In the news

Running hack hacked off after data hack.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13039511/runners-world-magazine-boss-accused-fake-london-marathon-times.html

Very good.

For DM averse readers

https://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2024/01/runners-world-editorr-scrutiny.html

https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/russian-cosmonaut-set-record-sunday-most-time-spent-space-reports-2024-02-04/

Pretty cool. Also readily lends itself to lots of jokes about Putin’s Russia.

Police are offering £20,000 reward for info leading to arrest of alkali attacker. Last sighted at Tower Hill underground station, and police are concerned someone might be harbouring him. Raids in Newcastle turned up empty caustic soda container(s), so it’s pretty clear the attack was premeditated. Witnesses described how he assaulted the kids and it’s simply horrific.

If he’s gone swimming, I for one won’t shed a tear.

I hope the horrible cunt is being eaten by infection.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-extends-ban-foreign-ownership-housing-by-two-years-2024-02-04/

Unsure about the Canadian situation, but at least in London part of the solution would involve cracking down on housing scalper corporations (looking at you, The Arch Company, y’all suck) who sit on empty property for years.

It’s bad enough when it’s 1/3 of a highstreet or 1/2 of an urban industrial estate being kept empty with outlandish rent demands, but when it’s tens of thousands of domestic properties kept purposely empty for years, despite overwhelming market demand, that shit has broader consequences for society and the economy than “just” a homeless family or a slightly-less-profitable private investment venture.

Charging Council Tax on commercially owned empty properties would be a good start.

Parisians vote for a tank of entitlement tax:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/04/parisians-vote-in-favour-of-tripling-parking-costs-for-suvs?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

That's s very low turn out, but I'm very in favour of the result and hope it leads to similar action elsewhere.

That’s not helpful to the immigration debate, refugee debate, or capital punishment debate.

Because the last two pages of this thread have been such a shining example of rational thought on the subject. A horrible assualt happened, but it has nothing to do with immigration. "Native born" citizens of this country commit horrible crimes fairly regularly, but it doesn't become a discussion of who should be in the country or who should die of infection or drown.

For clarity’s sake, where the horrible cunt is from doesn’t change my mind on how I hope it turns out for him.

Interesting, that's my local running club and the Whatsapp groups are strangely silent about it all.

[Her 2023 London Marathon Strava track] follows (backwards) the 2019 course, not the 2023 course.

🤔

Yeah, looks a little fishy but Strava obsessed people have done lots of similar things when their Garmin hasn't recorded the full thing. They just want the data to be in Strava somehow. Vague marathon route + chip time is all they want in Strava.

I considered doing something similar for not having a full gpx file of PBP in 2011 but then ICBA.

She did one London Marathon in a panda costume for a Guinness World Record so I'm sure there was a suitable level of scrutiny for that.

But missing a timing mat and being a 1 min/mile faster for a sizeable section is a bit odd, especially with the way the bib was folded over (if you look closely at the photos a couple of pins that secured it were moved...). Probably some kind of explanation but it's unlikely to come out anywhere public.

If you look at the history of amateur distance running, it's full of people who have found incredibly complex and arcane ways to cheat at something that doesn't fucking matter, whether it be getting a 3.20 mara time or placing in some obscure ultra that nobody else on earth even knows happened. There's no prize money, no glory, no point. Might as well diddle your way to a half-hour Parkrun.

Mind you, the amount of work online detectives put in to catch someone who's cheated in a way that makes no difference to the turning of the world is pretty baffling too. People are weird.

I agree with all this. It's the backwards bit I find particularly odd though.

People spend hours playing computer games or sedoku or mastering rubik's cubes. Other people ride across continents and more still analyse information to find cheats. Everyone should have a hobby.

Hobbies and Interests: Cooking, chess, identifying loopholes and cheat methodologies for the West Sussex West Panda Marathon

My new hobby is reading about all these fucking cheats!

https://www.marathoninvestigation.com/ is my new favourite website.

Are you me? Spent about an hour flicking through those this morning too. Fascinating

You can't fool me in to thinking running is an interesting hobby

Analysing the runs you've done can be interesting.

But that requires doing the runs, which is deeply uninteresting and unsatisfactory.

You can't fool me in to thinking running is an interesting hobby

Maybe that's it. Running fair is too boring and working out ways to cheat adds much-needed interest?

I remember reading into a previous one of these. There was tonnes of detail about how this woman had doctored her GPS data and fake this and that.

I didn't realise it had expanded into a whole collection of dodgies.

I'm not sure I'm on board with it. If someone holds that much importance by their 3.20 marathon time that they are willing to go to all these weird lengths to cheat it, it clearly indicates that it's an unusual, probably unhealthy, possibly unhinged, obsession for them.

All this detective work might bring 'justice' of a sort, but to expose these people in front of all the people whose opinions actually matter to them seems to have an element of cruelty. Yeah, the person's a cheat who's maybe bumped someone from 10,000th to 10,001st, but they're most likely not very well - is it worth ruining their life with a public shaming?