this guy can't be real wrote:
areaIpersson wrote:RY (CHEATER) PROPAGANDA MACHINE IS TURNING AT FULL SPEED
*Andy Persson*
perssonfamily@gmail.comI have migrated over here at last from LRC because it was becoming clear that the only people who had anything sensible to say were ultralisters. I haven't got time right now to read your version of Rob's run but I thought I would offer my perspective as someone who knows him and has run with him. I tried to write this on the LRC forum but it got refused for inappropriate language. Not sure why - I even tried removing in case they were very sensitive. So this relates to the discussion that has been happening over there but may be of some interest here. I am having trouble figuring how this works so hope I am posting this in the right place.
About time for another thought or two from me as Rob supporters seem to be a bit thin on the ground here at the moment. I have a feeling this might be a bit long so apologies in advance, but if it is a problem maybe just read a sentence at a time and intersperse it with reading all the other comments attacking him. Alternatively just ignore it and move on.
The situation as I see it is this:
A guy decided to give the Transcon record a go and set off a few weeks ago. Some video was produced showing no runner by the RV and it all blew up, the immediate assumption being that he had gone all that way to sit in an RV and pretend he was doing it and in the meantime pull off the greatest endurance con in history (aside form Yiannis's first Spartathlon, oh no wait..) Since then everything has been scrutinised in depth with various oddities arising.
- Rob won't release his gps data - well as far as I know he hasn't claimed to have beaten the record yet, so not sure why that is a problem.
- But if he releases it at the end it might have been doctored - google is your friend. It doesn't take much to detect doctored Strava data and Tomtom even harder to fake. I'm sure there will be a queue of LRC members happy to oblige on the technical side there.
- But he has lied about stuff before so he must be lying now, like that bronze medal in triathlon in 2004. Oh someone's found something on a 2004 forum putting Rob in 3rd place in those championships - yeah but it's on a forum so you can't trust that (yes, someone actually said that)
- Well what about his PRs - no way he's done that. Well recently reported running 5:47 mile by a well respected figure, and that after running best part of 2000 miles (even if you exclude the hours sitting in a jacuzzi in the RV) So if he maintained that pace it would give him a sub 36minute 10k. Maybe a little less inconceivable that at some point in his past, maybe ten years ago, training for that distance he might have hit 5 minutes under that. I'm sure he can let us know, but maybe after finishing this thing.
- Yeah, but his claims for his first three marathons are unbelievable. Meaning I couldn't do that and no one I know could. But lets say 99.999% of people couldn't but the 0.001%, by some evolutionary hiccup, do have that capability. That would mean in the UK 600 people could. Maybe one of them went out and found they had an unusual capacity for running and recovery and decided to just keep going for the rest of the year covering 373 marathons and ultras in that time.
- Well if he made up all this stuff, he probably made up other stuff like being in the army. Let's check that. Oh, he was and he was in the triathlon team. Oh forget that.
- Look his charity page here says he raised £0. oh but this justgiving one says over £60,000. Better investigate the charity. Bound to be fake.
- I know let's send over some of our most respected (OK some of the younger LRC members are catching up here) running figures to catch him out. They arrive and report a change of perspective, noting that he is a genuinely nice guy (sorry, I know character references have no bearing on this, although character assassinations seemingly do) and that comparing him to Steve Warshawer. As predicted, comments about age and beards appeared though I hadn't guessed the smoking ones. They also say there are questions yet to answer, which means they are yet to be answered not that they can't.
- What about his other records, the one where he beat Dean Karnazes's longest distance without sleep? All fake. So I and others crop up to vouch for that and posted my strava link for the 60 miles I ran with him through the night to 350 miles when I handed over to Kev (first and only time I've met him but feeling some kind of kinship now!) for another 23. I missed the protocol about not revealing your identity on this forum so have been googled and then had my handle used to post false messages. Changed my handle, thought I had registered it but hadn't so had impersonators again. Registered new one but have still had someone using the new one. Isn't that the point of registering it? Ah well. Just ignore anything from arealpersson that doesn't say registered
Talk about propaganda -- notice how he always avoids all the real issues.
Instead of showing us where Mr. Young ran a sub-31 10k (or any effort that shows similar ability), we get some garbage about running a 5:47 mile. Really? Are you serious?
He claims to have been "Mr Plod", a poor runner, in his (fantastical) triathlon "career". 30:47 would not be a poor time for a triathlete, quite the contrary. We know this, surely in his heart Andy Persson knows this. (Rob Young quite possibly doesn't, or hasn't thought it through, because he's crackers.)
And as for claiming to be a pro cyclist... Too patent a whopper for even A Persson to back with a straight face.