11 ms·

Marathon Man: A Michigan dentist’s improbable transformation

135 points by wallflower 14y ago

Xcelerate 14y ago
Oh boy... as a D1 runner, I have heard far more about this guy than I care to. If you want to read more, this topic has been discussed extensively at Letsrun: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3863010 http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3863010
- phil 14y ago
  I think Mark Singer's writing is great. Did you think he represented the situation accurately, though?
klodolph 14y ago
If this were a movie, I would expect his twin brother to be revealed.
- Vivtek 14y ago
  That's where I thought this was going.
emini_guy 14y ago
Good time, much better than that of some other "accomplished runner", http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/paul-ryan-superman http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/paul-ryan-supe...
- philwelch 14y ago
  Please don't post comments like this. It doesn't really add anything to the discussion, and for that matter it doesn't really add anything to any discussion. I'm a fan of making fun of politicians, too, but you don't accomplish anything or convince anyone by doing so.
  - DiabloD3 14y ago
    Actually, it makes me wonder. How many politicians have pulled similar tricks to get elected/stay elected? Its sometimes hard to fact check these people, and the media repeatedly gets called on the carpet for not fact checking either. Politicians are often called professional liars, so the line to Kip Litton isn't hard to draw, even if isn't always warranted. HN is largely anti-politics, but I think in this case there has been enough politicians who have been caught telling the "big lie" that it is worth bringing it up for discussion on this.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      I have to admit, it's kind of amusing seeing the lengths people will go to on HN to rationalize a patently off-topic comment or submission as being on-topic.
  - nashequilibrium 14y ago
    I am not American so I have no U.S. Political bias, but the comment is on point about someone not being truthful regarding their achievements. If this was not a politician you would have not complained. Its seems like you are more concerned about this being about a politician than someone not being truthful.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      The OP was about a guy who cheats at marathons. The comment was about a verbal gaffe by a recently nominated and controversial Vice-Presidential candidate. I'm not sure about your countrymen, but Americans have an annoying way of derailing every conversation and forum into petty, non-sequitur, assume-bad-faith attacks on politicians of the opposing party in a way that really adds nothing to the discourse. It's not that the comment wouldn't have bothered me if it hadn't been about a politician; it's that the comment wouldn't have even been made if it wasn't about a politician. There's this obsession with proving that politicians of the opposing party are terrible human beings in every possible way (so that we may feel righteous in our cause) instead of actually discussing things that matter. The end result is a sequence of catty remarks that only convince people who already agree with you, which stops any productive dialogue before it starts. It's the single most destructive thing about the American political culture. HN is one of my few remaining refuges from that bullshit. If everyone else is suddenly fine with it, maybe it is time for me to leave.
GuiA 14y ago
If you enjoyed this article and are unacquainted with the world of running, I highly recommend the book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall.
- trentmb 14y ago
  As a mere recreational jogger, what's there to know about running?
  - thebigshane 14y ago
    There isn't. But it is an interesting book. It's about barefoot/natural running btw.
    - interurban 14y ago
      I'm not sure how you can say there isn't anything to know about running. Volumes upon volumes of books, magazines, and articles have been written about every aspect of running, from training and nutrition guides to novels and short stories. There's no need to know that any of this even exists in order to enjoy running, that's part of running's beauty. But there's lots to know if you want to. p.s. I should add that Born to Run is an interesting read about a part of running that lots of runners don't know much about.
      - thebigshane 14y ago
        We're in agreement. I should have worded it as: there isn't anything a recreational jogger needs from running books in order to enjoy and even get decent at running. Not to say running books are completely useless, but most of the things you could get from them are better learned from experience or passed down by a coach/trainer. Exception: Running magazines (or any magazine for that matter) are only there to entertain you and sell you things. Another exception: if buying running accessories/books helps motivate you, go for it, but I don't think I really needed anything more than a running journal/log. Another really good running book for those still following along: Once a Runner -- http://www.amazon.com/Once-Runner-John-L-Parker/dp/0915297019?tag=duckduckgo-d-20 http://www.amazon.com/Once-Runner-John-L-Parker/dp/091529701...
oskarth 14y ago
Reminds me of Stephen Glass [1], the reporter who fabricated entire events and wrote about them in The New Republic, as well as the movie Catfish [2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulist 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film)
- kyberias 14y ago
  You don't think that spoils anything of the FILM at all?
yaakov34 14y ago
I am a runner also (finished one marathon with a time that is nothing to write home about), and was looking forward to an interesting story. I read this whole article with a growing feeling of incredulity, not about the cheating that it describes (yes, I understand that there are confabulators of this type - Stephen Glass was already mentioned in the comments), but about the effort and space that a national magazine would spend on this story. I kept waiting for SOMETHING of momentous importance towards the end somewhere that would justify all this buildup, but it never came. Yup, a guy cheated in a bunch of races. Yup, he is a confabulator who will invent any number of details and fake personas to build up his fantasies. Yup, he was caught in due time. You could summarize this in five lines. This is not just beating a dead horse, this is shooting it with a howitzer, repeatedly. The only truly interesting detail would be the method by which he cheated, which the reporter, at long last, admits that nobody has figured out. This leaves the possibility that other people are cheating the same way, although maybe less brazenly. Again, this could be summarized in a line (it's clear that he cheated, the method is difficult to figure out). What is this, a slow news year?
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  The New Yorker likes to publish long, meandering human interest pieces. If you don't like those kinds of articles, skip them.
  - yaakov34 14y ago
    It's not my favorite magazine, but I've read long New Yorker human interest pieces, and they've always had more, well, interest than this. The problem is that when you see a long piece in a respected magazine on a subject that you are interested in, it's hard to decide at some point that all the rest is garbage, and put it down. I started reading this story expecting a tale of a middle-aged dentist who transformed himself into a remarkable marathon runner. Pretty quickly, the story veered into a tale of cheating. I could see there is another 30 pages left to go, and kept wondering what I'd learn about. A secretive group of marathon cheaters who jet around the country and subvert race after race? A group of vigilante marathoners who help bring them to justice? Maybe Kip Litton's whole life is a lie, and he is not a dentist, but a spy from Gondwana? Maybe we at least get some fascinating psychological portraits painted by the masters of investigative journalism? No, in the end, it's a pile of boring and irrelevant details. "At 7:34 the next morning, Joe Blow leaned over his model M keyboard, and, with keystrokes echoing crisply through his split colonial house, posted a message to the forum revealing that he has a photo of Litton at the 10K timing mat". Ok, that's not a quote, but the article is very much like that. In the end, Kip Litton is indeed a dentist from somewhere in Michigan, who for some unfathomable reason decided to start cheating at marathon races for amateurs. And that's it. Nobody knows why, and in some cases, we don't know how. This is a 10,000 word article in a major magazine. 30 to 40 printed pages. Come on. I have just as much right to express my disappointment, as the New Yorker has to print this nonsense in the first place.
jakejake 14y ago
I hadn't heard anything about this guy until now. I wonder if he is secretly loving the attention? We all do things to get positive attention. A narcissist is different in that negative attention is an acceptable substitute when they aren't able to get positive attention. I couldn't help but feel a little sad though, there is such a wild variety of damaged people out there.
vorg 14y ago
How often this Michigan dentist's story is similar to the way some startup businesses raise funds, and some open source software projects recruit developers!
vishaldpatel 14y ago
What about multiple runners with the same shoe size?
barking 14y ago
Certain people (e.g. doctors, policemen, lawyers) seem to be defined by their jobs. If he had been a plumber this story would probably have been titled An improbable transformation
- mccr8 14y ago
  It is just a bit of a pun, as the movie Marathon Man has a dentist in a key role.
MindEraser 14y ago
Article sucks - don't read - watch this- about cheating and taking a bus ride to win a marathon- typical hackernews fashion :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fc_og9KLcU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fc_og9KLcU Specifically watch at 10 seconds at the cops face.
jacques_chester 14y ago
People cheat. In some sports it's easier to spot than in others.
Tichy 14y ago
wall of text
majorapps 14y ago
I find Richard Feynmanns accounts of hacking (non-computer) systems at Los Amos to be fascinating - I was hoping once the cheating was revealed we were going to be treated to a story of how someone cleverly found a loophole in the system that was then closed, improving the system for everyone. Rather we got a smear article...
danso 14y ago
Thanks for posting this, it's an interesting yarn but the two the best takeaways are: 1. People generally care only about the bullet points - that is, it seems all too easy to fool people with things such as resume padders because few people have the time or energy to investigate further 2. Granularity in data is everything. Even (actually, especially) when the data are bullshit. With some data science skills, it can be trivially easy to expose frauds. How hard would it be to look over all marathon results that have split times and filter for those who improved in the second half?
psn 14y ago
I found this a pretty interesting read. hackerish reasons: - The scale of the fraud. This guy is making up a race on the internet. complete with other runners, their profiles and so on. Its the sting come to life. - The data based approach to cheating detection. Random runners can look up, in seconds, stats for any other runner. Not just their times and placings, but checkpoint by checkpoint timings. Its then easy to profile the normal runner and then the cheat. - The photo aspect. disqualifing a guy because he didn't appear in any photos shows how far we've come in having 100s of photos of every event. - The lack of on-the-ground cheating detection. This guy presumably left and entered the route of the race, with no one noticing. Runners noticed themselves going from position X to X-1, but not ll of them complained. - The issues of internet anonimity. We see yet another internet comminity with pseudonyms. This doesn't prevent it being a commumity. it doesn't prevent people spotting strawman accounts. and less hackerish reasons: - The lack of clear motivation. Why did he do it? - the weird overreach. Why did he aim for a high ranking? If he'd come 50th no one would have cared. Why did he talk to someone from the new yorker? Why did he make up a whole event?
- cafard 14y ago
  People do step off courses--for restroom stops, to chat with friends, to have blisters tended--and then back on. I once stepped out of the Marine Corps Marathon about the 10 mile mark to chat with some friends who were near the Georgetown end of Key Bridge, for I knew already that my time would be nothing special. When I pushed back in, there were some spectators who supposed I was cheating, and why not--there is nothing so memorable in my appearance that they should have noticed me leaving the course.
- at-fates-hands 14y ago
  "- the weird overreach. Why did he aim for a high ranking? If he'd come 50th no one would have cared. Why did he talk to someone from the new yorker? Why did he make up a whole event?" This is what surprised me about him. If he had more respectable times, he could've run the scheme for much longer, and avoided the scrutiny of the community. Even the author at the end said his sub 4 hours times were believable and gave him credit for those. As always, his greed got the best of him.
- 14y ago
rickdale 14y ago
Wow, this is literally in my backyard. I live in a town in between Davison and Clarkston, one road gets you to either. Ultimately this guy sounds like a true douche. In this area as a dentist you are making plenty of money and to try and promote fake races to raise money for your son's illness is truly uncalled for. I love all the trouble this guy went through to fake accomplish these runs. It's one of those you just put more work into cheating than just doing it the old fashioned way.
- duskwuff 14y ago
  Given the context, I'd be inclined to start wondering whether his son actually had CF at all.
anaheim 14y ago
Stopped caring after the first 700 lines or so. A Midwestern dentist cheating at a marathon? That's such a homely little kind of cheating :) Bankers on Wall Street embezzle millions and this guy was just trying to fake winning a marathon; bring out the pitchforks. LOL.
ck2 14y ago
A great investigation and writeup but wasted on a problem that is not really a crime but simply a nuisance to society. I guess some poor people shoplift out of desperation vs some wealthy dentists fly around and cheat on marathons out of boredom. I wish that investigative energy would have been aimed at banks, wallstreet or billionaire tax cheats.
- vermontdevil 14y ago
  There's plenty of energy aimed at these institutions. Matt Taibbi for one example. There's a lot of good investigative journalism around. Problem is most Americans does not seem to care based on the votes they cast for the politicians who keeps the status quo.
ck2 14y ago
Additional and relevant marathon running time lying: http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/ http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-r... I am not sure why people lie about running times. But I've run a few marathons and you definitely remember the difference between a 4 hour pace and a 3 hour pace.
- cafard 14y ago
  Definitely so, if you've run a 3 hour pace. I've run a number under 3; but what I remember about a sub-2:30 pace is that I couldn't manage it.

135 points by wallflower 14y ago

Oh boy... as a D1 runner, I have heard far more about this guy than I care to. If you want to read more, this topic has been discussed extensively at Letsrun: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3863010 http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3863010

phil 14y ago
I think Mark Singer's writing is great. Did you think he represented the situation accurately, though?

klodolph 14y ago

If this were a movie, I would expect his twin brother to be revealed.

Vivtek 14y ago
That's where I thought this was going.

emini_guy 14y ago

Good time, much better than that of some other "accomplished runner", http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/paul-ryan-superman http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/paul-ryan-supe...

philwelch 14y ago
Please don't post comments like this. It doesn't really add anything to the discussion, and for that matter it doesn't really add anything to any discussion. I'm a fan of making fun of politicians, too, but you don't accomplish anything or convince anyone by doing so.
- DiabloD3 14y ago
  Actually, it makes me wonder. How many politicians have pulled similar tricks to get elected/stay elected? Its sometimes hard to fact check these people, and the media repeatedly gets called on the carpet for not fact checking either. Politicians are often called professional liars, so the line to Kip Litton isn't hard to draw, even if isn't always warranted. HN is largely anti-politics, but I think in this case there has been enough politicians who have been caught telling the "big lie" that it is worth bringing it up for discussion on this.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    I have to admit, it's kind of amusing seeing the lengths people will go to on HN to rationalize a patently off-topic comment or submission as being on-topic.
- nashequilibrium 14y ago
  I am not American so I have no U.S. Political bias, but the comment is on point about someone not being truthful regarding their achievements. If this was not a politician you would have not complained. Its seems like you are more concerned about this being about a politician than someone not being truthful.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    The OP was about a guy who cheats at marathons. The comment was about a verbal gaffe by a recently nominated and controversial Vice-Presidential candidate. I'm not sure about your countrymen, but Americans have an annoying way of derailing every conversation and forum into petty, non-sequitur, assume-bad-faith attacks on politicians of the opposing party in a way that really adds nothing to the discourse. It's not that the comment wouldn't have bothered me if it hadn't been about a politician; it's that the comment wouldn't have even been made if it wasn't about a politician. There's this obsession with proving that politicians of the opposing party are terrible human beings in every possible way (so that we may feel righteous in our cause) instead of actually discussing things that matter. The end result is a sequence of catty remarks that only convince people who already agree with you, which stops any productive dialogue before it starts. It's the single most destructive thing about the American political culture. HN is one of my few remaining refuges from that bullshit. If everyone else is suddenly fine with it, maybe it is time for me to leave.

GuiA 14y ago

If you enjoyed this article and are unacquainted with the world of running, I highly recommend the book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall.

trentmb 14y ago
As a mere recreational jogger, what's there to know about running?
- thebigshane 14y ago
  There isn't. But it is an interesting book. It's about barefoot/natural running btw.
  - interurban 14y ago
    I'm not sure how you can say there isn't anything to know about running. Volumes upon volumes of books, magazines, and articles have been written about every aspect of running, from training and nutrition guides to novels and short stories. There's no need to know that any of this even exists in order to enjoy running, that's part of running's beauty. But there's lots to know if you want to. p.s. I should add that Born to Run is an interesting read about a part of running that lots of runners don't know much about.
    - thebigshane 14y ago
      We're in agreement. I should have worded it as: there isn't anything a recreational jogger needs from running books in order to enjoy and even get decent at running. Not to say running books are completely useless, but most of the things you could get from them are better learned from experience or passed down by a coach/trainer. Exception: Running magazines (or any magazine for that matter) are only there to entertain you and sell you things. Another exception: if buying running accessories/books helps motivate you, go for it, but I don't think I really needed anything more than a running journal/log. Another really good running book for those still following along: Once a Runner -- http://www.amazon.com/Once-Runner-John-L-Parker/dp/0915297019?tag=duckduckgo-d-20 http://www.amazon.com/Once-Runner-John-L-Parker/dp/091529701...

oskarth 14y ago

Reminds me of Stephen Glass [1], the reporter who fabricated entire events and wrote about them in The New Republic, as well as the movie Catfish [2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulist 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film)

kyberias 14y ago
You don't think that spoils anything of the FILM at all?

yaakov34 14y ago

I am a runner also (finished one marathon with a time that is nothing to write home about), and was looking forward to an interesting story. I read this whole article with a growing feeling of incredulity, not about the cheating that it describes (yes, I understand that there are confabulators of this type - Stephen Glass was already mentioned in the comments), but about the effort and space that a national magazine would spend on this story. I kept waiting for SOMETHING of momentous importance towards the end somewhere that would justify all this buildup, but it never came. Yup, a guy cheated in a bunch of races. Yup, he is a confabulator who will invent any number of details and fake personas to build up his fantasies. Yup, he was caught in due time. You could summarize this in five lines. This is not just beating a dead horse, this is shooting it with a howitzer, repeatedly. The only truly interesting detail would be the method by which he cheated, which the reporter, at long last, admits that nobody has figured out. This leaves the possibility that other people are cheating the same way, although maybe less brazenly. Again, this could be summarized in a line (it's clear that he cheated, the method is difficult to figure out). What is this, a slow news year?

w1ntermute 14y ago
The New Yorker likes to publish long, meandering human interest pieces. If you don't like those kinds of articles, skip them.
- yaakov34 14y ago
  It's not my favorite magazine, but I've read long New Yorker human interest pieces, and they've always had more, well, interest than this. The problem is that when you see a long piece in a respected magazine on a subject that you are interested in, it's hard to decide at some point that all the rest is garbage, and put it down. I started reading this story expecting a tale of a middle-aged dentist who transformed himself into a remarkable marathon runner. Pretty quickly, the story veered into a tale of cheating. I could see there is another 30 pages left to go, and kept wondering what I'd learn about. A secretive group of marathon cheaters who jet around the country and subvert race after race? A group of vigilante marathoners who help bring them to justice? Maybe Kip Litton's whole life is a lie, and he is not a dentist, but a spy from Gondwana? Maybe we at least get some fascinating psychological portraits painted by the masters of investigative journalism? No, in the end, it's a pile of boring and irrelevant details. "At 7:34 the next morning, Joe Blow leaned over his model M keyboard, and, with keystrokes echoing crisply through his split colonial house, posted a message to the forum revealing that he has a photo of Litton at the 10K timing mat". Ok, that's not a quote, but the article is very much like that. In the end, Kip Litton is indeed a dentist from somewhere in Michigan, who for some unfathomable reason decided to start cheating at marathon races for amateurs. And that's it. Nobody knows why, and in some cases, we don't know how. This is a 10,000 word article in a major magazine. 30 to 40 printed pages. Come on. I have just as much right to express my disappointment, as the New Yorker has to print this nonsense in the first place.

jakejake 14y ago

I hadn't heard anything about this guy until now. I wonder if he is secretly loving the attention? We all do things to get positive attention. A narcissist is different in that negative attention is an acceptable substitute when they aren't able to get positive attention. I couldn't help but feel a little sad though, there is such a wild variety of damaged people out there.

vorg 14y ago

How often this Michigan dentist's story is similar to the way some startup businesses raise funds, and some open source software projects recruit developers!

vishaldpatel 14y ago

What about multiple runners with the same shoe size?

barking 14y ago

Certain people (e.g. doctors, policemen, lawyers) seem to be defined by their jobs. If he had been a plumber this story would probably have been titled An improbable transformation

mccr8 14y ago
It is just a bit of a pun, as the movie Marathon Man has a dentist in a key role.

MindEraser 14y ago

Article sucks - don't read - watch this- about cheating and taking a bus ride to win a marathon- typical hackernews fashion :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fc_og9KLcU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fc_og9KLcU Specifically watch at 10 seconds at the cops face.

jacques_chester 14y ago

People cheat. In some sports it's easier to spot than in others.

Tichy 14y ago

wall of text

majorapps 14y ago

I find Richard Feynmanns accounts of hacking (non-computer) systems at Los Amos to be fascinating - I was hoping once the cheating was revealed we were going to be treated to a story of how someone cleverly found a loophole in the system that was then closed, improving the system for everyone. Rather we got a smear article...

danso 14y ago

Thanks for posting this, it's an interesting yarn but the two the best takeaways are: 1. People generally care only about the bullet points - that is, it seems all too easy to fool people with things such as resume padders because few people have the time or energy to investigate further 2. Granularity in data is everything. Even (actually, especially) when the data are bullshit. With some data science skills, it can be trivially easy to expose frauds. How hard would it be to look over all marathon results that have split times and filter for those who improved in the second half?

psn 14y ago

I found this a pretty interesting read. hackerish reasons: - The scale of the fraud. This guy is making up a race on the internet. complete with other runners, their profiles and so on. Its the sting come to life. - The data based approach to cheating detection. Random runners can look up, in seconds, stats for any other runner. Not just their times and placings, but checkpoint by checkpoint timings. Its then easy to profile the normal runner and then the cheat. - The photo aspect. disqualifing a guy because he didn't appear in any photos shows how far we've come in having 100s of photos of every event. - The lack of on-the-ground cheating detection. This guy presumably left and entered the route of the race, with no one noticing. Runners noticed themselves going from position X to X-1, but not ll of them complained. - The issues of internet anonimity. We see yet another internet comminity with pseudonyms. This doesn't prevent it being a commumity. it doesn't prevent people spotting strawman accounts. and less hackerish reasons: - The lack of clear motivation. Why did he do it? - the weird overreach. Why did he aim for a high ranking? If he'd come 50th no one would have cared. Why did he talk to someone from the new yorker? Why did he make up a whole event?

cafard 14y ago
People do step off courses--for restroom stops, to chat with friends, to have blisters tended--and then back on. I once stepped out of the Marine Corps Marathon about the 10 mile mark to chat with some friends who were near the Georgetown end of Key Bridge, for I knew already that my time would be nothing special. When I pushed back in, there were some spectators who supposed I was cheating, and why not--there is nothing so memorable in my appearance that they should have noticed me leaving the course.
at-fates-hands 14y ago
"- the weird overreach. Why did he aim for a high ranking? If he'd come 50th no one would have cared. Why did he talk to someone from the new yorker? Why did he make up a whole event?" This is what surprised me about him. If he had more respectable times, he could've run the scheme for much longer, and avoided the scrutiny of the community. Even the author at the end said his sub 4 hours times were believable and gave him credit for those. As always, his greed got the best of him.
14y ago

rickdale 14y ago

Wow, this is literally in my backyard. I live in a town in between Davison and Clarkston, one road gets you to either. Ultimately this guy sounds like a true douche. In this area as a dentist you are making plenty of money and to try and promote fake races to raise money for your son's illness is truly uncalled for. I love all the trouble this guy went through to fake accomplish these runs. It's one of those you just put more work into cheating than just doing it the old fashioned way.

duskwuff 14y ago
Given the context, I'd be inclined to start wondering whether his son actually had CF at all.

anaheim 14y ago

Stopped caring after the first 700 lines or so. A Midwestern dentist cheating at a marathon? That's such a homely little kind of cheating :) Bankers on Wall Street embezzle millions and this guy was just trying to fake winning a marathon; bring out the pitchforks. LOL.

ck2 14y ago

A great investigation and writeup but wasted on a problem that is not really a crime but simply a nuisance to society. I guess some poor people shoplift out of desperation vs some wealthy dentists fly around and cheat on marathons out of boredom. I wish that investigative energy would have been aimed at banks, wallstreet or billionaire tax cheats.

vermontdevil 14y ago
There's plenty of energy aimed at these institutions. Matt Taibbi for one example. There's a lot of good investigative journalism around. Problem is most Americans does not seem to care based on the votes they cast for the politicians who keeps the status quo.

ck2 14y ago

Additional and relevant marathon running time lying: http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/ http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-r... I am not sure why people lie about running times. But I've run a few marathons and you definitely remember the difference between a 4 hour pace and a 3 hour pace.

cafard 14y ago
Definitely so, if you've run a 3 hour pace. I've run a number under 3; but what I remember about a sub-2:30 pace is that I couldn't manage it.