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

One thing to keep in mind: While we are looking at all the photos and video we have access to, the marathon organizers and USATF are looking at all of that and perhaps more. Lord knows what else they could have. Mike can post all he wants on Facebook about what he did and didn't do, but eventually there will be a USATF conclusion.

Ex Phys Guy wrote:You are getting "VO2 Max" confused with the Daniels VDOT idea which estimates a given "economy" and produces a number akin to what a VO2 Max test MIGHT show. Purists will tell you that an actual VO2 max means very little in terms of predictions. a VDOT is a score you get for one race that can be correlated to another race, like a Purdy score or Hungarian Score. Any of those things will tell you that his performances don't correlate. Actually testing a VO2 Max in a lab and counting on that to mean anything in real world racing is useless, however.

That is just the point. I similarly hated when people took to vigilante justice / phoning threats to the principal when they though Mike's story was real. Can't you see this is just the other side of the same coin! It's mob mentality running one way and then the other .

Judging to humiliate people by one very specific instance of conduct in their life. and likely not knowing the full story (the principal for instance).

I dont support mob mentality in either case.

tomas voyeur wrote:

asdfsa wrote:

That is actually brilliant.

Was a brilliant idea. I just founded a company that travels to races with no timing mats and videographs only the port-o-potties, albiet it all the port-o-potties, for the race entirety.

Just to be clear: are the cameras outside the portapotties, or inside the portapotties?

rojo wrote:

So I'm back on the hunt. Can someone tell me what the "other runners with not photos" spreadsheet exactly is.

Someone ran a computer program with what? All of the finishing #s in the results? And it can tell who only shows up at the finish line or later? How is that possible?

What exactly did the script do and what are we now looking at on that spreadhseet?

I don't really understand what we are looking at there.

I did just look up one bib number on there and find her easily but am not sure how we got that list and what it represents. Sorry for not understanding.

Please post an explanation or call me. If you want to call, just shoot me an email and I'll email you my #. Or call our 800 number and listen to the prompt and ask for me. 8444-LETS-Run

Those are runners with a small number of pics taken, or none at all. The idea is to prove that every single runner in that list can be found on the 'lost and found' set of photos. Except, of course, our buddy.

Cronkite's Tears wrote:

Madness wrote:

This is just obsessive. Don't you have things to do with your life? A hobby?

Rojo IS doing his job--and he's doing it much better than the overpaid hacks at the Today show and other mainstream media outlets who "covered" Mr. Rossi's diatribe against his children's school principal as a feel-good, dad-of-the-year fluff piece.

While I don't condone this witchhunt, Rojo is running a business. It makes sense he is going to encourage a message board storm that is generating a lot of interest in the website.

He has duty to corporation to do this, generate profits. That said, i wish the legal fiction of the corporation and its standards for fiduciary duties were different. And had some sense of longterm well-being of society rather than short term/moderate term gains.

Use the Portapotty! wrote:

tomas voyeur wrote:

Was a brilliant idea. I just founded a company that travels to races with no timing mats and videographs only the port-o-potties, albiet it all the port-o-potties, for the race entirety.

Just to be clear: are the cameras outside the portapotties, or inside the portapotties?

Outside, you sick freak.

Regarding the runners without course photos.

The photographer's website generates the each runner's page based on JSON data fetched via an XMLHttpRequest action. There is no session security, XSS mitigation, or throttling. You can hit the endpoint URL for any bib number and get back a result containing the number of photos present, and the roll to which the photo belongs.

I created a list of all of the finisher's bib numbers, then wrote a script to iterate through that list and save the resulting data.

The finish line photos are on sequential rolls, so I excluded images on those rolls from each participant's photo count.

The result is a list of two dozen or so people who have no photos other than crossing the finish line, for whatever reason. Looks like some folks took that list, and are trying to eliminate people based on whether it would be reasonable for them to not have photos; obscured bib, bib on back, etc.

The goal is simply to demonstrate the unlikelihood that Rossi was missed by the photographers.

It actually would be less noticeable (and easier) to do it at the relay stop. I ran the relay two years ago, the stops are crowded and hectic and no one would notice. Anyone running the marathon would just assume you were another relay runner and not think twice about someone new after that point.

I wonder if Mike actually targeted that particular guy (Douglas) thinking that he was going to have a time similar to what he was aiming for (based on how close he is to him at the start and the finish). And/or he got times mixed up since the start was delayed 10 minutes.

I'm going to pile more love on the IP sting operation and the Portapotty Theory. Well done gentlemen.

My goodness this is great entertainment! I've even got my wife hooked and she hates Letsrun, But she LOVES comeuppance!

fdsdsds wrote:

While I don't condone this witchhunt, Rojo is running a business. It makes sense he is going to encourage a message board storm that is generating a lot of interest in the website.

Rossi needs to do whatever the powerlifting miler who we can't name did to get the thread deleted. That guy is making money directly from his lies and his publisher advertises his new book by citing his amazing mile times.

tomas voyeur wrote:

Use the Portapotty! wrote:

Just to be clear: are the cameras outside the portapotties, or inside the portapotties?

Outside, you sick freak.

Oh. Too bad.

Umm...you know that email I sent you two minutes ago with my credit card information?

Please just delete it.

Thanks

forget VO2max it aint relevant wrote:

You aren't proving anything with the VO2 max posts. We all agree that he did not run a 3:11 marathon, but we don't need to invoke the VO2 max concept. We don't need him to run on a treadmill to test his VO2 max (if you want to test somebody on a treadmill, just see how fast they can go- it will tell you a lot more than their VO2 max). You should read Magness' book, there is a great summary of the research showing that VO2 max is NOT the limiting factor in running performance.

Indeed. I only put "estimated VO2max" into the chart for each result from Athlinks to put them in perspective another way. I have used my favorite calculator to produce chart which uses a mix of various algorithms (VO2max, age grade %, Riegal and Cameron formulas) to come up with a best race equivalency estimate for a given time for a given runner. It's over at

Therefore there is no "error" in the chart, it just uses a more complex calculation than the more standard and much simpler vo2max race equivalency equation.

The bottom line is that everyone has shitty races in their Athlinks profile that is not indicative of performance. But Mike Rossi has nothing but shitty races in his Athlinks profile. Someone who runs a 5K every weekend like he did at one streatch certainly wouldn't do that. It does not sound rational. I don't know anyone who would sign up for a 5K every weekend to jog it. It sounds abnormal.

Are there many runners who do proportionately better in the marathon than shorter races? I doubt it. It is hard to believe that a runner with many races on record never tried to go all out in a 5k or 10k but then decided to try suicide pace in a marathon and held on. I just don't buy that someone who never tried 5k pain for 5 minutes somehow endured marathon fatigue for an hour. How long has this guy been running? In my second year of running I took 15 mins+ off my half marathon time in less than 6 months. In the 4 years since I've shaved only 3 more. If he were a new runner who suddenly did some real training instead of the 30 mpw stuff you see in beginner plans, it could be possible though.

If Lehigh officials DQ him for cheating, does he get DQ'ed from Boston as well? Does he realize that means he is no longer allowed to wear the jacket, because you know he is wearing that one on a daily basis?

if the patriots are punished for findings that are "probable" and "likely", this guy is absolutely screwed

fdsfdsfdsfd wrote:

That is just the point. I similarly hated when people took to vigilante justice / phoning threats to the principal when they though Mike's story was real. Can't you see this is just the other side of the same coin! It's mob mentality running one way and then the other .

Yes, intellectually you are correct. But, the story has never been about that.

Facts? Don't need them. Rules to run a race? Don't need them. Attendance rules for my kids? Don't need them. And then apparently many, many people defend this guy's nonsense not imagining for a minute the consequences of that attitude.

It speaks volumes to how very many people actually live vs. what an education/citizenship/laws/propaganda is supposed to provide.

somebloke wrote:

Those are runners with a small number of pics taken, or none at all. The idea is to prove that every single runner in that list can be found on the 'lost and found' set of photos. Except, of course, our buddy.

I don't get how the script worked. It typed in every finisher and then he/she looked to see if they had a photo?

But I don't just understand it. Take for example #1226. If you type him in, they list 3 photos. None of them are him. How did the person who wrote the script realize that?

Now, I went in and watched the finishing video, realized what he looks like and then went back and four him 3-4 times on the ocurs.e

I just easily found two people on that list. There arent that many. Someone help us out. But someone please explain how he knows these are people without photos as some do have photos but they just aren't them.

I disagree. I think there is a very clear difference in the kind of mentality of the "mob" individual in those separate instances.

1) If someone is phoning a threat to the principal, based on her sending a letter about the absences, this is someone reacting because they don't like the system, and are choosing to lash out at a person.

2) If someone is wishing this to blow up in Rossi's face, because they don't like him as a person, then they are rooting against him as they view him as a villain. Like in formulaic movies, you have to have a reason to want someone to fail.

There was nothing villainous that we knew about the principal to root against her. There are lots of reasons to view Rossi as a villain and root against him, as is basic human nature. I'm not saying that all people root against people they view as bad individuals, but it is hardly a psychological anomaly.