Cross-Canada record attempt, 7200K - 66 days. Current record by Al Howie 72 days

When does he roll through Calgary?

If he sticks to the schedule, now one day behind, he'll finish in Lake Louise tonight, Seebe 7/6, then roll through Calgary Saturday, stopping in Chestermere on Saturday. But those are 100k+ days--longer than he's been handling lately. Hope he's back on form now!

I need to understand ultra pacing and tracking better. I run with a Garmin and usually have it set to display my average pace . I start slow (I'm old) and gradually speed up, but your ability to move the needle on the average pace diminishes as you're farther in. That faster tenth mile doesn't make much of a difference factored over a ten-mile run. Dave's now 23 miles in but the average pace on the tracker has gone down to 11:09/mile. It says "AVG PACE" on the display on his Garmin Livetracking page but is it really showing his CURRENT pace? Otherwise, if he was on 11:35ish pace at 15 miles how fast is he going now to have dropped it to 11:09 average?

Er... wrote:

Tracker is back working. Running 11:30-11:40s, 15 miles in.

on instagram (instagram story) he posted a pic from the top of 10 mile hill, so I'm guessing he started with a climb this morning? which would slow the pace at the start.

How is he a day out?

If I am missing something, fine, but his schedule (spreadsheet) says Day 8: Golden BC and that is where he stopped at, Golden on Day 8. And his total kms were slightly more.

Wet Coast wrote:

How is he a day out?

If I am missing something, fine, but his schedule (spreadsheet) says Day 8: Golden BC and that is where he stopped at, Golden on Day 8. And his total kms were slightly more.

He's on Day 9. He was scheduled to have arrived in Golden on day 7 and leave on day 8., but he got there the end of day 8 and he left there this morning.

Look at the date: Day 8 on his schedule was yesterday, July 4th. He's on Day 9 but looking to run Day 8's route today. As to pacing, what I meant was I don't get the relative paces bandied about and not having been through the interior in about 30 years, I can't remember exactly where he's going up and where downhill. I only meant that if the Garmin livetracking site is really showing his average pace over the whole run, he's varying his pace significantly. At 15 miles he was averaging 11:30 roughly. But at 23 miles he was averaging 11:09. Which means between mile 15 and 23 he had to average 10:29s. This seems a pretty significant fluctuation but maybe he was on a nice downslope at that stage. Or, more likely, the Livetracking page is actually showing his current pace, or average pace over the current mile he's running?

Wet Coast wrote:

How is he a day out?

If I am missing something, fine, but his schedule (spreadsheet) says Day 8: Golden BC and that is where he stopped at, Golden on Day 8. And his total kms were slightly more.

Er... wrote:

As to pacing, what I meant was I don't get the relative paces bandied about and not having been through the interior in about 30 years, I can't remember exactly where he's going up and where downhill. I only meant that if the Garmin livetracking site is really showing his average pace over the whole run, he's varying his pace significantly. At 15 miles he was averaging 11:30 roughly. But at 23 miles he was averaging 11:09. Which means between mile 15 and 23 he had to average 10:29s. This seems a pretty significant fluctuation but maybe he was on a nice downslope at that stage.

Or, more likely, the Livetracking page is actually showing his current pace, or average pace over the current mile he's running?

Garmin Live Track only updates every few minutes so we are not getting the full data. The average pace on Live Track likely has some unknown moving pace or smoothing calculations done like how Strava and Moves count show on their pages. These unknown calculations they do can really screw up the statistics they show like we've seen in the past so I would just ignore a minor fluctuation.

To get a much more accurate look at Proctor's speeds today, we will need to wait for the full Strava data that comes in 1-10 second samples and where I can calculate everything with known formulas.

Thanks. It's certainly confusing trying to interpret from that Garmin page. Past 35 miles and it now says he's averaging 11:02/mile. Seems pretty ambitious for someone still relatively early in a cross-country trek but I guess it's probably inaccurate.

scam_watcheroo wrote:

Garmin Live Track only updates every few minutes so we are not getting the full data. The average pace on Live Track likely has some unknown moving pace or smoothing calculations done like how Strava and Moves count show on their pages. These unknown calculations they do can really screw up the statistics they show like we've seen in the past so I would just ignore a minor fluctuation.

To get a much more accurate look at Proctor's speeds today, we will need to wait for the full Strava data that comes in 1-10 second samples and where I can calculate everything with known formulas.

Having had a chance to sleep over my initial analysis from yesterday and taking another look at Proctor's Strava GPS, I have come to the conclusion that what we are seeing here is very likely NOT cheating and that one of Proctor's two Garmin Fenix watches is for some reason recording highly inaccurate GPS coordinates.

For example, in Proctor's two Strava uploads for July 1st from his two watches, they both start and end at the same points and the cadence data from both are very similar yet slightly different, which is a good sign this is genuine data and that Proctor was wearing both of them. But the key difference is that the second, longer distanced upload has the tracking swinging widely from side to side of the road, even going into neighborhoods.

I believe Proctor used this same malfunctioning watch on his first June 27th runs because they also exhibit frequent swings in speed.

Of note is that I do not see the tell tale frequent cadence oscillations from 0 to 60 rpm at speed that would indicate he is riding a bicycle or in a vehicle with his arms not moving. This was a reason why I was not fully sure what we were seeing in this data yesterday.

So I am happy to report that Proctor's run seems genuine from at least what I can analyze. I would like someone, maybe me if I have time, to reach out to Proctor and his teach to try to understand why one of his two Garmin watches is record such widely inaccurate GPS coordinates.

scam_watcheroo wrote:

Having had a chance to sleep over my initial analysis from yesterday and taking another look at Proctor's Strava GPS, I have come to the conclusion that what we are seeing here is very likely NOT cheating and that one of Proctor's two Garmin Fenix watches is for some reason recording highly inaccurate GPS coordinates.

.

In the future I recommend you always sleep on these things before you start publicly speculating. You also need to be more aware of your biase, which is that you want to find a cheat. You also need to more mindful about if you have developed an expertise that makes your opinion more potentially damaging (in its believably) than some random anonymous poster Your enthusiasm yesterday to go after Dave was not OK and certainly was not justified. It's not just Dave's reputation you were willing to tarnish in your rush to judgement, but you also put in jeopardy the fund raising he is doing for a very good cause.

I hope you donate a significant amount of money to the Rare Disease Foundation through Dave's website today, by way of apology.

I definitely agree you should have considered and reconsidered before posting suspicions.

Into Lake Louise, 53 miles and must be close to finished for the day. Excellent work!

Er... wrote:

I definitely agree you should have considered and reconsidered before posting suspicions.

Into Lake Louise, 53 miles and must be close to finished for the day. Excellent work!

I ran with Dave for most of yesterday. He is in a positive mind now which is good and seems as good as can be physically. I still think he can do this in under 72 days. Ran most of the day but walked a bit coming out of Field

About the live tracker...there is no connection for phone for a lot of that area so I don’t thinkgonna work live. His data at the end of run should be accurate.

Tron wrote:

About the live tracker...there is no connection for phone for a lot of that area so I don’t thinkgonna work live. His data at the end of run should be accurate.

Yeah, the Garmin Live Tracker cannot be relied upon for placing information, especially when it only updates every few minutes normally in addition to the other problem of one of Proctor's watches recording highly inaccurate data.

As I previously mentioned, the two uploads that Proctor did on July 1st, 2018 shows that one of his two watches is recording highly inaccurate GPS coordinates. One watch records coordinates that mostly stays on the roads while the other watch records coordinates that has it zigzagging offroad into neighborhoods that uses paths not physically possible:

This is why you guys have sometimes wrongly been saying Proctor is running really fast on a certain day but then slowed down a lot on another day. It's because Proctor needs to get his watches replaced ASAP, especially the one zig zagging him.

Can you give Proctor the heads up about this issue and ask where he got his watches from? Since this doesn't seen to have occurred before the run across Canada.

He got the watches from Garmin before the run...I think both are new fenix 5x.

Agreed.

Andy,

I admire your dedication to outing cheats and also your willingness to plough through reams of data. You have become something of an authority on the subject. But with authority comes responsibility. I too was rather shocked at your posts yesterday. I don't think your motivation was malicious, 'I was first to call him out' but rather a desire to discuss this issues with fellow sleuths. I don't think the pages of LetsRun are the best place to do that. I would suggest you build up a small group of fellow investigators and communicate through email or some other private method and then only announce your findings when you have solid findings. I believe this is how Derek Murphy operates. I would be willing to work with you. If so, I think I can find your email from either the Reading or Hughes fiascoes.

Where is he now?

waiting for calgary circus wrote:

Where is he now?

He is currently between Banff and Canmore. Hot day out there today. He may change his schedule to start at 3am to avoid heat in the coming days

Passing Canmore now, 46 miles in. Looks like he's having a good day. What's his play--where will he stop today?