Frank Meza 2:53:10 at LA Marathon (70 years old) unofficial time (just finished)

Fawn, it’s moran on LRC.

Oh boy!

What is the value in winning or placing in your age group in a marathon? Or a 5k, 10k, or 1/2 marathon?

Obviously the value that individuals place on this varies widely, to an elite it means nothing, but to many, it means a lot! I would be curious to get Roderick's opinion as the originator of this thread and former admirer of Frank's.

Pick an arbitrary number, $200 value for winning an age group, $150 for 2nd, and $100 for third, $75 4th, $50 5th, $45 6th, $40 7th, $35 8th and so on down to 10th, that would be $750 a race that he has defrauded his fellow competitors. Obviously, someone who has never won an age group in their life and missed out on winning it at 70 because Frank cheated, I would say the value might be more than $200! You missed out on the experience of receiving the award, the accolades from friends and family, etc.

Derek has listed 44 marathon's that Frank has "ran". Those are just marathons, how many more 5ks, 10ks, and 1/2's has he cheated in? Let's just pick the number 50. Using the "value" of $750 lost for the top 10 participants in his age group that he cheated them out of, that would be $37,500! Of course, some of these races wouldn't have had 10 participants in his age group, but regardless, Frank has cheated a lot of people out of experiences that do have value, value that cannot be recovered with retroactive DQ's...

What about the wasted time on the part of the races looking into his cheating? Or the timing companies? Or us here on Letsrun...

doubler wrote:

Put up the article. This one is basically to report on the DQ and set the table for the more detailed analysis on the other races.

Well done Derek. With our crowd-sourced sleuthing and your own work promoted via the respected platform that you have, slowly but surely all Frank's transgressions are finally being hauled into the light.

Flounder wrote:

Bunch of hypocrites we are.

I don’t agree with what Frank did. It is wrong but this sport is screwed up at the top and you are clinging to Frankie like flies on shite while the owner of this website seems to encourage doping if it isn’t against the rules.

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9464562&page=2

While this thread has comments stating that NOP “juices better than everyone else.”

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9468464

Oh f&ck off. Do you even know what a hypocrite is? For your statement to be true, we mustn't comment on Frankie because we all serially cheat in races going back decades.

And what in hell has the owner of this website got to do with this thread? If you haven't noticed, all the work was done without any involvement from the site owners at all. Indeed it has been commented on many times that the thread never appeared in the hot topics and the site seemed intent on ignoring it and Frank's cheating.

Frank has swindled dozens and dozens of genuine age-group medal winners and you're whining about and focusing on, a thread about the hypothetical possibility of doping with spinach! What is wrong with you?

.

How could the Loyola coaches not know he was cheating all this time. Looking at that list on doubler’s site, anyone who has even a moderate amount of running knowledge would be suspect of Frank’s “accomplishments.” Just 2011 alone - 5 sub 3:15 marathons and a 3:19 (damn that LA traffic) by a 60+ year old man, sometimes with less than 30 days recovery. Then 8 even FASTER marathons in 2014. I mean, come on!

doubler wrote:

Put up the article. This one is basically to report on the DQ and set the table for the more detailed analysis on the other races.

Thanks.

It’s worth more money to elites. And they generally don’t have to pay for their races.

I am enjoying your jumping of the shark! Please continue Tony.

Most races don’t have prize money. But I am sure that Frankie has stolen a lot of $3 trophies over the years.

Flounder wrote:

It’s worth more money to elites. And they generally don’t have to pay for their races.

I am enjoying your jumping of the shark! Please continue Tony.

Most races don’t have prize money. But I am sure that Frankie has stolen a lot of $3 trophies over the years.

Yeah, monetarily it’s nothing. So no need to go there. The value of an age-grade win is subjective but no one has the right to steal it.

Flounder wrote:

It’s worth more money to elites. And they generally don’t have to pay for their races.

I am enjoying your jumping of the shark! Please continue Tony.

Most races don’t have prize money. But I am sure that Frankie has stolen a lot of $3 trophies over the years.

I am merely pointing out that Frank has swindled/defrauded a substantial amount of value from participants. Civil courts typically assign monetary value so that a civil judgement can be rendered against a defendant. I am presenting a hypothetical value. It is much greater than the $3 trophy that you mention.

[quote]triathleteguru wrote:

What is the value in winning or placing in your age group in a marathon? Or a 5k, 10k, or 1/2 marathon?

Obviously the value that individuals place on this varies widely, to an elite it means nothing, but to many, it means a lot! I would be curious to get Roderick's opinion as the originator of this thread and former admirer of Frank's.

There are occasional things we win as over 50 runners. (Brooks shoes/small gift certificates/free entry to next year) Mostly medals. Most of us run a lot of races & what we would want is to get our medal ASAP and get in our car to go take our well-deserved nap. My first race was Run Seal Beach 2015. In spite of my slow time I got a third place medal. They do a nice medal presentation. Every other year they start with the oldest first. They usually read your time. ( which should be always)

Some runners care a lot about medals. Some seldom bother to get them. I like accurate results. Not 5kers in the top 10 results of the 10k, forever with some timing companies. BUT, for someone to cheat to steal a medal and places from real runners goes “beyond the pale”. It is not possible that Frank Meza did not come to know that he was taking medals away from other runners. That is the slimiest aspect of this. He not only hurt the runners themselves, but anyone else that would have received joy from these runners happy day. So FM hurt many people this way. Lastly, Frank Meza’s placements were close to getting top 3 masters (40 plus), which sometimes can mean a nice payday. This would be possibly theft of enough value to be a low level felony, certainly a misdemeanor.

If I were the judge I would award the participants Frank bumped to the degree Frank was dishonest. Cheaters obviously do harm to the community and that's one way to make them pay.

For example: I was hurt. I saw how bad I am compared to some old fat guy (by age group winner standards he is fat), it was demoralizing I tell you. I started to wonder if maybe I had some hidden cancer or something slowing me down.

Same with the Age group dopers, they suck.

Still bad at boxing. To be clear Frank Meza did come close to the masters prizes in marathons. I did look into this a bit, could not prove or disprove that he received money this way. I didn’t do a complete check. So, it could have happened. Which of course would makes this more serious.

Roderick: Did Frank actually go up on the podium to get his awards or did he skulk off to DQ?

BTW , I just noticed that Dairy Queen and Disqualification have the same acronym, and that in this case there could be some confusion.

The LA Marathon has now updated the outcome for the 70-74 AG on their results link.

Goodbye Frank.

Next up Phoenix.

It does look like they are in the process of scrubbing him from the results rather than dropping him to the bottom with a DQ in the AG and OA.

He still appears in searchable results at 2:53:10.

It took me awhile v3 wrote:

... A parent claimed Frank said he ran a 2:20 marathon. I have now presented this as fact.

You never did any such thing... nor did anyone else.

Took me a while v2 wrote:

Frank will disappear and now you've alienated a whole group of potential new runners who came from LA Times to find out that if they run a marathon Derek is going to chase them down and try to get them fired. Well done chaps.

Bull$#!+. Stop being delusional and hyperbolic.

“Oh f&ck off. Do you even know what a hypocrite is? For your statement to be true, we mustn't comment on Frankie because we all serially cheat in races going back decades.”

Whoa boi. Triggered easily ain’t you? This is a running site and these are all recent threads here that talk about various methods that runners use for cheating.

I have to suspect that you’re a sub elite wannabe who is taking “supplements.”

Or maybe you’re just Frankie’s driver.

I think that what Frank does is horrible and that he should be permanently banned from the sport.

A magnificent obsession. You're really going all in. You do realize, there are drugs available to calm mania?