Frank Meza Report wrote:
Accomplices would be helpful but not necessary to pull off cheating at LAM.
2. The Hollywood section where Frank jumps off the course from his “little boy break” has a 90 degree turn. He could have parked his transportation at a midpoint and saved time since he doesn’t have to run back against the course.
I considered this, but then he would have had a similar problem in making his 10-15k split. Even if you split the distance halfway, he's still backtracking about 700m on both the 10-15k and the 15-20k splits. I agree that it could be doable, but it cuts the margins to make the split times really thin. Whereas, having a 2nd bike prepositioned on the course makes it reasonably easy. There would be no need to backtrack on either split. By my calculations, he could exit the course, walk to the bike (1min), unlock bike (15sec), ride at only 15mph to the next mat (14min), lock bike (15 sec) and walk 2 minutes to the jump in point (Total Time... ~17 1/2 minutes)
I don't think the other splits would have been as problematic as this one. The real question is why would someone choose to run this far on one leg? My guess is that he knew that there would be a course photographer just ahead of the jump-in point and he wanted to get in the photos.
I'm only a recreational rider, but I have three road bikes. Frank is a triathlete so he probably has at least three bikes. It makes far more sense to pre-position your own bikes than to rent a bike or beat yourself up trying to make a difficult split time with only one bike.