LRC Sleuths- Fellow LetsRun Visitor Rob Pope Has Nearly Completed Forrest Gump's Five Runs Across America and wants scrutiny

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wejo

cofounder

2 years ago 04/22/2018 12:08pm CDT

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I can't believe I wasn't familiar with Pope who is trying to run across America five times like Forrest Gump.

Dude even looks like him. He ran 2:36 at London today and Jon Gault talked to him.

"Pope says that he reads the site to stay entertained during his trip and has heard all about fellow Brit Rob Young, whose cross-country attempt was exposed as a total fraud by a group of tireless LetsRun.com messageboard posters in 2016. And -- are you listening, LetsRun nation? -- he welcomes the scrutiny that his attempt will bring."

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/04/meet-real-life-forrest-gump-rob-pope-nearly-completed-gumps-epic-quest-five-run-across-america/

So are any of you familiar with him? What's his PRs? And how legit is his run?
Old lady driving a Honda civic

2 years ago 04/22/2018 12:15pm CDT
re: wejo

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I think I saw him under my local bridge with a shopping cart and a can of beans the other day...
scam_watcheroo

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2 years ago 04/22/2018 12:40pm CDT
re: wejo

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Hmm, I've taken a look at Robla's website and social media but can't find any live tracking or Strava. I would have expected he would have had done at least one of those to record his runs. He looks to have the marathon race speed from his race history but that doesn't directly translate to transcontinental ability. The lack of any GPS tracking on his claimed first person to ever 4x run across America in a single year leaves me skeptical.

Wejo, if you can ask him if he has GPS data he hasn't uploaded, I can analyze it with my analysis tool. Otherwise, I cannot consider his claims as legit.
scam_watcheroo

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2 years ago 04/22/2018 1:01pm CDT
re: scam_watcheroo

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Robla has a very large collection of photos he took of scenery and him posing during his claimed 4x run across America on Facebook, so at the very least he was recharging a phone. And from the timestamps of this photos, they were uploaded during his claimed runs and not all at a single time after it all ended. So it is really odd that there is no GPS evidence he actually ran it when there is evidence he was had at the very least a smartphone and the ability to upload photos and go on social media.

https://m.facebook.com/pg/runroblarun/photos/?mt_nav=1
scam_watcheroo

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2 years ago 04/22/2018 1:25pm CDT
re: scam_watcheroo

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Looking closer at Robla's photos, we can see that he did indeed wear a GPS watch both during his claimed 4x run across America and at recent Marathons in the UK. Is it a Polar?

So where is this GPS data? Robla is very active on social media, but no Strava?

https://m.facebook.com/runroblarun/photos/a.326866937653680.1073741828.325003944506646/609946232679081/?type=3&source=54

https://m.facebook.com/runroblarun/photos/a.338104939863213.1073741829.325003944506646/619666211707083/?type=3&source=54
scam_watcheroo

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2 years ago 04/22/2018 3:27pm CDT
re: scam_watcheroo

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From more digging, I have found Rob Pope's Strava account with the GPS data from his claimed runs across America. So maybe he is legit. He should really link to his Strava account on his website.

It will taken some time for me to download and analyze the data to check for reasonable stride lengths, continuity from one run to the next, and some data patterns we know from the past.

https://www.strava.com/athletes/17717961

Reel Tyme

2 years ago 04/22/2018 3:52pm CDT
re: scam_watcheroo

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It't too bad he did not post data in real time. That is the current standard for virtual "boots on the ground" to provide a greater level of confidence. People have called the current standard "The Gold Standard" which Pete Kostelnick proved out during his record setting Run Across American in 2016.
Gravy

2 years ago 04/22/2018 4:09pm CDT
re: wejo

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Follow the money...
Brits cheat

2 years ago 04/22/2018 4:20pm CDT
re: Reel Tyme

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He's another cheating Brit like Dave Reading & Rob Young.
scam_watcheroo

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2 years ago 04/22/2018 4:24pm CDT
re: Reel Tyme

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Reel Tyme wrote:

It't too bad he did not post data in real time. That is the current standard for virtual "boots on the ground" to provide a greater level of confidence. People have called the current standard "The Gold Standard" which Pete Kostelnick proved out during his record setting Run Across American in 2016.

Actually, I don't think real time GPS data is that valuable compared to the much higher data sampling rate we get from GPS watches uploaded to Strava. Real time GPS data is useful as a quick check (and for tracking them in person a la Asher Delmott) but the update intervals are measured in minutes instead of seconds, far too coarse to be useful to determine details.

Even on GPS watches, the maximum data sampling recorded is only once per second and we don't get access to accelerometer data. I would much prefer that GPS watches recorded at 10-30 Hz with accelerometer data instead of the max 1 Hz they do now with no accelerometer data. The reason for this is that with 1 Hz data, you can never be sure if someone is hanging onto the side of a slow moving RV or if there are multiple people passing the watch off as a relay team. Having 10-30 Hz with accelerometer data would make these types of cheating much more difficult to pull off without patterns showing up in the data.

With the low resolution data we currently get from real time tracking and from regular GPS watches, there are multiple ways to cheat that I would never be able to detect. This is a reason why having independent eye witnesses of someone running is so valuable and why Strava data is not a sole source of truth.
scam_watcheroo

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2 years ago 04/22/2018 4:29pm CDT
re: Brits cheat

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Brits cheat wrote:

He's another cheating Brit like Dave Reading & Rob Young.

I don't think we should say that right now since Rob Pope does have his GPS data on Strava so there is a good probability he did it legit. On the surface viewing his graphs on Strava, there are some issues however. I'm seeing multiple instead where his Strava pace graph goes to around 2:02 minute per mile pace for part of a mile. I'll have to check out what happened in those cases with the unsmoothed data, could just be the Strava smoothing algorithms screwing up again.
Anactualgirl

2 years ago 04/22/2018 7:34pm CDT
re: Brits cheat

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I’m pretty sure he’s Australian? At one point was the Aussie marathon champ?

My beef with his run is that it is not continuous- he flies back to the UK intermittently for breaks. Other than that it is legit.

"The Gold Standard"

2 years ago 04/22/2018 7:38pm CDT
re: scam_watcheroo

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scam_watcheroo wrote:

Reel Tyme wrote:

It't too bad he did not post data in real time. That is the current standard for virtual "boots on the ground" to provide a greater level of confidence. People have called the current standard "The Gold Standard" which Pete Kostelnick proved out during his record setting Run Across American in 2016.

Actually, I don't think real time GPS data is that valuable compared to the much higher data sampling rate we get from GPS watches uploaded to Strava. Real time GPS data is useful as a quick check (and for tracking them in person a la Asher Delmott) but the update intervals are measured in minutes instead of seconds, far too coarse to be useful to determine details.

Even on GPS watches, the maximum data sampling recorded is only once per second and we don't get access to accelerometer data. I would much prefer that GPS watches recorded at 10-30 Hz with accelerometer data instead of the max 1 Hz they do now with no accelerometer data. The reason for this is that with 1 Hz data, you can never be sure if someone is hanging onto the side of a slow moving RV or if there are multiple people passing the watch off as a relay team. Having 10-30 Hz with accelerometer data would make these types of cheating much more difficult to pull off without patterns showing up in the data.

With the low resolution data we currently get from real time tracking and from regular GPS watches, there are multiple ways to cheat that I would never be able to detect. This is a reason why having independent eye witnesses of someone running is so valuable and why Strava data is not a sole source of truth.

I think in real time means being able to able to load their Garmin, or similar tracking data webpage, and see where the runner currently is at. And also for prompt uploading of daily run data for review. Watching the GPS at random times is one method to check that the data is occurring in real time and thereby much more difficult to fake.
"The Gold Standard"

2 years ago 04/22/2018 7:46pm CDT
re: Anactualgirl

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Anactualgirl wrote:

I’m pretty sure he’s Australian? At one point was the Aussie marathon champ?

My beef with his run is that it is not continuous- he flies back to the UK intermittently for breaks. Other than that it is legit.

Those runs are still legit, but these types of runs need a note about how they were done. Note that there are very few runners who could afford to take several months off to do a continuous run.

Someone posted a link to all "runs" Across America they they could find on either the Pete Kostenick or the Sandy Vi Run Across America threads. There are some runs that required years to complete, and alls the runs were noted as total days from start to finish, days off included. You can get an average miles per day to cover a certain number of total miles. That seems a fair way to compare such runs that require months to complete.
scam_watcheroo

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2 years ago 04/22/2018 10:17pm CDT
re: "The Gold Standard"

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I've downloaded the last couple weeks of March 2018 runs from Rob Pope's Strava account to analyze. The GPX files and analysis results are on my Google Drive:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qfbEbcJZ4XGnI7ZuocHfO898t9gjjALq

A first pass through the data shows that there are some issues with the cadence/stride lengths but which are explainable. We can see in the cadence histograms that there are quite a large number of less than 30 rpm cadences (zeros) as indicated by the far left bar of data. When combined with his speed data, this results in stride length histograms that have a very large number of them at 15 feet to infinity, corresponding to when he is moving at speed but his cadences are at or near zero.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=129yLLgiYu6KWVNJQS1MNGwzpMrzzpOl9

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fO0p_RkEs7FQex_EtPFZ_ycObMhaGGJN

Looking at his unsmooth cadence line plots, we can see that they often oscillate from 0 and then right to ~60 rpm:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18oqIow9LG8JUh56LKIAnXcfm8eLmtwfk

We saw these 0-60 rpm cadence oscillations and infinite stride lengths in the Samir Singh, faith runner, investigation where the evidence strongly showed Singh used outside assistance in the form of a bicycle or similar. The difference here is that Rob's speed histograms are reasonable and he is openly using a push stroller, unlike Samir Singh. Rob's speed data shows he typically stayed below 8 mph with very few data points above that speed (similar to Pete Kostelnick's data). This is in contrast to Samir Singh's data where he had very large portions of his speed data greater than 13 mph.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EZaLcw2y4ZO8TAlewLZp-94rCCOSWED9

In Rob Pope's case, what appears to be happening is that sometimes he has the hand with his Polar GPS watch on the handlebar of his push stroller he uses to carry all his gear. When this is the case, the cadence does not register like normal because the oscillations of the watch are greatly reduced like as if one had his hands on bicycle handlebars.

So a first pass through Rob Pope's data passes my sniff test and looks legit. I'll have to do some code changes to my analysis tool to download all the rest of his Strava data for the runs since there are way more than I like to do by hand and to correct the timestamps inside the GPX files.
Push stroller

2 years ago 04/22/2018 10:56pm CDT
re: scam_watcheroo

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Can someone post a photo of the stroller?
scam_watcheroo

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2 years ago 04/22/2018 11:01pm CDT
re: Push stroller

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Push stroller wrote:

Can someone post a photo of the stroller?

https://m.facebook.com/runroblarun/photos/a.326866937653680.1073741828.325003944506646/574958526177852/?type=3&source=54

https://m.facebook.com/runroblarun/photos/a.326866937653680.1073741828.325003944506646/581237382216633/?type=3&source=54
Push stroller

2 years ago 04/22/2018 11:02pm CDT
re: Push stroller

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I found it.

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.BQKcoN5QndJIEFmJznFhVwHaFQ%26pid%3D15.1&f=1

http://www.thestate.com/latest-news/8af2el/picture193425384/alternates/FREE_1140/25551855_567231320283906_6491952082631653124_n
Push stroller

2 years ago 04/22/2018 11:03pm CDT
re: scam_watcheroo

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Cool, thanks.

That sure helps with the goodies.
Push stroller

2 years ago 04/22/2018 11:07pm CDT
re: Push stroller

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I'm a fan, hahaha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qKCk-nfHQ8