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

Also occurred to me a brief blurb regarding randomization would be important to rule out selection bias; e.g. 200 randomly pooled marathon finishers with times ranging from xxx. Random sampling from the population subset is key.

Roric's left toe wrote:

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?

Aha! I haven't read through the posts that follow and therefore don't know if anybody has answer your good point, but....

If I'd only run a few miles of a marathon and wanted, quickly, to convince people when I crossed the line that I HAD run all of it, I'd toss water on myself.

That would explain a drenched shirt and dry armpits.

RossiLikesHisPhotos wrote:

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?

We should get a list of the styles of shirts he's worn to races. It seems like they're all on the cheesy/look-at-me side, except for the plain black one at LV.

Not sure if this has been settled, but is there a consensus on specifically how and where he jumped off and on the course?

Course Jumpinator wrote:

Not sure if this has been settled, but is there a consensus on specifically how and where he jumped off and on the course?

It hasn't been specifically established but the most likely scenario is that he went off at the first relay exchange and came back on at the last one.

Course Jumpinator wrote:

Not sure if this has been settled, but is there a consensus on specifically how and where he jumped off and on the course?

No consensus AFAIK, but it would be easy to jump off at the first relay exchange point and jump back in at the last one. Both are accessible by car.

Another option would be to simply run a bit after the start and then go to the sidelines and walk away.

I'm surprised by all the comments on the RW FB page about this. Many many comments along the lines of who cares, who has time to look into this, what kind of person would go after Mike Rossi like this, leave the poor man alone, and on and on. They even criticize the LRCers for their "conspiracy theories". They all sound like a bunch of Oiselle angry birds wanting to be friends with Kara. Heck, one little Oiselle wanna be type who ran Boston this year even commented - "what's the big deal ? There are bigger things to worry about" I bet she would feel different if someone who cheated a BQ took her spot this year.

I am actually a little proud of this site. There has been some really great work here by a lot of different folks. Good job. The integrity of the sport DOES mean something. I can't wait to see how this unfolds and Rosie Rossi gets whats coming to him. I don't wish anything terrible to happen to the guy - but a couple of DQs and good 'ol national public shaming would do it for me.

RunsInPink wrote:

...And furthermore, if you make a huge, public deal about showing your kids what it means to work hard and achieve a goal, and then you get caught cheating, you are a total jerk.

I don't really think that you need this sort of qualification. When you get right down to it isn't pretty much everyone a total jerk?

Course Jumpinator wrote:

Not sure if this has been settled, but is there a consensus on specifically how and where he jumped off and on the course?

I definitely don't think he jumped in as described in the video. You can see him behind the green singlet guy early on (2:09:15-2:09:18 for instance).

I can't believe ya'll are giving him a free pass on wearing the 2014 jacket, who does that other than pompous pretender? What does he tell people when they ask if he ran, no but I liked the color (liar). Just another hint into his character.

Good work LRC. The story is out to major (enough) media outlets. I don't foresee and apology or admission but as long as he is DQ'd I will be satisfied. Others are free to do/wish what they want, but ask yourself why you are seeking further results.

relay for life wrote:

Course Jumpinator wrote:

Not sure if this has been settled, but is there a consensus on specifically how and where he jumped off and on the course?

It hasn't been specifically established but the most likely scenario is that he went off at the first relay exchange and came back on at the last one.

The one thing that still bothers me, and I brought it up several pages ago, is that he started and finished the race mere seconds behind Douglas Rendall, lime green tank top guy. If Rossi left the course as is suspected, did he re-enter the course and by chance just happened to be behind Randell again, or do you think he was waiting for lime green tank top guy to come along so he would know when to jump back on the course?

You both have very good questions and points. With respect to randomization, I would call the sample "unintentionally random". The results were scrapped off the internet and the sample represents the subset I've been able to scrape thus far. The determining factor as to whether or not a given runners results where collected has more to do with the way the website is indexed, which should be orthogonal to any other variables related to marathon times. I can give some more summary stats later tonight after my run, but essentially have a fairly random distribution of race results for various races including the half and marathon. For the marathon times range from about 2:30ish to 4+ hrs. Times are distributed between that range fairly normally.I would like to exclude all trail races but I'm not sure if I have a perfect systematic way of doing so. For now I've been individually investigating outliers by revisiting the webpage they came from to assess if something funny is going on.In doing this process, I also noticed because of the way I merged the half-marathon and marathon times, I could have many half-marathon times matched to the same marathon time, if the runner ran multiple half's leading up. (I personally would never do that, seems crazy, but I forget how much some people race.) Anyway I can clean up the data and statistical model a bit by selecting the fastest half marathon time leading up to the race for each runner or alternatively averaging the times.In terms of methods, I've just used a simple OLS regression, a constant plus 1 linear term fits the data fairly well. With respect to error terms there not correlated with the independent variable at face, and overall the model explains about 65-75% of variation in times i.e R2 around 0.70 using only 1 variable.

p00pbreathbillionaire wrote:

Also occurred to me a brief blurb regarding randomization would be important to rule out selection bias; e.g. 200 randomly pooled marathon finishers with times ranging from xxx. Random sampling from the population subset is key.

mileage_man wrote:

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!

Definitely keep us updated!

As someone pointed out earlier, the same people saying "who cares?" and "leave him alone" are the same ones who cheered his letter last week. They don't want to admit that they were wrong.

Wouldn't there be a photographer before the first relay point? Otherwise the first runner wouldn't get any photos

Mylegsarereallyshort wrote:

I can't believe ya'll are giving him a free pass on wearing the 2014 jacket, who does that other than pompous pretender? What does he tell people when they ask if he ran, no but I liked the color (liar). Just another hint into his character.

It's pretty much known to everyone on this planet and K-PAX (note the "PA") that you don't wear the jacket until you've run the race. Now if you qualify and buy it early because you got a discount it's okay to try it on, but otherwise expect and suffer cosmic repercussions.

Oh yeah.

IFartInYourGeneralDirection wrote:

relay for life wrote:

It hasn't been specifically established but the most likely scenario is that he went off at the first relay exchange and came back on at the last one.

The one thing that still bothers me, and I brought it up several pages ago, is that he started and finished the race mere seconds behind Douglas Rendall, lime green tank top guy. If Rossi left the course as is suspected, did he re-enter the course and by chance just happened to be behind Randell again, or do you think he was waiting for lime green tank top guy to come along so he would know when to jump back on the course?

I believe you are overthinking it. At some point late in the race, Rossi likely emerged from the relay exchange or crowd some distance in front of Rendall and was caught in the last half mile or so by Rendall.

iiagdtr wrote:

Mylegsarereallyshort wrote:

I can't believe ya'll are giving him a free pass on wearing the 2014 jacket, who does that other than pompous pretender? What does he tell people when they ask if he ran, no but I liked the color (liar). Just another hint into his character.

It's pretty much known to everyone on this planet and K-PAX (note the "PA") that you don't wear the jacket until you've run the race. Now if you qualify and buy it early because you got a discount it's okay to try it on, but otherwise expect and suffer cosmic repercussions.

Oh yeah.

he not only wore the 2015 before running the race, he wore the 2014 and never even ran that race. douche kabob....