Influencer William Goodge attracted my attention for the deeply suspicious manner in which he ran across America last year, so much so that I even ventured to Oklahoma to confront him. In brief, whenever he does his big multiday fundraisers, and there have been three major ones in the last 5 years, his heart rate crashes to around 105 whilst he peels off immaculate, world class
days’ running. The argument that heart rate monitors are weak and worthless pieces of engineering and technology is null and void. The companies Garmin and Coros are enormously successful and create excellent product. Besides, nobody’s wrist monitors misbehave
like Goodge’s – 90% of the time. Misfires occasionally occur but randomly and often with the monitor firing high, not super low numbers. Goodge’s monitor always behave perfectly outside these fundraisers.
Goodge does very little training and cantered across the States without a scratch on him. His second half took just 25 days, which is around the 7th quickest in history. He is nothing like this level of runner. Also, Goodge refuses to release the data from his Whoop device, but in a screengrab it was noticed that one day had 4 hours of running missing.
His training and business partner Robbie Balenger had identical heart rate fails as Goodge in his Transon in 2019. Goodge then did the UK End to End later in 2019, with Balenger alongside as his crew, and after a spectacular collapse on day’s 2-4, his heart rate then collapsed he ran the rest of the route untroubled, at near world class level at a rate of around 105. He then had identical modus operandi for his stunt of 48 marathons in 30 days in 2021.
Missing charity funds
For his Transcon, Goodge used Gofundme for his fundraising, not the cancer charities he was raising for. He did it by two pages, one of which has now disappeared from the internet for
some reason. The total funds raised were around £100,000. It is explicitly stated that ALL funds were to go to charity. One year later and with the pages not accepting donations for a long while, the following monies have been handed over: £51,859,75 to Macmillan and $7,010.23 to American Cancer.
There are grave concerns that Goodge has kept the remaining £40,000 funds for
himself. He has partied all over the world in the last year staying in the best hotels and dining at the finest restaurants. “Runfluencers” are a large and growing business, with many companies in an arms race to sign up athletes with the most followers and get them to sell their products on social media, usually Instagram. Goodge has 175k followers, whilst Paul Johnson has 335k and Need Brockmann has 305k. Johnson is notable for creating his huge
following by claiming he would beat the Transcon world record by 5%, but gave
up on day four, but with all endorsement in place for him to have the adventure
of a lifetime. Brockmann now says he will be the first person in history to run 1,000 miles in 10 days, but he is an ordinary, non-descript runner, who may get 13-14 days for that goal, whilst the record is held by Yiannis Kouros, by far the greatest ultrarunner in history.
Making outlandish, false statements is one thing, but if these influencers are now starting to keep the charity funds for themselves, that is quite another. I have reached out to Goodge, Balenger, his cameramen Reece Robinson and James Tregaskis, and Rich Roll who has spoken to Goodge on his podcast and is one of his biggest supporters, but all refuse to comment on this matter. This is strange in itself as charity fundraising is something people are proud of, with no call for secrecy.
WVL Cockerell
Author, “the 50 Greatest Marathon Races of all Time.”