This thread was originally titled, "Incredible development in the $612,000 Transcon Goodge run, currently ongoing" but the new title is more descriptive. The description of the run is here.
Oh Will, you must have enjoyed 36 hours of no one really interfering with your gaggle of fans continually piling on your opinions…
Would it be possible for you to stop your bombastic statements? No human pulse? Come on. I’m beating at 52 right now. Is that a human pulse? WGs 105 is a human pulse just not to your liking. A 3:58 marathon is being exposed? Exposed for what? Has WG ever said he’s one of the fastest runners on the planet? You make it sound, or even a 3:05, as a blah time. Congrats to you if you blow that time away. But to the average marathoner, I believe 4:21 is the rate for men. So, by that definition WG is above average. But, I guess that isn’t good for you. Comments like you are making is what hurts the running community as a whole. You sound elitist. Isn’t running supposed to be for everyone at whatever their best abilities are?
My guess that the thing they know that you don’t is they believe in themselves and aren’t listening to the doubters.
You’ve now had 2 or 3 TC finishers explain to you that WGs distances, pace and HR aren’t surprising at all. They’ve also said that trying to compare 6 day ultras to a TC aren’t comparable. But you’ve now dismissed yet another one because it doesn’t fit your narrative. Wow! Maybe you’re trying to claim some fame from this and angling for your own Netflix special?
Personal insults aside, you concede rather a lot when you resort to charges of "elitism" in reference to criticism of someone claiming to be performing at a level they haven't proven themselves capable. No one is suggesting this guy isn't any good; they're saying there's no evidence that he's good enough to hit the distance numbers he's putting up. You're being disingenuous in pretending at this late stage that you don't understand this important difference. In other words, you are completely out of real defenses against the totality of circumstantial evidence of fraud being steadily piled up here. No point in even touching the "they believe in themselves" tripe ( they absolutely ARE listening to the "doubters" and you know it. The doubters will be their undoing), let alone your risible WG to Sifan Hassan comparison, which proves you're either actually or willfully ignorant of how this sport actually works. Either way, your defense of this guy is rendered worthless.
I think Recruiter57 is a trusting guy who doesn’t have the experience we have with these cheating saga’s as well as not having the deep understanding of the physiologically/pedigree impact on running performance across events. I don’t think he understands there are approx 10 of us on here (including Will) that have a lot of experience with previous cheaters and know certain signs that spell trouble. Many of those signs are present on this run. We are all in agreement there is a strong likelihood there some foul play going on.
My hope is that the cameraman is working his own angle and does a gotcha doc on the douchebag crew.
It feels like the whole point of the heart rate data is to make nu calm seem real.
Anyway, will, I am from UK an am volunteering to go out and watch the rest of this run. If you cover the air fare, I will do the rest. I am happy to have rocks thrown at me, I will just follow and watch and ask why the runner has their face covered.
Will C, let us know next steps here. If needed, setup a GoFund me and we’ll put in the money to get this lad out there. Need a 24/7 livestream on Goodge.
Just a tiny point, but Recruiter was actually having a pop at the equally great Hellen Obiri [Boston], who like Hassan is inexperienced at the marathon. But yes, the point is stillborn. Great sporting breakthroughs happen all the time, and the reason we don't doubt them is that we look at the pedigree, talent and history of the athlete in question.
Wow, what a busy night, the most posts ever to wake up to. I also have this fascinating initial contact from Marsh Ulrich of 52.5 day fame and the huge Wikipedia page above:
"You are correct, if he isn't using a tracker all bets are off as that is the only way observers can track progress and it also provides information that usually can verify a person says he or she is doing what they say they are.
More importantly it creates suspicion when a tracker is not used as observers and people can verify in real time where the runner is so as to pay an unannounced visit to see for one's self that rules are followed and claims made are verified.
My crossing was tough as I had lost a lot of my speed at the age of 57 and it became a matter of putting lots of hours in per day of running (17 to 19 per day).
If you can provide more information and his route that would be appreciated. Those of us who hold records consider San Francisco to New York City or the reverse to be the official route. Guinness lets about any route count (LA to NY or reverse) is easier as it eliminates altitude."
------------------------------
That's damning stuff from Marsh. "All bets are off." I think we can continue to put more pressure on the tracker issue. From day 1 it was a huge let down. There are so many companies that provide tracking. The opentracker website is absolutely superb, and the blue dot addicts are in nirvana; and a recent Jogler just did the 'where am I?' app on his phone which was perfectly useable. They say something about the tracker being bulky, but compared to what? his two bottles? His phone? What about an airtag?
Aside from no tracker vastly easing untoward activity, it is such an insult to fans of the sport who have had to observe each day completely blind. It has been so very boring, and we have had no clue really what has gone on. Sometimes it looks like he's done well, sometimes terribly, but the result is always the same - simply immaculate and trouble-free running. Yesterday, a case in point. The tracker stopped pretty early and no Strava filed. Their filing of Strava is also getting later and later - also an insult. Just report the damn thing! I am staggered there's no news on WGs Insta reel since 4pm his time.
The lack of a tracker is down to Balenger, and Balenger alone. RB has made a very calculated decision to keep his man untracked. This is a full-time job for him, but he makes huge blunders like this all the time. Another is to simply put a late new route into google, which is so not how to route plan. It's kinda like: "you had one job..." People take weeks over the planning of routes, agonising over the pros and cons of one highway to another. For instance at Jogle it is often better to go 4 miles further on a flat route than a horribly hilly one. As one doyen has written: "All that work and now crew chief RB has him marching up and down mountains all day."
RBs handling of me right from the start was derisory, disgusting and inhumane. He didn't treat me like a concerned citizen and a pro running author, statistician and historian of the last 25+ years, but simply like a bug to be squashed, or as he put it himself on camera to me, I mean as much to him as 'what he wipes from his rear end' [but he didn't put it like that]. His very first words to me were that I was "tasteless" to have made contact. What a deeply negative tone to begin a key interaction.
I also think it's very prescient that Marsh had to slug away for 17-19 hours. His age a small factor but loads of multidays excel well into their 50s as it takes decades to build up to this stuff. That was always my immediate concern to all this, that WG was always done so early. People kept saying, "meh, low 50s... not that good," but it was the PACE of them people couldn't see. The mark for this for anyone but the very, very top is 14-17 hours, and he was always done in about 10-12, and then it was time for beers, pizza, a camp fire, and a lovely long recovery.
The new man on the scene is Elliot Clements-Hill, described as WGs brother, and for sure a clone: a former rugby playing, male model from Ampthill, with no club or PowerofTen. Their inner circle remains incredibly tight with no outsiders.
This post was edited 3 minutes after it was posted.
I'm finished with my viewpoint on all of this and since the whole thing comes down to trust, I don't trust it and so for me it's not a valid attempt. The lack of tracker on the runner is my main issue. You spend all this money and time doing it but don't have a tracker on the runner.
The other red flags are valid points but this all comes down to the tracker. Observability seems to be one important way of verifying these kind of efforts and they have not bothered to rectify this whole issue of trust in anyway.
WG might have run the whole way but without the paper trail then he's not done it in my view.
Out of curiosity, I thought I would google "how to fake runs in Strava"? I figured it would come up empty. But to my surprise there are apps that allow you to do this. This video walks you step by step in how to modify a strava run on your computer with a program to make it look like your run was something it was not. There are even apps that allow you to make it look like you are running on another continent when you are not. Essentially you layer over a 25 mile run you did somewhere else onto a different map. I present this to show that we have another cheat theory to work with besides watch muling.
Here are the steps where you can import fake runs in strava. You just need to export your existing old run or get a gpx file from other runner, change date a...
The new man on the scene is Elliot Clements-Hill, described as WGs brother, and for sure a clone: a former rugby playing, male model from Ampthill, with no club or PowerofTen. Their inner circle remains incredibly tight with no outsiders.
Checked his strava. He has some side by side runs with Goodge this past week. He does have the map feature viewable but heart rate disabled. He is faster than Will. 2:48 London Marathon.
At the moment, I can't overlap his run to WG yesterday because WG has yet to upload to strava. Weird.
Tracker hasn't budged from WM parking lot. 6:56am. Are they sleeping in this morning?
Hi all! Great news, we have finally tracked down the full USA Crosser stats, which also puts another whopping hole into WGs sloppy research. It's NOT 300 to cross, as he so self-importantly states, this is a fib at best, it is 493 - and momentarily to become 495. There has clearly been a very healthy uptick in the last decade - who knows why...
Anyway, we can be far more accurate with our stats as there have been some majestic runs in the last decade.
Of the 215 runs, the best have been:
Pete Kostelnick 42
Patrick Malandain 45 Phillip McCarthy 49 Sandra Villines 54 Shaun Evans 59 Jason Romero 60 Adam Kimble 60
So now we have an even better feel for everything. Goodge will place 5th/215 in this group that tallies with his 10/279 previously.
If we say that 1,000 have hit the challenge with intent [it is surely a lot more, but this'll do], Goodge will be 13/1,000. This is what is being waved before us to accept.
There is the great story of Sandy Villines in there, who was also subjected to LR sleuthing but they found nothing untoward, and she was kindly paced by PK on occasion. SV may be fairly unheralded, but WG has nothing like her pedigree and aptitude for the sport and she came into her Transcon with three years of hard-hitting Ultras under her belt and by 2017 had become white hot, destroying the entire field by 5 hours at the Razorback 100, and famously winning Badwater [135m] in a fine time of 34 hours. Compare this to Goodge running 35 to the winner's 18 at MDS. And this is 34 vs 24.94, with PK at 28. At this ratio SV would run MDS in around 26, which is about right as the lead woman there were 24, 25 and 26.
SV's running form is clearly compact and impeccable and her whole run was deeply humble, with just a single handler and no sponsorship, but loads of science and an incredibly diligent approach to all detail. She had to slog away for around 2 hours per day more than WG and was absolutely light years from some of the speeds he so often hits.
Anyway, now we know. 1,000 Tranconners in history, and WG will be 13th on the list, where the form guide suggests 145th. Albeit with no tracker, no pulse, minimal experience, and no pedigree.
This post was edited 7 minutes after it was posted.
Hi all! Great news, we have finally tracked down the full USA Crosser stats, which also puts another whopping hole into WGs sloppy research. It's NOT 300 to cross, as he so self-importantly states, this is a fib at best, it is 493 - and momentarily to become 495. There has clearly been a very healthy uptick in the last decade - who knows why...
Anyway, we can be far more accurate with our stats as there have been some majestic runs in the last decade.
Of the 215 runs, the best have been
Pete Kostelnick 42
Patrick Malandain 45 Phillip McCarthy 49 Sandra Villines 54 Shaun Evans 59 Jason Romero 60 Adam Kimble 60
The full list, post 2012, courtesy of the great Bjorn Sunesson, currently on his 8th crossing, is .
It'd be nice to have the lists merged, but the previous compiler doesn't want it, so for how they remain separate! 1909-2012 is
So now we have an even better feel for everything. Goodge will place 5th/215 in this group that tallies with his 10/279 previously.
If we say that 1,000 have hit the challenge with intent [it is surely a lot more, but this'll do], Goodge will be 13/1,000. This is what is being waved before us to accept.
There is the great story of Sandy Villines in there, who was also subjected to LR sleuthing but they found nothing untoward, and she was kindly paced by PK on occasion. SV may be fairly unheralded, but WG has nothing like her pedigree and aptitude for the sport and she came into her Transcon with three years of hard-hitting Ultras under her belt and by 2017 had become white hot, destroying the entire field by 5 hours at the Razorback 100, and famously winning Badwater [135m] in a fine time of 34 hours. Compare this to Goodge running 35 to the winner's 18 at MDS. And this is 34 vs 24.94, with PK at 28. At this ratio SV would run MDS in around 26, which is about right as the lead woman there were 24, 25 and 26.
SV's running form is clearly compact and impeccable and her whole run was deeply humble, with just a single handler and no sponsorship, but loads of science and an incredibly diligent approach to all detail. She had to slog away for around 2 hours per day more than WG and was absolutely light years from some of the speeds he so often hits.
Anyway, now we know. 1,000 Tranconners in history, and WG will be 13th on the list, where the form guide suggests 145th. Albeit with no tracker, no pulse, minimal experience, and no pedigree.
Not too much to say about day 50 except more of the same, yet even more caricatured. An eye-watering 51 minute negative split; 6:24 going out, 5:33 coming back, despite hideous climbing.
Good HR till mile 17 then a complete crash and bionic thereafter. He can only find two sub 13 minute miles for the first half, but 10 for the second, including a 9:55 and a 10:11. Some really ferocious climbs like 220m up to 400, but he scales them with an HR often in the mid 90s.
Out of curiosity, I thought I would google "how to fake runs in Strava"? I figured it would come up empty. But to my surprise there are apps that allow you to do this. This video walks you step by step in how to modify a strava run on your computer with a program to make it look like your run was something it was not. There are even apps that allow you to make it look like you are running on another continent when you are not. Essentially you layer over a 25 mile run you did somewhere else onto a different map. I present this to show that we have another cheat theory to work with besides watch muling.
thanks for this. Yes, data manipulation has always been one of the several theories. More than one source has told me it's surprisingly easy to do.
One thing we all know for sure is that somehow, for some reason his data gets tampered with. The chance of his and RB's "tech fails" being natural bad luck for 4 years and 15,000k, over some half a dozen events events, when all their other running is fine, is not just zero, but less than zero.
The tech fail theory is on its last legs and one hears about it way less, because it has far too many holes in it. And that spells trouble for WG and RB.
Can someone please tell me what TF is going on in this thread so I don't have to read 80 pages? Someone's running across the US? Their HR data is suspect?
Sure, in a nutshell a male model and Insta influencer, W Goodge, is claiming to be fastest Englishman to cross America, despite having no chance, and is performing some 20 days up on what may be expected for his ability, with no tracker, no human pulse, and a history of he and his business partner R. Balenger doing exactly this sort of thing for the last 4 years at up to 6 events, with identical modus operandi, of a normal heart rate for some of the day before it collapses, whilst the speed either maintains or increases.
So yesterday was a 51 minute negative split for instance. They tend to try to raise 50 grand for these challenges, but this time they're after half a million quid - not pointed to charity but to their Gofundme. The guy in question lost to a 3:58 W45 marathoner at MDS by 5 hours, to give some insight into his ultrarunning level. He will be the 13th quickest Transconner of all time if he keeps going like this [out of around 1,000 starters], defeating many noted legends of the sport.
Sure, in a nutshell a male model and Insta influencer, W Goodge, is claiming to be fastest Englishman to cross America, despite having no chance, and is performing some 20 days up on what may be expected for his ability, with no tracker, no human pulse, and a history of he and his business partner R. Balenger doing exactly this sort of thing for the last 4 years at up to 6 events, with identical modus operandi, of a normal heart rate for some of the day before it collapses, whilst the speed either maintains or increases.
So yesterday was a 51 minute negative split for instance. They tend to try to raise 50 grand for these challenges, but this time they're after half a million quid - not pointed to charity but to their Gofundme. The guy in question lost to a 3:58 W45 marathoner at MDS by 5 hours, to give some insight into his ultrarunning level. He will be the 13th quickest Transconner of all time if he keeps going like this [out of around 1,000 starters], defeating many noted legends of the sport.
Lovely, thank you! Never heard of W Goodge, but a quick Goodgle makes it very clear that he isn't built to go the distance for an event like this. Funny that these "hybird athletes" and guys like, what's that military-esque dude, Goggins(?), have duped a bunch of people into thinking you can be a great distance runner while being twice as large as the best to ever do it.
Out of curiosity, I thought I would google "how to fake runs in Strava"? I figured it would come up empty. But to my surprise there are apps that allow you to do this. This video walks you step by step in how to modify a strava run on your computer with a program to make it look like your run was something it was not. There are even apps that allow you to make it look like you are running on another continent when you are not. Essentially you layer over a 25 mile run you did somewhere else onto a different map. I present this to show that we have another cheat theory to work with besides watch muling.
thanks for this. Yes, data manipulation has always been one of the several theories. More than one source has told me it's surprisingly easy to do.
One thing we all know for sure is that somehow, for some reason his data gets tampered with. The chance of his and RB's "tech fails" being natural bad luck for 4 years and 15,000k, over some half a dozen events events, when all their other running is fine, is not just zero, but less than zero.
The tech fail theory is on its last legs and one hears about it way less, because it has far too many holes in it. And that spells trouble for WG and RB.
Also, I'll just chime in here so I have something to contribute. This is very easy to do. GPX/other GPS format files are very simple files. No protections. I could manually write up one that says I ran around the globe if I chose to. I believe it's just some sort of key-value pairing, it's been a while since I looked. Basically the file says something like:
- $timestamp, $latitude, $longitude
- $timestamp, $latitude, $longitude
- $timestamp, $latitude, $longitude
- ... repeat ad nauseam
Plug in the times, latitudes, and longitudes to suit your needs.
I did t know Goodge and Robbie have been at this for years together. I assumed they just hooked up a few months ago.
Oh goodness... soooooo much back story to all of this. Has been ongoing since March of 2019. Balenger clearly collapsed on day 3 of his Transcon with a horror session, but from then on his heart rate went into nosedive, but he locked like a riveter onto 76k days, and sailed through to the end no trouble at all for a 75 day return.
Around this time time Goodge got in touch, said he was inspired and they've been inseparable. Off almost no training Goodge tried Jogle. Day 1 was problematic, day 2 a bit of a mare, day 3 a horror and day 4, 53k in 13:30. Yes you read that right. Then he rose like a phoenix, and just like Balenger saw a collapsed heart of 100 or so to see him home in 15.4 days, and a simply nuts 1.4 day negative split.
Two years later Goodge did 48 marathons in 30 days, but only 10 of them return a human pulse, the rest the monitor either freezes or is that of the bionic man. He raced two marathons in that time, of course both had perfect HRs. The latter at 170 with a high of 189. This is a guy with a very high HR.
So, yes, they go on training camps together, WG crews for RB at TSP to Vegas [who in turn tosses in 4 minute miles during that, we found out yesterday.] Both became professional ultrarunners around 4 years ago and RB clearly works for WG as his minder, manager, coach and general valet/batman.