Robert Young fakes run across America

Up until this new 'record' attempt most ultra runners in the UK have viewed this guy as at best a publicity hungry clown in a kilt, and at worst a narcissist and probable liar... But either way, he wasn't winning any big races, so he's been politely ignored... There's a lot of these types of guys around... However, this is the first time he's attempted something of any real meaning, and if you disregard his hysterical fan club of middle-aged park-runners who see him as the second coming of christ, the vast majority of serious distance runners in the UK view some of his recent claims as completely bonkers... Irrespective of whether he finishes the run or not (not really looking likely any more), the guy's credibility in the UK is irredeemably screwed...

Cheers for outing the guy though...

Coxy wrote:

Up until this new 'record' attempt most ultra runners in the UK have viewed this guy as at best a publicity hungry clown in a kilt, and at worst a narcissist and probable liar... But either way, he wasn't winning any big races, so he's been politely ignored... There's a lot of these types of guys around... However, this is the first time he's attempted something of any real meaning, and if you disregard his hysterical fan club of middle-aged park-runners who see him as the second coming of christ, the vast majority of serious distance runners in the UK view some of his recent claims as completely bonkers... Irrespective of whether he finishes the run or not (not really looking likely any more), the guy's credibility in the UK is irredeemably screwed...

Cheers for outing the guy though...

Ahh, that's an enormous lie! I'm a Uk runner and he's seen throughout the Uk on a very regular basis racing and isn't 'politely ignored' at all! He's currently very well liked and supported. That may or may not change but at the moment your claim is bollocks

He seems liked by a lot of people here in the uk. He was the first to call out mark vaz as a cheat not long ago on his fake JOGLE exploits. The irony being he was planning his own cheated record attempt. They listened to him, and there was a huge backlash towards vaz and he was forced to drop his record claims and go away.

I dislike these publicity seekers so ignored what Rob was doing but saw him on tv a lot. He loves all that kind of thing.

He must have some kind of charm and charisma, and can charm both women and men.

Whatever happens, I think hundreds will still follow him like jesus.

Main thing now is stopping him claiming a finish with faked data, as he might just limp this one in to finish, though I imagine outside the record.

His followers would still hero worship him for finishing though.

He will likely fake an injury and take ages to finish and be hailed a hero for running while injured

IHOP waitress Blanch wrote:

What does cadence mean? Is that something that they treat down at the clinic?

Xoxo Blanch

Think of cadence as how fast some dude is humping you. Those fat truck drivers pound you with a low cadence, while your little brother bangs you with a high cadence.

iGotSpreadsheetzYo wrote:

iGotSpreadsheetzYo wrote:

I made a plot of the time of day and paces at which he was running from my spreadsheet:

http://i.imgur.com/GHJrXZf.jpg

This one's better, sorry

http://i.imgur.com/mBL8ufi.jpg

Can you post all this on his Facebook page? Under one of his main posts, not lost as your own post to page.

Hardly anyone asking awkward questions on his page, just worshippers.

It's called marathonman uk and has a blue tick

knower of snaggleteeth wrote:

Brits are so easily fooled wrote:

I'm beginning to believe that Brits are either more gullible than Americans or the type of people that simply accept somebody at their word and don't care to check the facts.

They're just too scared to say anything not PC. That's why their country has been filled up with Muslims.

That's true in general, but his fan club love him.

This is funny, millions of posts like this on Facebook. They are all changing their profile picture to a bright yellow photo of him, lol

Tracey Wiffen updated her profile picture.

Robert has taken a lot of unnecessary flack and nastiness recently from a group of (small minded) "runners" so I've changed my profile photo in support of my lovely man who runs in his kilt (when not attempting to smash a world record! He does have it with him though!) Yeay! GO ROB!! 󾟙 󾮞 󾬖 #LA2NY #WorldRecordAttempt #teamskins #happycampers He's a selfless, morale boosting, inspiring chap running across the US for charity and possibly to break the world record of the fastest crossing. He deserves every respect! Woohoo!! Our happy runner 󾟙 󾬖 󾮞

Carolyn Littlejohns Why flack???? unsure emoticon:-/

Tracey Wiffen Some jealous, trolling Americans got nothing better to do than to criticise everything that Rob has done; they want concrete proof of his mileage etc, demanded to know everything even where he has a wee frown emoticon:( poor Rob is exhausted. He's well over halfway and is in quite a lot of pain and this type of crap is really affecting his thinking. I've witnessed his incredible determination for myself, I've found him and met up with him by his tracking and these people are accusing little @#@ with nothing better to do. Yet, none of them will take up Rob's invitation to run with him.

Helmi Flick Idiots.

Tracey Wiffen He's raising an awful lot of money for charity too x both here in the UK and the US xx

Carolyn Littlejohns It sounds like a bad case of the green eyed monster to me!! Sad people!!

His fans on facebook.

Barry Brooks Rob stands along wth Mandella Martin Luther King and all the other legends of decency honesty and immaculate integrity. Stride for stride he runs along with the great men of history. He has overcome a childhood to become a man of great exception. To know him is to have ones faith in humanity restored renewed and reaffirmed.

Like · Reply · 1 · 14 hrs.

Hop it. wrote:

Natty Dread wrote:

When I was 18 and running 10Ks, I probably would have made a similar uninformed quip. Try it and get back to us.

So? at 18 I could hop on the spot on one foot for six hours, now I can do it for 12, who knows, I might be able to do for 24 hours one day, but who gives a flying feck.

I can't say who I despise the most. The cheater in the van or those slowtards who are currently launching their "big operation Geezer" to bust him. All you need to take down the con runner is two persons, a camera, a car and a bike. But knowing what kind of attention seekers ultra runners are, you can be sure that this Laz dude and his posse will only go out there to show the world how great "runners" they are. They've probably spent a week planning every detail of this great event where they will plod alongside the cheater.

Folks, the turtle geezers have hit the ground. I repeat, the turtle geezers have hit the ground.

They made a quick trip to Trader Joe's near Young's route, slipped their Vibrams on and set out their bottles of metamucil along the route.

Last report was that they were speeding along at 8 minute pace trying to catch the RV.

More updates later.

Hey Wouter I don't think he is conning many people here too in the UK. I know what a good runner you are and also know james and mark as well as rob young. I have done some long events bit I am an average runner but do understand how much effort it takes to be this good. Ifor ypu look on here I have made a couple of comments and also I have asked direct questions on his Facebook page and he has actually replied to me. I asked the questions under my own name Lindley.

I do think this james and mark are defending him persee as I am not defending him either.

As they have do said I think he is capable at a good go at this BUT based on all the evidence so far I think the rules are being bent and my own suspicion is that he was add some RV miles while he rested at night. There are too many inconsistencies right from the start with how the start happened all the way to different stories about the tracker and where it is and why he can't bee seen in videos running with the RV etc.

I will say though he has done the majority of what he claims with some exaggeration on his pbs and artistic licence on his number of wins etc.

Yes there are the die hard supporters that have called hater every 5 seconds and they are not going to change. I personally am not buying it and nor are many of the other ultra runners on the UK circuit.

I have personally given him spaces in my events and he is a bloody good runner but even if somehow he is not cheating in this his credibility is destroyed as he still won't post data.

Don't think we have all been conned as that's not the case. Not by a long way.

Some of us have been suggesting that ever since this thread started Rob has probably been running honestly. But let's take a step back. Pre-thread he was averaging 70+ day and was superhuman according to their blog. We don't know what % of those miles he actually ran vs rode. To say that him now doing 30-40 per day and suffering means that he's probably running the whole way is giving him too much credit. He may likely be running only 50% or less of these post-thread miles.

From the way it's unfolded it looks they made him run as much as possible right after the thread started. This would have had huge consequences on his legs and probably caused some Big Brother style fights within the RV regarding the best approach going forward. Now that several days have passed and no one has showed up to stalk them it appears they have him back in the RV doing much more riding than running again. Mark my words, if the dust settles even just a tiny bit they will start driving far enough again each day to make sure he gets to NY in record time.

At this point the only thing that will put a nail in the coffin and even make his fanbase think again would be continuous footage from afar clearly demonstrating him not leaving the moving RV for large chunks of the course (2-3 days worth). That would take some serious ninja work. I believe they will be able to duck and weave with everything else and ultimately do just enough to pass the Guiness BS test, which isn't saying much.

Will Rob win for the children?

In Slooooo-Mo wrote:

Folks, the turtle geezers have hit the ground. I repeat, the turtle geezers have hit the ground.

They made a quick trip to Trader Joe's near Young's route, slipped their Vibrams on and set out their bottles of metamucil along the route.

Last report was that they were speeding along at 8 minute pace trying to catch the RV.

More updates later.

Laz and the turtle geezers have already been observed. They started on the West coast though, and will catch up with Rob in a few weeks. They didn't consider it true to the sport if they cut the course and went directly to meet Rob. Here's the crew during one of their Galloway breaks:

run, Laz, run wrote:

In Slooooo-Mo wrote:

Folks, the turtle geezers have hit the ground. I repeat, the turtle geezers have hit the ground.

They made a quick trip to Trader Joe's near Young's route, slipped their Vibrams on and set out their bottles of metamucil along the route.

Last report was that they were speeding along at 8 minute pace trying to catch the RV.

More updates later.

Laz and the turtle geezers have already been observed. They started on the West coast though, and will catch up with Rob in a few weeks. They didn't consider it true to the sport if they cut the course and went directly to meet Rob. Here's the crew during one of their Galloway breaks:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1276/5186789653_169018e2e6.jpg

Are the turtle-geezers going to upload their data to Strava? Or is that against the ultra-dude creed?

Ref Herts Insider: At a guess, from my knowledge of the U.K. local press, this was a county news site with almost all content written by either junior journalists or by those who submitted the news. This stuff is rarely content-checked, very easy to inflate claims.

I used to compete in a high profile sporting event (mid to back of the field, most of the time!) and submitted regular press releases to a number of similar websites and local newspapers. Even when I wrote the copy, sometimes it would be edited before publication and slightly twisted - but if I had made some pretty outlandish claims I doubt anyone would have checked them. As far as the local press were concerned it's free copy and a cool photo for virtually no work on their part. My time in Herts was after 2004, but it hasn't changed a lot.

I'll see what I can find now on claims 2 and 3.

RobsMom wrote:

Barry Brooks Rob stands along wth Mandella Martin Luther King and all the other legends of decency honesty and immaculate integrity. Stride for stride he runs along with the great men of history. He has overcome a childhood to become a man of great exception. To know him is to have ones faith in humanity restored renewed and reaffirmed.

Like · Reply · 1 · 14 hrs.

^This.

Challengerunning wrote:

I will say though he has done the majority of what he claims with some exaggeration on his pbs and artistic licence on his number of wins etc.

He is a runner. No doubt about that. He is good. Not exceptional, but good. The trouble is that when you are caught on a lie, people start to question everything you've said before. That is what happens now. And honestly, if you can't trust him on easily verifiable facts like a PB, why would he be trusted on the hard to verify things where cheating is easy? Trouble is that those unverifiable performances are where his claim to fame is coming from. I think that he ran his races honestly. But that he has been cutting (big) corners on the rest. And I also wonder why nobody had called BS on the PB's and and the two different background stories. Somebody must have seen that. But maybe somebody did and I just missed that.

We've had our own marathonman a few years back over here. But at least that one didn't make any superhuman claims. His main sin was suggesting that his claims were superhuman. And the press ate it all. I also suspect that one of cutting a few corners when nobody was watching, but nothing as extreme as what we are seeing now.

On a final note, it has been striking me for a long time, how easily WR claims are made in the UK and how nobody seems to be bothered. For instance the "jogle WR". My impression is that in the US such a thing would rather be labeled FKT, which obviously doesn't have the same ring to it.

Racergirl wrote:

I used to compete in a high profile sporting event (top of the field, all the time)

Very informative and interesting posts from Racergirl, but you're obviously new to letsrun. So I changed your post to meet lrc's standards.

[quote]He seems liked by a lot of people here in the uk. He was the first to call out mark vaz as a cheat not long ago on his fake JOGLE exploits. The irony being he was planning his own cheated record attempt. They listened to him, and there was a huge backlash towards vaz and he was forced to drop his record claims and go away.[\quote]

In the sport I used to do, if you accused another competitor of cheating then BOTH teams were investigated on the basis that frequently it takes a cheat to recognise a cheat: "He can't possibly beat me because I'm already gaining advantage by cheating so should be winning".

Van is on the bridge!!

http://www.marathonmanuk.co.uk/fastest-crossing-of-america-usa-on-foot-live-tracking/

1 Rob

Tracked 12 Jun 2016 06:05