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

It's been fun, but now the world knows he's a cheater. It's time to leave the sad old man alone. Move on to the next cheater.

Thank you Frank, for making burn through all my high speed data three days early this month refreshing this thread.

What's up with LA wrote:

It's been fun, but now the world knows he's a cheater. It's time to leave the sad old man alone. Move on to the next cheater.

Thank you Frank, for making burn through all my high speed data three days early this month refreshing this thread.

This.

Frank now reminds me of the guy in the Monte Python film .... arms and legs cut off insisting it’s only a flesh wound.

Insisting he’s not a cheater is just pathetic with the mountain of photographic evidence. I know some insist on a confession, but it just seems like overkill now.

a lot to lose wrote:

Aztlan Athletics offers ... a "Grab Bag" of resources including ... registration and timing support, course management and consultation..

THAT's gotta be the explanation. He's doing the, uh, leg work for consultation, helping races detect and eliminate cheating strategies. He's like a "white hat" hacker; you can tell because of the white hat he wears in all the race ph ... oh, wait. Never mind.

Hard to believe that the so-called friends of Meza like Lalo Diaz, Bland, Loyola HS community, Aztlan Track Club, etc. have not convinced Frank to fess up. This story will only continue to grow as long as “Meza’s team” denies the obvious cheating and issues ridiculous defenses and promises of future proof of Meza’s abilities!

Makes me wonder if some of them have more to lose by admitting the truth.

Roderick Powell wrote:

FYI, we do have two 71 year old mega stars...Jeannie Rice and Gene Dykes..true ambassadors of our sport...

Have we completely vetted them?

Slow as Molasses wrote:

On Yahoo Sports this morning:

https://sports.yahoo.com/70-yearold-doctor-disqualified-from-la-marathon-after-online-outrage-investigation-044141778.html

And it continues to snowball....

Rapidly ...... over 1700 comments under the yahoo article.

Last call for FM - wait till the bike photo goes viral and the dq’s start flowing. Phx at this point can’t not dq ...... then Derek’s and deadesq autopsies on the Long Beach ones where there are amazing pix.

Frank - don’t make your Aztlan friend stick up for you any more. It’s embarrassing and humiliating for him.

What's up with LA wrote:

It's been fun, but now the world knows he's a cheater. It's time to leave the sad old man alone. Move on to the next cheater.

Almost time, but first let's see another DQ from LA, one from Phoenix, and one from San Francisco. After the six-pack is complete maybe it will be time to move on.

MC Hammer wrote:

Have we completely vetted them?

With Gene, just go to Strava and you can see his runs and races

doubler wrote:

Inside Edition doing a story. Not sure if I will talk to them or not.

Awesome. I wonder if it’ll be Deborah Norville or the younger cute blond?

Those tmz dudes should get in on the action. Or better yet, an expose like on American Greed.

Great funny analogy on whoever compared frank to the guy on monte python with no limbs...

Keep up the great work Derek.... on to Long Beach ..... and SF

MC Hammer wrote:

Roderick Powell wrote:

FYI, we do have two 71 year old mega stars...Jeannie Rice and Gene Dykes..true ambassadors of our sport...

Have we completely vetted them?

Gene Dykes has done a 24 hour race on the track that had a live camera feed. As with the great Ed Whitlock, if you ever get a chance to see Gene run in person don't pass it up.

MC Hammer wrote:

Roderick Powell wrote:

FYI, we do have two 71 year old mega stars...Jeannie Rice and Gene Dykes..true ambassadors of our sport...

Have we completely vetted them?

I'm an ultrarunner and ran with Gene on different occasions. He's the real deal, there's no question about it.

This is absolutely fascinating. So all along he has been doing this by bike? This would make sense, less chance of getting caught by subway or traffic camera, eliminate the chance of a traffic jam or subway delay, hop on and off the bike and covertly track the runners.

It seems he got sloppy. The yellow on the socks, red stripe on the shoes, black Nike hat, and he kept the long sleeved shirt? Why wouldn't he just dump those along with the warm-up pants??? Why not change the hat to a different color, wear plain socks, shoes with no distinctive marks?

First of all, runner 185 has 42 photos and Frank has 5!!!!! Second, no chance in hell a 70 year old runner with his body type is running a 6:51 pace for a full bleeping marathon! Third, how many of my fellow runners don't wear a white running shirt because that is going to be soaked and sticking to you from sweat and water you might throw on your head, and everyone will be seeing any extra belly fat, nipples, etc because it's soaking wet. Zoom in on his finishing photos. That shirt is COMPLETELY DRY. If I run 5 miles in a white tank that thing is sticking to me like I entered a wet t-shirt competition!

Two other question/observations. It looks like he has something black draped around the handle bars of the bike, not sure what that could be. What is the string thing he is fumbling with in the one running photo and then holding in his left hand at the finish? Lastly, he has that distinctive gaunt face with the dark raccoon circles around his eyes. To me that shows up pretty clearly in the bike photo.

doubler wrote:

Inside Edition doing a story. Not sure if I will talk to them or not.

Good Morning America!

The laughter of the commentators is pretty telling. They don't buy the story, and they haven't even seen the bike photo.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

Just ignore or trawl through all the pics if you want. wrote:

gubner wrote:

Is there are reason you can't just link to the photos you say are the smoking gun instead of telling others to sort through thousands of photos to find what you found?

Yes, because he/she is trolling.

Not a troll. Obviously there's enough evidence out there now and the damage has been done. This is the icing though.

Not Just Yet wrote:

Almost time, but first let's see another DQ from LA, one from Phoenix, and one from San Francisco. After the six-pack is complete maybe it will be time to move on.

This has been bugging me for a while. Look at Frank's face as he finishes San Francisco 2014.

He looks terribly disappointed or disgusted. I think I know why. He "ran" 2:59:10 at LA 2014, and he was trying to beat that time. He ran 2:59:40 at San Francisco. Just missed what would have been a PR for him at that point. So close.

Shoulda pedaled faster, I guess. Or worn less clothing to save on transition time.

GMA was short and what the hosts found most interesting was that FM could actually run a record marathon AND take a "wee" break.

IowaRunner wrote:

This is absolutely fascinating.

...

First of all, runner 185 has 42 photos and Frank has 5!!!!! Second, no chance in hell a 70 year old runner with his body type is running a 6:51 pace for a full bleeping marathon! Third, how many...

Two other question/observations. It looks like ...

Yes, you're adding in some interesting observations. And you're noticing some of the "Frank anomalies" that have been accumulating over hundreds of pages on the thread. It's hard to sift through all of it, but you may find it interesting browsing around (and reading Derek/doubler's posts at marathoninvestigation.com if you haven't already).

But yeah, there's a ton of circumstantial evidence.

I'm still working out the calculations, but in light of all these pieces of evidence, it seems that the probability of FM having run a sub-3 at any time in the last decade is roughly equal to the probability of Gene Dykes running a sub-3 ... with a just-bought winning Powerball ticket in one hand and a silicone-based life form evolving spontaneously out of the water bottle in his other hand.

The curious programmer/runner wrote:

....

I've created a program that could allow anybody to download a large amount of finisher pics for analysis so that not just us programmers are able to do this. Would anybody be interested in me posting the code and instructions? I can make it very fool proof.

Curious programmer--I have a favor to ask. Is there a way you can look at the 2014 San Francisco photos and find a way to be able to either scrape or view sequentially? They're using some Unix timestamp on the photos that makes it impossible to change one digit and see either the previous or next photo in the series. Example:

6555945_race_0.5948109768047379.display.jpg?1406636962

I recognize the last set of digits starting with 1406 as Unix time, which would convert, in this case, to 07/29/2014 @ 12:29pm (UTC). The date of the race was 7/29/2014. The other digits are still a mystery to me.

Any illumination you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

He probably didn't spend enough time on the bike to get in shape for San Francisco. Learning a cyclocross mount/dismount method might have helped too. Also, it's a pretty old bike. He's been seen on a much nicer bike in his triathlon photos, but I imagine he didn't want to risk it being stolen.