Pike's Peak Mule wrote:
gerdeweds wrote:
You can cut some switchbacks. You can also have more than one person running it and handing off bib/chip to make it appear to be a single runner. Or have an actual registered runner carrying two bibs/chips for all/most of the route.
That's why I was looking for photos of Pike's Peak. There are no photos of FM on the course, so how do we know he ran it himself?
I've discussed Frank's performances in the Pikes Peak races, as well as some possible methods of cheating in those races, in various posts during the course of this thread. I also included some links relating to those subjects. I'll just quickly note a few things here:
1. Frank's 1988 performance, when he was 39 years old, is consistent with relatively flat sea-level performances of around three hours, and arguably better for a sea-level runner without much specific training for a long uphill followed by a long downhill. There would have been various ways to cheat in that race, including course-cutting and perhaps bib-muling, but Frank's performance was reasonably consistent with what I might have expected him to be able to do at that age. (I think that many people may be assuming, incorrectly, that he has always been a slowpoke.) Although there was television coverage of the Pikes Peak races that year, and I still have a tape of that television coverage, I think it's very unlikely that it would provide much useful information in this case. Also, although I know that there were one or more race photographers at some of the Pikes Peak races in the 1980s, I don't know whether those photographers took pictures of all runners in 1988, and I'd be pretty surprised if anyone here could find one or more race photos of Frank (or someone else with his race number) that could shed much light. (I suppose you could ask Frank if he has any photos of his performance.) For a number of reasons, I'm actually giving him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
2. In Frank's three marathon performances from 2009 to 2013, he finished first, second, and fourth in the 60-64 age group. In the 2012 Pikes Peak Ascent. he finished fifteenth. Those performances would generally be consistent with flat sea-level times of, roughly, about 3:30 to 4:00 or more. Again, there would have been various ways of cheating in those races, but significant course-cutting would have been increasingly difficult as additional course marshals and intermediate timing checkpoints were added over the years. I don't know how much photographic evidence might be available from those races, which raises the possibility of bib-muling, but I do question why anyone in California would care enough about times on Pikes Peak to use a bib-mule, and I don't think that Frank's age-group places, although generally quite high, are obviously outrageous. For various reasons, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on these performances, but I also realize that, by his early 60s, he may have been locked into a pattern of cheating in virtually every race, even trail races for which times are sui generis.
