I ran all of my best races before the internet was much of a thing. I try to avoid sharing my PRs because I assume most people will think I'm a liar. If someone I didn't know told me they had PR's similar to mine, I'd think they were lying as well.
You just need to accept that insecure people are going to lie about their PR's. It doesn't matter what someone claims they ran 25 years ago, what matters is what they can run today.
It doesn't matter what someone claims they ran 25 years ago, what matters is what they can run today.
I usually take someone at their word if they ran back in the 1970s to 1990s. Results aren’t like what they are today. This guy’s not old (mid 20s) and we have results on him.
Joe Vigil said in a lecture some years ago “Life’s not about who you were, but who you are”, which basically echos your sentiments. People are going to lie about their PR’s, sure. This guy is lying about his identity and the people he’s ‘friends’ with and ‘trained’ with in college.
Simple but effective. Tell the imposter you have a good buddy who ran on the team the same year as him and you’ll mention that you now train with the imposter.
Basically this. If he's a liar, but not totally insane, that'll probably be the last workout shows up to. At the very least, he'll stop talking about New Town. Or, in the unlikely case there's a misunderstanding, maybe you'll resolve it.
If he's delusional, keeps showing up, and the whole group wants him out, just tell him he's not welcome.
If the rest of the group doesn't really care, then either ignore him or find a new group.
When I ran for my college’s club team we’d have guys like this show up. One guy would talk about how he was running 80 miles a week and doing workouts with our cross country team but then curiously got dropped on a 6 mile easy run with our group of 30 minute 8k guys. Another guy was a pretty decent runner who was one of the top at our club but would always embellish that he was going to be in walk-on the following spring. Also would claim to be in shape for a big result and then had the usual excuses (injured, dehydrated, etc) when performances didn’t quite match claims. In both cases we never felt it necessary to call the guys out and instead just let results speak for themselves.
I started getting back in running shape 9 years ago, when I turned 40. I started off fairly mediocre at a 23 minute 5K but eventually got it down below 19 minutes and started picking up some age group awards. Being that I’m 49 this year and will soon be 50, I know I’m on borrowed time and have a limited window to still obtain PRs, so for the last few years I’ve been taking my training very seriously. I consider myself lucky as I have no children so besides work I can dedicate most of my passion towards running. I worked my mileage up to 80 mile weeks and now my 5K is down below 18 and I’ve even started placing overall in some local races.
This last summer I competed in my local 5K with my eye onwinning the race. This would have been the first race I ever outright won. I paced myself very well and didn’t let the HS XC kids draw me out with a fast start. I hit the first mile split at 5:40 and the 2nd mile at 11:22. At this point I had caught most of the kids who had gone out in low 5 minutes and paid the price. There was just one guy up ahead. I was hurting pretty bad but set my eyes on his back and slowly reeled him in. I caught him right before the 3 mile mark and passed him with a surge and kept the momentum going towards the finish. I saw the clock flip to 17:00 and new I was inline for a decent PR and more importantly my first win.
I was kicking towards the finish, when suddenly this female Kenyan girl comes sprinting past me (I found out later she was a college XC runner who just happened to be visiting her family in a nearby town). I wound up running a 12 second PR but was disappointed that I didn’t win… I was finally going to have my moment of glory, that I trained so hard for and it was snatched at the last second by some random foreigner.
A few weeks later at the award banquet I received the honor of “Best Master’s Runner”. I was nice to be recognized but somehow felt hollow. I stood up and gave an impassioned speech and told everyone how I was going to “train my brains out and pound that Kenyan into the ground next year” as I pounded my fists into table. In this moment I could feel the radiating admiration of the running community… they all knew that I was dead serious and definitely not a joke!
Met a guy on the track today who claimed that he ran for a very respectable D1 school in the northeast. I won’t mention the school name here, but let’s just say this elite school is called “Nova” (Pretty clear which it is). Says he ran 3:42/4:00 in the 1500m/mile, but could not find results on this guy anywhere.
One of my buddies ran for ‘Nova’ right around the time this 4:00 guy did. My buddy says “I’ve never heard of him”. We found out this guy is actually a 2:00/4:40 guy and ran for some no-name D2 school.
If there’s anyone who shares a love for exposing imposters claiming fake PR’s, it’ll be on this site. How do I approach this guy? He’s most likely going to show up on the track again; and he’s not the type of guy we want around our weekly track workouts.
1. You don't know I didn't run faster after I changed schools.
2. Why don't you want me joining for your workouts? I am a better runner than you.
Unless he's using bogus creds to actually get into a race or something like that, what difference does it make? Nothing counts in track but times and places actually run, not what someone says he/she ran.
I support the courage to dream, to imagine, to contemplate a world where one leaps over handicaps and runs faster than they have ever run, for a team more elite than they have ever run with, and has the courage to share this inspiring imagination with their current actual running mates, even if conveniently leaving out the fact that it was all in their mind composed of whole cloth.
Why shatter someone’s alternate reality that doesn’t cost anything?
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These threads are always so stupid. Literally just race them if it's a problem. Unless you're competing with them, why would their times be material? Are you going to trust them for training information, buy him dinner, or materially support him in any way as a result of his *times*? Performance is a poor indicator of expertise in the first place, but if he's full of crap as well why even waste energy? Tell them to shove off and do your workout. Most speed work can be done on the roads, and even if you "have to train in spikes" the benefits of that most days (beyond developing proficiency in the skill of running in spikes) is mostly bunk. So...The issue is that you're somehow damaged by this person claiming to be better than they are?? Such backwards logic, literally why waste the time and energy. You need help if you're taking a hobby this low-stakes in such a critically emotional way.
Hilarious as if there's only one. I can find 11 of these dudes to talk to today, which one do you want to hear whinge and moan about "if only I could have executed my long runs more consistently...guess I'll just have to try harder next time" people write such massive checks that they can't cash, and then find reasons to explain it away in minutiae. These dudes are a dime-a-dozen, usually because they don't have anything else that's interesting to offer.
Met a guy on the track today who claimed that he ran for a very respectable D1 school in the northeast. I won’t mention the school name here, but let’s just say this elite school is called “Nova” (Pretty clear which it is). Says he ran 3:42/4:00 in the 1500m/mile, but could not find results on this guy anywhere.
One of my buddies ran for ‘Nova’ right around the time this 4:00 guy did. My buddy says “I’ve never heard of him”. We found out this guy is actually a 2:00/4:40 guy and ran for some no-name D2 school.
If there’s anyone who shares a love for exposing imposters claiming fake PR’s, it’ll be on this site. How do I approach this guy? He’s most likely going to show up on the track again; and he’s not the type of guy we want around our weekly track workouts.
Met a guy on the track today who claimed that he ran for a very respectable D1 school in the northeast. I won’t mention the school name here, but let’s just say this elite school is called “Nova” (Pretty clear which it is). Says he ran 3:42/4:00 in the 1500m/mile, but could not find results on this guy anywhere.
One of my buddies ran for ‘Nova’ right around the time this 4:00 guy did. My buddy says “I’ve never heard of him”. We found out this guy is actually a 2:00/4:40 guy and ran for some no-name D2 school.
If there’s anyone who shares a love for exposing imposters claiming fake PR’s, it’ll be on this site. How do I approach this guy? He’s most likely going to show up on the track again; and he’s not the type of guy we want around our weekly track workouts.
Simple enough. Next time he brings it up, you say "oh yeah, I have a buddy who ran for "Nova" when you were there." Then leave it to him to continue...
It doesn't matter what someone claims they ran 25 years ago, what matters is what they can run today.
I usually take someone at their word if they ran back in the 1970s to 1990s. Results aren’t like what they are today. This guy’s not old (mid 20s) and we have results on him.
Joe Vigil said in a lecture some years ago “Life’s not about who you were, but who you are”, which basically echos your sentiments. People are going to lie about their PR’s, sure. This guy is lying about his identity and the people he’s ‘friends’ with and ‘trained’ with in college.
Ok...let's see how you can handle honesty.
Everyone here practically knows everything about me.
If you want to call someone out directly...be ready to be told the same
I'm Michael
San Marcos/Murfreesboro
Athlinks 82606260
My times are here! I don't lie
I can't verify the other guy..but times? Name? Location?
He is an idiot. How many people who went to Nova even ran a 4 min mile? Especially before 2010 or even more so before 2000, running a 4 min was a really big deal.
People like that are irritating, but why would you even want to waste energy on someone like that unless you are as equally small? Get a life and move on. Trust me, you're not protecting your training group as such as you want to think you are. You might want to learn a little basic psychology and then in turn question what you're telling people about your PR's...just a thought. If you really feel like you have to make a point, just burn his ass in your workouts. The truth always comes out and everyone knows it without saying a word.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Was not surprised to see the general consensus stay the same. I’m assuming the ones being aggressive on here rather naturally have an aggressive personality or are defending the guy because you’ve also lied about your PR’s. Let’s not normalize lying, and even more important, identify theft is not a joke.
With that said, I’ll make sure we include this guy in our sessions and remember try to hold it together while he reminisces about his alternate ‘Nova’ universe. Take care.