It's a shame that this thread has degenerated into exchanges between trolls and individuals who don't get it. Although there's no serious question about the fact of cheating, there are still other interesting questions about this case, and I was hoping that the level of discourse might remain high enough to address those matters as information leaks out and facts dribble in.
Avocado's Number wrote:
It's a shame that this thread has degenerated into exchanges between trolls and individuals who don't get it.
It seems to happen a lot that people who "engage" with trolls merely to expose them are misunderstood by those who simply shout "troll" and miss their intent to do some "astroturfing".
Took me a while wrote:
some Latino dude wrote:
this troll just keeps reeling in the suckers.
it's obviously an LRC regular having a little fun at your expense.
he comes across as authentic as Franks race times but some of you guys just can't help yourselves....so well played I guess.
Thank you. Probably the most sensible post I've read in about 7 pages. My phone's about to die though so I might need to resume this tomorrow.
If you were going to */10 me, what do you think I'd score?
11/10. Well done.
Ironically enough, I think the person with the most to lose out of all this is Lalo Diaz. Frank is in the twilight of his life and career (might not even practice anymore for all I know) so besides leaving behind a questionable legacy isn't going to hurt him much, except his ego. Diaz on the other hand you'd have to think stands a very good chance of losing his job over this. Supporting a fraud and making aggressive and snarky comments when approached for comment isn't going to go down well, would be shocked if there wasn't some sort of investigation happening as we speak. He unquestionably knew Frank's claims were false yet allowed him unfettered access to the kids, not a crime of course but allowing someone with such demonstrably poor character to coach at (from what I can gather) a fairly renowned school is not a good look. Couple that with his responses to Derek and others and you'd have to question whether he has brought the school into disrepute, a standard employment clause where I'm from, can only assume it's the same over there. For that reason I don't think Frank ever 'fesses up because if he does, chances are his good mate is going down with the ship.
Just Googled Lalo Diaz, he's an old man too but my point still stands.
areallyniceguy wrote:
This story is so confusing. On one hand, it seems like there's evidence that Frank is a cheater, but on the other hand, I don't understand why he wasn't mandated to run with an observer before? If the cheating was so prevalent and happened in the past, why didn't race officials insist that he run with an observer? That's a lot of races to cheat in!! I read that he completed over 100 races in his life. And it would require a lot of planning to do so in over 100 races! It boggles my mind how he would be able to pull anything like this off while having a job, coaching and just living his life. If he did cheat in every race that he did well in then, the man deserves a medal. That seems like a lot of work! Go Frank!
LA Marathon did offer him an observer for 2016 because his 2015 times was suspect. Of course, he chose to dodge it because we all know he can't run at that pace. He probably entered the LA Marathon in 2017, 2018, and 2019 pretty late so there was no time to setup an observer runner.
Would like to see Direct Evidence wrote:
Perhaps the LA Marathon has not made a DQ decision because Frank Meza hit all the timing mats and shows up on all the timing mat photos, so no one else is carrying his bib. Also
1. There is no admission from Frank Meza
2. There are no photos of him getting in or out of a vehicle or bus or train during the race.
3. Frank Meza has fast times in previous marathons and half marathons.
1. If you cheated, would you admit it?
2. Pretty evident that he didn't fun the full course. If he did, you would see pictures of him like other sub 3 marathoners.
3. Do you have a record of his 2:20 marathon? I haven't read anything about his fast half marathon.
Took me a while wrote:
If Frank previously ran a 2:20, and runs for fun, and doesn't care about PRs or WRs, and decided to take a break and ended up running a 2:54, what difference does it make to any of you? Who cares if he used the bathroom or stretched or even grabbed a burger? He's a hobby jogger and according to literally everyone he knows him he can legitimately run fast.
In which marathon and when did Frank run 2:20? The difference it makes to us is that he appears to have cheated to run the fastest marathon time in the world for a 70-year-old (even if not on an eligible course). The LRC doesn't like cheats.
rojo wrote:
The thing I'm most interested in his how did he do it?
I mean LA is point to point. And we know he ran like .8 of a mile at one point. So if he runs there and back (to a car) but waits a bit before it, you are talking like 1.6miles. I'm not sure he's fast enough to run that far, drive the car, etc.
Uber isnt' real reliable unless you tell the driver you'll pay for 3 hours worth of work.
A bike isn't easy to pull of either.
Maybe I should cheat in LA next year. I've always claimed I should "run" lehigh valley in the same time as Mike Rossi. There is no way I could run that fast but I want to hit the timing mats and finish in his time and see if they DQ me. Maybe I should fly out to LA and try their 'minor league' race as well. I can write if off as a business expense and the wife will be thrilled to get some sunshine.
Any suggestions on the best way for me to hit all of the timing mats within say 30 seconds of an even split while barely running?
There are two questions here. How did he do it in the past at other marathons? How did he do it at LAM 2019?
In LAM 2019, he could have done it four different ways.
- An accomplice with a car picks him up, drops him off before the next split mat, and then drives ahead to pick him up after the next mat.
- He jumps on and off the course near the mat and then rides a bicycle to just before the next split. On the longest known run (0.8 miles), he could have used more than one bike, prepositioning a bike just after the mat so he wouldn't have to double back. He'd only have to ride about 3.1 miles to his next mat, which at 15mph would only take 12 minutes. Remember, Frank is a triathlete so he probably has several bikes. Doing these bricks (3.1 mile moderate-paced bike ride followed by 1/4 mile run at 8:30 or so) would be doable at 70. I'm 71 and I could do it. Heck, 12mph on a bike would cover the distance in only 15 minutes and that's an equivalent effort to walking for a cyclist.
- A $799 electric bike or a couple of electric bikes would make the bike portion a piece of cake. Alternately, he could rent an electric scooter or two and lock them for the short time he would be off the scooter.
-Or he could have used some combination of all the above.
fisky wrote:
- A $799 electric bike or a couple of electric bikes would make the bike portion a piece of cake. Alternately, he could rent an electric scooter or two and lock them for the short time he would be off the scooter.
I'd heard of E-Bikes but until I rented one on a holiday I assumed they would be pretty "meh", I was massively surprised and anyone who thinks he would be pressed to hit the splits without an accomplice has not tried one, 20 mph/32 kph needed an utterly trivial amount of effort even uphill.
IS THIS FRANK?
In this sequence of photos, a runner can be seen standing by the photographers in the same spot FM jumps onto the course about 90 seconds later.
On finisherpix dot com, go to page 7206 and look at the sequence of photos beginning at 3017_115290 through 3017_115298. On the link below, the photo os 3017_115296. You can go through the photos by changing the last digit on the URL address ( i.e., from ...296 to 295, etc).
IF this is Frank, in order to get to this point on the course to be in this photo, FM would have had to run the 2.3 miles from the previous mat faster than the current M70 5K world record.
https://www.finisherpix.com/gallery/singlephoto/en/usd/3017/3017_115296
You don't want to take note of the countless evidence, but you believe the first poster that Frank allegedly told him or her that he ran 2:20? And now you expect us all to discuss about your opinion that Frank has sensational knowledge about diet or other superior expertise stuff?
Took me a while wrote:
Goodnight and I hope Frank receives an apology from everyone.
For what? Is there an obligation to believe in him, as if it were a religious law or a universal law?
https://twitter.com/giroditalia/status/1140529728065036289ExpertKipWatcher wrote:
fisky wrote:
- A $799 electric bike or a couple of electric bikes would make the bike portion a piece of cake. Alternately, he could rent an electric scooter or two and lock them for the short time he would be off the scooter.
I'd heard of E-Bikes but until I rented one on a holiday I assumed they would be pretty "meh", I was massively surprised and anyone who thinks he would be pressed to hit the splits without an accomplice has not tried one, 20 mph/32 kph needed an utterly trivial amount of effort even uphill.
Avacado wrote: "There have been quite a number of cases involving course-cutting on Pikes Peak, largely by cutting out switchbacks. In 2012, an appeals committee was formed to deal with such cases, and the number of course marshals was increased."
I believe the switchback cutters were not trying to cut the course, but were just trying to find ways to pass in the last few miles near the top. This is dangerous, so they needed to find better ways to stop it.
The traffic really isn't as bad as those pix make it look. Generally you end up at that point "running" with others your same pace and nobody has enough spring in their step to pass anybody.
Those running 3:03 up, as FM apparently did in 1988, would not have any traffic issues on the way up. (My best is 3:15 up. Barely any traffic issues until the last quarter mile when the 3:05ers are coming down.)
Avocado's Number wrote:
It's a shame that this thread has degenerated into exchanges between trolls and individuals who don't get it. Although there's no serious question about the fact of cheating, there are still other interesting questions about this case, and I was hoping that the level of discourse might remain high enough to address those matters as information leaks out and facts dribble in.
Actually, the troll prompted some excellent posts by deadest. The fact is that by trolling the board and playing devil’s advocate, the troll makes the case against Meza that much stronger.
I have uncovered more potential evidence that will need higher resolution photos to confirm. I wrote a program to download batches of images and search for chunks of pixels that we close to the same color as Frank's blue shirt.
This resulted in identifying a few photos of someone who looks like Frank (with hat and all) on a bike in the background on a sidewalk. I also found some amusing photos I plan to share as just fun.
I uncovered it this morning and didn't have time to compile it before work. I will post later tonight. Stay tuned.
Experienced Programmer Curious Sleuth wrote:
I have uncovered more potential evidence that will need higher resolution photos to confirm. I wrote a program to download batches of images and search for chunks of pixels that we close to the same color as Frank's blue shirt.
This resulted in identifying a few photos of someone who looks like Frank (with hat and all) on a bike in the background on a sidewalk. I also found some amusing photos I plan to share as just fun.
I uncovered it this morning and didn't have time to compile it before work. I will post later tonight. Stay tuned.
Note: still in reference to the 2019 LAM.
As a service to those who don't have the time to read all of a 4,000 post thread, I think every 10 pages or so I'll post a succinct summary of the most important takeaways. I can only hope they are all as game changing as this first one...................."stop eating eggs and start drinking copious amounts of water if you want to run marathons in the heat at world record pace just for fun"
doubler wrote:
rojo wrote:
The thing I'm most interested in his how did he do it?
I mean LA is point to point. And we know he ran like .8 of a mile at one point. So if he runs there and back (to a car) but waits a bit before it, you are talking like 1.6miles. I'm not sure he's fast enough to run that far, drive the car, etc.
Uber isnt' real reliable unless you tell the driver you'll pay for 3 hours worth of work.
A bike isn't easy to pull of either.
Maybe I should cheat in LA next year. I've always claimed I should "run" lehigh valley in the same time as Mike Rossi. There is no way I could run that fast but I want to hit the timing mats and finish in his time and see if they DQ me. Maybe I should fly out to LA and try their 'minor league' race as well. I can write if off as a business expense and the wife will be thrilled to get some sunshine.
Any suggestions on the best way for me to hit all of the timing mats within say 30 seconds of an even split while barely running?
We talked about this a bit last night. I have also said I’d like to replicate this, and maybe I will try, and just remove my chip before the finish.
He didn’t have to run 1.6 miles. Look at the course map between miles 11 and 12. I had wondered why he didn’t emerge closer to that mat. But he could have parked at mile 12, cutting the total distance he needed to cover to 0.8 miles if he did this solo.
If both of you could attempt this, while documenting the attempts, would be epic to watch. This would have to be a first... has anything like this ever been done before?
The Mooch wrote:
doubler wrote:
We talked about this a bit last night. I have also said I’d like to replicate this, and maybe I will try, and just remove my chip before the finish.
He didn’t have to run 1.6 miles. Look at the course map between miles 11 and 12. I had wondered why he didn’t emerge closer to that mat. But he could have parked at mile 12, cutting the total distance he needed to cover to 0.8 miles if he did this solo.
If both of you could attempt this, while documenting the attempts, would be epic to watch. This would have to be a first... has anything like this ever been done before?
Heck of an incentive to get in sub 2:50 shape...