Hi all,
here's an update on another thread about the British runner William Goodge doing Transcon at the moment and some worrying irregularities.
Namely that he runs at 150-170bpm in the first two days of his multidayers, collapses, and then rebounds at close to world class pace for the rest of the journey, but all at 110bpm.
I guessed they were probably doing it for the first time at Transcon, but it turns out that Goodge and his side-kick Balenger also did it at Jogle in 2019. I have published a paper on it at the Jogle FB page here.
Their overheads for this challenge must be enormous with a crew of 6 and huge infrastructure, maybe all costing 100k. They stop for commercials a lot to promote the brands that are backing them.
A killer stat is that at day 9 at Jogle, Carla Molinaro's last 15k was run in 2:11 off a brutal heartrate of 154 - what's required to achieve great things in running as we all know - paying the blood price. Goodge's last 15 splits of his day 9 were at, you guessed it, 110bpm, and he still beat Molinaro by 8 minutes, despite his overall Jogle being 16 days to her 12.
This is all very chilling, not helped by them directing charity funds to GoFundMe, and not to Macmillan and American cancer; and also by not having a tracker on the athlete - it is kept in the van for some reason, which is a total anomaly in this day and age. They say that is to entertain us, but there's nothing fun about watching a semi-dormant van.
Thank you in advance for any input or feedback you may have on this.
Cheers, Will,
author of The Greatest Marathon Races of All Time