Fake Splits, Real Feelings

On Lying Our Way Through a Race

Recently I listened to an episode of the Bergwelten podcast where climber Simon Messner talks about the temptation to cheat in alpinism. Especially in remote areas (e.g. the wilder parts of Pakistan) there’s often just you and a summit that may or may not have been reached. And a story that can easily slide a few meters higher than reality. Simon Messner talks about it all: fake summit photos, routes done “clean” that in reality involved a lot of bolts and fixed gear, prestigious ascents that verifiably never happened.

Listening to that, I thought: “Wow, that’s wild!”
And then I thought: “Oh well, we have the same thing in running.”

We like to believe that our sport is protected by timing mats, chips, GPS watches and race photos. Hard facts and numbers, no discussion. But spend ten minutes on marathoninvestigation.com¹ and you realize: if humans can turn eight-thousanders into a place of invented summits, we can absolutely turn a marathon into a theater stage.

(Photo by Stephan Wieser)

The art of cutting corners

Here are a few stories, paraphrased and anonymized, all documented on marathoninvestigation.com.

1. The half marathon with 250 shortcuts
At a big-city half marathon in China, race officials reviewed photos and GPS traces and ended up flagging more than 250 runners for cheating. Some ducked through gaps in the barriers to rejoin the course later. Others took literal shortcuts across grass and side streets. A few used bikes for parts of the route. The pattern was so widespread that it looked less like a handful of bad apples and more like a quiet, collective agreement that the official distance was optional. Absolute mayhem.

2. The bike to second place
One age-group runner crossed the line in second place at a marathon, collected a spot on the podium, and later had to admit that parts of the race were done on a bike. Yes, a bike. Witnesses, timing data and photos didn’t line up with human running splits. And it wasn’t just this race, but part of a pattern of similar cheating in previous events.

3. The outsourced Boston qualifier
In another case, a mid-pack runner hired someone faster to run under their bib at a qualifying race. The “bib mule” delivered the “not-so-easy” required time, and the slower runner used that result to snag a coveted spot at the Boston Marathon start line. Until data analysis and a little internet detective work exposed the scheme. Race directors and marathoninvestigation.com worked together to disqualify the result and tighten their rules around bib transfers and identity checks.

4. The Strava fiction writer
Then there are the athletes who cut the course and later “repair” the story online. One triathlete posted manual Strava entries that claimed a heroic marathon split, totally out of line with their previous results and race-day conditions. When asked to provide GPS files, they couldn’t. Splits didn’t match the official time, and the data trail fell apart on closer inspection. The running had been mediocre but the storytelling was elite.

And this is just a small sample. The catalog is long: bib swapping, bandits sneaking into races they never entered, people wearing finisher gear for events they never actually completed, runners returning to the course after dropping out to cross the line for the photo.

On the surface, it’s absurd. Risk public humiliation, a permanent internet footprint and maybe a lifetime ban for certain races.

But the longer I look at these stories, the less I see actual villains and the more I see something uncomfortably familiar: the human urge to make our life story align with the person we think we should be.

(Photo by Stephan Wieser)

Why would anyone cheat in a marathon?

The obvious answer is: to win. To get a podium, a paycheck, a contract. And sure, in elite sport, direct financial pressure is part of the picture. But most of the cases marathoninvestigation.com surfaces are not Olympic finals. They’re local marathons, mid-pack age groups, charity events. People with day jobs and kids and very ordinary lives.

What really interests me is the psychological aspect of it all. What’s going on underneath?

1. Identity Dissonance

Many of us build strong identities around running: Boston qualifier. Sub-3 guy. Back-to-back ultra finisher. Our friends know us that way. Our social media profiles tell that story. Our training for months or years revolves around that role.

But then reality intervenes. We get sick or injured. The weather turns. The training plan was too much or too little. At mile 30 or kilometer 35, the body quietly votes “no.” For no obvious reason.

Now there’s a conflict:

The story we’ve been telling (I am this kind of runner) versus the hard facts we’re about to generate (I did not run that kind of race).

Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. The discomfort is real. It’s much easier to adjust the facts than to adjust the identity. So you rationalize a tiny shortcut, a bib swap, a generous rounding of splits. Just this once. You’re “correcting” an unfair day so your result matches who you “really” are.

Seen from inside that logic, the act is not evil. It’s protective. It’s an identity-preserving move.

2. Social Evaluation Pressure

We no longer just run, we present ourselves to the world as runners.

Research² on cheating in sport and social media pressure points out how comparison and public broadcasting amplify the urge to perform, especially for recreational athletes who still live in normal social worlds.

If every race ends as a reel, posting or data set on your profile, “just doing your best on the day” can feel strangely insufficient. The medal photo without the PR caption suddenly looks flat. Every race becomes a referendum on your entire identity as a runner, and your perceived value in your micro-community.

Under that lens, the stakes for a single time become wildly out of proportion. It’s not just a number. It’s who you get to be in front of others.

3. Ego-Oriented Achievement

Sports psychology talks about ego-oriented versus task-oriented mindsets. In an ego-oriented frame, what matters is how you rank, a.k.a. being better than others, winning, standing out. In a task-oriented frame, what matters is the process: learning, mastery, consistency, effort. I’ve found studies³ that show that a strong ego orientation, especially in competitive environments, increases the likelihood of cheating.

You don’t need to be a pro for this to hit. You just need a context where results unlock something:

• the “Performance Team” of your local club

• travel support from a sponsor

• a qualification standard for the race of your dreams

When winning (or simply qualifying) feels like the only thing that counts, cutting ten minutes can feel like a reasonable shortcut through a system that already seems unfair.

Again: internally, this is not framed as fraud. It’s framed as leveling the field.

4. The cheater’s high

There’s another uncomfortable layer: research shows that, contrary to what we like to believe, people often feel good after getting away with minor unethical acts. Mood goes up, not down. The “cheater’s high”⁴ is a real, measurable effect.

Think of the small scale first: sneaking onto a train without a ticket, cutting a tiny corner on a crowded trail, jogging through a red light when no car is coming. There’s a little jolt of I got away with it. We all know it.

Transfer that to running: you step off the course, cut a block, jump back in, and the mat still beeps. The number on the results sheet lines up with the version of you that exists in your head. There is at least relief, maybe even a quiet rush.

That emotional reward makes it easier to do it again. And again. Until the reality gap becomes too big to hide.

5. Cheating is contagious

One more thing: we cheat more when we believe others are doing it too. Analyses of doping⁵ and match-fixing show how quickly norms shift once a critical mass crosses the line.

Back to that half marathon with 250+ shortcuts: if everyone around you knows “this is the place where people cut the course,” the moral weight of doing it yourself shrinks. You’re not the problem; you’re just playing by the unofficial rules.

The same happens at the local level: if you know someone who “definitely didn’t run that time” and nothing happened, the barrier to your own small lie drops. We are social animals. We read the room, even when the room is a 42-kilometer loop through a big city with plastic cups and banana chunks.

6. Self-Deception Dynamics

Underneath all of this is something quieter and more dangerous than malice: self-deception. The psychological term for bending reality just enough that you can live with yourself. We love narratives that protect our self-image:

• I trained hard

• I deserved better

• I only cut a little

• I’m not taking anything away from anyone

Impression management towards others and self-deception towards ourselves go hand in hand: we want to look good out there, and still see ourselves as fundamentally decent in here.

So no, I don’t think most race cheaters wake up in the morning planning to commit sports fraud. I think they wake up wanting to be the person they already told the world they are. And then they make a series of micro-decisions that move the story faster than the body.

(Photo by Stephan Wieser)

Who gets hurt?

It’s tempting to say: “Who cares. It’s just a hobby. Nobody dies if someone claims a faster half marathon.”

But the damage is real, even if it’s subtle.

1. The zero-sum places
Boston doesn’t have infinite spots. When someone uses a bib mule or faked splits to generate a qualifying time, they’re not just lying to themselves. They’re literally taking a place from another runner who did the work and missed the cut-off by seconds.

Podiums, age-group wins, prize money – they all are zero-sum. Someone else stands one step lower because you stood one step higher. On a lie.

2. The invisible comparisons
More diffuse, but just as dangerous, is what this does to everyone watching. When a runner with a similar life (job, kids, training volume, etc.) suddenly posts a massive PR, the rest of us do math in our head: Why am I not progressing like that? What’s wrong with me?

We rarely factor in the possibility that the result is fake. We just internalize it as our own inadequacy.

3. The trust issue
Sport works because we collectively agree that the numbers mean something. Once that trust erodes, cynicism creeps in. Every breakout performance becomes suspect. Every incredible age-group result is greeted with doubt and a link to marathoninvestigation.com.

And for the people who are caught, the consequences can be brutal. Public shaming, online harassment, sometimes far beyond what the original act would justify. There is at least one high-profile case where a runner at the center of a cheating scandal later died by suicide, and the debate still rages about what role the public pile-on played in that tragedy.

Cheating damages the sport, yes. But our reaction to it can damage people, too.

From “them” to “us”

Okay, this is going to hurt a little, but it’s the part I can’t avoid: Although most of us will never hire a bib mule or ride a bike through a marathon, we’re all familiar with smaller versions of this.

• Calling 19 reps “20” because you lost count and like the higher number better.

• Rounding 9.6 km up to “10k easy” in your log.

• Leaving a bad interval set off Strava because “the watch messed up.”

• Quietly ignoring the days where your knee hurt too much to finish the plan, so the training graph looks smoother than your actual life.

These aren’t crimes. But they live in the same world: the desire for our numbers to match the story in our head, even when reality is messier.

The harder honesty

If you zoom out far enough, almost no one cares whether you ran 3:06 or 3:59, whether your VO2max score is “excellent” or “good.” What does matter is something smaller and more private: whether you can trust the way you talk to yourself about who you are. Every tiny edit to the truth – rounding up, hiding, smoothing – doesn’t just polish a result, it teaches your brain a lesson: the real thing is not quite enough.

And that’s maybe the saddest part of cheating, in any size. Not just that some stranger doesn’t get into Boston because of it. Not even that the sport loses some purity. It’s that a person (yes, you) who clearly cares enough to train, to show up, to suffer, ends up telling themselves that the honest version of their effort is unworthy of being seen.

What would it look like to practice the opposite?

To treat your slow splits, your DNFs, your “not today” races the way you treat summit photos and PR screenshots: as proof that you were there, fully, with all your heart and pure love for running. To let the numbers stand for what they are: Just numbers.

That’s the only real act of courage left in a world where everything can be gamed: not to be the fastest, or the most impressive, but to be the one person in your story who lets the numbers stay ugly and true.

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Everything Not Running

For three years, I’ve published a Das Z Letter every Friday.

Which means I now have something I didn’t set out to create: an archive. A lot of writing that still feels current and yet quietly disappears behind the newest post, like that super nice t-shirt that disappears underneath a pile of fresh and new ones.

I don’t want this to turn into a dusty “search bar” problem. I want my Das Z Letter to become a real library: easy to enter, easy to browse, and worth getting lost in.

So I’m curious:

How would you actually like to access older Das Z Letter?
(Quick poll below — feel free to add detail in the comments.)

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On Repeat

To be honest, I was never interested in the band Goldfinger. In the mid-90s, so many cool punk bands were popping up that it was easy to overlook one. Besides, I was allergic to the ska-punk genre back then. Punk should be punk, and ska should be ska, as far as I was concerned.

Today, I know that it was a big mistake to completely ignore Goldfinger. The band has impressive songwriting skills and writes real hits, hits, hits. That’s probably because their singer, John Feldmann, is also a music producer for bands like Blink 182, Good Charlotte, The Used, and Avril Lavigne.

Either way, Goldfinger has continued to evolve as a band and their themes have become increasingly political (e.g. animal rights). Their latest album, “Nine Lives,” is an absolute pop-punk masterpiece and has a guest list that reaches the moon: Pennywise, Blink 182, NOFX, Ice Nine Kills, just to name a few.

Of all the great songs, one stands out for me in particular: “Derelict.” A high-speed punk anthem that could have been written in the 90s.

1. marathoninvestigation.com and its founder Derek Murphy have been praised for protecting race integrity but also criticized for public call-outs; one high-profile runner at the center of such a cheating scandal later died by suicide, and the impact of that exposure remains heavily debated.

2. Arkansas State University – “Cheating in Sports: What Psychology Teaches Us”

3. Baltic Journal of Sport and Health Sciences – “Understanding Factors Related with Cheating in Sport”

4. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology – “The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior”

5. Science of Running – “Psychology of Doping - Why we’re fighting a losing battle”