the most outrageous PR lie

That Martin Franklin ran the entire course at a race.

This past summer I ran in some running club-sponsored track meets, and in one of them, I won the mile in 4:49 (I know it's slow, but I'm 36, was never a miler, and that's where I was on that day - about where I am right now). Coming in about 8th or so was a 7th grader who ran 5:58, yes 5:58 - 2 seconds under 6:00 - just so we're clear. Two weeks later, I finish a run at the metro park and I see this kid and his grandfather finishing a run together. We start talking, and the grandfather tells me that the kid had another track race a few days earlier and that he "broke 10:00 in the 2-mile". I said "really?" Grandfather said "yep". "He's a star." Kid sat there and nodded in the affirmative the whole time. No freakin' way did he do that less than 2 weeks after running basically a 6 minute mile going all out.

I over heard one of my teammates telling a girl that he ran 4:45 for the mile when he ran 5:10. The 4:45 rang a bell because it was the first mile of our three mile course and he just ran the first mile(downhill) I came through in 4:55 and I finished. But that was back in high school. It is hard to lie now because of the internet. That just reminded me of the biggest pr lie ever. We got a kenyan last year at our school. PRS were as follows 10k-29:50 5k-14:20 3ksc 8:58 1500-3:42 800 1:51. Season Bests for last year 8k 26:30 5k 16:04 3k sc-sh#t I am not going to even say

1500- about a smooth 4:15 800- hahahahah 2:02

I can't believe how many people tell me that "back in high school" they ran "about a 4 minute mile." I swear I've heard this dozens of times.

The saying on my college track team (which wasn't very good) was "Everybody broke 2 minutes in high school." We had a guy who apparently had actually run about 1:58 in high school, but never broke 2:15 in a race in college. Not exactly a lie, but he talked like sub-2:00 was just around the corner....

We had a similar situation in our (D3) conference. Some guy hyped himself as a 2:18 marathoner, then couldn't break 27:00 for an 8k all year.

Sevatonics 8.17 steeple at age 16 on the Marius Bakken site, it took him 9 counter posts to actually admit it might not have been accurate, he was even saying he was the new Southern Asia record holder! But of course it couldn't be recognised becasue it was hand timed. And lets face it the steeple at world level is just jam packed with Southern asians!

I broke 30 in the 10K at Mt. SAC this year.

First of all, my username is a lie.

Second of all, We had a guy named Frankie in college who ran unbelieveable time trials "by himself" but was always much slower suring race. Ex. he claimed a 14:50 5K on track late at night by himself, but never ran faster than 15:45 that I knew of. I will say this, I could never hang with him in almost any hard workout, however he never finished ahead of me in any race. The guy was a workout champion, but always flopped on Saturday.

There was a soccer player at my college who swore he ran a 4:05 mile in h.s. He looked fast compared to other soccer players but when he came out as a walk-on we pounded the isht out of him every practice and he until he couldn't hack it and eventually quit.

And oh yeah, I almost forgot about baseball players. Seems like everyone I know had a teammate who could run a 4 minute mile, which was 4 laps around the light poles!

ppl who report 1500 times as miles and 3k as 2 mile.. and son on (3 m as 5k, 6 mile as 10k, etc)

When I was in high school, I had arranged to hook up for a hard 5 miler with this other kid who said he was a runner. Well, the guy never showed up so I did the run by myself. When I saw the guy later, I asked him if he did the 5 mile run. He said he did and I asked him how fast he did it, to which he replied, "Ummmm, 15 minutes." I knew right then that he wasn't a runner and had never run 5 miles in his life, but I humored him with an explanation that he must have mismeasured it or something because 15 minutes for 5 miles was way faster than the world record. He paused and said, "25 minutes?", with a worried look on his face, as if he knew he'd been caught lying and wanting to at least guess a time that might be believable.

Similar to that whopper was the tale I was told by a guy who claimed to have been "real fast in the 440y in high school". I asked him how fast "real fast" was, and he replied, "41 seconds." I said, "Are you sure that's right? That would be faster than the world record." He said, "Oh. Uhhhh, yeah. Well, that was on a relay."

As far as people who actually DO run and know SOMETHING about what times are good, there was this Morrocan-born guy who did local road races and who boasted track PRs of 13:07 and 27:50. Funny thing was, he would always run between 15:20 and 15:50 in local 5Ks and his best road 8K was a 25:45. And there are plenty of all-time track lists which go thousands deep, none of which have his name on them.

Some people just don't realize that it's EASY to verify claims of world class (or even national class) performances, and they can't get away with BSing for long!

One of my teammates claimed he did a 12-miler in 58 minutesd very recently. For this guy, that was unrealistic and I knew it. I told him that was under 5 mins/mile, and he promptly started grinning like he knew he had been caught.

One way I knew he was lying was that he was 12th man on our XC team last year and broke 30 for 8k maybe only once the whole season.

He later informed me that the run he did was not 12 miles, but instead was 7 miles. Figures. The new joke among the local runners though is that this guy is all of a sudden one of the top 3 Americans. Ha

There was this Chinese woman named Wang Junxia who claimed her six mile time of 29:31.78 as the 10,000 meter record.

I know all of the other events were severely wind-aided that day, including when Willie Banks exceded the triple jump WR at the same time as my race, but the wind guage read 0.0 m/s when I ran my 10.49 100m.

Actually, I heard the same thing, except that it was even less than 6miles...5.965miles to be exact.

Had an 800 meter runner on my team that would lie after EVERY meet. He would always be in the 2:00-2:02 range at race, but then tell everyone he ran 1:57 or so. The thing is, he would be telling this to people that (a) were at the meet, (b) watched him run, and (c) had the official results proving otherwise. Despite all this, he would still stick to his tomes he said and claim something was wrong with the timing system. Made me laugh every time.

Reminds me of my mom when I was in high school... She used to tell everyone that I ran a 4min mile, a 30minute 10K, and then later in college, a 2hr. marathon.

I just gave up trying to correct her. So, now you'll know the real story when someone chimes in about a dude in highschool / early college that claimed he had the range of 4min - 2hrs.