Run Across America: Nels Matson Aims To Break Pete Kolstenicks Record, Starts TODAY

“In the era of sophisticated data tracking anyone making a public claim about extreme perseverance would be well-advised to document their feat as meticulously as possible. Failure to do so can result in that most modern of afflictions: The wrath of the Internet skeptic.”(1)

Suppose someone starts trolling you all. What would it take to get “boots on the ground” to show up?

(1)

run.outsideonline.com

Why Did an Unofficial Run Across the Country Turn into Running Internet Drama?

mmirhashem

When fitness influencer William Goodge ran across the country to raise money for charity, his feat received unprecedented scrutiny from hardcore running fans

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Why even talk about the record, if you don't have a shot? Isn't running across the US enough?

erm, the record isnt about hr and time on feet, its about distance travelled. if, and i hope we dont, we start getting into technical debate about his performance and when, if we do, you start shilling for him, we are going to have to remember moronic posts like this one.

For me; he is not doing enough miles each day AND he is taking too long to do them. thus his daily mileage can only decrease. therefore he is behind schedule and will only get worse. i think he needs to give up on a record he never had a hope of and reset a realistic goal and go for that. i am sure he can do the distance, but sensibly.

Who cares what he can do over 6 days? This isn’t a six day race. If a guy can run 1 mile at a 5:48 pace, it doesn’t tell you that he can run a 5k in 18:00 flat.

Sorry to say that it's become obvious that he's just not going fast enough. The last two days he's done about 55 miles in 16 hours. That's over 17 minutes per mile. Even with a liberal allocation for breaks and accounting for hills he's effectively going at a fast walk.

It's always a little harder to tell with the Garmin data but it looks like he's starting today at a similar pace. A few more days of this and the record would be out of reach.

I don't want to be a hater, it would be an impressive achievement even to keep this pace up across the country but this doesn't feel like a true record attempt at this point.

Yes on a pancake flat course over SIX... I repeat SIX days. This is not to disrespect the athlete but you're pretty naive to think a 6 day effort is equivalent to 42 days.. Also the fact you guys are just aiming to beat the daily mileage average per day instead of building a buffer is a recipe for disaster. You need to build a buffer in the event of injury or an abnormally slow days. You're already behind and it's not even a week.

hes going very slowly now despite both last two days being less than 60 miles

It's pretty clear that he is... which is really bizarre. I assumed he was a friend of Goodge's, but now it appears he just likes to randomly become a rabid fan of whoever is in the process of failing to set a transcon record, presumably because he enjoys getting a rise out of people like Will Cockerel. The world is a strange place, and contains some truly unpleasant people.

Who says I'm not a friend of Goodge's?

Rather, I give the transcon runners the chance to show what they can do with actual foot steps whether I think they will succeed or not. I believe that the vast majority of transcon runners do it in good faith believing they have some chance and have planned it out. I don't go around messaging the transcon runners everyday that are too handsome that they will fail like Cockerell did to the previous two runners. That's just being spiteful.

As for Matson in this current transcon, definitely looks like the record attempt is off now since he only ran for the first half of today and the tracker didn't move for the second half. This would seem to indicate he is either injured or sick.

around 35 miles yesterday. now doing just over 3mph.

this is finished.

to be fair, the mental attitude of anyone able to do 15 hours moving just on one day is astounding.

Well we can officially call this dead in the water... the record is already out of touch even with Pete missing a day.

Van rides are still ok, I assume? 💤

55 miles. he is hanging in there. the record has gone, obv, but he is doing well.

Regardless of how this run goes, he does appear to be actually doing it! Looking through his Strava data, nothing immediately strikes me as being odd.

Will C pointed out that William Goodge's heart rate was too low for what he was doing. His supporters claimed that this was due to watch errors. I also argued that he might simply be a better athlete than his previous race results suggested. (I'm less convinced now, as he hasn't shown any decent results since either.)

Will also pointed out that Paul Johnstone's cadence suffered mysterious drop outs lasting several miles, which were explained away by his supporters as watch faults or using poles. However, using poles only drops your cadence slightly- try it for yourself.

I also like the fact that he's carrying the tracker. Not only is it an independent verification (GPS rather than phone signal) but it also gives his position in real time and enables outside observers to keep an eye on him. Neither Goodge nor Johnstone did this but funnily enough Pete K and Marshal Ulrich did.

The two easiest ways of cheating in these events are:

1) You hop in the van for a mile or two several times a day which would be very hard to spot especially out West. It would make each day a bit easier, but the van would have to drive carefully to maintain a slow speed. Your cadence and heart rate would drop (unless you are doing pressups and waving your arms like a loon)

2) If you are more organised, a better plan would be to have a substitute who takes your watch the moment you hop into the van and runs for you. The van can then travel at a normal speed (with you resting inside) and wait down the road for the substitute to catch up. The other runner's slightly different cadence and heart rate might be detectable though, depending on how well practised the team was.

This run doesn't seem to have anything dodgy about it. Please correct me if you think I'm wrong.

With Goodge, the pattern and regularity of the unusual HR data was consistent across years of 'sponsored' events (and never normal training runs or official races), which also applied to his running partner, and persisted across numerous watches and monitors.

The only thing I’ve seen that raised my eyebrows was that one day earlier in the run where his elapsed time and running time were essentially the same. It was quickly pointed out that Strava algorithm sometimes does this, but I’ve never seen it happen to nearly the extent that it did that day and it hasn’t happened on any other of his runs since. What was it about that one day that made Strava act in that way?

I do think he is doing it, but that anomaly is not entirely explainable.

Day 1 Elapsed time is 35 mins more than moving time

Day 2 25 mins more

Day 3 (10th Sep) Identical

Day 4 1Hr 13 more

Day 5 1 Hr 50 more.

Don't know what the explanation is. Strava algorithm? Different watch? Different method of deciding what 'stopped' is ie less than 1 mph for example?

And yet a huge number of witnesses saw Goodger running including Pete Kostelnick and Cockerell's personal spy that followed him in secret. The problem with you haterz is that you don't operate in reality