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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Follow the money...

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

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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.

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Brits cheat wrote:

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

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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.

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scam_watcheroo wrote:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Can someone post a photo of the stroller?

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Push stroller wrote:

Can someone post a photo of the 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

Cool, thanks.

That sure helps with the goodies.

I'm a fan, hahaha.

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