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

I may be way behind on this but it seems to me that there is an inherent problem in using watch data uploaded to Strava as the main evidence that the run was as claimed whilst simultaneously claiming the watch data is flawed. Or have we given up claiming that the watch data is flawed (the weasely catch-all "tech fail") because of the realisation of the problem above? It is possible that I missed this in the thread.

they've given up on proving anything, and we're just supposed to automatically trust that "he's run every f****n step" per their youtube video.

I have concocted a "tech triumph" scenario. What if there are periods during the day where the "watch" is attached to Recce Robinson's Emmy winning drone, flying at 5mph over the landscape. Meanwhile WG is snoozing away with his Strava configured to read HR from his whoop? possible? perhaps. Probable? not really. groundbreaking? absolutely.

Correct, it's the perfect paradox. One day, they will have to comment on this. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are flying around, one way or another. They have two, and only two options: to brazen it out and say he's superhuman and runs 6 minute Ks off 105 [but 155 usually]; or tech fail.

The moment they go down the tech fail route, bang, they have to answer to this challenge, and the fact that his tech was perfect on day 1, and then 13 & 17 after my tough letters, and then all but perfect on my 5 days observation; but then an almost total fail since.

They'd then also have to explain why the identical tech fail happened on RB's Transcon in March 2019 onwards [spotted by someone else, not me], plus on WGs Jogle, plus on WGs 48/30, plus now recently found out on RBs Central Park loops. They'd then also have to explain why WG and RB suffer no tech fails in the their training or other racing, the data is fine.

One key supporter put all the blame on Garmin, but the Coros behaves identically.

Pleading the Fifth will only get them so far.

Hi again. I think it's vital to realise that a multiday run of 40 plus days (eg a crossing of America, Australia or Europe) is completely different from a shorter event, such as the classic 6 day race or a record attempt from Lands End to John O' Groats. These are battles of attrition where each day's performance tends to get steadily worse, whereas in a Trans Continental run you have time to recover. It is so long that your body changes and adapts in ways that I would not have considered possible beforehand.
For example, after two to three weeks I stopped nodding off each day after we finished running and also started sleeping uninterruptedly through the night. I gradually began to find the daily effort easier. After 3100 miles, I genuinely felt that my body had adapted so well to its daily task that I could have turned around and done it again. In the beginning I was wolfing down all the food I could get, but by the end of the run I was not eating anything like as much. During the last 1500 miles I put on 3 of the 4 pounds that I had lost in the first half of the run, so clearly my body had become more efficient at carrying out the work asked of it. I emphasise again that I would not have realised that any of this would happen unless I had actually done it.
Preconceived ideas based on evidence from shorter runs, about heart rate, pace or negative splitting are simply not relevant to a 40+ day run. Comparisons although tempting, do not have any real validity.
If I were to take all the data from our run across America, give it to someone who had never done these type of events and ask them for a report, then I suspect that they would flag up numerous days as being suspect. Why, for example did we go 30% further in the second half of one day than in the first half? Why, on another day was our pace significantly faster in the afternoon than it had been in the morning? Why, after 3000 miles did we run for 60 minutes at 7.5 mph (8 minute miling)?
It's all about context. You need to know the temperature, humidity and prevailing wind. You need the intensity and duration of both sunshine and rain on that day. Is the road flat or hilly? Are the gradients long and gentle or short and sharp? You need the quality and twistiness of the road, the width, camber and material of the breakdown lane and the exact proportion of running to walking. Then there are random interactions with pedestrians, motorists and the Police, combined with the changes in how your body feels both throughout each day and on a day to day basis. Without taking all this into account, we are just staring at columns of numbers that don't have any real significance.
What I'm trying to say is that anybody who hasn't actually done one of these 40+ multiday events doesn't really understand what's going on. Forgive me if this sounds arrogant or condescending- but it needs saying, as it is the simple truth.
This thread is now 70 odd pages long and seems to be degenerating into a mess of infighting, insults, and baseless sweeping claims. We spent pages debating the possibility of him running 8k (5 miles) in 45 minutes. I'll state categorically that I could have done this on any given day of my run (or indeed most of them).
Whilst we argue amongst ourselves over irrelevancies, Goodge and his team are laughing their socks off over a beer each evening reading our words. They have made fools of us and will continue to do so when the post event interviews come out and the book deal arrives. This sudden last minute surge to heroically break a record that they were unexpectedly made aware of, whilst bravely ignoring the naysayers- it's a perfect film script. (And you heard it here first- I guarantee that it will be made into one.)
Fundamentally, don't we all want the same thing? An answer to the simple question- is this run genuine? The only way we can get this is by actually observing him carefully and discreetly for an extended time, or Goodge making a claim that is not physically possible. Neither of these two things has happened yet.
I don't like what I've seen of Goodge because of his sweary, arrogant and flashy attitude. I don't like the way that he is extremely media savvy, good looking and chiselled. I also don't like to admit that these are simply my own prejudices. It shouldn't alter my opinion of whether his run is genuine and that is simple- I don't know.
Sorry for another long post.

The "caperish" feel of this would make it a great Guy Ritchie film. FWIW Steve I crossed in 2021 and I don't claim to know what's going on either. It has been entertaining and I'm looking forward to it being over.

Thanks for that Steve. It is probably the most coherent and sensible thing that has appeared on these pages. It is good to have people like you, Pete and Jerry who have real experience of this journey shedding light on it. It is hard for people who have never run an ultra multiday to really know what it is like. There is an assumption that because you are running slowly you couldn’t run any faster. But from my experience, after around ten days you discover what is comfortable and sustainable, and stick at that pace. As you say, as long as you have time to eat, sleep and recover, your body adapts to the routine and gives up complaining.

thanks Steve, happy to back off and down tools for now. I have said a lot and would welcome it if they came after me as there could be a formal enquiry that could look into everything.

I remain more convinced than ever, that as a package, for all of RBs Transcon, WGs Jogle, 48/30, RBs Central Park, and now this to all have had identical modus operandi and incredible unusual anomalies, that only occur at these very precise events, indicates untoward activity. And you don't get a thread like this on LR for being whiter than white. Aslo, the lack of a tracker really was appalling, and such a kick in the teeth to us all, who would love to have followed the run in real time. The perfect example of them laughing at us.

But we'll know a lot more once we see how the run concludes over the next week, whether the HR crashes continue, as they have yet again yesterday, and where he finally nestles in the all time rankings. We will also see if his heart returns to normal function the moment the run ends, which I'm sure it will, and how he fares in other running activity in the coming year[s].

I did this investigation as a dedicated historian and statistician because I have seen nothing remotely like what these boys have thrown up for 4.3 years, except of course by Rivett at Jogle, whose claim there is so similar regarding lack of ability, background, negative splits and never fatiguing; but otherwise there is no precedent even vaguely like it, and they are clearly enjoying a superb living and lifestyle from the sport. As you say, savvy stuff.

To the future then and let's see what gives. W.

Hi,

I am sure there are people on this board who keep accurate notes on every little detail. I am not one of them.

I am sure I remember you said you were a defence lawyer. If you are now saying different, or if I misremembered, fine.

If you want to be more optimistic, then also fine, but I guess you have quite a few open spaces in your life where you have paid for bridges to be.

'extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence'

One of the main thinga to come from this in my opinion is that for these types of run or event there needs to be an established standard. Something that can be set out by a group or major race organiser in the ultra running community.

Key standards could be for any run such as WGs they have to follow defined rules or the run is never 'ratified'. For example, tracker must be worn by runner, two trackers in case of faliure, full transparency on crew members, open publication of data etc. This way you dont get runs taking place where the runner makes their own rules, especially if they claim they are going for a record.

Until this happens lots of ultra running will get caught up in the same controversies.

Standards exist for other road running such as certified course measurements etc. Ultras need the same thing

I don't plan on looking back but someone made a fairly ambiguous comment I thought at the time to the effect of their mother saying they should become a lawyer. Not sure if it was our perpetual "nobody lies, especially not on the internet" chum.

A good example of why tracker should be on runner : Looks like team WG had a major reroute today (day 49). Their original plan was to head east out of Cambridge OH but they went Northeast. The original plan had them moving through Wheeling WV but new route likely takes them just south of Pittsburgh PA. I grew up about 45 miles south of Cambridge OH on the OH/WVa border so very familiar with that area. Vehicle (and tracker) is still west of Zanesville OH (pinging day 48). Trackers serve multiple purposes. One is to locate the runner in areas of low/no cell coverage as they operate off of a different network. I'll be curious to see what today looks like and if they rejoin the original route or plow ahead.

I remember getting pulled in and believing all the Lance Armstrong “justifications”.

Never again … this thing stinks and all this other mumbo jumbo to obfuscate in the name of being impartial is ridiculous.

And just a follow up to this: I do think it's terribly dangerous if we take Steve's advice too literally to wave anything through that's not impossible, or if not caught in the act. This is precisely what people taking rides, muling, short-cutting, or manipulating want - as little resistance as possible.

If we really did this, we'd have to accept Mark Vaz at Jogle - 7 days [because many of us can do 115 miles in a day], Rosie Ruiz at Boston 1980 who smashed the American record as an unknown, Fred Lorz who won the 1904 Olympic marathon; Rivett at Jogle of course, and countless others.

Or yes, stuff like that WG sequence of 9:09, 8:52, 9:19, 9:16. He barely ever breaks 10 - about 1%, sub 9:20 is one-in-a-thousand and still it quickens here with the 9:09 and the berserk 8:52. But we're just supposed to bow and applaud because it's "technically possible", as we can all run 36:36 for 4 miles. But out there? Very deep into the day - and race? Steve's USA crossing was a fine 79.9 days, but that's around 18-24 minute miles, so to hear him say 9s are easy, stings a tad.

If someone is doing 6:45s in the marathon, and then chuck in an unseen quad of 5:15s, are we supposed to applaud or cry foul? This is the very heart of the debate.

Whatever happens here, I do hope the community will always keep in mind history, statistics, precedent, logic and common sense and not just wave through anything that comes our way, just because it's "not impossible".

As I have already remarked, nobody actually had the smoking gun of Rob Young on video riding in the RV when he was claiming to be running. Asher Delmott's initial meeting them with no sign of a runner was handwaved away with a dubious "we thought he was an axe murderer" story and the implausible TomTom data that Ross Tucker and another expert analysed is now covered under the "you can't argue with tech fail" excuse.

Except once again you are comparing him with people who were claiming remarkable feats. This is nowhere in the league of what Vaz, Young, Rivet et al were claiming. PK was running 40% more mileage each day. I’m comparison this is pedestrian. And once again your marathon analogy just demonstrates a lack of understanding of how ultra multidays work.

I know precisely how multidays work. People get tired. People suffer. People run to their ability, not completely freakish stuff day after day after day [without a pulse or a tracker]. I've gone over your Jogle and it's all perfect - every K. You say it has plenty of negative splits, but it also has everything as you'd expect and loads of chaos, fatigue and suffering as you allude to in interview.

You're doing the line in the sand thing again. Just because what WG is doing is only freakish and completely against anything that we'd expect from him, you say, "PK could do it therefore fine." What Ruiz and Lorz did are perfectly possible, and Kouros came within a few hours of Rivett's quality, and there are still some who think it could be beatable. And you also say that you could do 9.09 8.52 9.09 9.16, as does SP, when nothing could be further from the truth. I'm not asking about utter fantasy, I'm talking about the real world: a Transcon, deep into it, very late in the day, from someone usually running 11-14 mins per mile.

And now, I'm not allowed to use the 6 day world champs or Jogle... they're both too slow. The Transcon is quicker apparently and people regularly just stretch their legs and pull out stuff like this. Or so I'm told by someone travelling 1.88 times slower than the WR, or yourself who's 1.65 times slower than Dan at Jogle. If history has taught us anything, it's that Transcon is bloody tough, incredibly slow and usually takes far, far longer than one might expect.

Squirrels must love Will Cockerell because he is a nuthouse

Thank you Will C for maintaining the integrity of our sport. As the saying goes, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. You are damn good man and we respect you for the work your doing.