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

Fair to say the face cover is weird and makes no sense, but does anyone in the crew look remotely like WG? The two main guys have smaller builds and are covered in tattoos, just not sure how sound a theory it is. I don't think I've seen everyone in the crew, but WG has a pretty distinct look and build.

Also...No-one in the history of the world has ever covered their face and not their body like this in an athletic endeavor. If he is anti-cancer, likes people to see his muscles and has the huge budget he has, I'm sure he could have made the stretch to get a white compression top (which would have been more effective at cooling than bare skin). Hey recruiter57- can you send him a couple of these and a baseball cap and he'd only have to put sunblock on his hands.

It doesn't matter, as they're not releasing photos of the other guys. You have no ability to compare unless you went to see yourself.

For clarification: photos of the other guys with face wraps...because...WHY WOULD THEY IF THEY'RE TRYING TO "PROVE" THAT ONLY WG WRAPS HIS FACE

P.s. before anyone brings up sunburned lips. Wear a Buff over the mouth and a baseball cap. Why cover every bit of the head including hair??

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I can't say if it makes sense for him. I doubt I would cover my entire face, but I've covered my head, neck and ears to try to cool down. Yes, I concur that it doesn't make athletic sense. But, we also don't know if he is doing that for 1 min for a pic, for a 6 mile segment, or for 6 hours. Why? Because no one is there observing.

Again, as the good defense lawyer I am (my Mom always thought I'd make a good lawyer when I was young), here's more reasonable doubt. Innocent unless proven guilty.

It is a little ironic that you are challenging him covering up his face...when the username of....Cover up 😂😂

Seeing the good in people and giving them the benefit of the doubt sounds nice in principle, but it needs to be balanced with the recognition that there are people who do bad things such as lie and cheat. There’s a line between seeing the good in someone and being gullible enough to be fooled, scammed, or worse.

As jurors in the court of public opinion, it’s on us to discern if Goodge is a good honest person doing a good deed, or a fraud selling a product and looking to make a name for himself. We can only make this judgment by using the (unfortunately) limited evidence we have.

When I consider all the information that has been shared and discussed in this thread, I think it’s fair to be dubious of Goodge.

As I think someone else has already pointed out, there is a discreet answer for just about every one of the many "irregularities" associated with this story. But all of the smaller ones, such as the head-covering, take on a different hue when examined in light of the still unexplained larger ones-- the unprecedented percentage of "tech fails" and anomalous data.

As still others have pointed out, this is not a court of law. What it is a court of is expert public opinion. The public court of non-experts may see only a cool, and maybe even inspirational, dude slugging it out in the elements for a worthy cause, and never mind the details. But what THIS court see is more grifting on our sport, however marginal in the larger scheme of things (it's not like this guys is a medal winning doper or anything). And, for what it's worth, we're not having it. We weren't having it with other minor characters like Rob Young, Mike Rossi, or Kip Litton, and we're not having it with this guy. Our hope is that one day soon, when random people are discussing this guy's "accomplishment", someone will say "I heard is was all B.S.", sending some else here for the details!

Word. As an observation, outside of a court of law do we make judgements based on a balance of probabilities based on what evidence we are aware of or do we never decide anything until we have irrefutable proof?

Also if I tell you I am the world record holder for 34.7 miles on a Tuesday in May over a particular route juggling tomatoes do you take my word for it when I say "prove I didn't" or do I have the burden of providing good evidence?

Have had good fun this evening looking into more detail of WG's Jogle as a novice which he was clearly no way ready for:

Day 1 - pace 7:28 is hot, but a positive split of 1hr31 is trouble.
Day 2 - pace 8:30 and much less distance, but still a 1:20 decline.

Day 3 - pace 9:47. Wheels off, chassis on fire, is this already over? positive split of 25 mins

Day 4 - pace 11:05. All straight out of Monty Python or Benny Hill. 54k in 13:30... yikes. At half-way in the Cairngorms with RB glued to his side, he steps off the A9 for some reason, on to a side road where there is a lot of panicky walking in random directions. He then travels 7 k in totally the wrong direction around half the perimeter of Loch Garry for 1hr15 before his watch, a minute later, has him restart 7kms away back on the A9 route at the top of the loch. Totally bizarre and inexplicable but that's 'riding' clear as day, and multidaying's sacred no-no. If they've simply got lost, bad luck, gotta turn round and retrace steps. He then navigates the next 19k in 3:45 for close of play. A truly horrible day.

And that's it!! No more drama, no more fatigue, no more problems for the rest of the run. He screams off a 1.4 day negative split, finds days like 100 k, and 7:58 pace and check out his splits for the rest of the run:

Day 5, negative by 8 mins

Day 6, negative by 27 mins

Day 7, negative by 58 mins

Day 8, negative by 42 mins

Day 9 postiive by 18

Day 10 negative by 5

Day 11-16 positive, but only by 19, 4, 44, 2 & 21.

Seriously, no-one has risen like that from the dead and creamed off such an effortless run. Some claim multidayers regularly do negative splits, but I'm really not sure about that. I can hardly find any, and certainly nothing on this level, and of course WG continues to deal with them frequently at this Transcon.

Here are Dan Lawson's Jogle WR splits, they're all positive and he really was seen as the best multidayer in the world at the time after his thrilling 6 Day win took him top of the world lists:

1hr24 [a torrid leak on day 1 after a super quick start.

00:06 more like it!

1hr02 whoops

and then very, very consistent, if a tad pricey: 32 mins, 32, 16, 40, 50, 50, 1hr5.

After day 4 Lawson leaked a cumulative 4 hours 15 on the second half of days, whilst Goodge gained 38 minutes, for a 4 hour 53 gain on the most masterful Jogle of all time.

Women's WR holder Molinaro positive splitted by 29, 1hr47 [ouch], 49, 20, 56, 40, 7, 7, 0 [fantastic 3 day spell], 65 [doh], 4, 1hr23.

So, a 7 hour 56 leakage there by Carla, and that's with an 0, 4, 7 and 7. By comparison Lawson leaked 7hr10 in total; so very similar.

This puts WGs penchant for extravagant negative splitting into more perspective. I can see how and why the odd negative split might arise as there are so many factors at play. But it won't be frequent and it won't be by much.

Boots what are you doing tomorrow?

I just want to call out the Brojos again. They claim to be the voice of the fans, and then shy away from the most popular thread in years on their website.

In another time they'd be the ones offering up cash to get someone to go check this out.

Not ironic. That was the reason for the name 🤣

I wondered that at the time and did consider asking if he is Alanis Morrissette

Herewith a day 46 report:

Heart rates well up, good, they're taking note of our increased pressure; but it doesn't stop it from being one of the most upsetting days in WG & RBs 15,000kms of these capers. Just when we think we're about to see a nice pure day with no funny stuff, the last 13 miles are a huge slap in the face for those who love running and its noble traditions and ideals.

We saw one, I repeat one, 10 minute mile in the day for the first 9 hours and 44 miles of the day, and then he finds SIX in quick succession in the 45th, 47th, 48th, 54th and 57th miles.

How can it be that something so tough to do becomes so easy, after 9 hard hours of slog? Perhaps his heart shoots up and he's really working? But no, of course we know exactly what's coming, because the pattern is so predictable: His heart is NOT going to rise with the much quicker running, it's going to crash. The rate crashes almost perfectly in line with the faster miles: as the day's 140s become 131 for a 10:21 mile [not credible], then a 101 for a 10:59 and a 102 for a 10:17 and a 123 for a 10:21.

For the last 5 miles of the day his HR returns to normal, and the 10s are fired off at 159 and 148. But that stretch of running from 45-52 miles is some of the quickest he has done on the entire trip, and all off an HR of, you guessed it, 105.

He runs 40-65k in 3:25, then 65-90 in 3:10. A monumental uptick in fortune given the moment in the challenge.

People accuse me of hyperbole, but the reason I use big language about WG is that he does big stuff, like ripping off a world class 3:10 25k to end a day. I just checked Dan Lawson, day 5 at Jogle, so still in the first half. Could he match the 3:10? Nope 3:12.

And the remainder of Dan's final 25k sequences?

3:02

3:04

3:25

4:00

3:55

4:30

That's what real multidaying looks like: suffering, decay, degradation, despair. And no, he's not even going massively further than WG. One of them is about the same and one of those runs is only 65k and another 33.

As ever, when WG has these amazing spells, we get no footage or commentary about the incredible uptick in fortune - maybe just a flippant aside, like here: "funny finding your groove after 40 miles." I never understand why they don't try to film more of his epic spells. Surely it's something we'd all like to see?

Some people will now say: "oh we can all run 5 miles in 55 mins"; but they don't look at context; about where it comes in the day; about who the runner is.

Has anyone ever found so many more 10 minute miles in the second part of a multiday, than the first? The ratio here is 1:6.

The big mistake that people make with this case is saying that stats, history and athlete profiling don't matter, and that if we don't catch him riding in the van we must wave him through. But do we need to catch a 4 hour marathoner riding, when they do a 2:30? No, why not? Do we need to catch a golfer saying they shot 58 at St. Andrew's? No, why not?

RB and WG consistently do highly unique and bizarre stuff, and we're just supposed to accept it all. But let it be heard loud and clear that these six 10 minute miles late in the day when only one found in the first 44 miles, is every bit as strange as his 45 for 5 miles the other day. Running simply doesn't work like this.

You can't be bothered to work out simple centimetres, that are 1/10th of a metre, a cube of which would hold a 1000kg of water, all exactly in 10;s i.e decimal, yet you want me to believe that a tall man like Goodge runs like Benny Hill with strides shorter than that of a dwarf walking?

I agree that yesterday's data might be the most blatant. Look at miles 37-42. His heart rate is pegged at about 135. His pace is pegged at about a 12 minute mile. and his cadence drops to 172-174. Then there is a brief walk. Then all of the sudden his pace hits 10 minutes per mile! His Cadence jumps back up to 176-180 and his heart rate plummets to 105. A freekin Miracle again!

To me, this data looks like he started to get spent at miles 37 (as one might expect). His Heart rate/cadence is telling us so. Then at mile 42 he stops for a momentary walk. The watch gets handed over to a fresh runner and all is good. Transcon day of data goes forth without a hitch.

Yesterday, on a ten mile run, I pondered over how difficult it might be to cheat. During my 10 mile run, I saw two sets of eyeballs that momentarily glanced at me during 90 minutes of running. And I live in a populated area running at 7:00am. My point is that nobody much cares about runners and you could easily go for many hours and days invisible to the world. And Will is mostly running in cornfields with crew around him and a truck and Van. If they want to do nefarious, nefarious seems easy to get away with. We just need to figure out how the Strava data scam is happening. The watch mule is still the leading theory.

If you were a watch mule and your mission was to duplicate the running of another runner, the easiest thing to do is pace. Cadence would be a bit more difficult. But the hardest thing to mimic would be heart rate. If you look at the graph of yesterday's run you see a distinct difference in the graph with data lines after mile 37. It most certainly looks like something changed at mile 37 and continued to the end of the run. It looks exactly as you might think a watch mule taking over would look. The heart rate is the biggest deviation. Cadence changes. The pace changes as well but the Strava graph makes pace more difficult to pick up. It won't let you isolate small portions of the run to drill down.

The second half of this day was net downhill, the last 10k all downhill, so are ten minutes miles all that remarkable running downhill at the end of the day?