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

I took a screen shot of a few of his selfies, wearing the BAA shirt in a few. I don't see the jacket

lol'ed and now have lots of ppl at work looking at me. Might make that pic my desktop for an hour or so.

I'm taking screen shots. I do not see any mention of his time. Someone commented "time?" and then said "nevermind I see it on the other post" Well I looked for another post and there is nothing. Just a post saying he was going to be running Via, a post selling his Eagles tickets, the finish line pic and then the pic of his Boston registration. No time in the comments either.

Now can I figure out how to post the screenshots? I'm not as technically savvy as most of you are!

1. The Narcissistic Facebook Friend (NFF) posts often, but rarely comments on others’ comments or posts.

2. NFF might however “like” or comment on comments or posts directly praising or complimenting him.

3. NFF’s posts often receive a flurry of comments from “friends” but after a few weeks, the friends stop commenting from lack of feedback. There is a fairly constant “friends’ turnover.

4. NFF often posts selfies, but they are rarely spur-of-the-moment shots. Usually they are posed, sometimes seductively, and show off NFF’s best features.

5. NFF’s posts are often grandiose and might be repetitive. She just jetted down to a private island and wants all her closest 4132 FB friends to know this. He gives a play-by-play of all his conquests, work or personal. She changes her photo repeatedly, often giving reruns of favorites, and asks people what they think. He posts each new poem he writes at least 20 times.

5. Some NFF’s have stratospheric numbers of friends and will accept friend requests from anyone and everyone and/or constantly make friend requests. (They could also be buying ads to gain friends like many celebrities and politicians have been doing on Twitter.)

6. Some NFF’s prefer quality over quantity. Manipulating a few eager devoted followers is far more satisfying to them.

7. If compliments are lacking the NFF often isn’t too ashamed to ask for them outright.

8. The NFF asks you for more information about yourself and then never responds to your messages or comments.

9. The NFF invites friends and followers to dis/insult/verbally “gang up” on a person who was or still is one of his FB friends.

10. The NFF openly brags about his tastes, acquisitions, partner/spouse, house, children, friends, money or looks.

11. The NFF “fishes” for compliments by mildly putting down his tastes, acquisitions, partner/spouse, children, friends, house, money or looks.

12. The NFF FB “likes” are designed to impress others. His likes read like a who’s who of brands, celebrities, causes, etc. But how can you tell? One example: He “likes” many trending social or political causes, but is only moved to post about shallower topics or himself.

Ihatecheaters wrote:

I love how he puts in his Facebook status before Lehigh "I'm going to give it my all (as is the case with everything I do)" -- sooooo you DID give it your all in all of those other races that you have already gone on record to say you "just ran for fun"?

I thought the exact same thing.

hart crane wrote:

I am shocked at the number of comments on this RW article SUPPORT Mike Rossi.

So many people saying "Who cares!?" "Worry about your own running!" "He just had a great day!"

THIS is terrifying. THIS is why the sport is turning to untimed color runs. So few recreational runners care about the actual integrity of racing.

Who cares about integrity in racing when I CAN GET A MEDAL??!!!

Came across my twitter feed from Running Times. ...

http://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/questions-arise-over-how-a-pennsylvania-dad-qualified-for-boston?adbid=596374047711080448&adbpl=tw&adbpr=16031688&cid=social45375126&short_code=2y4el

Seems like most of the responses are along the lines of "wow you guys are so cruel."

Looks like Mike comes out smelling like roses again.

These are probably the same people that applauded his letter to the principal. Some of them sound so naive.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Seems like most of the responses are along the lines of "wow you guys are so cruel."

Looks like Mike comes out smelling like roses again.

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

hart crane wrote:

I am shocked at the number of comments on this RW article SUPPORT Mike Rossi.

So many people saying "Who cares!?" "Worry about your own running!" "He just had a great day!"

THIS is terrifying. THIS is why the sport is turning to untimed color runs. So few recreational runners care about the actual integrity of racing.

Who cares about integrity in racing when I CAN GET A MEDAL??!!!

Seriously. Just astounding. But remember, RW gave us such articles as "Run Injury Free Forever" so they may be a bit naive.

rojo wrote:

Rasism, great work!!!

I still see three photos on the spreadhseet without photos:

2203

2336

1132

Can you post about them? Also can you email me? I'll want to interview you when I write my story since you came up with the computer program.

One other question about the photos. Does anyonw know if there was one location that was likely to get all of the finishers. Is it worth it, us crowdsourcing one location - all of the shots - and just noting all of the people seen there. If he was the one guy missing, then it's even more obvious.

We don't really need this but if someone knew if a single location got everyone that would be amazing. Im thinking no single location got them all? Raysism do you know?

Unfortunately, I wasn't the one who came up with the computer program -- I have no idea who did it or how they did it.

But I definitely know there was one location that had basically everyone: the bridge (starts at Roll 11, Frame 1024). I believe I found every mystery runner along that stretch. There were others that probably caught just as many people (one was a road, another a path), but the bridge was quite comprehensive.

I think the three missing people were walkers, and the cameramen left before they got there. Their times are all well over 5 hours.

Regarding contacting the principal. I am the guy (perhaps one of several) who emailed the principal, but I agree completely that this does not need to happen again. I emailed her for a specific reason.

Very early in this thread I believed that we were onto something because the time is not plausible. From there I began an extensive review of the photos until I was satisfied that he cheated. As things progressed here, I put together a package of information and began to send it to media outlets. If someone ran a "dad of the year/letter to the principal" story, I hit them with enough facts to help get this going and challenged them to pursue this story (like, do some real journalism for once).

As I did that, I believed that the principal and teachers should know this might break. She could get calls from journalists, she would want to able to protect his children if they get picked on in class, whatever. They got hit with a $hit storm once, they didn't deserve to get hit again without a heads-up. She knew by Monday night, at the latest (unless someone contacted her before I did). This is really getting momentum in the media today. I think I did a good thing by letting her know, but would absolutely not contact her again.

Is it fairly obvious that the whole RW article came from this thread?!

I 100% support the disqualification of anyone who cheats, but you come across as extremely malicious.

Great job! you did the right thing.

DM25 wrote:

These are probably the same people that applauded his letter to the principal. Some of them sound so naive.

Facebook makes LR look like the Oxford Union.

runner felice wrote:

2014 ODDyssey Half Marathon 12 weeks out from Lehigh Marathon

Mile Split Chip Time Gun Time Age Age Place Gender Gender Place Pace City State

241 MIKE ROSSI 328 01:47:03 01:47:08 12 M 179 PACE 08:10

For other research I've created a database of people's race times. Using this database which tracks peoples race results, I did a quick analysis of the marathon times after someone had run between a 1:20 and 2:00 half marathon. I limited the data to only include people who raced the half no more than 90 days before the marathon. I chose this range because its close to the time between Mike's race at ODDyssey Half and the Lehigh Valley Marathon.

The results of my statistical analysis is that a runner's marathon time is usually their half marathon time multiplied by 2.0477 plus 0.2319 hrs (14 minutes).

For Mike Rossi this means his predicted marathon time would be:

= 2.0477 x 1.78333 hrs + .02319 hrs

= 3.88 hrs or a 3:52.

What is more interesting is that this statistical analysis also says that there is 99% chance that his forecasted time would fall between 3:24 and 4:21. Obviously this is a huge forecasted range, which is partly because I wanted to limit the sample to runners with times similar to Mike's and also where the half marathon was only a couple months before the full marathon. And as the sample size decreases the forecast range is likely to increase.

Regardless, the 3:11 time falls outside of this range. Statistically speaking, based on this relatively small sample of data (100 half marathon times between 1:20 and 2:00 hrs) there is only about a 1% chance that Mike could have run a 3:11 marathon after running a 1:47 half. If the sample size was larger, it would almost certainly help the predictive power of the statistical analysis, shrink the forecasted range and make it even less statistically probable that Mike could have run a 3:11.

This analysis is super simple, which has obvious drawbacks, but also has its benefits. For example, I interpret this as saying people 99% of the time people don't run 3:11 after running 1:47, regardless of conditions, injuries, setbacks etc. All of those factors could impact any individual time but on average they should impact all times equally. I've omitted plenty of variables but I've done so on both sides of the equation: half marathon time & full marathon time. Any oddities like good (bad) weather, fast (slow) course, good (bad) day should affect both times equally throughout the sample and should statistically cancel out.

Furthermore this model has some selection bias as I'd argue people are more likely to toe the line for for the full marathon if they are in better shape, so we're likely including all of the runners that were in really good shape as Mike claims he was and excluding all the runners that were in such terrible shape that they dropped out or didn't start. Hypothetically speaking if I could include those people who were in terrible shape, the statistical forecast for Mike's time would be even higher and would suggest that his 3:11 was even less probable.

Finally, of the marathon-half time pairings include in my sample, Mike's is the greatest outlier. His time of 3:11 is 41 minutes faster than his statistically forecasted time. There are two other runners who beat there predicted time by 30 minutes. Generously speaking, his time is a 1/100 occurrence because I have a sample of 100 runners. However quick test using the statistical distribution of the under-performance/over-performance of each athlete, suggests that Mike's over-performance is less than a 1/1,000,000 occurrence! In addition to all of the evidence against Mike it's more than obvious that he's a cheat!

A tv station has contacted us abou Rossi. I want to be factually accurate.

Can someone post Rossi's PRs.Doesn't he have a PB faster than his athlinks PBS?

Are they different than follows:

5k -21.52

Half - 1:40:44

Please post his PBs at all distances.

Also where can I look at his training logs? Does he post those?

I mean if he really was a 3:11 guy he should be running way faster than 21:52 for 5k in practice as part of tempos.

rojo wrote:

A tv station has contacted us abou Rossi. I want to be factually accurate.

Can someone post Rossi's PRs.Doesn't he have a PB faster than his athlinks PBS?

Are they different than follows:

5k -21.52

Half - 1:40:44

Please post his PBs at all distances.

Also where can I look at his training logs? Does he post those?

I mean if he really was a 3:11 guy he should be running way faster than 21:52 for 5k in practice as part of tempos.

Rojo, this is great.

I just want to reiterate that the moment should be used to tell WHY this is important as well as prove the validity of the cheating allegations.

This is not a witch hunt. He broke the rules and affected dozens or more individuals, including the race director who now has his race in question.