Another run across America underway - is it legit? Boots currently on the ground

Yes, in short, AS runs 196m for 24 hours and WG circa 108. Also WG has a hugely high running HR outside of this stuff, and of course I'm not saying 110s are not possible. I'm saying they're not possible for 20, 30, 50, 80k as he and Balenger do 90% of the time.

Well under 1% say that his HRs are possible. I'm not actually sure who's left - except for possibly Recruiter. 5:30k's on a multiday require an effort of 150+bpm, not 110. This is proven 100% and one can't compare with the greatest ultrarunner of all time bashing out a very easy 33k for him, that's a jog for Aleks, he often pings off a sub 2:40 marathon first thing in the morning.

If you're trying to help thank you, but as you yourself note, the example of Sorokin is of a completely different level. The example of someone like Kostelnick is in a multiday is more comparable, who ran many of his Transcon days at 165, even dicing with the 170s.

Also, we have about 30 Gotcha moments, but persuading the mainstream media who can't possibly be expected to understand this level of detail is very tough.

Today's GMTV interview a perfect case in point. A plump ex-Tory MP and his sidekick banging on about him being Forrest Gump, when Rob Pope crossed around 4 times and morphed closely into Hanks, and the broadcasters crowing that he broke the British record by 10 days, despite 25 of us writing to them to say otherwise.

But the media assume they are not being fed bullsh*t by WG and his publicity machine, despite Lees even having a Wiki page! - And being a well-loved BBC broadcaster. Hopefully speaking to the BBC after noon. They could be the breakthrough - it only takes one.

Please people, don't be defeatist and say, 'what a pity we never caught him,' it doesn't work like that. Never is a big word and not to be loosely tossed about.

The Movement Blueprint are also listing Goodge as a world holder on their website, which is blatant false advertising.

Goodge is their coach for hybrid athletes. Body builders that want to get into running it seems. 8 week programme for £99 and you get to look as good as Goodge!

I was just thinking this.

Well it took quite a few Tour de France victories before Lance Arnstrong was exposed. Sometimes persistance is required. As ultra runners, we should have the endurance to see this through to the end.

Goodge has stated somewhere that he may try a trans Europe run (excluding Russia) at some point. No further details.

I'm not sure where you pull 5:30k's from for an example as WG is consistently clocking k's in the region of 7-8s which is a completely different level of effort.

Oh, he has hundreds of Ks in the 6s at 110. Just look at most/any days, either here or at 2019 Jogle.

5s are rarer, but if they're in the 120s that's still way too low - 9 min miling for a Transcon is inter-galactic world class. He reeled off eight 5 minute ks in a row [with one at late 4], past 50 miles in the day. Or 7s in the 90s? Totally unfathomable, and his data is simply awash with those.

This is really the crux of the issue.

3x Olympic Champion rower, Hamish Bond, has an absolutely disgusting video on youtube of him on a rowing machine holding a 1.42.6 500m split for 1 hour, at rate 20 with an average heart rate of 142. It is amongst the most absurd things I've ever seen.

But Hamish Bond also has videos showing his heart rate during 2k and 5k erg tests which perfectly reflect that level of fitness; he's a generational athlete.

Goodge and RB have thousands of entries on strava showcasing a completely different physiological profile to the 110bpm runs. Goodge would run for hours at a certain HR and speed in the morning. Go and have his NuCalm nap, then go back out on the road and run FASTER times at a LOWER HR. This is a consistent feature of both his and RB's sponsored runs, but not during their training, or - more tellingly - official events (marathons etc).

This issue, in and of itself, needs explaining.

But what's most notable is that when WG was put under pressure to produce HRs inline with his training runs etc, he could do it. And not only did those HRs go back to normal but his performances (namely his speed) changed with them.

Goodge could literally be the slowest man on the planet and the pattern would still be bizarre.

Looks like GMB are tweeting that WG is fastest Briton to run across America:

Lance Armstrong has been brought up a few times in this thread. Remember when he used to give those humble brag type interviews where he attempted to dazzle and puzzle you with technical data to make it seem like the interview was out of his league digging deep? It was very convincing. I know I believed he was clean for a long time. But there always was the way he got so damn defensive and irritable when people brought up cheating that did not sit right. We now know why of course.

When I hear Robbie doing interviews I see a lot of similarities.

That is absolutely wrong of them (MB) to delete a completely valid comment. That is a marketing team that is trying to cover themselves.

Not even close to the same thing. There is nothing particularly odd about the 100 km world record holder jogging a 10 km at 9:30 per mile pace with a HR of ~94. And his heart rate was more or less steady throughout the run.

All of you have to do is take a look at a few of Goodge's runs and see that it doesn't make any sense. As Will C. has pointed out, you can pretty easily see what is normal running for him vs. those bizarre stretches where his HR floats in the 90-110 range, often at word class transcon paces. Look at Day 39 for example but there are no shortage of weird ones.

I’m very skeptical too. But I still haven’t seen a single cohesive theory on HOW this all was done. And why the byproduct of the cheating was very low heart rates. If the runs were faked, then why include low heart rates?

A few theories have been thrown around since the backend of the run, but I've been asking the same question from the off.

There's clearly something to the low HR data. Whether it's a by-product (as you put it), or a way of providing plausible deniability for cheating (so they can try and pin it on a 'tech fail'), it's indicative of something, I'm sure of that.

Alternatively, I haven't seen any of Goodge's defenders (some of whom I suspect are on his team), explain the HR phenomenon. Why and how can he fix his HR issues when he's pressured to, but can't keep them clean the rest of the way? Why and how do the low HRs often occur during periods in which he speeds up during afternoon sessions? Why does RB exhibit the same phenomenon on his runs? And why does their performance so often appear to increase during these spells of low HR running (some pages back Will C went over some of RB's runs in contrast to RB's 'official' events, the pattern is clearly there), notably in a way which wasn't replicated when WC was watching / had demanded clean data?

Ignoring the rest of it, you'd think WG's team - or the man himself - would want to solve this mystery too. If not for curiosity's sake, then at least for PR purposes. This LR thread is 114 pages and nearing 2300 posts long. WC has been a thorn in their side for WEEKS. He's emailing their sponsors, emailing newspapers, emailing TV stations. It shouldn't be too difficult considering they can produce days of clean data when they're pushed to, which strongly suggests they either know what causes it, or could quickly figure it out. So why not end Will C's primary argument, and take the wind of his sails, by posting a quick youtube video or instagram post? He certainly has the numbers on his team to do it.

Due to the inherent inaccuracy of state-of-the-art devices in 2023 the wrist HR data will never be more than circumstantial evidence. Goodge and his team know this, and rely on it. It's a huge red flag, a massive red flag when you factor in Goodge and Ballinger's previous HR history. But it still won't stand up in court of public opinion.

In my eyes the smoking gun evidence is their decision to use the tracker as a decoy.

They had one. Know exactly what it's usually used for. What it can do. Any fans, or skeptics, who clicked on the 'Where is William anyway?' live tracker on the NuCalm website and decided to go along to witness this incredible feat, maybe even run with him for a few miles, would have been sadly disappointed. At best they'd finding a support van in a distant town. No honest Transcon team would ever have done this

Precisely. Team Goodge learned from Robert Young and didn't want to be caught out unawares by an Asher Delmott-type visitor while engaged in their shenanigans.

Recruiter57 seems to think that there is a binary
set of worldviews between the Goodge acolytes and the more reasoned and
informed skeptics: either you actually believe that Goodge is a
world-class ultra endurance athlete, or you're a miserable misanthrope
who doesn't trust anyone or anything. NO!
Over the years there have been numerous ultra
runners who had my respect, admiration, and awe, and by their actions
and comportment never even cast a scintilla of doubt over their
achievements: Ted Corbitt, Yiannis Kouros, Park Barner, Don Choi, Frank
Bozanich, Stu Mittleman, Joss Naylor, Don Ritchie, Aleksandr Sorokin,
etc.

However, when an Instagram "influencer" with an
unimpressive running pedigree who brags about the paucity of his
training, and has a physique unsuited to endurance sports (which
mysteriously never attenuated despite Goodge allegedly running some
100kms per day) claims to be one of the top-10 Transcon runners of all
time, and does so while refusing to wear a tracker, hawking a snake oil
product, dubiously collecting donations, putting out Youtube videos that
look like reality television shows, and tries to keep onlookers and
unannounced visitors at bay, well, Hell yeah that's going to make me
skeptical and incredulous...as much so as when an overweight woman with
visible cellulite and a baggy t-shirt who doesn't know what interval
training is "wins" the Boston Marathon, or when someone claiming
age-group world records suspiciously and repeatedly misses timing mats
and course photographers at numerous races. The HR data compiled by WC
is just one piece in a mountain of other damning circumstantial
evidence.

The final nail in the coffin has been Goodge -aided and abetted by a mass
media that becomes complicit via their laziness and ignorance-
concocting and perpetuating the blatant lie that he’s now the fastest
Brit to “run” across America.

Thanks for your note and largely like it, but your first para is too sweeping and was the bane of my life 6 weeks ago, but far less so now. "Inherent inaccuracy" simply isn't true, not when I marked 100 random runs by major runners a week ago, totalling some 4,000k, and all 100 came back clean as a whistle. Yes, WG and RB can and will only use tech fail as a defence, but it won't work, for the reasons you allude - like previous history. And the American Library of medicine saying these things are fine 98.5 to 98.8% of the time, which is my experience... and WG and RB's working at least this well outside of these.

But yes, on balance, very grateful for your post. I can't say much but as many as five major organizations are looking at this matter very closely today alone - I have been in touch with them. But none will be rushed, and none will come out of the traps without looking into it all very thoroughly. I know a panel of statisticians at a renowned University have been consulted, and a cardiologist, etc.

We all just have to sit tight and keep making waves, and commenting on these ghastly media postiings on social media, which a good few of us are doing. The media can either be super ignorant and lazy and just go with any old nonsense [like he is the new Forrest Gump], or super cautious and paranoid, hence why this is all such hard work and seems like a slow process.

**And huge thx to Arthurnotinmyyard for their very powerful and eloquent piece too

This is as inaccurate a statement now as when you first posted it.

A) The National Library of Medicine is just that, a library. It no more expresses an opinion than my local library.

B) The study you cite, which you never provided a link for, was done in a lab on a static bike. The findings don't claim to be valid when running outside.

C) You cherry picked the study. I found two others, also in the library, and provided links, which concluded far poorer accuracy.

D) You ignored all this, just as you ignore anything that goes against the narrative. There are countless other examples of this but to name just one. Anyone reading this thread would think WG ran slower than before when you observed him. ROJO asked this very question. But even your own report shows this to be false.

You've wasted all this effort pointlessly on heart rates. They aren't going to prove anything. Besides which I think there are now four occasions on which WG recorded low rates when he was beyond reasonable doubt actually running: the slow day in his 12 marathons of Christmas (posted about this before, it was conveniently ignored), when you saw him, when someone else on this board saw him, and on the last day.

You needed hard evidence, by which I mean proof he didn't run a section he said he did. You should have devoted all your energy into getting that. You had weeks, but now it's too late.

There's plenty to be suspicious of on this run, the lack of a tracker being the most glaring, but without any evidence that's all it is, suspicious.

This thread is an echo chamber. An overwhelming guilty verdict here means nothing in the real world. The Reddit sleuths who thought they had found the Boston Marathon bomber were convinced of guilt too.

I'm not here to make friends, I know this will be voted down furiously, but please do yourselves a favour. If you want people outside of this self-selecting group to take you seriously then stick to your best points. Which primarily means stop going on about heart rates.