Robert Young fakes run across America

Moveon.org wrote:

No smoking gun after weeks of investigating?

Peter Sagan wrote:

Moveon.org wrote:

No smoking gun after weeks of investigating?

https://www.strava.com/activities/617303559

80% of that is a 3000 ft decline over 19mi. That's a pretty comfortable downhill grade. Actually sort of believable, if he indeed has the form Dr Lieberman says he does.

I ran with guys at school who were good at that but were nowhere on the flats or uphill. Maybe this is his real talent.

0/10. Every mile is ridiculous, but the first 6 are uphill so even more ridiculous than the other ridiculous miles.

quote]Peter Sagan wrote:

Moveon.org wrote:

No smoking gun after weeks of investigating?

[/quote]

Climbing from 8,500 to 9,000 feet at 6 miles @ 6:06 average when his marathon pace is 7's, and running without EPO or altitude training.

Plus the previous day's fatigue in his legs.

The stint in Flagstaff would not have yet created the necessary RBC's. Is that correct, RJM?

Homegoy wrote:

Peter Sagan wrote:https://www.strava.com/activities/617303559

80% of that is a 3000 ft decline over 19mi. That's a pretty comfortable downhill grade. Actually sort of believable, if he indeed has the form Dr Lieberman says he does.

I ran with guys at school who were good at that but were nowhere on the flats or uphill. Maybe this is his real talent.

Yeah, he has bionic implants in his quads. What a specimen of scientific interest.

He seems to do pretty well on uphills at high altitude though...

https://www.strava.com/activities/618227710

I know, pretty weak first km of the climb but he picks it up after that. Why? Because he has figured out what no-one else has - the way to do a transcon is to go fast uphill. That way they're over sooner... In fact, even sooner if you put in a surge at the end.

Always good to start a 20+ mile run by blazing sub-6:00 miles from the start while climbing at 8500'. If they had just driven the RV a couple of minutes per mile slower, it could be plausible.

Multi-talented wrote:

He seems to do pretty well on uphills at high altitude though...

https://www.strava.com/activities/618227710

I know, pretty weak first km of the climb but he picks it up after that. Why? Because he has figured out what no-one else has - the way to do a transcon is to go fast uphill. That way they're over sooner... In fact, even sooner if you put in a surge at the end.

In fact an even quicker way is to tunnel straight under the mountain. If you looked closely at the photo of the RV below, you will see it's equipped with what looks suspiciously like drilling apparatus.

These are great. If it isn't too hard I'd use miles rather than minutes for the vertical axis - seems like that would more correctly reflect the distribution of pace as he worked across the country. E.g. 40 minutes at 20:00 pace followed by 20 minutes at 5:00 pace is actually covers 2/3 of the mileage at the faster pace (despite only spending 1/3 of the time at that pace).

Sorry last post went weird. How about Steve Way, 2:15 Marathon and 6:19 100k runner, looks like he's already following Rob on Strava too:https://www.strava.com/pros/6599916

Investigator wrote:

My histograms from earlier were wrong I think - the software had a bug when switching between metric/US units.

These look accurate for his Strava data:

http://imgur.com/a/XbCzDhttp://imgur.com/a/qenoz

I was curious for a comparison, and while I'm no Rob Young, I thought I'd use my own data:

http://imgur.com/dcpRsUS

This is a couple years worth of run data I think, should include a marathon training cycle or two, triathlon phases, an ultra. I am a mid-17, 36, 1:22, 2:56 PR guy (yes, typical hobby jogger) and this included a variety of long slogs, steady runs, races, tempos, track workouts.

Really looks like Rob Young has another modality of transportation prior to 6/12 that would do me wonders in my training ;) Was thinking I could scrape some pro-runner's Strava and do a comparison to Rob Young, any suggestions?

Actually you can just create a fake gpx track on a website such as http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php This site creates fake time stamps (with a constant speed) so that you can upload it to Strava as an activity, then create a segment. (then obviously delete the fake activity from your account). I do this to create neat segments if the real gps data didn't accurately follow the road/path.

Ukrunner777 wrote:

RYoungFan1 wrote:

Anyone know how to make a segment for the day 1 part of the run on Atlanta Ave? It sure looks suspicious. Would be curious to see how other runners tracks look (specifically the street crossings). He has to be on a bike by then. Pace is very, very fast.

Only someone who has ran a route can make a segment from it.

Very early on in this thread I said that bike riding and substituting runners were both likely parts of this hoax. The Swiss bike rider who was allegedly pre-riding a transcon out where Rob was supposed to be could have been a fake. Sounds fishy.

Maybe Robbie will start taking EPO now, since he cheats in other forms of life. Then he could reproduce the times and look legit.

LRC to the rescue. wrote:

Very early on in this thread I said that bike riding and substituting runners were both likely parts of this hoax. The Swiss bike rider who was allegedly pre-riding a transcon out where Rob was supposed to be could have been a fake. Sounds fishy.

Swiss Bike Rider? The plot thickens!

Hearsay, but still caught my intuition reflex, I think here or maybe some other site, some guy said he went out to find RY and only met up with some Swiss guy on a bike who claimed he was pre-riding a Transcon route. That seemed completely weird, maybe a troll. My first thought was that Dustin was acting Swiss but blundered with the Transcon thing. Just a wild hunch sort of thing, could be nothing.

Here's a fun one. It was brought up a long time ago from his RV tracker. Now that we have GPX we can look in more detail. I don't think its on the google doc.

https://www.strava.com/activities/617424229

8.4 miles in 48minutes. 5:43 pace.

His fastest 10k split within that 8.4 was run in 34:47. 5:36 pace.

http://imgur.com/cnBNYez

As far as I know this is the fastest section of running we've found (longer than a mile or two)

This was at 8000ft elev. Relatively flat with a slight rise in the middle.

NCAA altitude conversion chart gives about 90 seconds per mile conversion for a 10k at 7700 ft (the highest on the chart.) The run works calculator gives the same

http://runworks.com/calculator.html

So that's ~33:15 10k... and he ran 2 extra miles at about that pace.

sorry, that's 90s total conversion, not 90s/mile

1 2 3 green wrote:

Here's a fun one. It was brought up a long time ago from his RV tracker. Now that we have GPX we can look in more detail. I don't think its on the google doc.

https://www.strava.com/activities/617424229

8.4 miles in 48minutes. 5:43 pace.

His fastest 10k split within that 8.4 was run in 34:47. 5:36 pace.

http://imgur.com/cnBNYez

As far as I know this is the fastest section of running we've found (longer than a mile or two)

This was at 8000ft elev. Relatively flat with a slight rise in the middle.

NCAA altitude conversion chart gives about 90 seconds per mile conversion for a 10k at 7700 ft (the highest on the chart.) The run works calculator gives the same

http://runworks.com/calculator.html

So that's ~33:15 10k... and he ran 2 extra miles at about that pace.

my bad, false alarm, I just couldn't find it in my feed.

Painstaking process to link up the TomTom screenshots to the Strava segments. I'm 40% of the way through transcribing the Strava segments (basically the first two weeks).

@Synonymous: Once the strava activities are logged it will be very simple to compare the TomTom screenshots and the tracker data with what they have uploaded to Strava. It's going to be pretty obvious that they tried to upload only the less suspicious (slow) stuff. And we'll probably find out they didn't upload a lot of "Night Run"s

Hobby jogger, I mean investigator... you'll probably edge me out in the Turkey Trot. The histograms are exactly what you would expect! RY's is the epitome of a bimodal distribution. Naming has double entendre here, since he literally has two modes of transportation :-)

123 green, 456 yellow, I haven't gotten to New Mexico in the strava segments but I've been flagging the ones that are obviously 6 min/mile RV segs.

investigator, I think wrt to histograms of pros, strength is in the numbers. No matter who you pull you are going to have a unimodal distribution, so pull a bunch.

PS how are you pulling the data and generating the histograms?