Another run across America underway - is it legit? Boots currently on the ground

I believe someone already mentioned Dave Reading and "he's wife" (never get tired of that, LOL) upthread. Didn't he eventually switch over to riding a bike, before even that got too tough for his fat ass? He and Robbie were full-on grifters. Kip had a real career and was/is probably a decent guy other than his strange obsession (not too different from Frank Meza). Rossi is a sociopath, but not a full-time grifter that we know of.

It isn't quite that simple. He's had some perfectly clean days whilst unobserved - nobody (including Will C) has said he hasn't. But those clean days look nothing like the dirty days, either with HR and / or speed.

1) here's my post from #194

"Heart rate tech could be 100% inaccurate, this isn't the primary issue. The issue is that the inaccuracy is happening on a consistent basis ONLY during Goodge's three events over FOUR years, across multiple bits of tech (with multiple heart rate monitors & GPS), in the exact same, rather unique, way. These discrepancies haven't happened during any of his training runs, nor any of his witnessed runs.
The problem isn't just that it's faulty, it's WHEN it's faulty. This pattern needs to be explained.
Unless Will (the topic creator) is simply wrong.
I'm not saying that there isn't a perfectly reasonable explanation - a quirk of how his teams operate during these runs that explains it. But it needs to be explained."

The pattern may even be unreliable within those parameters, but it doesn't detract from the central issue of when the highly irregular times are occurring.

Note I mentioned the idea that Will C's arguments haven't been verified. This is because the bloke spent over 10 hours - by his own account - trawling through Strava. He had specifics over 4 years broken down in detail on his facebook page, but he inexplicably deleted every post before his (rather dramatic) comment about his final report. I'm not sure if he posted all of those posts on letsrun, but it was compelling.

There were two types of dodgy data: the egregious (90-120 BPM heart rates with notably faster times in PM sessions), and more moderate spells of faster periods at said heart rates. Low heart rates and low speeds & high heart rates and high speeds have never been an issue.

Again, this occurred across 4 years, 3 continents, and never during training, official races, or when monitored.

There's almost an element of the surreal when grifters are well and truly caught in the act. To the majority of people (myself included) it's not something that you can quite believe until you see it in person.

Yesterdays run is posted on Strava. The title is wrong, there are two Day 29s now.

Anyway, the odd thing about the Day 30 is that the HR is now low for the whole run.

It is of course, only odd compared to the other days.

At the moment I haven't seen enough evidence to convince me of cheating or that he isn't doing the run. I guess we will have to wait for willc to post a full report this week to decide.

Interesting post from Will C on the facebook group (https://tinyurl.com/4a9yr88m):

Hi all,
An update from me, now safely back in the UK. With great regret WG’s heart rates have returned to their physiologically impossible levels of before my visit. This all appears like a child’s game.
In short, his heart rates for the challenge look like this:
Day 1: His HR is always fine on day 1 of these challenges. Never a blemish.
Days 2-12 his heart crashes to circa 110s. At which point I stringently contact WG and crew and told them to show me a pulse.
Day 13: HR 138 – the rocket works.
Days 14-16 things markedly tail off again.
Day 17 - in light of my saying that I’ll report them to the authorities if they don’t behave, WG has his worst day of the challenge with just 76k at a pace of 8:34. His HR of 130 is clean though, considering the weak pace.
Things tail off again, as the pace rockets to 7:45 but at a slower heart rate of 126.
His HR for my 6 day visit are fine: 143, 137, 135, 119 [raining: walked the entire day, data clean], 129, 126 [another day of walking due to rain].
But then on day 28 after my confirmed departure: the pace rockets to a searing world class level of 7:06 but at an HR of just 119 – 7bpm quicker than when he walked the entire day before for 16kms less. And he follows up with a 120 yesterday, with his rate twice crashing.
------------------------
Another reason for my visit was to see how he was achieving these amazing second half of days. And quite frankly, he wasn’t. He walked some 90% of the second half of days that I was there, as evidenced by his splits for each half of distance – discounting the Nucalm nap of course:
The two days before I arrived saw two spectacular negative splits:
5:54 and 5:40
6:00 and 5:52
These negative splits are incredibly rare in running and all but unseen in multiday, and he is peeling two off back to back.
But when I arrived, to see how in the world he’s speeding up of a day, here are his splits:
5:09 and 5:47
4:53 and 5:59
4:54 and 5:44
5:22 and 5:33 [rain, straight walk, still a slow down]
5:32 and 6:10
5:00 and 5:37 [more rain and straight walking]
5:12 and 6:13 [day that I leave for UK]
As can be seen, these figures show someone fading throughout the day in a 100% pure manner than what one would expect on a multiday, with no chance of an even or negative split.
Let’s take a Jogle split for Lawson and Molinaro [both day 6]:
7:19 and 7:49
7:04 and 7:38
Both showing the perfect natural fade that Goodge also does under observation.
But then, after my departure, it’s happy hour, and straight back to negative splitting:
5:18 and 5:10.
Clearly part one was a major struggle, but then a big pick up in pace over part two as his heart dropped to a completely implausible range of 88-112 for the last 20 miles, having been at 116-151 for miles 2-29.
-----------------------
The abuse to me from WG and crew is as extreme as it gets. Balenger screamed at me multiple times on camera that I only care about this because I, “have a hard-on for a dead man,” which is one of the most unsettling and offensive insults I’ve ever heard.
Goodge shouted at me to go and do something to my wife. I didn’t catch what, but Mark who was there, said to him: “no Will, you mustn’t, you mustn’t.”
Unfortunately, I had to call off my observation of WG short by around 1.5 days, because on day 26 he became unhinged and started to threaten me physically. At one stage he suddenly marched straight out in front of my car forcing me to a sudden stop and then came and lurched for the driver’s door handle. Fortunately the car had an autolock on it.
A little later I saw him pick up a dark object from the grass verge which looked like a rock and concerned he could hurl it at the car, I threw it into reverse and gave him a wide berth for the next four hours. But when I did risk a drive by, he whirled around and still carrying the rock hurled it at the car from point blank range, where it made a loud crack on the side. Mark and James witnessed this.
I then imposed a 250 metre radius around him for my safety, but he would still scream the worst possible abuse at me from afar, pictured, when all I was doing was acting as a witness and observer to an attempt on a national record that had stood for 54 years.
Their youtube video for this week attempts to paint me in the worst possible light, but fortunately people are seeing through it. The crew were saying I’m mad for running up and down the course, when all I was doing was putting in 30-40 miles worth of training whilst waiting for WG to appear, as I’d tend to drive 3 miles ahead and wait.
The “major development” I have spoken of continues to grow in stature and has now become acute. I shall publicly release it here, at noon UK time, on Wednesday 3 May. I am just tying up its research.
My full report will follow in due course, but I need to see what the response is to the development, and it may just be better to let the run play out in full as the report’s stats would become dated the moment they landed.
Until Weds,
Will

As per Will C's post, day 26 is clean.

I said I'd provide some links on wrist watch HR reliability.

Earlier in this thread wvlc said this about the accuracy of heart rate monitors. In fact I've seen him quote this elsewhere too.

I have consulted the National Library of Public Medicine who have done a study of the accuracy of wrist based Garmins vs electrocardiograms, and they found this:

"Results: Both devices showed a low mean absolute error (1.16-1.48 bpm for Apple and 1.35-2.25 for Garmin) and mean absolute percentage error (<1% for Apple and 1.16-1.39% for Garmin) in all intensities."

He didn't provide a link, but here it is:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Accuracy of wrist-worn wearable devices for determining exercise intensity

As an indicator of exercise intensity, heart rate can be measured in a timely manner using wrist-worn devices. No study has attempted to estimate a target exercise intensity using wearable devices. The objective of the study...

Open link

And yes, the conclusion is as he says. What he doesn't say is that the tests were done on a stationary bike, not running.

And this is cherry picking. If you want to paint a different picture, pick a different study.

How about this one, again from the National Library of Public Medicine:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Accuracy of wearable heart rate monitors in cardiac rehabilitation

To assess the accuracy of four wearable heart rate (HR) monitors in patients with established cardiovascular disease enrolled in phase II or III cardiac rehabilitation (CR).Eighty adult patients enrolled in phase II or III CR...

Open link

This one involves running on a treadmill, and concludes wrist worn devices aren't that accurate. Some findings:

- Garmin was the worst, for example 95% of readings took in a spread of +-25 bpm relative to the benchmark ECG measurement.

- "Wrist-worn monitors tended to underestimate HR, and all periodically delivered spurious HR values."

- "Overall, wrist-worn HR monitors were less accurate in younger patients"

I know, I know, Goodge's numbers don't show random failures but systematic low values.

OK, how about this one, still from National Library of Public Medicine:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Accuracy of Heart Rate and Respiratory Rate Measurements Using Two Types of Wearable Devices

Wearable devices such as fitness trackers have become popular in the healthcare field. Tracking heart rate and respiratory rate, in addition to physical activity, may provide an accurate picture of daily health. We believe th...

Open link

It has a graph that shows a large number of measurements that were excluded because they were obviously too low.

Then all these studies were done in the lab, so they aren't affected by changes in humidity or lighting. What difference does that make? The closing seconds of the latest video shows WG wearing a watch over a top and then against his skin. What difference does that make?

Could the so called patterns in data be explained by anything other than watch muling? I don't know, but I think we're miles away from saying that it can't.

You can't hand wave the irregularities, especially given what Will C said 2 posts above (I've quoted it from facebook). It's the pick ups in pace as well that you have to consider.

Most of us on here run regularly. I've never seen any of these drops in my personal data. I've worn heart rate monitors for all sorts - including rowing in terrible conditions, cycling, and running an ultra.

Plus, Will G has used multiple watches (not just Garmin) and heart rate monitors.

Anyway, this is all getting v. messy, as entertaining as it is. I'm going to wait until he posts his report tomorrow and hope and actually progresses the discussion.

The conduct of Will and his team sounds particularly bad, but at the same time I don't think it suggests he has something to hide.

I should have noticed this in the video, well spotted. If he is wearing the monitor over clothing at the start of a run and then takes his jacket off and runs the rest with the watch on his skin then this might explain the HR.

If this is the case then, why the hell is Will G's team not pointing this out in some way. It's pretty obvious that reading HR data through a jacket might not give you accurate data!

Day 30 run for Goodge has HR data in the joke category. He quickens the pace but HR goes down

It'd be an easy thing to do to buy them some plausible deniability. But it'd be the other way around - against skin provides the more accurate readings - and an odd pattern given he speeds up in the afternoon / it's hotter then.

Away from the HR itself, Will C appears to think the speeds are impossible - a view that's only hardened since he witnessed the man himself running. My question is whether that's necessarily true.

Zero sign of wearing anything between watch and skin on day 29 pics, and a joke of a day for heartrate data - plenty of examples of 9-10 min miling at heartrates below 100 bpm.

Stats like that and the hostility shown to closer monitoring, or questioning of the data, and the ongoing refusal to track the runner rather than the crew confirm in my mind that something very hokey is going on and has been across the length of all of these challenges.

Entirely aside from all of that I have no idea how the brands he is claiming to ambassador for could want continued association with the behaviour currently on display.

Thanks for keeping this civil.

I'm not sure how I'm "hand waving the irregularities". I've just cited peer reviewed papers that support the data being irregular, and provided possible further explanations. Just saying "well my data is ok" is anecdotal. For what it's worth, mine isn't. I've an eyeballs out race where the heart rate was recorded as being lower than the gentle warm up.

I've also provided a counter example where WG's heart rate dropped when monitored, but this has been, if I could be so bold, hand waved away.

I'd agree that my heart rate doesn't drop during a run. But neither do I generally run at 10 minute miles, interspersed with walking, and take an hour's nap in the middle.

These brands have basically nothing to lose. If he's not busted, the brands get their recognition. If he is, they get their logo sprawled across all the coverage of the scandal. As long as they come out with a "we never would condone this behavior blah blah blah" post they get minimal reputational damage. Any publicity is good publicity. We should know by now that the incentives of capitalism are often not what we want them to be.

Ok, why is it clean? Before you knew which day the times/ rates I gave you were from you said they we're dirty. I hope you can see why that's problematic.

say my name

its a slow burner.....

I replied to that (#607). If you refer to Will C's latest facebook update in #606, the day in question was clean - he was walking.

The dirty days see a low heart rate and notably faster paces.

My mention of handwaving was in reference to this part of your post:

"I know, I know, Goodge's numbers don't show random failures but systematic low values".

This is the problem: systematic failures. They happened at extremely specific times across HUNDREDS of runs. Please read #606.

As for the studies linked, your last paper concludes: "The heart and respiratory rate measurements obtained using wearable devices were accurate within the practical margin of error."

Will's is failing to the tune of a 25% (or more) reduction, and - to repeat myself - it's happening at highly suspect times with accompanying increases in speed.

Your second study looks at their accuracy with cardiac rehabilitation patients and / or those with cardiovascular disease, and notes the results are different to the studies on normal people. Most of the watches / straps they tested were 90%+ accurate, with some over 95% accurate, and the heart rate strap being over 98% accurate. Will G, as I've previously mentioned, has used multiple watches and heart rate monitors - not just a Garmin (and not the specific Garmin model mentioned in this paper).

You're just saying "Will said X" to everything. Have checked any of it?

Day 26. Go and look now. Not walking. Heart rate drops between Ks 40 and 80 then jumps up again. Take K 57, sub 6 min at 111, completely flat. Why is this fine? How about 77, sub 6 at 114, slightly uphill? How is it different to the dirty days? Are you questioning anything he says? Have you, or anyone, checked these thousands of examples?