Biggest Bullshit Lie You've Ever Heard About Running Times or Workouts

one of my freshmen runners, pr of 22:46 this year, told the team he will run 17:00 next year.

16:00 as a junior.

sub-15 as a senior.

i wish i could coach that well. he is in for a disappointment.

i once heard someone ran 13:55 in trainers!

man that is GREAT- everyon at work was asking me if I thought I had a chance of winning when I went to Boston. I was so happy just to QUALIFY! Again, they thought I was being modest when I said I'd be an hour behind the winners. They just have no f***ing idea.

A few years ago I had a co-worker who was one of these pathological types who could never keep his mouth shut about any topic and could rarely tell the truth, always an interesting combination. When he discovered I was a runner he claimed to know a "local girl" who was an "Olympic qualifier" in the marathon. In fact, he even claimed she was supposed to have been in Atlanta in 1996 but had missed those Games with an injury. He was even kind enough to give me her name, at which point a cursory Web search revealed a five-mile race time for this "local girl" of 49:00 and a few other results at different distances of a similar caliber. Guess she was in a down training mesocycle or something. (He'd at least given her age correctly - 19.)

A buddy of mine who worked in my department and was also a runner told me he'd heard some similar garbage from this guy, so being benign sadists, we chose to feed the monster rather than call the guy on his bullshit. He claimed to be a mountain-bike fanatic, so every once in a while I'd mention having done a mountain-bike race in the Berkshires and that such-and-such a world-class cyclist had been there, and did he know of this race and this athelete? Oh yes, he'd say, I've done that race and met that dude. Of course, the names of both the race and the world-class cyclist had been made up on the spot. After a while this cruel sport lost its luster on account of there being absolutely no challenge. I told him once I had a cousin who'd hiked the entire 4,000-mile-long Appalachian Trail in six days, and not only did he believe me, but told me he had a college buddy who'd done it in a week.

The weird thing was that he seemed normal enough on the surface and was adequately functional in - maybe even proficient at - his relatively undemanding job. Had he come across as a garden-variety f***nut I would have more easily been able to reconcile his prevarication habit by dismissing him as mentally challenged, but it was as if he were normal except for an absolute aversion to telling the truth, even in situations he had to know he'd be busted on the spot. Weird. His dad was a psychiatrist who was later suspended by the Board of Medicine of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for allegedly banging or drugging a patient, I can't remember which, so maybe the dude had unresolved childhood issues.

one time a guy told me he ran 5k in 3 minutes. Then i asked him how long 5k was, he said, yeah.

and i walked the f*** away.

just walked.

seeya...f***er.

I was at this bar one time, and I over heard this guy trying to impress these girls as he is drinking beer and smoking a cigerette. He was telling them how he ran a half marathon in 60 mintues. So, I turn to him and say, "WOW! You have ran a half marathon in 60:00 flat?" His reply was "yes, I did it like half a year ago!" So, I reply, "That is incredible! You should be a professional runner, because the WORLD RECORD is like 59:18. You could make a ton of money doing this." Then I proceed to say before he even got in a word, "You did not run a f***ing half marathon in 60:00. What can you run an all out mile in?" His response was, "Yes I did! Dude, you can look it up because I did it during a triathalon!" So I go, "That is BULLSHIT! Now I know you are f***ing lying! What can you run an all out mile in?" His response was, "I have never really trained for it, but I could probably run 5:00". I was like, "Dude, to run a half marathon in 60:00 means that you are averaging under 4:40 a mile for 13 miles straight. Probably closer to 4:35, and you can't run one mile under 5:00, so seriously, tell these girls it was really a 10k instead of a half marathon." He got pissed, didn't open his mouth again, the girls were laughing there asses off, and I was dying inside as he stormed away!

bring up this post - butp

I had a fairly "soft" female roommate who told me that she did all her running on a treadmill and ran about 6 minute miles. I finally realized that she meant 6 m.p.h. I didn't have the heart to correct her, but I also counldn't lie, so I think she still thinks that she runs 6:00 miles while I'm out there running 7:00s.

Carnivore 69 wrote:

Something along the same lines: People who measure running ability in miles per hour, like a car. I've met more than one guy who has said he runs all of his runs at a decent pace, say 15-20 mph!!!

Speaking of muscle-bound guys, I had a trainer at the gym (this was in the process of trying to hit on me) who asked me why I was so sore one day. I told him that I had done 22-miles the day before. The marathon was about a month away, maybe 3 weeks at the very least. He told me that I was being stupid, and that this was way to close to the marathon to be running that far. I asked him if he had run a marathon, he said no, he mostly plays basketball.I also have a co-worker who runs a lot, has that runner "look" (so he's at least lean), and hangs bib numbers in his cubicle. He runs a lot of marathons and 1/2 marathons, so I feel like he has some kind of clue. However, he told me a few weeks ago that he needed to run 10 miles that night, but that it was too cold out (30s) and that when he runs in the cold, he gets too much fluid in his lungs. I told him that was the dumbest thing I ever heard, and made sure I ran 11 that night just out of spite.

Joe C. wrote:

Variation of the same old BS, but here goes:

At the Y last Thursday, a muscle-bound guy (actually competes in bodybuilding competitions) whom I'd seen but never talked to before came up to me to talk about running because he apparently knew I was a runner. He goes on and on asking about what distances I run, how I train, etc., then drops the big one: "I run this course near my house about twice a week. It's 12 miles and it usually takes me a little less than an hour by the clock on my kitchen wall."

This is no lie; I ran 29:31 for 10K with the second half in 14:26! And I'm female. My secret is "caterpillar fungus."

Biggest lie I've heard is that most African runners are drug free.

Realistic Realist wrote:

Biggest lie I've heard is that most African runners are drug free.

Biggest lie I've heard is that this poster thinks he knows why Africans are good.

My friend once had his time misprinted by the local paper...seems his race tearoff was put in the wrong spindle...5 mile race..instead of 28:16 he was down for 24:33...got every woman that year...misprint printed a few days later but very tiny and nobody saw it!!! He gave me $50 so I shut up about it...Should I apply for a job at US track&Field or Nike??

The Article on UM this week explaining the michigan as as a 4:14 mile, 4:32 road mile, 3:04 1200, 4:32 road mile, 204 800, 4:32 mile, 53 400, all with little or no rest. There are about 10 guys in the world that could do that and none have ever run for U of M.

one day me and a friend were at a bank and this dude saw our track shirts and proceeded to ask us what we ran and how fast and all that stuff. We told him we ran the 400 in around 50-51 (this was in high school), and he told us that his friend ran the 400 in about 42. He was positive about this even after we told him the world record was 43 and some change. Then another guy told me that a kid at his school ran the 100m in 9.11. I also told him that the world record was 9.84 (at the time) and that he must be mistaken about the actual distance his friend ran, but he swore that this kid ran a 9.11.

I guess you should give him the 50 $ back now

????

I really think Sydney Maree was a great runner, but he insists that he ran 4:40 mile pace for 10 miles every morning.

That is ridiculous. BS sniffer am I.

Average_Joe wrote:

Sydney Maree's claim that he ran 10 mile runs every day at under 5:00/mile pace would be a good candidate.

I think the actual pace was somewhere around 4:30, like world record pace. 5:00 I can see because 5:00 would be 2:11 marathon pace which you would think he "could" do if he trained for it. Also, if someone says they run 10 miles at 5:00 pace I doubt they mean right out the door.

Alan