I caught Dane Rauschenberg cheating

Dane even infiltrated the Marathon Investigation Facebook group.

Not sure why Derek allowed him in? What's next, Mike Rossi joining the group?

The thing is, there is NO overwhelming evidence. We see this pop up time and again and it consists of

1. The moving RV thing (easily shown to be when Dane's crew had to take him back to places they made a wrong turn; completely acceptable.)

2. Someone seeing something that doesn't jive with them on GPS/Strava data where others say "Hey, I have had weird stuff happen to me."

3. "Eyewitness" accounts like the one Markus has where somehow no one else sees this, not 100 other competitors, a timer, a RD, etc. In fact, Markus somehow sees this from half a mile away. But did he see Dane cross the timing mat again to make it count as an extra lap? No. Or he would have said so.

Other than that, it is people who don't like Dane for whatever reason saying he cheated. All this does is dilute the people that have been actually caught cheating (Rob Young, Kip, etc.). There are no photos showing Dane cheating, no actual reliable first-hand accounts, and nothing, in spite of deep dives into instagram, Strava, etc none of which are even remotely limited from view from those who wish to spelunk that back it up.

It gets beyond tiring to see this guy's name come up because now, if he ever does cheat, we are going to be the LetsRun Who Cried Wolf and none will believe us. What's more likely, given a years-long history of un-questioned race results, is that Dane has made a name off of doing feats others have not done. They could, possibly, but haven't. So decry that.

I am aware there isn't much integrity in some LR posters but this is just beyond the pale.

Hi Dane

1. Ruben Foster (the husband of Catie Foster, on Dane's crew for the run) estimates from Catie's description that Dane cut between 40 and 80 miles from the course. Dane's tweets and Strands posts would lead to a similar estimation.

2. There is no logical way to suggest that Dane actually complete the Ely Marathon course and his watch just messed up.

3. Markus's story seems pretty airtight. Either he's lying (he's a known guy in the field and this seems unlikely) or Dane cut the course.

I don't like Dane. He's a narcissist, and I say that from experience, but this is additional, absolutely solid evidence that he cheated:

This is a screenshot from one of the runs on his Strava from before I originally posted the thread outing him for cheating in his self-made Dane to Davenport event.

Do you know what those bumps in pace mean? They mean he rode in his car. Do you now what he did to incriminate himself after I posted them? He cropped his runs from the event to exclude any portion that showed him cheating.

Dane-specific account wrote:

Regarding the threads getting repeatedly deleted, Rojo seemed to have very little knowledge about who Dane is, or what he's been up to, but he thought that these kinds of threads shouldn't get deleted. Since Dane (and other guys like Kip Litton, Frank Meza, and Mike Rossi) aren't professional runners per se, the mods felt that the threads should get deleted, but Rojo disagrees. There's (finally, after a decade+ of blatant cheating) some people doing stuff behind the scenes that could possibly lead to a more formal public outing, and Markus's stuff here was part of getting the ball rolling. My hope is that Rojo or Wejo will pick up the torch on this if public outing doesn't come from the current stuff. There's overwhelming evidence, and it's about time Dane stopped making money by lying about things he didn't do.

I can certainly understand where the LRC mods are coming from and wanting to keep the threads more on traditional running topics. There is certainly a lot of evidence that would indicate an organized and detailed investigation of Dane is needed as well as allowing him to respond and then consider the evidence.

I was away for a long time (for varying reasons) and only got back on LRC in the past few months. I saw the aftermath of the Frank Meza events and also how sharing these investigations to Marathon Investigations is no longer the way forward. If you were thinking of sending this off to Derek, I hope you will reconsider and keep this as a low key investigation with the final report shared with RDs and key individuals rather than fully public.

Monitoring the Marathon Investigation comments and Facebook pages made me realize that the vast majority of people there are simply out to get their fill of outrage news for the day and public shaming and serve no real purpose. It also dawned on me that I greatly misjudged Derek's character when he recently belittled the contributions of LRC investigators and also the many hours I had spent helping him behind the scenes.

As for the Strava evidence, I hope you have been downloading the GPX files off Strava using one of the Chrome extensions available.

I've seen the tweets and Strands comment thing before as well. None of that makes any sense. The theory is that the time between posts doesn't add up to the actual time between the distances traveled. Again, this was addressed in the movie where it shows them updating the Strands account whenever there was cell phone reception. Sometimes multiple updates were uploaded at the same time.

As for your flagging those runs during the Dane to Davenport, if you flag a workout the owner gets a notification. The notification allows them to remove portions which may be in a vehicle. Seems quite obvious that is what was done here. In the recap of his run on his blog he specifically mentions once where road construction forced them to take an alternate route and another where he abandoned running down a tunnel with no head torch and having to retrace steps after getting a ride to another road.

There are simple explanations given, voluntarily, by Dane prior to anyone accusing him of cheating while he posts all of the "evidence" for anyone to see. There's just not nearly enough here to even rise to suspicion of cheating.

CommonSense2 wrote:

The thing is, there is NO overwhelming evidence. We see this pop up time and again and it consists of

1. The moving RV thing (easily shown to be when Dane's crew had to take him back to places they made a wrong turn; completely acceptable.)

2. Someone seeing something that doesn't jive with them on GPS/Strava data where others say "Hey, I have had weird stuff happen to me."

3. "Eyewitness" accounts like the one Markus has where somehow no one else sees this, not 100 other competitors, a timer, a RD, etc. In fact, Markus somehow sees this from half a mile away. But did he see Dane cross the timing mat again to make it count as an extra lap? No. Or he would have said so.

I am aware there isn't much integrity in some LR posters but this is just beyond the pale.

3. I saw him when he was walking back to his car and I saw him from the opposite side of the course when he was crossing the timing mat again. Here are the laps times for comparison:

CommonSense2 wrote:

It gets beyond tiring to see this guy's name come up because now, if he ever does cheat, we are going to be the LetsRun Who Cried Wolf and none will believe us. What's more likely, given a years-long history of un-questioned race results, is that Dane has made a name off of doing feats others have not done. They could, possibly, but haven't. So decry that.

I am aware there isn't much integrity in some LR posters but this is just beyond the pale.

Un- questioned race results of Dane Rauschenberg?

Just google Dane Rauschenberg + cheating and you find plenty of questions about Dane

Like this one

Or this one

I got aware of Dane when I was living in Portland, OR . This 202 miles in 50 hours was where my alarm bells went off. 202 miles in two days is a very good result in a 48 hour race under good conditions with support. You can't just run that without a lot of ultrarunning experience which Dane does not have.

And in the 6 hour race in Grapevine, TX Dane started cutting the course straight away. I saw him doing that 3 times and he only stopped because I called him out on that.

Dane Rauschberg is now on notice.

My report was not only posted here but also on the ultralist. Derek from Marathon investigation saw it too. Race timers are aware of him as well. The easiest thing would be just run your races without out cheating just like everybody else.

I'm sorry, is an excel spreadsheet with two sets of numbers being submitted as proof?

Yeah, I saw your previous post about how you got aware of him. I also saw your "cutting the course" being him running on the inside rather than the outside of a trashcan on a turn. I read it all and it didn't move me. You say he doesn't have a lot of ultrarunning experience but it appears he had a 50k of 3:37 and a 50 miler of 6:52. He also had the previous 12 hour race of 84 miles (which you seem to disregard for the reason of...none at all) as well as some 100milers and a 24 hour race. So, you have just decided that this isn't enough for whatever reason.

You just seem like you have a vendetta. That's my take. (And the two links you posted to are both by Gary Krugger who has shown his dislike for Dane here multiple times with the whole Strands thing mentioned above. That blog is nothing but rambling and has less "proof" then you have.)

It's good if Dane has been put "on notice". But I see nothing that warrants this thread staying up.

Scam_Watcheroo,

I never minimized your contributions. Your scraping tool and the support of the tool for over a year was much appreciated. As you mentioned in the other thread, I offered to compensate you for your work many times. You criticized me for that fact. I have always been transparent - I am not a programmer. I need help to pull the raw data. I've publicly asked for assistance in scraping data.

I appreciate the help, particularly with the tool and the support.

What I was arguing - was the amount of times I have pulled analysis from these boards. Those instances were few and far between. The Frank Meza case was the most notable. I credited letsrun posters for everything that I used.

Now, a couple separate points, not directed at scam_watcheroo.

As I promised after the Meza tragedy, I will not participate in the 'cheater threads'. Too often there are theories that don't pan out and other names brought in that should not be. This will be my last post here.

Dane is a member of The Marathon Investigation group. There are over 8000 members. The only people I don't allow or kick out are the spammers, or people that break the group rules after being warned. It's not just a group of Marathon Investigation supporters. There are plenty of critics in there as well.

-Derek

What's funny is that Dane uses some circular logic going for his defense.

According to Dane, if you have a vendetta against him, your claims of his cheating can't be believed. How does he know you have a vendetta against him? You call him out for cheating.

Combine his lack of logic with his lack of understanding of his own timeline, and I'm starting to see why he never became an actual lawyer.

Dane, this would be a lot easier if you stopped the 3rd person BS and just discussed this directly. Then maybe we can get to the bottom of all this.

What about your Ely marathon?

It looks like CommonSense2 is Dane Rauschenberg, no question about that.

Not sure why would anybody cut the course and cheat a half mile in a small 6 hour race you lead anyway. Is not like Dane was winning a car when he hit 80 laps.

Ultramarkus wrote:

Not sure why would anybody cut the course and cheat a half mile in a small 6 hour race you lead anyway. Is not like Dane was winning a car when he hit 80 laps.

His idea about ignoring the impossible becomes more marketable if he happens to win and set records.

I believe his reason for running is far different from yours and mine.

Great stuff, people!!!

Markus has tried to reign me in many times. He is an organized, experienced witness of good character. He does not lightly go on record with his evidence. The contrast with a scammer like dane is too obvious.

I also enjoyed the frank discussion of sleuthing generally. I am not a programmer, either; I profile based on high-percentage. It has been my obsessive task to study runners during 5 trans-continental races. I know how they behave, in many cases, much better than they know or remember themselves.

Markus, across Australia, was the classic “still water runs deep” guy. A clever guy, but you didn’t see how clever till after he finished. I can’t f—-ing believe you got a camel photo, Markus!!!

Ultramarkus wrote:

It looks like CommonSense2 is Dane Rauschenberg, no question about that.

He shares a characteristic with Litton and Rossi in that he seems to think that it is highly convincing to talk about himself in the third person under an anonymous handle.

pathfinder wrote:

Ultramarkus wrote:

Not sure why would anybody cut the course and cheat a half mile in a small 6 hour race you lead anyway. Is not like Dane was winning a car when he hit 80 laps.

His idea about ignoring the impossible becomes more marketable if he happens to win and set records.

I believe his reason for running is far different from yours and mine.

Records? Please. 41 miles in a 6 hour race is an okay result but not close to any records. And he would have won this race even without cheating. But I agree cheaters are different, they have to cheat no matter what. After I called Dane out on cutting the course you would have thought that he would keep a low profile in that race but he didn't.