Worst running time lie?

Any football player who has never run track who says they are fast

Our running club just finished with our short workout and this fat guy goes up to me. He tells me that he wants to join or club soon and, without me asking, tells me that he ran a 16:50 5K in HS. I respond respectfully and enthusiastically, "cool, that's a nice job."

Him: Yeah...but I ran the mile in HS and ran it in 4 minutes.

Me: You do know that a 16:50 5K (grass) translates to roughly a 4:45 or so mile?

Him: Yeah, but I'm better at shorter distances. I'm fat now but ran a mile recently in 7 minutes. I also ran a 5K this week in 20:30.

Then, without me asking, he reveals that he is "fluent" in 9 languages.

Him: I'm fluent in Chinese because I have a friend from China that I used to chat with.

Biggest. Jerk. Ever. He gets points for lying even when not prompted and about various topics.

Hey I remember this thread from back when.

Whatever happened to "me and my match?' One crazy obsessive fast dude!

Went to a small college and this freshman on campus was bragging about his 4:08 high school 1600. Nobody from that adjoining state broke 4:10 that year; the fastest in the year in the US was about 4:05 and this kid's name wasn't on any T&FNews top 10 list. So I called him out and he got all shifty and said he did it in a time trial at the beginning of the season and then got injured. Never ran a step for our school, but the girls thought he was awesome. Oh, he was kind of rolly polly about 5'8" 155-60. Maybe could run 5:00 or 5:08 mile if in shape.

Follow-up: found him on Facebook and he has his own PR consulting business, so he lies for a living.

Maybe he ran 4:4x or 4:5x, and just truncated to "4 minutes"

I have a pretty good story back from my days working at the local running shop. My best days as a runner were high school. I wouldn't say I was a local legend, but I was certainly locally known. I won a state 1600m title junior year and a state 800m title senior year, with solid PRs from 800-3200 and a decent XC resume. I didn't ever match my high school success in college, though I improved my PRs slightly, before moving to 5k/10k. I didn't run at all my freshman year, suffering from three consecutive stress fractures.

Anyway, I worked at a running store all through high school, college, and my first two years out of college. The summer after my freshman year of college, a younger guy comes into the store.

He tells me he's looking for good trainers for XC. He said he attended a d1 school and was gonna be a sophomore. Although he didn't run freshman year, the coach found out he was going to school there and convinced him to join the team.

"Awesome, you must be pretty solid if the coach wants you on the team."

"Well yeah, I won states in the 800m two years ago."

I don't really know what my facial expression was, but I tried very hard not to smirk. The kid claimed to have won MY 800m title, haha. Apparently, he didn't recognize me, even though I was recognized a lot, particularly in the running shop.

I got his name when he paid for the shoes and looked him up. He was actually decent, 4:28 1600 and 1:58 800. But the audacity he had to lie about winning a state title was unbelievable. Especially because he was telling the lie to the person who actually won the state title.

Now that I'm a hobby jogger, I don't bring up my high school days with my training partners who are all significantly faster than me at this point in life.

I know a private coach who works with local HS kids who claims to have competed in the Olympics. He's never told me to my face because he knows I know my track history and will call him out. Still uses it to pitch to kids for the $250 a month fee.

Pretty much any time that Hobie Call has proclaimed. 3:57 being one of them

I am a fu

There was this black f*** down near the border I met at an airport, and he said he set the world record for the 5k hungover and 10 pounds heavier than he should have been! He then went on to say he set 4 world records in one summer! Geez what the hell was that chickenf***er smoking?

Yeah-and he was 15 POUNDS OVERWEIGHT when he beat Salazar at that 10k in 1982 at Eugene!

I am a swimmer. I tell people I ran a 4:38 mile in a road race on 2 weeks of training. I don't mention that it was 2% downhill. I also don't mention that before those two weeks of training and three weeks of injury time off was 8 weeks of Daniels.

The worst lie I've heard wasn't on times but it was equally ridiculous. A woman I met at a road race last summer was telling everyone afterward that she was new in town, running with an "olympic training team" and she was aiming to run at the trials this year.

She followed this up with ludicrous posts on facebook about her training, hitting the trials standard, going to "nationals" (which usually entails some sort of USATF certified course and/or small regional championship) and eventually, running in the regional club championships and pretending it was the olympic trials. She stated that she did not know if she qualified or not yet, because "they" still needed to pick the team members and they'd give her a call.

Apparently the top 5 steeplers made the team this year, by virtue of phone selection, and this poor lady was #6. Her family and friends were so sad.

The full details of all this are truly hilarious.

This easily could have been referring to me based on times and year. I even used to wear running clothes to school daily because they were comfortable and I didn't like changing before track (don't remember what brand). If I said I was sponsored it would have been a joke, though if someone didn't get it I wouldn't have let them in on it. What I knew I had that the other xc runners didn't was raw speed. When I used to train on my own, my mile pr was about 5:20. 1 1/4 years later, after xc, winter track, spring track and then xc again, my mile was at about 5:20. I was trading explosive leg power for the ability to run a mediocre 5k. I used to look at my coach in horror when he would tell us how slow were were running 400s, how little rest we would get and how many we were doing. Or that the run today would be 8 miles on the road with 130 lb metrosexuals setting the pace. Looking back I could have ran all the long runs by myself with a watch on the grass to avoid the pounding of the concrete. I could have used that endurance I finally had as a base to take my 800 and mile time way down. Or I could have learned to use blocks, put up with the sprint coach's one hour stretching routine and run the 200. Instead I stopped running for the winter. When I returned to the track in the spring for a final showing it was as an under trained 400 runner who cared more about gaining some muscle than getting faster.

FreshmanRunner wrote:

I had a kid in my school run around 19:10 for 5K this year, his Mile PR is something like 5:20. He was our #10 guy for XC. I often have his friends ask me if hes the best runner in the school like he boasts. He also wears nothing but saucony and wears Saucony shirts all of the time. He now tells people that hes sponsored by them. Sometimes, I just dont know what to say to this kid...

I really hope that you were just wearing Saucony because they were comfortable; 5:20 and 19:10 for HS are NOTHING to be arrogant about. They are ok, but not even varsity for some schools.Are you a 400 meter runner running the mile and 5K? Why don\'t you just run sprints then? Is your 400 meter time 55 or below at least?

[quote]whatt? wrote:

I really hope that you were just wearing Saucony because they were comfortable; 5:20 and 19:10 for HS are NOTHING to be arrogant about. They are ok, but not even varsity for some schools.

Are you a 400 meter runner running the mile and 5K? Why don't you just run sprints then? Is your 400 meter time 55 or below at least?

[quote] Like I said I wore whatever athletic clothes for comfort and didn't pay attention to the brand. The chances that that post was actually about me are slim but if it was I didn't literally wear all Saucony and brag about being the best runner in school. I just often wore what I was going to wear during practice to school.

I should have just run sprints; it's clearly what I'm built for. This was 6 years ago we're talking about. Yes I can run under 55 when healthy. Working on rehabilitation of a knee at the moment.

My stocky uncle claimed that in the late 70's he ran a 15 minute 3 mile in his high school gym, but couldn't break 5 for the mile. He also said he didn't want to run xc/track because he didn't like it. Not sure I believe that...

i think i've already told this story on this thread but since it's re-surfaced....

This pretty heavy dude at my office said he ran sub four for the mile in college. I scoffed about it and made fun of him to my runner friends. You'd have had to be a national class runner to run that in the 70s.

One day I bothered to look him up and low and behold, there was his name in his college's record books. 3:59 mile. Goes to show, i guess...

Okay a confession--but all in jest.

Went to XC nats in Madison in 78 with a teammate and met a former teammate who was on the UW team (not top 7, but lettered). We went out to a bar the night before and the server was chatting us up and asking what we were up to that week. My friends looked at each other and started saying we were from the U of O team. The tall rakish guy was "Ken Martin" the one with close cropped dark hair was "Salazar" and I was built a bit like Don Clary, and so we were a team.

She kind of didn't believe us--like what are you doing drinking a few beers the night before your big race--and then suddenly there's a news clip with Dellinger talking and some of the Duck runners.

"oh yeah there's coach," and you can see me back there, said 'Salazar.'

It was a ruse and she may have half believed us, but probably not.

Using 5K/10k PR's from known short courses is not the worst but annoys me. You know, the guys that run 19 minute 5k's every weekend but run 17:20 on a course 2.9 miles long and claim to everyone they can break 17.

Back in the mid 1980s there was a Nike sponsored team named the "Killer BBBs" that had a winning streak at the Hood-to-Coast Relay. I think it was 1985. All these top runners from Portland, Eugene, U of O, Nike were sub 30 minute 10k, and a couple were sub four minute milers. A recent U of O grad (non team member) who lived in Portland (my friends & I jokingly referred to him as "THE RUNNER") was telling everyone how fast he was (sub 30 10k, 4:05 mile, 2:20 marathon) but could not be verified. He would show up at club track workouts, but would drop out halfway thru, claiming he ran hard that morning or was nursing an injury. He talked his way onto the team. Each runner does roughly 3 x 5 mile legs. These guys are running 5:00 pace. THE RUNNER's first leg is a flat 4.9 mile stretch. He runs it in 27:35. His teammates are PISSED! They yell at him, are totally disgusted with his lies. He starts crying! His team ignores him and he drops out after his second leg (injured, of course.) The team does win.