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by teliskr 1565 days ago
As a mid-40s marathoner, this is really interesting to me. I don't feel sorry for him; other than that he lived life with an ego condition allowing him to do this. That is sad, but he earned the scrutiny and outing.

Right now, I'm running 50+ miles a week training for a marathon. That is really hard and a major commitment. I won't set any records, but I have a good shot at placing in my age group. I don't run to win anything or achieve a certain place, but I would be somewhat pissed off if some idiot like this cheated and beat me.

I enjoy most of the time that I spend running, but to get to this level, you have to go through a pretty difficult level of training which makes all of your life a lot more stressful during the periods of intense training. Right now, I'm staying in a job that I don't like because the schedule is very flexible and allows me to spend around 15 hours a week training.
1 comments
martimarkov 1565 days ago
As the article pointed out - there was no concrete evidence beyond doubt. The stupidity of the community is to blame: you think someone is cheating and you dead set on proving it? Fine let him run next time and get real evidence. Get a drones up with some friends. Get someone to run next to him.

Anything else is just our human brains looking for patters and finding it even if it’s not there.

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loeg 1565 days ago
The evidence is very concrete if you are vaguely familiar with competitive running. You can't set record times with 33%+ 5k split-to-split variance; if you can set a record time doing that, you could go literally minutes faster with even pacing. The folks at the front are chasing marginal seconds and this guy was leaving minutes on the table and smoking everyone.
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teliskr 1565 days ago
So anytime someone thinks something is dubious, their brain is "looking for patters and finding it even if it’s not there". I disagree, sometimes your brain makes connections and often (but not always) those connections are correct. To most dedicated runners (such as the LetsRun group); this case is pretty obvious. The last paragraph of the article reads pretty conclusive of his guilt.

This reminds me of Lance Armstrong. Prior to his outing, I believed Lance Armstrong was innocent of doping. But many serious cyclists told me there was no way he was not doping, and they were right. Expertise is often useful.

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