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

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DM25 wrote:

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.

Exactly. Now that the guy they wanted to nominate for "father of the year" last week has been exposed, they feel stupid and want it to go away, too.

Of course, the irony of all this is that if these people had just rolled their eyes at his ridiculous letter to "Madam Principal"--instead of sharing it with their friends and holding him up as some kind of a role model--NONE OF THIS WOULD BE HAPPENING. No one would know or care who M. Rossi is or what he did.

i suspect his wife is reading the post nuptial cutoff thread right about now

I've read this whole damn thread and there are two points I haven't seen mentioned.

First, while the finish line photos actually do show Rosie Rossi is drenched. Look at the fourth one and zoom in. Why is the side of his shirt dry all the way up to his ARMPIT? Clearly the front of his shirt is completely wet, but does he have some deformity that prevents his pits from sweating?

Second, Rosie claims that all his previous races were easy runs or done with injury. Okay. But what on God's green Earth led him to believe that he could go out and run 7:19 miles for a marathon? I know that when I plugged in some times to McMillan and it told me I could run a BQ time of under 3:25 (same qualifier as Rosie), I thought "Holy hell that's fast." Previous marathon PR was 3:32. When I did go out and try that PR you know what group I went out with? 3:25. No WAY would I have just thought, "Hey I'll go out with the group running 30 seconds per mile faster than my goal. That should work out well."

friend: gee, awful that you are in Runners World this month, i support you buddy

M R: yeah, but I am IN Runners World!!!

Wow. Mike Rossi, officially busted with video evidence.

Captain Jack Sparrow wrote:

friend: gee, awful that you are in Runners World this month, i support you buddy

M R: yeah, but I am IN Runners World!!!

+1

Smoking gun video?! wrote:

http://results.chronotrack.com/event/results/event/event-10268?entryID=10510918

Watch the finisher video of MR - note the guy wearing green neon singlet finishing just ahead.

Now go to these times of the video (not the clock time)

@2:09:10 - the green singlet guy coming in from the distance

@2:09:20 - two pedestrians cross behind the green singlet guy from left to right

@2:09:23 - a mystery man from the left walks out on to the course BUT does not continue right and appears to join behind the green singlet guy

@2:09:30 - two more pedestrians (one with a stroller) cross from left to right behind the green singlet guy + mystery man

@2:09:47 - green singlet crosses the finish and mystery man is revealed to be MR...

Case closed.

LRC video analyst

Awesome. Rossi is Douche of the Year and will be in strong contention as douche of the decade.

captain sparrow wrote:

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

Of course it did! Where else would it have come from? It's a nice summary without all the name calling and other BS that is spreading over 70+ pages here.

1. Sweat. Poring over shirt sweat patterns isn't going to prove anything.

2. Nonrunners. For many nonrunners, there are two results: run marathon or not run marathon. e.g., the reporter who responded with "how can you say he can't run a marathon when we know he ran Boston?". Don't expect them to get that there's a difference between 3:11 and 3:41.

3. Any runner will understand that to run 7:19 miles for 26 miles takes many decisions. It's not like you just take off and run without a watch and you get to the end and the clock says 3:11. You have to decide to run a 7:19 mile, then another 7:19, mile and so on until you reach 26.2. This is what you're saying and what makes it seem so unlikely.

More pics wrote:

http://imgur.com/Qn9uRD1,kdVJdiS,tGuIUgS,aHTw4qT#1http://imgur.com/Qn9uRD1,kdVJdiS,tGuIUgS,aHTw4qT#2http://imgur.com/Qn9uRD1,kdVJdiS,tGuIUgS,aHTw4qT#3

Little did he know that some Facebook friends would actually get him on the cover of RW.

More pics wrote:

http://imgur.com/Qn9uRD1,kdVJdiS,tGuIUgS,aHTw4qT#1http://imgur.com/Qn9uRD1,kdVJdiS,tGuIUgS,aHTw4qT#2http://imgur.com/Qn9uRD1,kdVJdiS,tGuIUgS,aHTw4qT#3

Headphones in both racing pics.

Some good recent points. When I first BQ'd I needed 3:20. So when I made my first attempt I knew damn well what pace I needed to run. My other races indicated I was in more like 3:15 shape, but I didn't go out at 3:15 pace, it was black and white to me, all I wanted to do was BQ (like Mike did), to go out hard and to get caught up in the adrenaline was my worst enemy, so I went out at 3;20 pace and held it till I I knew I was good...then sped up.

As a 47 yr old obsessed with Boston, with no indicators you can do it, you don'e go out and run 3:11 when you need 3:25.

Got the photos for these last 3 walkers. So Mr. Rossi is the only one out of 1065 marathon finishers with no photos along the race course (excepting the finish line).The bike path toward the end was where I found these three, in roll 70. Updated in the spreadsheet.Just once, I'd like to get the story from one of these cheaters about how they did it. I'd totally forgive them just for spilling the beans.

Raysism wrote:

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.

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

OK have it at it sleuths, 'cause I don't understand this one.

This is a result I found for him that would give him a 1/2 marathon "PR" of 1:39.08 at the Movie Madness Half-Marathon:

https://usroadrunning.com/race_registration_results.php?club_id=2257&selection_1=430

But.... this is a virtual race? Distance had to be run before September 30, 2014, but I don't know when the window opened to register. It's Mike Rossi, Rydal, PA, Age 47. No date on when he ran this time, but because of his age, I think it had have "run" this between April 21-30 to September 20, 2014. Just checking his age from past results, and I think his birthday his sometime in late April.

This is a bizarre "event." You register, send in your time (you can achieve it on a treadmill?!), and I think they mail you a medal?

Did he do any boasting on twitter, etc. about this?

I assume you're being facetious , but if you're not I can get the sample size to about 260 by opening up the half-marathon to marathon race date window to 6 months rather than 3 months. This gives people a little more time to improve and not surprisingly predicts slightly lower times. The absolute lower end on Mike's time moves down to 3:13. There are a a couple other runners who make similar "improvements;" however one ran a 2:12 half and then ran a 4:09 marathon and another two runners had 112 and 168 days to improve. I will note though that the runner with the 112 day window ran a 1:50 half and then ran a 3:10 marathon. This is not terribly different than what Mike did.... I'll have to look into this runner specifically and see if I can find anything out about him/her.

Something substantive to add wrote:

Got the photos for these last 3 walkers. So Mr. Rossi is the only one out of 1065 marathon finishers with no photos along the race course (excepting the finish line).

The bike path toward the end was where I found these three, in roll 70. Updated in the spreadsheet.

That is great work.

Well he’s cheating here in Allentown

And no race photos of him can be found

Out in LetsRun they're killing time

Filling out forums

Posting online

Well this father fought some silly school War

Spent his weekend on the Boston tour

He’s a mother and an attention whore

Ask him to race

Raced with them slow

And he cheated here in Allentown

But the lying ways was handed down

And it's getting very hard to stay heyeyeyeyeheyey

Well we're waiting here in Allentown

For the photos that were never found

For the GPS files he never gave

He didn’t work hard

He didn’t behave

So the race medal hang on the wall

But he never really finished it all

No he never showed us what was real

Thought we were dopes

A race entry to steal

And we're waiting here in Allentown

But they've taken all the facts they have found

And the cheater simply crawled away heyeyeyeyheyeyey

Every runner had a pretty good shot

To get at least as far as this old man got

But something happened on the way to that place

They threw 26.2 miles in his face

Well he cheated here in Allentown

And it's hard to keep this douchebag down

But he won’t get a PR today heyeyeyeyheyeyey

And this story just won’t go away heyeyeyeyheyeyey

And he cheated here in Allentown

For the LetsRun kids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnJp0oyOxs