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

Running selfies wrote:

http://imgur.com/i3tN5IB,baWnjCf,GXmBNTE,lxC0fUU,4B57mzahttp://imgur.com/i3tN5IB,baWnjCf,GXmBNTE,lxC0fUU,4B57mza#1http://imgur.com/i3tN5IB,baWnjCf,GXmBNTE,lxC0fUU,4B57mza#2http://imgur.com/i3tN5IB,baWnjCf,GXmBNTE,lxC0fUU,4B57mza#3http://imgur.com/i3tN5IB,baWnjCf,GXmBNTE,lxC0fUU,4B57mza#4

Do you know that date he wore the 2014 jacket?

Can you post just the pic of him wearing the jacket?

He shared an article on Facebook on October 23, 2013 that is still visible to the public and pretty funny now!

Good Lord. The guy takes selfies like a Kardashian.

November 27th

Do we know if the dog was photographed at multiple locations? It has a bib number as seen here

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/09/lehigh_valley_health_network_v_1.html

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.

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:

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

JustAnumbersguy, Raysism and Something substantive to add are the real heroes of this thread.

Literally every single other person in the race (including walkers!!!) has at least one picture of them other than the finish line. But not Rossi. This alone should 100% convince anyone that he should be DQed.

Not being facetious at all. I just remember 200 being the minimal sample size needed for good power to minimize beta error, and it is a commonly used sample size in research. That's my limited understanding from biostatistics, which admittedly isn't great. again, awesome work and I enjoyed reading your numbers.

HeCheated wrote:

Good Lord. The guy takes selfies like a Kardashian.

Must do Boston.

Hey! I put in a whole $0.02 worth of work on the whole IP address question about 50 pages back. Does that qualify me for Boston?

Excellent work guys. I am very curious to see if the Today show will do a follow up. Fox won't do a follow up, the letter to the principal played right into their gov't brown shirt audience. [quote]The Real Heroes are... wrote:

[quote]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.

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.

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??!!!

Hey, we can care about integrity and like medals at the same time. I love medals but that doesn't stop me wanting to make sure that if he cheated (and i'm pretty convinced he did) we do everything we possibly can to catch him. I think the work you guys did with the Kip case was amazing

runningbadger wrote:

Excellent work guys. I am very curious to see if the Today show will do a follow up. Fox won't do a follow up, the letter to the principal played right into their gov't brown shirt audience. [quote]The Real Heroes are... wrote:

[quote]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.

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.

Well the the Philadelphia NBC station, which is the same network as the Today show, will be doing something at either 4 pm or 5 pm today. I know that they have tried unsuccessfully to contact Mr. Rossi, as I have corresponded with them about this and gave them rojo as a running expert. Perhaps Today show will decide to follow-up after tonight's episode. I am sure once Via Marathon and USATF has completed their investigation, they most certainly will do a follow-up.

Rob E, well done!!! I would love some more details about the stats you did - just a (OLS?) linear regression of HM times vs subsequent marathon times, it sounds like?

Clearly a bigger sample size would help decrease the range (unless it came at the expense of a longer time window). So would including more races, I was thinking - probably a lot of that variance comes from the fact that people will run a race easy sometimes, or totally bomb. As you note, this doesn't invalidate your conclusions, but maybe averaging over a couple races (or having multiple predictors or something?) could tighten the range a lot. You probably have better ideas than me about how to do this, so just raising the idea.

I'm also curious, did you look at the correlation of the residuals or anything to dig into how the regression was working?

Also, regarding selection bias - I see what you're saying but I'd want to argue that this isn't really a problem, since we already know that Mr. Rossi at least made it to the start line like the rest of your sample.

Rob E wrote:

The only athletes who have made huge "improvements" like Mike did so because their half marathon times were from trail half marathons! What he's claiming to do have done, improved from 1:47 to 3:11 in that short amount of time has not been done in my little sample.

One described the race as "it is a very tough course. Steep hills up and down, mud, creeks, tree roots, rocks, etc."

Hah! That is about the most entertaining twist I have ever heard. Seems like it would be fair to exclude the trail race ones from the sample!

Rob E wrote:

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.

Definitely keep us updated!

Wow, that finish line video is pretty damming. He's a huge cheat!

Why were you sympathetic? Because he received a generic form letter from the school district that any other parent in that situation would have, and if he had questions about the policy he could have called the school's attendance office, but instead chose to embellish his story, post the principal's name and sic the media on her?

Geez, people are fools.

That's really the damming evidence... and his FB response tries to address this by avoiding the predicament of zero pictures of him taken until the end. We're talking about a guy who loves selfies and would probably jump in front of another runner to be in the picture... and yet no pictures at all? I think we also need look at this whole thing from a different angle. He's one of those guys that never in a million years would think "real runners" would be scrutinizing him. His whole show was always meant for a non-runner audience who would actually find any of his feats impressive. You'd have to be a serious serious newbie to follow this guy's blog. It's no different than that bodybuilder wannabe who claimed he ran a 3:30 mile in high school. If you noticed, not that many people doubted his performance at first.. and when runners actually caught wind of it he instantly became defensive. My predictions:

1. Mike will never confess

2. He will try to deflect by discussing the MRI results, of course backing up the fact that he will never be able to run a fast time again

3. He will switch to a different hobby

But my god I hope he confronts us all instead!

Raysism wrote:

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.

Rosie is not gonna like this turn of events.

“Truth is the mother of hatred.” ― Decimus Magnus Ausonius

pop_pop! wrote:

Hey! I put in a whole $0.02 worth of work on the whole IP address question about 50 pages back. Does that qualify me for Boston?

Nice try. You have to cheat your way in on your own.

Even in far more crowded races he seems aware of the official photographers and acknowledges them for his photo.

ps - does this guy look like a 3:11 marathoner to you?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XyrNMOQ2ha8/VHo44AuGUcI/AAAAAAAAB4w/RKwBiDSKxds/s1600/635528692355785814.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RYbTpmznXSk/VHo42R3k0DI/AAAAAAAAB4U/PEBgIDYCgR8/s1600/635528691836403187.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cH18e_y7CNE/VHo44BqoFTI/AAAAAAAAB44/F7i8BCkUrho/s1600/635528692661259090.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-61opUnzhESw/VHo45Eop4-I/AAAAAAAAB5E/hzMSNEZRZeo/s1600/635528693023607886.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ty5zumJKarE/VHo463WS8PI/AAAAAAAAB6U/BMBX5QMToW4/s1600/635528693411270238.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OrO-qfbLIVg/VHo46-u3n-I/AAAAAAAAB5g/nbEMSbAIVK0/s1600/635528693719555127.jpg