British ultrarunner Robert Young received “unauthorized assistance” during his attempt this year to break the record for fastest run across America, according to an investigation commissioned by his chief sponsor, the sports compression company Skins.
“We have identified no alternative plausible explanation for the data-of-record other than assistance, most likely in the form of riding in or on a vehicle for large parts of the attempt,” said the 101-page report, which was released Saturday.
The key finding was derived from Young’s private TomTom account, the fitness tracking service that stored data from two watches he used during the record attempt. The data showed that his cadence—the number of steps he took per minute as measured by the watch—indicated he did not run large swaths of the route during the first 24 days.
After public scrutiny mounted, the report found, Young started running the full mileage but could not maintain the rigorous pace, and ultimately dropped out, citing a foot injury.
Young, 33, has maintained his innocence.
“I do not agree that I cheated,” Young told Runner’s World in a 40-minute phone conversation Friday afternoon. “I certainly made mistakes, but I did not cheat.”
Nevertheless, Skins has terminated his contract. The company did not provide details about what the sponsorship entailed.
Young left Huntington Beach, California, on May 14 with the intention of breaking the Guinness World Record for fastest trans-America run. The record, set by Frank Giannino Jr. in 1980, stands at 46 days, 8 hours, and 36 minutes.
Young, who is based in Great Britain, calls himself “Marathon Man UK.” His website says his accomplishments include finishing 420 marathons or ultramarathons over 420 days and running 373.75 consecutive miles without sleep.
To break the trans-America mark, Young needed to run nearly 60 miles a day. He lasted roughly 2,000 miles over 36 days before dropping out west of Indianapolis on July 18, citing a fracture in his right foot.
His location during the run was broadcast live to his website via a tracking device, and his journey was documented with photos and text updates on Facebook. But Ultrarunner Faked Parts of Record Run Attempt, Report Says a week after he began.
Members of the ultrarunning community expressed suspicions over the volume of miles Young claimed to run and his pace. In the early stages of the run, Young frequently ran more than 70 miles a day, often maintaining a pace faster than 7 minutes per mile, an unprecedented feat according to many of those ultrarunners. They accused him of riding in his support vehicle, a beige RV, instead of running the full distance.
These allegations led to international media coverage and thousands of online posts, many on the website LetsRun. A group of accomplished ultramarathoners, including Gary Cantrell, the race director for the famous Barkley Marathons, decided to verify Young’s pace in person. They tracked him in a separate vehicle for five days before he dropped out.
The group did not witness any wrongdoing by Young, but they did note that his pace and mileage dropped significantly under their scrutiny.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below ldquo;I Can’t Explain&rdquo, to commission the three-month investigation. It was conducted by two respected independent researchers: Roger Pielke Jr., a professor in the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, and Ross Tucker, an exercise physiologist and founder of the website We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.
The researchers conducted interviews with Young, a member of his crew, and witnesses who spotted his support vehicle on the road. They also received submissions from Internet sleuths who had already examined Young’s publicly available data during the attempt.
But the strongest piece of evidence came from Young himself. He gave the researchers access to his private TomTom account, which revealed the cadence data that had previously not been released to the public.
“Looking at the data it is fairly obvious,” Pielke Jr. told Runner’s World. “Having the cadence data is irrefutable evidence.”
The “Smoking Gun”
As part of the investigation, Young supplied Tucker and Pielke Jr. with the two TomTom watches he used to track segments of the run. Young said he alternated between the watches, using one while the other charged in the support RV.
The watches arrived to the researchers with no data, having been restored to their factory settings. But Young did give the researchers access to his online TomTom account, which showed that the watches had been able to capture Young’s location, pace, time of day, and most important, his cadence.
That specific piece of data shows how many steps are taken per minute. Someone on a bicycle or in a car would have a very low cadence, somewhere between 0 and 50 steps per minute; a slow walker would step around 60 times per minute; a typical runner would step around 150 times per minute, according to the report.
For the first 24 days of Young’s attempt, the data shows he took less than 20 steps per minute—one step for every three seconds—on a quarter of the segments measured by the TomTom watch. The researchers concluded that most of the runs with an abnormally low cadence occurred at night.
Pielke Jr. and Tucker paid specific attention to any runs where Young’s pace was faster than nine minutes per mile. For these segments, they were able to calculate how far Young would have had to travel with each step to maintain both the pace and cadence. Eighteen segments measured on the watch show Young’s step length would have had to exceed 40 meters per step.
Put simply, if Young were not traveling in a car or on a bike during those 18 runs, every time he took a step he would have bounded nearly half the length of a football field.
To add to the researchers’ case, the data significantly changed 24 days into the attempt—on June 7. Every run measured on Young’s watch appears within a normal cadence rate after that date.
So what changed?
A runner named Asher Delmott tried to meet up with Young in the middle of the night to join him for a few miles on a road in rural Kansas. Delmott claims he found the RV moving slowly, but he did not see any runner nearby that evening. He posted the account on LetsRun, sparking the most intense scrutiny Young faced.
This, the researchers wrote, is the “smoking gun.” The dramatic shift in cadence proves that the watches weren’t malfunctioning.
“Notably, not a single instance of impossible or infeasible step lengths was observed after the LetsRun post on June,” the report said. It concluded that once people started paying close attention to Young, he did run all the miles.
“Had the cadence info been available from the outset, we would not have needed to do the investigation,” Pielke Jr. said.
“I Can’t Explain”
Presented with the data, Young continued to deny any wrongdoing.
“To be honest with you, I did all the running,” he said. “Along the way there were mistakes, and I openly admit that.”
Young said the GPS watch may have been inside the RV during certain portions of his attempt. But he said that it was on his wrist “most” of the time.
The data Pielke Jr. and Tucker collected show that the watch would have to have been inside a moving vehicle for at least 25 percent of the measured segments during the first 24 days of the run.
“There were times when everyone was just tired,” Young said. “Not all the checks were properly done.
“I am not a big person with all the watches and the data and how all that stuff works,” he continued. “I was there to do the running.”
In the phone interview with Runner’s World, Young cited eyewitnesses who came and ran with him. He also stressed that the run was done to raise money for charity. He criticized the investigation for not allowing runners who came to support him a chance to submit their evidence.
Skins published a press release on July 1 that included an email address for witnesses to use to submit evidence. The researchers received evidence from seven people.
When asked why the GPS data did not match his story, Young said, “I can’t explain. All I am trying to do is stick up for myself.”
Dustin Brooks, one of the two members on Young’s crew, also denied any wrongdoing during a phone interview.
Investigators contacted Brooks as part of the investigation, but Brooks said they gave him little time to respond and he was on vacation in Croatia and unavailable to talk.
Tucker and Pielke Jr. did not follow up with another interview. In their report, they wrote that they did not need Brooks’s statement because the data was strong enough evidence on its own.
Speaking with Runner’s World, Brooks said he wished he could have spoken with the investigators. He said he never once saw Young ride inside the RV when he was supposed to be running. “If there was any cheating, it would have had to have been done by a master criminal to have fooled me,” Brooks said.
But when asked to address Young’s change in cadence, Brooks gave the same response as Young: “I can’t explain it,” he said.
Brooks followed the phone conversation with a separate email in which he wrote, “I’ll believe what I know about the man over any technology that says differently.”
Beginner Running Gear
Regardless of the investigation, Young did not reach New York City. The 36-year-old trans-America record lives on.
Young is one of three people in 2016 who has tried but failed to break it. As more attempt the mark, Pielke Jr. and Tucker have included in their report best practices for documenting such attempts.
“The emphasis should be on total transparency and full disclosure,” the report said. “Such transparency is neither difficult nor costly, given today’s technology.”
Among the list of recommendations, the authors suggested uploading data directly from a watch on a daily basis to at least two tracking applications. They said the data must include cadence and heart rate, and there should always be a tracker showing the runner’s live location.
Many of these methods are being used by an ultrarunner who is currently on pace to challenge the record. As of Friday, Pete Kostelnick was running through northern Colorado on day 20, averaging just over 60 miles a day. His websites displays his current location, as well as running segments on Strava as they are completed.
As for Young, he said that despite the investigation, he will not stop running. He is planning on competing in at least one six-day ultrarace within the next 12 months. He has also not given up on breaking the trans-America record. He is planning an attempt in 2017.
“My reputation is damaged,” he said. “I am not going to just hide away. I know I am going to come back and prove myself.”
Kit has been a health, fitness, and running journalist for the past five years. His work has taken him across the country, from Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, to cover the 2016 Olympic Trials to the top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine to cover Scott Jurek’s record-breaking Appalachian Trail thru-hike in 2015.
