Why ‘the fear of the unknown’ has some runners questioning this man’s record

Source : ABC NEWS

When William Goodge arrived at Bondi Beach on Monday afternoon, he did so as a record holder.

Just 35 days earlier, the 31-year-old British runner had set off from Cottesloe Beach in Western Australia and traversed the 3,800 kilometres across the nation on foot.

Goodge beat the previous record, set by Australian Chris Turnbull, by a whopping four days, regularly running around 110km per day.

So why has such an incredible achievement raised questions among the tight-knit ultra-running community?

Who is William Goodge?

Goodge is a 31-year-old ultra runner from Ampthill, 70km to the north of London in Bedfordshire, England.

He is a former model and used to play semi-pro rugby for the Ampthill Rugby Club in the third tier of English rugby — and still has the physique to match — but gave up after he “got knocked out too many times”. 

In 2018, his mother passed away from non-Hodgkins lymphoma and, amidst that grief, he turned to running.

“Obviously she was such a special woman to me and the only reason I got into this stuff was because of her passing,” Goodge told ABC Sport from Sydney, little over 24 hours after he completed his record run. 

“So it’s really a celebration of who she was and what she instilled in me as a person. 

“No one truly dies unless you stop talking about them, so I know she was with me the whole time, pushing me along. 

“It was really nice at the end, a gentleman actually brought us out a bottle of port [when] we’re in South Australia. and my mum would always have a glass of port after a rugby game, so yeah it was cool to do that and give her a little cheers and a nod.

“And we laid some flowers down at Bondi Beach as well for her.”

So Goodge is not new to ultra running then?

Definitely not.

Goodge’s previous feats have included a 16-day, 1,350km run from John O’Groats in Scotland to Land’s End along the length of the United Kingdom and, in 2021 he 48 marathons — one in each of England’s counties — in just 30 days.

In 2023 Goodge completed the TransCon, a 5,109km cross-country run across the United States from Huntington Beach, California, to New York in 55 days, making him the fastest Englishman to ever do so.

The record, incidentally, is held by American Pete Kostelnick, who did it in a staggering 42 days and six hours.

Goodge has also competed in the 257km Marathon des Sables across the Sahara Desert in 2022 and finished 11th at the Moab 240, a 240-mile (386km) ultra race in Utah.

He has raised thousands of dollars for charity and has been fundraising for the Cancer Council of Australia, as well as the UK-based Macmillan Cancer Support and the American Cancer Society for this run.

So what’s the issue?

Before Goodge began his Transcontinental USA run in 2023, some ultra runners began to ask questions about his data, most vocally Englishman William Cockerell.

Ultra running over these sorts of distances is almost entirely self-reporting. People take a GPS watch and run a particular distance and then submit their data for ratification to either the Guinness World Records or Fastest Known Time (FKT).

Cockerell, a fellow runner and author, raised concerns over Goodge’s heart rate data.

Simply put, he believes Goodge’s heart rate is too low for the distances he is running and that after an initial period where his heart rate does vary, it then stabilises.

Cockerell even travelled out to America to observe Goodge’s run in the USA, hoping to catch him “watch muling” — or swapping his official tracking watch between different runners while he has a rest.

This sort of thing is not unheard of in ultra running record attempts but it is an allegation that Goodge denied strenuously, inviting Cockerell to observe him for as long as he wanted to.

The pair ended up having an altercation on the side of the road — which was documented in an episode of his run on YouTube.

It’s not just Cockerell though. Rob Pope, another ultra runner, told The Times in April that although he hopes Goodge’s records are legit, his “heart rate doesn’t make sense”. 

The suspicious among ultra running community are still pointing out issues from his recent Australia run.

His run from April 16, day two of his challenge, has been flagged on Strava after users noted that he set a personal record of 23 seconds for 400m — that’s 20 seconds faster than Wayde van Niekerk’s world record on the track and is a speed of about 62 km/h — with his pace analysis recording that, for 42 seconds, he ran faster than 3:33 per km.

Canadian Running Magazine has also observed his InReach data recording movement at speeds exceeding 80 km/h.

These blips in the data can be easily explained away by transmission errors in what is a very remote part of the country, but it certainly adds fuel to the doubters.

Did Goodge track his run?

Conscious of the doubters, Goodge tracked his run by Garmin InReach and on Strava, which records his position and his basic stats, like speed and heart rate.

“I knew it was gonna come,” Goodge told ABC Sport in regard to the sceptics. 

“I was prepared for that and just, it comes with the territory. And you can’t blame people for coming at you and questioning your stuff. Like, it’s just part and parcel of it.

“Obviously we do everything we can, like, put the tracker up live so if anyone ever wanted to come and see us — and we had a lot of people that wanted to come out and run — just come and find us. So yeah, you do everything you can, 

“But there’s obviously like a limit. I can’t live stream the whole event. Maybe that would be something you could do in the future but being on roads like that as well, it’s just like it’s really tough. It’s tough to be able to even think about like having a car near me because it’s too dangerous.”

This is true. And just as when Cockerel came out to watch him run, he found no evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

“I’ve done everything I’ve ever said I’ve done,” Goodge told the Australian Financial Review (AFR) before his run. 

“But I appreciate that there is a higher burden of proof when you say you’re going for an actual record.”

Is this his first record?

It is, and one he’s understandably very proud of and one he felt was important to add another level to his fundraising.

“It was really important,” Goodge told ABC Sport.

“All the other events have obviously been impressive and I’ve had to give everything to them — even though I do maintain this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, just because of the the scope of it and not having like any room for error.

“But it was something for me … maybe it’s for my ego, but I’ve been in this game, what, six years since I did my first challenge? And I feel like it’s time for me to step up.

“Like, I get a lot of stuff in media talking about my modelling stuff and former rugby player, and that’s cool, but that’s not who I am, right? 

“It’s like, the main thing I do is I’m an ultra endurance athlete, and not a normal one by any stretch, but that’s how I want to be presented. 

“So yeah, it’s a cool one to achieve for me.”

Tell me about Goodge’s heart rate

Goodge’s heart rate data comes from a wrist-worn device — research papers say that these devices only have a moderate degree of accuracy.

He told the AFR that he always tries to run in Zone 1 or Zone 2 — and that is born out in his data, available publicly on Strava.

There are five heart rate zones, with Zone 1 rated as Endurance for low heart rates, all the way up to Zone 5, for Anaerobic activities where your heart rate goes very high — think walking as endurance and sprinting as anaerobic.

Zone 1 is the lowest intensity training zone and is characterised by being about 50 per cent of your maximum heart rate, so you can easily talk and breathe while doing exercise.

It’s different for everyone but, according to Strava, for Goodge it’s anything below 123 beats per minute.

Zone 2 is a relatively common state of training for endurance athletes and where a lot of training takes place and, for Goodge, is anything between 123 and 153 beats per minute.

Let’s take a typical day in the middle of Goodge’s run, May 11, where he ran 112km in 13 hours, 15 minutes, at an average pace of 7 minutes and 6 seconds per kilometre.

His highest recorded heart rate was 156 beats per minute, but his average was 104bpm. 

Incredibly, 92 per cent of his run took place with his heart rate in Zone 1, with eight per cent in Zone 2.

When Australian endurance runner Nedd Brockmann did his trans-Australia run, he tended to run more in Zone 2 — while running across similar terrain around the flat country of Kimba in South Australia, Goodge ran 110km at 7:55 per km with an average of 101bpm, 93 per cent in Zone 1, while Brockmann ran 102km at 5:42 pace with an average heart rate of 130bpm, 85 per cent of which was in Zone 2.

There were days when there were similarities though.

Both men ran similar distances late in their attempts, from near Yass to Goulburn in New South Wales which, according to the Strava data, took place in similar conditions, clear and 6C.

Brockmann ran 106km in 11 hours and 25 minutes at an average pace of 6:28 per km, with an average heart rate of 114bpm, 73 per cent of which was in Zone 1.

Goodge ran 113km in 14 hours and 40 minutes at 7:47 per km, averaging 110bpm with 81 per cent in Zone 1.

How does Goodge explain his low heart rate?

“The thing is, I don’t really look at it, but on day one, it [my heart rate] is probably going to be higher because I can push more,” Goodge said in response to the criticism.

“But it gets to a point where your legs are so bad you can’t really go very fast.

“I’ve done so much of this — like, my foundational training and all the events I’ve done, challenges — meaning that I can just ride out and I’m very much [running at] a conversational pace. 

“But there’s also just so many other aspects to this that you can’t really consider all the time. 

“Like, I’m running past roadkill and I’m putting something over my face, or a dust storm has come in, or a road train has come close to me, or I’m literally running along and I’m singing. 

“So there’s so many variables involved of why my heart rate might go up at a particular point, even though my pace is the same, or go down.  

“Also, I’m running slowly.

“Like, really slowly … it’s not sustainable to try and push that hard for that long, so I have to keep, basically, a steady effort the whole time.”

The burden of proof in endurance racing

By their very nature, endurance events are somewhat difficult to ratify outside of the competitor’s honesty.

Distance running has always had this issue, right from the early days of the Olympic Marathon in St Louis in 1904, when American runner Fred Lorz was disqualified after getting a lift for the majority of the race.

With ever more demanding events over longer and longer distances outside of ratified events, self-reporting is vital.

Goodge has not shied away from confronting those who are doubting the authenticity of his feats head on.

“If it’s fight or flight, I’m a fight kind of guy,” Goodge said when asked about his somewhat brash social media response to critics.

“Today’s effort is rage,” he wrote on Instagram on April 28, to give an example.

“Keep talking motherf******, keep adding fuel to the fire and I’ll make it even more unbelievable.”

Another post, this one on his Instagram story, showed Goodge relaxing with his crew, nursing a beer and a cigarette, with the caption: “And from all of us at the record down under team, to the nay sayers we sincerely say f*** you.”

Why does Goodge think he rubs runners up the wrong way?

There’s no doubt that Goodge is not the average endurance runner.

Not many men who pound the pavement have a modelling contract.

Neither do they have a beer and a cigarette after a long day pounding the pavement.

“I didn’t do it every night,” Goodge said.

“And also, the calories I’m consuming and stuff like the alcohol and the carbs will just get going me and get out the other end. 

“[American ultra runner] Robbie [Ballinger] had a really interesting rule that we kind of took on which is always one beer, sometimes two, never three. 

“But yeah, if there is an element of just like getting into some kind of normality after finish. And like sitting down and having dinner with the crew is a big one for me … it brings the level down and doesn’t make it such a absolutely horrendous experience.”

But maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe it’s just the extra attention.

“It’s almost, kind of like the fear of the unknown,” Goodge said about why there is criticism directed towards him.

“And I can understand why as like, a traditional runner in the sport, especially one that’s like pretty underfunded.

“It’s traditionally [a sport full of] people that just want to go and do some crazy stuff and there’s never been brands that have been that interested in it. 

“And then obviously someone like me comes along and I’m fortunate enough to have been in this social media world, not through any like real trying. I just would share what I was doing online, and fortunately, it’s obviously picked up and I get a lot of messages from people saying that they’ve seen what I’ve done and it’s helped them go through something.

“Everything I’m doing is trying to be positive. 

“But yeah, I can understand why they see it as unfair, so I’m aware of that. 

“And just the way I do stuff, I’m quite brash, I’ll say it as it is, I show the other sides of my life.

“And yeah, it might rub people up the wrong way, and that’s fine. It’s a small percentage of people.”

It should be stressed that those doubting Goodge are in the minority.

Goodge credits ultra-runner Robbie Ballinger as being a key source of advice in his career, such as helping him switch styles of trainers so his feet don’t get battered in the exact same position mile after mile.

He also made special mention of Aussie runners Chris Turnbull and Nedd Brockmann on his website.

“The beautiful thing about ultra in general is we help our fellow competitors,” Goodge wrote.

Brockmann, who did his own trans-Australia run in 46 days was one of the first to congratulate Goodge upon him finishing his run.

“Incredible my man,” he wrote.

“You deserve it all mate. What a feat of human endurance, thanks for the daily inspiration and reminding us all we can always do more!! King Goodge!”