Morning all! Into the last dance... a grim proposition in some ways, but it'll still have a compelling narrative power of its own. A crucial thing to note is that if his HR is really low, or crashes, don't worry, it's simply them tampering because they know full well that if they're surround by 200 people trotting along and he is suddenly at 150-160 for the last 10 miles, it will look serious bad for them. We have very much seen that they love to point to data fails when accompanied as a sign that it's that. If there was ever a time for RB and WG to slip a piece of paper between the wrist and the sensor, it is now.
As things have gone mad on here in the last few days, what we have seen is a total mishmash, hotchpotch of everything. Lots of human pulse, lots of not. This is them trying to make things more believable, but not too believable, otherwise it goes too far into the other direction - as it was for my first 3 days of observation, and on days 13 and 17 when I insisted by letter that they behave. They have learnt from that.
The blueprint for all this is RBs 2019 Transcon, upon which he went into partnership with WG and travelled to the UK to assist him on his Jogle as a novice a few months later up which he promptly collapsed. The HRs on those two events is far more crass, blatant, and less refined that here. There is no attempt to shield or mask, just a total mess.
Check out Balenger's last 5 days of Transcon [not his last day [30k], that was perfectly fine at 130]:
102 97 104 100 105
Now check out Goodge's last 5 days at Jogle:
107 108 98 109 117
As you can see, nigh on identical. He hit 100k for the 109, as a novice who had done 54k in 13:30 earlier in the challenge. There is some credible HR for the 117 - he goes in the 160s three times, hence its slightly higher rate. But after the 18th mile of having averaged 150 for the day, he then crashes and runs at 100 for the rest. He goes out in 6:08 and comes back in, you guessed it, 6:08.
Anyway! Yesterday was a very strong day for us sleuths. We have seen so very little Whoop data, but when we do it's pure bloody gelignite.
The May 22 glimpse showed he was missing over 3 hours of running, which is a massive insight, and of course much of that is during the Nucalm nap where you can't be caught out by someone popping up unexpectedly.
We also have the calories data, which is fascinating. With me in observation he burns 9,300 calories per day, but in May, when he hit ignite for this magisterial 5 day negative split, he only burns 5000 or so.
And we got the famous "Ode to May 19", the perfect microcosm of all this. What a set of data:
Strava? Fail - totally unclean data.
Whoop? Fail - totally unclean data. [3,000 calories consumed]
Tracker? Fail - goes off the entire day.
Route? Bizarre and inexplicable. They go off on a wild and crazy detour up north, RB has him marching up and down mountains, but in a piece to camera he just says: "we've decided to just put Central Park into Google - you know what, at this stage? F*ck it."
The up-down arrows for the last five pages have been:
Pro WG 70
Ante WG 1232
So some 5.3% on here are happy about this, which is the sense I get. The hardcore of Sneakers, Recruiter, PK and 50+, but really not too many more.
Have a good day everyone, will be fascinating to hear what they have to say about the British record... 7 weeks ago, Balenger promised me that they would give a big eulogy to Bruce on the last day as they ran him down [as they were so very certain that they would].