Cheptegei Gutted with Garmin GPS Track as World World ‘not properly recorded‘

After his recent 5k world record, Joshua Cheptegei held his head in dismay as he realised he’d worn his Garmin and he was heard to say “S*&t, this one is not going to count, no way will it have me running in Lane 1“. Joshua knows that all world records HAVE to be properly recorded and measured on STRAVA to really count. Indeed the genius-runner’s worst fears were realised moments later as he wi-fi sync’d his run-up to the orange cloud and got this. #Disaster

Source Data: strava (genuine!)

Watching in the stands, K Bekele (ETH), smirked: “It’s still mine, loser“. Of course, Mr Bekele set the true world record back in 2004 when neither technology nor Garmin GPS sports tech existed. Things were much easier in those days and far less accurate, of course. All Kenenisa had to do back in 2004 on that cinder track was rely on someone else pressing a stopwatch button and pencilling the approximate figure down on a piece of paper for it to count as a world record. Technology has come a long way since then and eliminates such basic sources of error as we now have multi-billion dollar satellite systems to rely on.

Current Olympic 5000m Champion, Sir Mo Farah, was also there in Monte Carlo that night and shaking his head in disbelief along with Michael Johnson and the BBC Sports Team. Mo was heard to say, “It’s like amateur hour. Sure you take Garmin’s sponsorship money but you don’t wear an approximator on race night.” He continued, “Everyone knows I used a beta Coros Pace at the Olympics in Rio, their track mode was simply awesome even then, it snaps you properly into the lane and the only downside was that I had to run just on the edge of Lane 2 for the whole of the final. Sure, I ran a bit further than I needed but my elbows kept everyone back and my GPS track was perfect. No-one could fault it. The race official that night used to work for Garmin Brazil too, he took my FIT files to bits and did all he could to take that Gold Medal away but I was having none of it.” Michael Johnson nodded sagely, “Yeah I remember Sir Mo, they had you for a moment though, didn’t they? with that GPS-discrepancy. Remember that?”

Sir Mo smiled briefly, “Oh, I’d almost forgotten about that Mike. Yes, the GPS track distance and the footpod distance didn’t quite match, they had me down for tech doping for a while. Alberto (Salazar) was having none of it. He pushed me down on a seat, told me to shut up and then started waving my shoe in the official’s face. Are you [expletive deleted] blind? he said. Can’t you see this you [expletive deleted], it’s a [expletive deleted] STRYD footpod you stupid mother [expletive deleted]. You should have seen the look on the IOC official’s face. He turned white and I thought he was going to cry. The sight of the STRYD in Alberto’s hand and the Coros on my wrist was all he could take. He simply gave in, threw back my medal and walked off. ”

INTERESTING FACT: Even to this day, Mo’s time at the 2016 Rio Olympics still stands as the only truly verified 5000m STRAVA 5k World Record.

STRYD Review, 10,000km Update – (Dual-) Running Power ⚡ Pod

Garmin on the Wrist

Back to less silliness and some form of sensible gossip for a minute; eagle-eyed readers might have spotted this on King Josh’s wrist.

I don’t even think he was wearing a lightweight FR945. Is that a Garmin Fenix? It’s probably a Fenix 6X Pro which I think weighs about 500g, it must have been like lugging a lead weight around for 12 minutes and cost him a second or two? Add to that the clear fact that he lost valuable time from the aero loss of not having his strap properly fastened and it makes his “time” even more amazing. (Edit: the STRAVA upload claims it to be an FR35, the FR35 DOES have a silver clasp so it could be)

Stats

Back to the STRAVA stats and you can see that Joshua Cheptegai had a new pair of shoes on, which he has stated to be the Nike Alpha Fly. If true, the pair are probably already at the end of their life! A warm-up run and a race at that speed and they’re done for.

I was hoping to get detailed STRAVA stats. A little known trick is that you can add /export_gpx or export_tcx to the end of any STRAVA activity like this https://www.strava.com/activities/3962494314/export_gpx and you can then download all the file’s details. However, the TCX file seems to be protected in this instance, yet you can download the GPX file but it has been stripped of all meaningful data, even laps. Which is a shame because the STRAVA post, above, has Joshua’s cadence down as 180 for the first lap but 190/192 for the remaining laps. Which I thought was great and would be interesting to delve further info.

As well as running 5k I also have that same race cadence….but that’s about all Cheptegei and me have in common when it comes to racing! He is a tiny bit faster…ahem.

He does have some good flybys though, as this image shows.

I digress; back to King Joshua’s STRAVA track from Monte Carlo. This really is the GPX track in my software and really does show how different from reality the track is. The truth must be that he only wore the Garmin Forerunner as a stopwatch, the GPS stats it would have produced are simply nowhere near accurate enough for world record instant pacing…although STRYD would have been. Just sayin’.

As if a world record wasn’t enough

Jeez. STRAVA Says he got 11 achievements on that run. What were the other 10? That’s just being greedy.

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Take out: I’m Joking, all athletes mentioned above are awesome and hopefully have a sense of humour