elephino wrote:
Mark Singer gets pestered by letsrun posters after every marathon cheater thread and he's said he's done writing marathon cheater stories.
The thing is Mark Singer already wrote a 12 page thing on Litton. And while I can't speak for Singer, I think Singer doesn't/didn't think of the Litton saga the way the anti-cheating letsrun crowd does/did. Singer's angle is/was more of an attempt to get inside the psyche of the pathological liar Litton is, to talk to people who knew Dr. Litton and his character growing up - at Grand Blanc High School and at UMichigan dental school, and to learn more about what would then drive Litton to do something so crazy, and then paint this Litton character in words (which he did so well)! The only guy who defended Litton was his close family and his friend, Dan Baxley, who To this day I am not sure if exists or if he is a fictitious person (actually Litton). There was a lot of stuff going on with Litton - multiple DQs, made up races, clothing changes, shoe changes, sub 3 hr finishes every 2 weeks. With Rossi, it's just one race in question. With Rossi we don't have changes in outfits etc. we don't even have one DQ.
Rossi probably wouldnt dare crossing the marathon finish line without having completed the whole course - and if he is going to cross it cutting the course, I'm sure he will be more careful to do it after the clock reaches 3:3X, unless he wants to actually train to get faster, but that's unlikely at age 47+, especially if he is encountering hip injuries at 15 miles per week.
This is obvious to people on letsrun and to anyone with a xc/track running background BUT - You'd expect a relatively inexperienced runner without much aerobic development who posts a marathon time of 3:11 to have the ability to run at least like 19:00 mins for a 5K (and likely faster given the lack of long-term aerobic development). You of course don't see that here with Rossi. The public may not understand that all this takes is some knowledge of Jack Daniels VDOT tables or of McMillan equivalent performance tables, etc. The public thinks a 2:50+ hour marathoner > 15:00 5,000m runner who has never completed a marathon before. The average varsity HS boy doing XC/track (16-19mins for a 5K) at any HS in the country can probably break 3 hours for a marathon in a relatively short time period with some emphasis on longer runs. Consult any exercise physiologist and he/she will tell you the (un)likelihood of a legit 3:11 performance given Mike Rossi's current physiological profile. He's an obvious cheat in my opinion.