Sad News: Frank Meza Found Dead In LA River

Very sad. While I support the outing of cheaters, we need to remember that they are actual people (and possibly dealing with mental illness). RIP

Sudden deaths are always very sad.

Please be respectful of Frank's family. Jokes about Frank's death will not be tolerated , nor will posts blaming Good Morning America, the LA Times or internet mobs.

If you want to post on this thread, you must register as we've closed this thread to non-registered posters to try to cut down on insensitive remarks, needless speculation or blame. If you want to post rationally and respectfully about the matter, register and do so.

While we don't know the cause of death, if you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, please get help and call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Sad. Nothing to be done about it now - but maybe this will temper our collective bloodlust in the future. Back people into a corner, and predicting how they will react becomes impossible. Food for thought for all of us.

Very sad news, thoughts and prayers go out to family, friends, and colleagues.

It's a very sad story.

I too think it's a good idea for everyone to realize that the people you are talking about on the Internet are real people. However, I also think it's a good idea for people to remind themselves that America is a very forgiving place. While we at LetsRun never got involved in terms of front page coverage with Dr. Meza (LRC note: we have done that with other suspected race cheats), I have in the past begged other race cheats just to come clean and admit it. America moves on quickly if you confess.

Gregory Price confessed to cheating at Marine Corps and the story instantly went away:

https://www.outsideonline.com/2040991/how-online-vigilantes-take-down-cheating-runnersn

The Reza thread should have been locked hundreds of pages ago. I've told the Brojos in very clear terms many times there is never an excuse for cyberbullying.

Smoove wrote:

Sad. Nothing to be done about it now - but maybe this will temper our collective bloodlust in the future. Back people into a corner, and predicting how they will react becomes impossible. Food for thought for all of us.

Exactly.

The LRC forum is unconscionable the way that it attacks people in terrible ways.

I wish it wouldn't be that way, and if it's a reflection of humanity, then that's a sad state of affairs for humanity.

Man, that's crazy. I didn't even post on that thread, and I feel slightly guilty, just for being a part of this website. Condolences and prayers to his friends and family.

malmo wrote:

The Reza thread should have been locked hundreds of pages ago. I've told the Brojos in very clear terms many times there is never an excuse for cyberbullying.

Thank you for that, Malmo. I never even looked at it. Such threads are disgusting.

I've looked very hard on-line. This is not showing on yahoo or anything other than from this video. If this is fake news, I would be so happy. This is not the way this should end. Though I feared this all along. Many did go way overboard on this thread, legit questions or not. The real purpose WAS to hurt Frank Meza beyond what "punishment" fit the "crime". I am not innocent. I did however try to fight fair. This ultimately became a battle between Frank and "us". The stakes were greater for Frank than us. We can't really be blamed for gloating after winning the battle with Frank. I was telling a fellow runner this morning, that I never would have started the 2 Meza threads, if I could have found any article on-line regarding his Phoenix Mesa marathon result, something I only found out because Frank late registered for LAM as I was going to track him. If this is true, it is not possible for me to feel worse about it. This has made me feel a tremendous regret and sadness. Again, why am I seeing nothing on-line. This should be all over the news and yahoo is showing nothing about it.

dunes runner wrote:

Thank you for that, Malmo. I never even looked at it. Such threads are disgusting.

While I didn't read the anywhere close to the whole thread as I only paid attention to it for a few days days maybe 2 weeks ago, I don't agree that threads trying to expose fraud in the fastest marathon performance ever run by a human at a certain age are inherently "disgusting."

Malmo wrote me and wanted the thread deleted and I wrote back asking him why it should be deleted. When I was reading it, it appeared that many people were still uncovering new evidence of improprieties by Dr Meza in a variety of races.

It doesn't matter if Meza cheated in a race or not. He was a part of the running community and he was publicly shamed on a national scale. Perhaps this forum is a place to question a performance, but not the place for an open and public investigation. It's very tragic that this is the outcome of a Letsrun thread.

Rip Frank.

I posted this on the Marathon Investigations page 2 days ago:

"May I suggest this? I think at this point the jury has spoken. He cheated. Period. So perhaps the investigation is finished. I don’t think the goal should be utter social humiliation. I suggest that Derek post that the investigation is complete and that no further posting is necessary. Unless, of course, Frank turns in another questionable marathon. I feel that further embarrassment might lead to something tragic. And that would come back to haunt all of us."

"Meza founded Aztlan Track Club in 1974. he also coached cross-country track at Loyola High School in Los Angeles. The school said he stepped down in June for health reasons."

I didn't realize that he founded the Aztlan Track Club. I knew Carlos Alfaro, and his friend Jimmy Perez from numerous races, and ran the Cinco de Mayo 10 mile the first few years. I didn't know Frank, but no one deserved what has happened to him. Rest in peace.

Taking his own life does not make him the victim. It doesn't excuse what he did. It's just one more way that he deceived and hurt people he claimed to be helping. He put himself in this position by a decade's worth of choices. If he couldn't live without an illusion that he had constructed, he should not have invested so much in building that illusion.

I read every single post on every single page on the thread, and I think it was actually one of LRC's finer moments. People argued on the basis of fact and dug up hard evidence. Posters who wanted to get into Frank's personal or work life got talked out of it.

But don't tell me that we should have just ignored it because there was no harm in it and age-group running doesn't matter. Running matters. Races matter. Letting one guy's decade-long cheating spree stand tells millions of middle-aged guys like me that one of the few things we've got going for us is meaningless.

If you want to lock or delete threads, target the groundless doping speculation, or the threads that give free rein to racism, or the gross comments about high school girls' weight. But let the facts speak.

People wondered what the truth was. They discovered it. Frank was invited to join the world of truth, and declined.

This is really sad news.

The whole thing about cheating ... you try so hard to be liked and respected that you go to an extreme.

And bitterly this one ended like this.

I do think this forum should have more moderators. I don't know how many moderators it has but it doesn't seem like many. And like any great enterprise it takes many people to do big work.

I do like what the moderator Rojo set above about just coming clean early and that America is a very forgiving country in the American culture gives people a second chance.

Given that this man was 70 years old yeah, I can only imagine that he has been doing this for a long time and I am not talking about cheating marathons, but living with a constant fear of being judged and feeling unworthy.

Anyway, I really hope the mods step it up recruit some additional help to curb any bullying or belittling.

Very sad, and yet not surprising. Too bad his close friends and family weren't able to convince him to just come clean instead of doubling-down with more excuses and lies.

Yeah, there were some mean things said about Frank on LRC and elsewhere. But there was also a lot of collaborative investigating about an issue that was of concern to the running community. (And lets not forget that a huge percentage of the comments were back-n-forth rants caused by the trolls who kept denying the obvious just to fan the flames and increase the page count.)

"While we at LetsRun never got involved in terms of front page coverage with Dr. Meza,...."

Way to backpedal, bro. Weren't you on the thread trying to figure out the right challenge to get FM to prove/disprove he could run sub 3?

I agree with you, colder and wiser. He chose to cheat and he had full control of what he could have done. And it was not a sudden change of mind that comes as "hmm maybe i should cheat". He planned ahead to cheat meticulously.

While it is sad indeed to hear about his death, and I feel sorry for his family and friends, his death does not justify his years of cheating.