cheating - but refuses to confess.

3. Then he set's up a blog exposing cheaters - with himself on the home page.

what happens next:

4. Eventually he confesses - makes a big media splash

5. He gets more media attention than he ever did at the beginning

6. Then comes Oprah, book deals, lecture circuit, $$$

Mike - you may actually pull this off - if so you will be a case study at Harvard Business School!

Maybe even a keynote speaker at Marathon events...

Mike - this is brilliant wrote:

Mike/Doubler - you are a savvy guy!

Your attempt to turn this into a positive for yourself may actually work!

Mike - you may actually pull this off - if so you will be a case study at Harvard Business School!

Maybe even a keynote speaker at Marathon events...

The most brilliant part is that he registered here two years ago before he even started running in order to set the whole thing up. Genius!

Headline Grab wrote:

The thing that grabbed me is "understand how unlikely it is that he ran the full course AND doesn't have any pictures. The numbers have been run and it is less than a .001% chance (sic, should be 0.01%)" so a headline around this might do the job, or "probability of Mr. Rossi missing all locations by chance, is about 1 in 11 thousand."

.

I agree with Headline Grab. The two main things that have been missing from the existing treatments IMO are (1) outright stating that Mike cheated (except for Hal Higdon on facebook), and (2) fully explaining just how damning the photographic evidence is. The Runner's World article comes the closest here, but the evidence is significantly stronger than it suggested. Therefore, I feel that the main value that Rojo's article can add to the existing treatments is a fuller description of the photographic evidence.

In particular, I would love to see Rojo's article focus on three core facts about the photographic evidence:

(1) That every other runner who finished the race was photographed at at least one other location.

(2) That a straightforward statistical analysis of the number of locations the 100 closest finishers to Mr. Rossi were photographed on the course (3-7, with an average of 4.7) implies that the probability of Mr. Rossi missing all locations by chance is about 1 in 11 thousand. The method here was just a z-test, backed up with a Pearson's chi-squared test for the normality of the data yielding p = 0.8. See the spreadsheet for more details (http://tinyurl.com/kkgcaxw), especially the 'Statistical analysis' and 'test of normality' tabs.

(3) The existence of three near-continuous photo checkpoints. See the 'Checkpoints for places 104-124' tab on the spreadsheet. Even ignoring the impossibility of running 100m in 6 seconds, the mere fact that the 20 finishers closest to Mr. Rossi were all seen at all three of these locations means the chances of Mr. Rossi getting missed at all three (as he was) are only 1 in 9 thousand. The analysis here is simply Laplace's rule of succession implying a 1 in 21 chance to be missed at each checkpoint, and assuming that the checkpoints were independent (which they should have been if he ran the race) so that the overall chance is (1/21)^3.

It's my opinion that venturing too far beyond these core facts (for example by speculating about suspicious but irrelevant training runs, or IP address sleuthing - things that granted are hilarious to us LR folk but are both more tenuous and less damning) risks making us look silly and biased, and distracts attention from the substance. On the other hand, including some stuff about his social media silence after Lehigh adds a human interest element, so ultimately I'm happy to leave it to Rojo to strike that balance. But I am hoping that a thorough description of the core, photographic evidence - which has been the piece missing from most other treatments of this story - will be the focus of Rojo's article.

Doubler wrote:

Since a few have requested that I post about Mike (probably because you think I'm Mike), here you go.

http://marathoncheat.blogspot.com/2015/05/mike-rossi-viral-letter-writing-dad-and.html

This guy got DQ'd from this year's Cleveland marathon. Still nothing from Akron or RNR Arizona.

If you haven't noticed, no one cares about that guy. Ever wonder why no one responds to those posts? Go ahead on your crusade, but no one cares here. We care about Mike Rossi.

Doubler wrote:

Doubler wrote:

Since a few have requested that I post about Mike (probably because you think I'm Mike), here you go.

http://marathoncheat.blogspot.com/2015/05/mike-rossi-viral-letter-writing-dad-and.html

This guy got DQ'd from this year's Cleveland marathon. Still nothing from Akron or RNR Arizona.

stop, just stop wrote:

If you haven't noticed, no one cares about that guy. Ever wonder why no one responds to those posts? Go ahead on your crusade, but no one cares here. We care about Mike Rossi.

Nobody cares about Mike Rossi anymore, either.

Or more accurately, nobody remembers him. His 15 minutes are over.

Whether he gets a DQ or not, it's not going to cause a ripple. Marathoners will take note, and the rest of the world (including mainstream media) won't give a flying f#$%.

Although I think it will be funny - in a train wreck kind of way - if they chicken out and decide not to DQ him, and our boy Mikey tries to parlay this into another 15 minutes of fame.

I'm imagining him now, desperately trying to get Kelly Ripa on the phone, to tell his story on Regis and Kelly (or whatever the hell it is called now).

No, the next logical step is that he makes a sex tape.

There are Mike Rossi blowup dolls? Who knew.

LoserMikeRossi wrote:

No, the next logical step is that he makes a sex tape.

FredericksOfPennsylvania wrote:

There are Mike Rossi blowup dolls?

Who knew.

LoserMikeRossi wrote:

No, the next logical step is that he makes a sex tape.

I need to source these and put them up for sale on my blog. I'll be rich.

The article is coming along nicely. I'm pretty much done with it. I just now need to reach out the race organizers and Rossi for comment.I do have a few questions. Mileage_man, can you elaborate on point #3 below?

I hadn't added anything in about that. I've just added something in to the artdcle about it.

Here is what I wrote. After talkinga bout the 1/11,000 odds of not being in the photos like the people within 100 spots spots of him, I then talked about how everyone who finished the race except for Rossi was also found out on the course at least one. Then I added this after reading your post.

Is this accurate? I wasn't paying attention when you all made that tab on the spreadsheet so I want to make sure what I write is accurate.

Is my language about the coninuos photos correct? I wasn't sure how/why people used those 3 spots for that tab on the spreadseet.

One other thing. I'm putting some of the funnier meme's in there at the bottom of the article.

There was one that talked about how his training involved "Unleaded" . Some reference to unleaded. Does anyone have the link to it? I loved that one but can't find it easily.