Another run across America underway - is it legit? Boots currently on the ground

This is nothing like Robert Young's run across the US.

Robert claimed to run upwards of 80 miles a day in mountainous regions of the US. And average very fast paces overnight, making it obvious he was riding in an RV. So I sent my friend Asher out to check on him in Kansas, and sure enough he was cheating.

I don't really consider 50-55 miles world class. I'm sorry, but I averaged 54 miles a day from Kenai, Alaska to Key West, Florida self supported for around 100 days, and had enough time to "enjoy" it.

Watch heart rate monitors are not very reliable. I for one have had a lot of runs where it says I'm hitting 170+ on a casual 8-9 min pace run. I notice this often happens when I stop and start running again, which one would assume he is doing.

Robbie Balenger, who has run across the US is with him. I don't think Robbie would put his reputation in jeopardy to help someone cheat.

Just like the author of the book about the prior record holder across Canada went after Dave Proctor in his recent record, I sense the author of this thread is just upset that the British record across America (which I didn't know was a thing!), will fall.

Good day!

Pete

It's a standard tactic to simply act appalled at the gall the opponent must have shown to even thinking about questioning you, rather than to answer the opponent's skeptical question. Lawyers, marketers, politicians, PR types, heck even randos who argue about stuff on the internet know this tactic and use it when convenient. It's also common when using this tactic to make a very long response, as the crew chief did here, to try and ride out peoples' ability to pay attention and recall what the original question was, so that by the time people are done reading the long response at least some of them will fail to notice that.... hey, he just said screw the haters and that their skepticism gives him F-you energy, he never actually addressed the substance of the skeptics' doubts.

Note also that he states in advance that the crew won't answer any further skepticism (I'd say that too if I planned to do untoward things in the future) and tries to paint his own failure to answer doubts as being positive and giving to the world rather than being negative and taking from it. That kind of touches on our current societal trend of being mental-health-conscious and some people will undoubtedly fall for this technique too. That whole statement is not even the cliche about "sound and fury signifying nothing" but is actually worse, a purposeful active measure anticipating further skepticism and trying to prevent it in advance.

What do you get if you mix CBD oil, PEDs, young men trying to shag an influencer and a run across America done in a van?

A bloody entertaining week is what.

Can absolutely see where you're coming from but I think you're mistaken in your last paragraph - I think Will finds it galling that the "record" may "fall" to a dubiously recorded run. They've got plenty of sponsorship and they could easily be recording this in a way that would satisfy everyone. And it leave a bad taste in the mouth when they go straight for aggressive ad hominem attacks when anyone has the audacity to ask a question.

Also, you've won Badwater and seem to prepare pretty extensively. This guy can't break 3 for a marathon and has no credentials.

If he uploads his Strava in a timely manner, what’s the difference between carrying the tracker in hand versus in the car? I did carry it in my hand (but honestly kind of annoying since mine was the size of a 1990s cell phone), but mainly so people back home could see regular progress if they were interested. Sandra V averaged more miles per day in her record across the US, and she’s probably a 3:20ish marathoner. People like Joe Fejes eat faster runners alive with pleasure at 6 day races, and many of them are 3+ hour marathoners at the time.

Why don’t they just post his .fit files? Wouldn’t that settle all of this?

there are a few apparent irregularities that other people have been pointing out but you're absolutely right - of course you are! - that he's not claiming superhuman distances/speeds so could well be perfectly legit.

(and of course 2023 footwear makes this sort of thing much easier on the feet/legs than it was decades ago.)

but the thing is there's no need for them to be oafish and aggressive towards will cockerell for asking a few questions. if they have the time to reply and abuse him, they have time to...answer him. he's been perfectly polite.

It's the 50-55 in sub 11 that's classy Pete. The speeds he's going at.

And to say his monitor is a tech fail: some 2,500 k's at these type of things since 2019?

All my research has it that his watch fails him never outside of these 3 high profile fund-raisers, and yes, there are occasional spikes of very high rates with data misfires. But that's NOT what this issue is.

The issue is that for 4 years now, this guy does 110bpm for sub 8king, thousands of time as a very mediocre runner, when outside of these events, he does 130-190s.

I have looked at around 1,000 strava runs and have yet to find a single one that's way out of whack. I don't care about the odd weird k. I DO care about 1000s spread over nearly 4 years at an incredibly specific time. And the American library of medicine has released a statement saying Wrist data is within 1.1 to 1.3% accuracy of electrocardiograms.

Your support of Robbie is loyal and admirable, but please don't just dismiss wrist data as hopeless, when it's clearly not, and 89k in 10:50 at Transcon as any old thing. Tell me who else has ever done that at a challenge like this? Except perhaps you.

He often moves way quicker than Rakonczay, when winning the 6 day world trophy.

To imply I'm doing this to protect Bruce's record is not true. I was comradely with Bruce, and he was a legend, but I'm doing this because it's a moral outrage that novice Instagram influencers can come into our sport and claim to be a great multiday runners off no pedigree, form, background or achievement, or very precious little. His DUV bio is absolutely dire.

Anyway, since I threatened to report them, his watch data is magically clean again. After 15 fails in a row. Make of that what you will. And he looked a complete wreck at the end of yesterday and incapable of speech. Let's see what today brings.

It might be one step in the right direction of being more transparent, but really wouldn't settle anything. FIT files, like any digital information, can be easily manipulated by a variety of software tools. Just minutes of searching will show you free online tools that let you manipulate timestamps, change power data, remove heart rate abnormalities, etc etc so you can imagine that much more sophisticated tools exist.

The best verification continues to be accurate and publicized live tracking and sharing of the planned route so independent, unaffiliated parties can randomly observe in real life.

I don't have an opinion whether Goodge is faking it, but I had a quick look at a bunch of days on Strava and they look fine to me. He is running/jogging with frequent walk breaks and walking the uphills. Cadence and paces make sense and do not seem superhuman.

The only thing that looks odd is the heart rate, but this is the least reliable reading if a watch is used to monitor it. In most of my Strava runs the heart rate is completely off, I usually pay zero attention to it as it is rare for it to be even remotely accurate across an entire run. So, if the only reason to think that he is cheating is because of the heart rate, I don't think the evidence is damning, so far.

I do agree that they could do a much better job of addressing this issue, though.

Sure they’re unencrypted and easy to modify, but modifying all of the data in a way that doesn’t raise any flags and matches the HR data posted to Strava would be pretty difficult. I think it would be pretty easy to tell from looking at a FIT file whether the data has been altered, unless the faker is also a very good programmer.

You really don't think it's odd that on day 5 he never once went over 120bpm, and on day one he went over 89%, with 19% over 145?

And then 17 days later after precious little running over 120 since day 1, when I write to them and say: "clean data guys, or else," he suddenly fires 81% over 120, with 11% over 145?

You're just saying, "data fail," to those middle 15 days, despite my intervention? Even though this has never, ever happened to him elsewhere in his career - except at Jogle in 2019 and his 48 marathons in 30 days.

And you don't think it odd that time and time again in recent days he does a 6 minute k at 145, and then two hours later he'll do a 6:20 at 115? The latter of which has never been seen in history in a long run like this - if so, when?

Whenever I ask people who defend these systematically identical heart rate patterns from any time in history, they never come up with a single example that's even remotely close to this.

ps, feel free to give me one day that "looks fine" to you, and I'll send you a report about why that day is a total and utter sham. 3-12 ideally because that's before I started to cry foul, then they started to behave a little better, for a day or so... in patches!

Crew chief Robbie posted a story this morning on Instagram stating that if anyone wants to run with Will, to DM Robbie in advance so that they can organize and go over the "code of conduct".

I agree. Anyone trying to defend Goodge has got to explain the heart rate data.

I have not looked at the data, but:

Glitchy data looks different from faked data. Glitchy jumps around, shows a real reading, then jumps into garbage, then back to real reading, etc. Faked data, such as other people doing the running, will have a different look, mainly much slower heart rates, as the new runners slowly rev their hearts up. And new runners would tend to run overly fast times, just as has been reported.

Willvic has provided a vast bounty of data, all of which is compatible with faking, in certain events, but not others. We have zero explanation of this from the other side. Glitchy data would not produce the consistent pattern of ridiculously low heart rates during very fast running that Will has reported.

okay, while they've got a case to answer, it's not "very fast running" is it? it's pretty slow running, regardless of how dodgy it seems

It's vv quick for a multiday. Anything quicker than 5mph is super world class. And he's regularly at 5.5. 37 miles in 7 hours at a transcon is well inside the top 1% of achievement.

For World class at Jogle - the like of Dan Lawson, Richard Brown and Don Ritchie, the holy grail is 40 in 8 hours. So this pace is topping that, at a race four times as long.

The problem with multidaying is that people think 10 minute miling is piss easy. It's not, it's brutal and all but unseen.

Yeah, "very fast" is relative to the type of running we are talking about. And also relative to the runner we are talking about. Given that context, all of those low heart rate running speeds are very fast.

So that means it's not just the heart rate data that needs explaining. The improbably fast running also needs explaining. We have willvic's explanation, which fits the data very well, if you ask me. Do we have anything from the other side?

40 miles in 5 hours? Give me a break, that is not Dan Lawson. I was consistently 9-9:30 min per mile (over 6 mph) for much further per day. You also have to remember Dan was attempting around 100 miles a day; versus this guy at around 50. 50 miles at a pace of 12 min/mile is way, way easier than upwards of 70 miles (which I did at over 6mph).

Looking at Strava I see many different methods of recording over the years (Strava app, wahoo, Apple Watch, Fenix), with a large chunk no heart rate data (like Strava app), so I’m still yet to see Will’s argument about this being “one in a billion”. I’ve asked Will to provide a sample listing by column of 1) date 2) miles run 3) hardware and 4) avg heart rate, which are all accessible via his Strava public profile. Randomly selecting various activities I just don’t see Will’s argument.

Also, going off heart rate data seems like the last place to go to find a cheater in my opinion. If someone was faking Strava data, they wouldn’t select ridiculous heart rate numbers. Also, if it’s a “relay”, he must be with some very out of shape people to realize those heart rates at those paces. This is laughable. Including the title of this thread, it’s tabloid. 😂