Did Mike Rossi (viral marathon dad) cheat his way into Boston?

This thread is getting good. what I've never understood is why when cheaters get caught red handed don't they just own up to it immediately. I think most people would back off at that point. What Mike is now doing is actually making matters worse for himself as the house of cards continues to collapse.

The Summarizer wrote:

guy at the water fountain wrote:

What would be the elevator summary of this discussion?

"Attention whore too slow to qualify for Boston, cheats his way in"

"No photos on course (everyone else had them) and the race had no timing mats other than start and finish. Oh, and he was conspicuously quiet about this race on his multiple social media accounts while endlessly boasting about all others. "

The Summarizer II wrote:

The Summarizer wrote:

"Attention whore too slow to qualify for Boston, cheats his way in"

"No photos on course (everyone else had them) and the race had no timing mats other than start and finish. Oh, and he was conspicuously quiet about this race on his multiple social media accounts while endlessly boasting about all others. "

"Refuses to post GPS records of the race or even training runs which might be even remotely close to his amazing BQ. Blocks anyone who asks. Deletes or hides social media ccounts when outed."

Shall I go on?

He knows he was wrong and he's sorry. Expect to see a big apology to that principal.

fasterthanyoudbag wrote:

Absolutely NO proof he cheated. Why don't you do something constructive with your time instead of trying to destroy someone of their accomplishment.

Focus on your on running and goals. You are pathologically obsessed with Mike.

,

Hey, I think you're the same person as BostonBQ:

BostonBQ wrote:

Sorry, pal you can't prove he cheated. You have NO proof. Are you jealous of his accomplishment.

You should celebrate others successes rather and criticize them. Perhaps if you put more work into your training you might be able to qualify for Boston.

These posts are nearly identical. Both have a question in the first paragraph, but leave off the question mark. Both say "NO proof" with the "no" in all caps. Both have the same poorly constructed message telling the readers to focus on their own running.

So you're obviously the same loser! Way to go, loser!

soccer moms wrote:

He knows he was wrong and he's sorry. Expect to see a big apology to that principal.

He already kinda sorta apologized to the principal (but not really).

Now Mike Rossi needs to apologize to the running community, Lehigh Valley race director, the BAA and did I miss anyone else?

Hello everyone. It seems like a lot of people have jumped on here that haven't read the whole thread.

Let me summarize the evidence we have that he didn't run his BQ.

1) A guy who has a 5k pb of 21:52, a half-marathon pb of 1:40:44 supposedly ran a 3:11 marathon. That simply doens't happen.

His half marathon time averages out to 7:41 per mile. His marathon time - twice the distance comes out to be 7:18.8 per mile. Thus hes' 22.2 seconds per mile too slow for just the half. So if he was running it on a track, he'd be more than 5 seconds per lap to slow. Could he run twice as far more than 20 seconds per mile faster? No, Not possible.

Or let's take his 5k time. That comes out to 7:02.3 per mile. People can't run more than 8 times as far just slowing down 16.5 seconds per mile. The world record for the 5k is 12:37.35. That comes out to 4:03.8 per mil

If the world record holder for the 5k could run a marathon slowing down only 16.5 seconds per mile, the world record would roughly be 1:53.45/.

The world record for the marathon is 2:02:57. That comes out to 4:41.36 per mile. So a pro slows down almost 40 seconds per mile when you look at their 5k to marathon differential.

Maybe that doesn't do it for casual observers - non runneres. So please take a look at the research we've done.

We've looked the 20 finishers closest to him at Lehgh Valley (10 that finsihed in front of him, 10 behind him) - all of them have run WAY faster than him. The slowest person within 20 spots of hin ckills him at lower distances. The person who finsihed 10 spots behind him has run a 5k in 20:12 and half in 1:32.16. That runner's 5k time is 32 seconds per mile faster than Mr. Rossi's. That guy's half marathon time is 38.8 seconds per mile faster than Mr. Rossi's, yet Mr. Rossi beat him the marathon? NO.

Non-hard core runners may not understand how much of a difference thirty-some odd seconds per mile is. IT'S A TON. IT'S BASICALLY THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN PROFESSIONAL MAN AND PROFESSIONAL WOMAN IN RUNNING. SO UNLESS YOU THINK A WOMAN IS GOING TO WIN THE OLYMPIC MEN'S GOLD MEDAL IN RUNNING ANYTIME SOON, THEN YOU SHOUDLN'T BELIEVE THAT SOMEONE WITH MR. ROSSI'S PRS RAN THAT MARATHON

The other runner's PRs are listed here:

https://goo.gl/i4y8ck

So 1) We've established his other running results AREN'T EVEN IN THE RIGHT BALL PARK . But you want people to believe he had the MOST AMAZING day in the history of running, yet

2) His results came in a race which conveniently doesn't have intermediate chip timing. Most big marathons nowadays have it. This race did not. How convenient. So cutting the course is very doable.

But let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt. He's from PA and Lehigh is in PA so maybe he chose the race for it's proximity to him. Well I'm sure there are ltos of photos of him on the course right? Wrong.

3) Instead of chips, one would normally rely on race photographs to prove he was out on the course. There are ZERO race photographs of him on the course except at the finish. How convenient.

We've done A LOT OF RESEARCH ABOUT THIS. This spreadsheet -

https://goo.gl/i4y8ck

- reveals that the 50 finishers before him and after him were all photographed at least 3 times on the course (two other times not counting the finish). He is nowhere to be seen.

4) The guy loves to brag about his times/performances - yet he was very quite about bragging about his supposed qualifier and didn't upload his GPS.

5) He ran over 3:40 and 4:00 in two recent marathons. THe 3:43 came just two months after his supposed 3:11. In two months, he lost more than a minute per mile yet was happy with the performance post-race?

So there is ZERO reason for me to believe he ran the time he claims to run.

Goodnight. I may try a formal article tomorrow but it will take time as I'll need to contact race directors, hopefully other finishers and Mr. Rossi himself.

-Rojo

PS. I may try to get a stats guy at 538 to figure the odds out but I bet it's wya over one in a million being legitimate.

soccer moms wrote:

He knows he was wrong and he's sorry. Expect to see a big apology to that principal.

She is not the only person that deserves an apology. He owes the person who was the first person who missed the BQ cut off an apology. He took their rightfully earned spot. But people that cheat like this don't think about the people they hurt, only themselves. My guess is 50 50 we see an apology, unless it really gets to the mainstream media. Then IF there is an apology, it will be one of those none apology apology's. " I wanted my kids to see me run in the marathon, I got caught up in the moment, I didn't mean to hurt anyone, Of the people I offended"

just so you know wrote:

KudzuRunner wrote:

My search results are never personalized. I hate giving Google my soul. So I never, ever search when I'm signed in to Google. I auto-delete cookies when I close my browser.

You can remain signed into Google and simply go to your settings and set it to turn off your search history permanently, rather than go through the trouble of signing in/out all the time. This de-personalizes the search in the same manner.

They still store data about your search results they just don't use that data to filter search criteria when you do subsequent searches. Even with signing out before searching, they still have your IP address so unless you're running through a vpn to do every Google search, which is on par with stock-piling for a zombie apocalypse in terms of looney, it's just not worth it.

Johnny Two Time, Very good sleuthing. it's a shame that we no longer have the ability to look up IPs. We used to be able to do it, but not anymore.

rojo wrote:

Hello everyone. It seems like a lot of people have jumped on here that haven't read the whole thread.

Let me summarize the evidence we have that he didn't run his BQ.

PS. I may try to get a stats guy at 538 to figure the odds out but I bet it's wya over one in a million being legitimate.

Based on my estimations of his athlinks stats His alleged 3:11 marathon performance is roughly "4 sigmas" away from his average performance which falls between "near certainty" and "discovery" and carries odds of about 1 out of 15,000+. So Mr. Rossi's performance is possible but highly inprobable without even looking at the rest of the damning evidence.

Nice work Johnny.Hey, I think you're the same person as BostonBQ:

BostonBQ wrote:

So you're obviously the same loser! Way to go, loser!

Born in the 856 wrote:

Disco is Dead wrote:

Is this Mike "Dancing on Air" Rossi?

Yep.

From Wikipedia: ...Mike Rossi was a former dancer who transitioned to being a host and in 1986 became one of the youngest hosts of a live daily television program in American TV history. House dancers included Kelly Ripa...

Our boy doing the ice bucket challenge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3-5thok9ec

Oh yeah, there was nothing, and I mean nothing narcissistic or attention-seeking about that. "Look at my hugh-jass 'Murican-made Ford and GM vehicles while I dump ice over my middle aged crossfit body! Lookit me goooooo! Whoo! I'm a hero and a patriot! I'm gonna stick it to them thar terrorists by running the Boston Marathon! Go Me! Whooo! I'm a freedom fighter!"

ROJO you are on point.

I'm a hobby runner like this cheater.

I bust my ass 20+ weeks at a time.

21:00 flat

1:32

3:25......YAH 3:25

SO 3:11 NO EFFIN WAY DUDES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice Sleuthing! Thanks to everyone who contributed to the outing of this attention whore!

fasterthanyoudbag wrote:

He already has. It was the Lehigh marathon. Too bad you weren't there.

Son, stop using all the fake names and just tell them what you told me. You had a great race day but a bad hair day. You politely told those pesky photographers "no pictures please!"

Nar-sis-sist wrote:

Born in the 856 wrote:

Yep.

From Wikipedia: ...Mike Rossi was a former dancer who transitioned to being a host and in 1986 became one of the youngest hosts of a live daily television program in American TV history. House dancers included Kelly Ripa...

Our boy doing the ice bucket challenge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3-5thok9ec

Oh yeah, there was nothing, and I mean nothing narcissistic or attention-seeking about that. "Look at my hugh-jass 'Murican-made Ford and GM vehicles while I dump ice over my middle aged crossfit body! Lookit me goooooo! Whoo! I'm a hero and a patriot! I'm gonna stick it to them thar terrorists by running the Boston Marathon! Go Me! Whooo! I'm a freedom fighter!"

Why do you all hate 'mericuh?

When I heard about 'the letter' I knew he was no good. Attendance rules are super-clear and he was trying to shout over them. I was amazed his half-aasery was even a story.

The perfect American metaphor. Cheating and lying and talking loud to cover it up. Good job everyone!

Compl

Game Over! wrote:

It appears either Mike or one his buddies are doing some none stop posting over the last few pages to try and put an end to the thread.

Couldn't agree more. Been following this thread from the beginning and supporters of Mike come rushing in the last 5 pages. Smh...

Give it up Mike. I'm starting to feel bad for you and I can't stand cheaters. The evidence is stacked up against you.

You're only making it worse for yourself. Admit you cheated and the attacks on you will start to die down. And if you didn't cheat, which i suppose is possible however remote, prove it. Post GPS data, pictures of you on the course, even handwritten splits for crying out loud. Anything man. If you end up proving (or at least bringing about reasonable doubt) you did run a 3:11 there better be a lot of apologies.

The people at letsrun will make this as big an incident as possible. In case you didnt notice we made a chart of runners around you and the amount of pictures that were taken of them versus you. A chart. The results are damning.

We all have a great race every once and a while and find it nearly impossible to replicate the results without further training. But this is too far of a gap in times. It has been established by the letsrun community and we are pretty much all at a consensus, the time gap is way to big. Plus there is even more evidence.

What you did was wrong Mike. You snubbed a runner who probably trained a lot harder than you out of Boston. I'm only in high school but qualifying for Boston is already on my bucket list. I wouldn't fathom doing what you did; the whole point of running for me is to beat my own records. To have a feeling of accomplishment when I finally break my pr.

Do the right thing Mike, apologize.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Letsrunners I know many of you feel this guy should be publicly humiliated and probably fined or put in jail or something. And theres a part of me that agrees with that. I put too much of my heart and effort into running to care about cheaters. But lets face it, the punishment should match the crime. He prevented one person from getting into Boston. He may have altered the corrals a bit. Yes, if I were the person he snubbed I'd want him hung at first, but I hope I'd cool down eventually and realize he could have done something a lot worse. There are simply greater injustices in the world... Get him to write an apology to the principal, the general running community, and the marathon runner he snubbed (if thats even possible to look up) that admit hes wrong and hes sorry. If we cant track down the particular runner he snubbed make him write an general apology to all the Boston qualifiers that still couldn't make it into the race. If he doesnt and refuses to apologize in the next week or two, leave him alone. Clearly theres something mentally wrong with him if he doesnt.

We may be only trying to shame Mike on this forum, but his whole family and even children will be ridiculed if we keep this up. We need to show that we are humans and we have hearts, and think about the people who will be impacted even if it isnt their fault.

I'm in the camp that can't believe the 3:11. That said, just as Rojo summarized the case against him, let's try to summarize whatever defense has been put forth. Like most of you, I want to know the truth. Just as our justice system depends on defense attorneys, let's see if we can at least piece together his defense to see whether it stands up to scrutiny:

1) He says he was injured and raced too much in previous running efforts, resulting in performances well below his potential. He purposely avoided races to be healthy for Lehigh Valley.

2) A guy posting as "Sub3HourMarathoner" says "I ran with Mike during the Lehigh marathon. He slowed down a bit at the end. I was surprised he didn't finish with a better time." Doesn't post his bib number for photo verification.

3) It was a point-to-point course without readily available mass transit.

4) Photos show him finishing.

5) He confirmed afterward on Twitter that he ran a BQ.

Is there anything else I'm missing that would bolster his case?