Oct. 8, 2026
BUSTED: Fitness Influencer Caught Cheating At Berlin Marathon, Boasted “Personal Best”
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RSS Feed A popular fitness influencer with over half a million followers, posted a triumphant photo with her medal and finishing time at the Berlin Marathon. 30-year-old Sun Yuanyuan, who goes by the name Abeeeer, even boasted that she finished under 5 hours: her personal best. The issue, someone took a picture of her being ridden on the back of a bike around mile 23 and her run times show a 6 minute faster paste between miles 22 and 25. Once the picture and her split times were revealed, the Berlin Marathon disqualified her, her running shoe sponsor, Brooks dropped her, and she had to publicly apologize for deceiving her followers and fellow racers.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It's happened to us all, right? And we hate it every time. You bust your butt for something, and then somebody right next to you cuts corners, but then end up getting the same credit that you are getting. Maybe somebody didn't study for that test, and then they wanted to cheat off you. Don't you just hate that? Well, we, as marathon runners, are irked, to the point of our heads about to explode over what a young influencer has done at the Boston, no, no, no, not Boston, the Berlin Marathon. Let me get that right. Welcome, everybody. That's Robes, I'm TJ, and yes, we are marathoners. And these stories come up every once in a while, but this was a pretty blatant example. Robes, does she really think she's gonna get away with this?
00:00:51
Speaker 2: I do think she thought that she was going to get away with it, and if someone hadn't taken a very specific photo... And sent it to a very specific social media account, she might have gotten away with it.
00:01:05
Speaker 1: You don't think she would have come around and conscience would have gotten to her and she would have just come out and done the right thing? No.
00:01:13
Speaker 2: I do not think that because she posted... a picture as a social media influencer of her with her Berlin Marathon finisher medal and her time, which she claimed was a personal best.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: Okay, this influencer has a half million followers, so this is not, she's not, and she has sponsors.
00:01:35
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:01:35
Speaker 1: So she is a legit influencer. And apparently she is a runner.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: She's a fitness influencer.
00:01:40
Speaker 1: Specifically. And when you see her, Rose, I saw her. I would have thought she was a model before I thought she was a marathon runner.
00:01:45
Speaker 2: She looks like a model, 100%. And maybe she does that as well. But she's a model who runs. And she was posing as a model who finishes marathons.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: Yes. And she finished it. She crossed the finish line. But we only found out very recently that she got a ride from part of the way, and there's photographic evidence. If you haven't seen this picture, it's hilarious. We have pictures of her in the marathon robes running. The same woman in the same outfit is riding on the back of a bicycle.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Yes. And for some very specific miles. And anyone who's run a marathon knows after mile 20, mile 20 is where you hit the wall. And it's been explained to me that the reason why this is a universal experience is that your body actually runs out of glycogen in your muscles. So yes, I know you see a lot of runners, maybe you've never understood it, taking those gel packs and sucking them down and throwing them down or gummies or bananas or oranges, whatever it is, is to keep getting that sugar essentially in your body quickly to keep your fuel going because after mile 20, you are literally, your body has to go into your muscles to pull out energy to get you across the finish line. It's painful, it's debilitating, it can cause cramps. For me, you can start vomiting, which is what I tend to do around mile 22, because your body just starts to say, what the heck are you doing to me? It's universal.
00:03:23
Speaker 1: When you say that out loud, we sound like lunatics. But folks, that is what marathon runners do. It's ugly, it's painful, it is not pretty. And mile 20 to 26, that is where you separate the men from the boys. It's true.
00:03:40
Speaker 2: Those last six miles are the hardest six miles you'll ever run.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: So to your point, Robes, this young lady, mile 22 to 25, essentially, she, according to the electronic tracker, she ran mile 22 to 25 six minutes faster than she ran the previous segment. Six minutes fast.
00:04:07
Speaker 2: That is virtually impossible.
00:04:09
Speaker 1: It is impossible. You cannot do it. It does not happen.
00:04:13
Speaker 2: I don't know of anyone who's ever been able to pull that off.
00:04:17
Speaker 1: You can't do it.
00:04:17
Speaker 2: When you train for a marathon, the best advice I've ever been given and we try to use is your slowest mile should be your first and your fastest mile should be your last. That's in any race. even in a marathon.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: Sounds crazy.
00:04:29
Speaker 2: It can be aspirational. It hasn't always worked out. I think the first marathon I ran, that was the case. But most of them afterwards have not been the case because I have been pretty miserable crossing the finish line and they've been my slowest miles. But the point is, yes, theoretically, the idea is to slowly build and just slowly get a little bit faster. There's no way that at mile 22, all of a sudden, boing, you just get this burst of energy, and you're sprinting the fastest you've run the entire race.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Not possible. So even had that not shown up on her stats, the picture is there. Even if we didn't have the picture, we would have had the stats. She would have been disqualified without the picture, I firmly believe. The difficult part here for us, Robes, Her pictures after the race, right before the con, before we knew she had cheated, Robes, the picture, and she has apologized, so I'm not just calling her a cheater. She's apologized and said she did this, but Robes, seeing her with the medal.
00:05:35
Speaker 2: Looking gorgeous.
00:05:36
Speaker 1: The personal best, the whole thing.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: So excited. The fact that she was like touting her PR. Yes. That was, I think, the worst part about it because, look, I don't know how. I personally don't know how you feel okay with yourself cheating, first of all, on something like that where, look, 1% of the world has run a marathon.
00:05:56
Speaker 1: That's the stat.
00:05:58
Speaker 2: It's there's a reason why it's really hard and it requires months and months and months of training and then race day. It requires incredible mental strength because every single thing in your brain is telling you to stop, to stop, to stop. So when you push through and you get on the other side of it. It is a true victory, both physically, mentally, emotionally, and yes, socially, because we are big believers. I think most runners who cross the finish line of a marathon, we will wear our medals the whole day and maybe even the full next day. And you walk around. I get chills thinking about it. It's the only time I feel like in your life where you have strangers and people just celebrating you and congratulating you. And you don't feel shy about accepting that praise because you earned it. So to have cheated your way to a medal, to be receiving praise and honors and to get likes and to be flaunting it on social media and talking about how great you did, that takes to me an exceptionally deceptive person where you're actually trying to get praise for something you didn't do.
00:07:15
Speaker 1: I don't know if folks normally with our cameras can see these, but we keep it right here next to. It's on our shelf. They're all displayed. Every single one of those, we had to earn every single mile of those to see someone. And you just said five months.
00:07:31
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:07:32
Speaker 1: You start training so early on and you change your life to train for a marathon because you have to set aside time certain days a week. And on the weekends, you have your long runs. And sometimes those long runs get over to 10, 12, 15, 18. It's your life.
00:07:48
Speaker 2: Then you have to fuel and refuel, and you have to make sure what you're eating, when you're eating, how you're eating, what your sleep, everything revolves around marathon training all leading up to marathon day.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: So we say all that to say, to see somebody taking a shortcut and then taking credit for the thing we just trained five months for puked for, went to doctors for, got shots for, that is difficult to take.
00:08:20
Speaker 2: You're in the middle of training as we record this for the New York City Marathon.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:08:25
Speaker 2: And you are nursing an injury. You are going in and getting painful injections in your foot.
00:08:31
Speaker 1: I literally have my foot wrapped as we speak.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: In a heating pad. Yes. All to run the marathon. Yes.
00:08:40
Speaker 1: This is what we do.
00:08:41
Speaker 2: And it's funny, as I'm cheering you on and excited and doing my normal runs because I am opting out this year and I'm gonna be cheering you on from the sidelines, I already feel FOMO. It's funny, it's like you know what it takes and I just decided to take a break, but because it is so intense, I just said, I gotta take a beat, I gotta take a moment, I gotta take a pause, and I'll get back into it. Because that's the toll it takes on your body to be in marathon shape. A half marathon, half marathon shape.
00:09:11
Speaker 1: It's our jam.
00:09:11
Speaker 2: That's my jam. Marathons are a whole other beast. They're not just twice as hard. They're a hundred times harder.
00:09:17
Speaker 1: They are, babe. People are just doing the double the amount.
00:09:20
Speaker 2: No.
00:09:21
Speaker 1: It's not. When you hit mile 20, your life changes and you find out a lot about yourself. Yes.
00:09:26
Speaker 2: I could actually, if they had a 20 mile race, I actually, you still have to train for that. But I would be so much more on board for that. They have 15 milers, I believe. there's something about that 26.2 miles. And even the last 0.2, it's as if it's another 10 miles.
00:09:42
Speaker 1: You know, going through Central Park, the way they set it up, it seems like it's like, where is it in here?
00:09:48
Speaker 2: Fifth Avenue, for anyone who is familiar with New York, the last leg of the New York City Marathon, it looks like it's flat. Every time I've walked on Fifth Avenue near Central Park or driven on it, I never realized it was a, incline the whole way. It's not a steep one, but you feel it.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: That's a tough stretch.
00:10:07
Speaker 2: You feel it, those last few miles.
00:10:09
Speaker 1: So if y'all can't tell, this is hard. To hear that this woman took a bike ride, it's a little funny to most people. I would say it's head-scratching to others. Some just shake your head. What a shame. But this will piss some people off who are big-time runners, who are into the integrity of running, who do it competitively, who socially it means something to them. Running is a culture, and folks do take it seriously, and there is integrity in it, even when it comes to shoes and what equipment you're supposed to. Runners help each other out in giving counsel to each other. Some of the best Some of the best social activity we've probably ever had is in that VIP tent before the New York City Marathon with the New York Roadrunners. And we just collect in there. It's a small group of us, but it doesn't matter who you are, if a movie star over here, if it's this, whatever we're from, we're all equals in the same spot about the, there's something about that.
00:11:11
Speaker 2: The marathon, running a marathon, people always ask why, because we seem insane, and I understand. My own daughters have been like, mom, why? And after you've done one, why isn't that enough? You just want to keep doing more. But there is something so beautiful about looking around you, people from around the world, and from all shapes and sizes, all ages, being All races, ethnicities, everyone comes together collectively and suffers together. And there's something about that collective suffering with a real goal at the end. When you can get past the other side of pain and recognize that you're stronger than you think mentally and physically and that you can do really hard things. I got into it after my cancer journey because I felt so, I just felt betrayed by my body. I felt weak. I felt vulnerable. And all of a sudden starting to recognize that I actually could build back something and I could do something I thought was impossible. And I really thought it was impossible. That gave me a whole new lease on life. And that is why I run marathons.
00:12:18
Speaker 1: And Rose, after you were the one that told me, you said it's people that run their first marathon, you're going to be one of two people. You're either going to say, I can't wait to do this again, or I ain't ever doing this again.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:12:29
Speaker 1: And I happen to be the former.
00:12:31
Speaker 2: We're repeat marathoners now.
00:12:32
Speaker 1: Love it.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: You've got your medal on. Wait, can I have my Berlin Marathon? Because actually, we're talking about the Berlin Marathon. I ran it in 2021. 2022. I ran it in 2022. I was supposed to run it in 2021. It got canceled because of COVID. Yeah. And so I ended up running it in 2022. It was 77 degrees when I crossed the finish line. And you get greeted with a beer. That was my favorite part of the Berlin Marathon. A lot of times they have water stations and Gatorade stations at the end in Berlin. As soon as you pass the finish line, they have a beer station. And I'm telling you, it was the best beer I've ever had in my life.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: That reads for Berlin, I guess. So yes, let's go to Berlin again. It is known as the fastest of the majors because it's flat.
00:13:18
Speaker 2: It's flat.
00:13:18
Speaker 1: But it's usually hot.
00:13:20
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's not usually hot, but it's been hot the last couple of years. You're right. There have been several in a row that have been exceptionally hot. So when we went to Berlin, I believe for a few days leading up to it to acclimate with all of the travel. And it was like in the 50s and misty every day. We're like, that's perfect running weather. And then the day of the marathon, it's a brilliant blue sky. It starts out at like 65, which is way hotter than normal, and ended at 77. And that was, I was on the struggle bus. I remember crossing at the halfway point, 13.1, and feeling like I could just run forever. I played Bon Jovi twice. Whoa, we're halfway there.
00:14:02
Speaker 1: Did you really play that?
00:14:03
Speaker 2: I did. And we're singing it. My best friend Nikki and I were. And we just thought we were so awesome. And then if you had seen me in Mile 22, you basically go, you see the gate, the Bredenburg Gate, and you know you're almost there. I kept going, where is that damn gate? Where is that damn gate? Yeah. Things can turn quickly. And that is what apparently happened to this band. young influencer so i.
00:14:24
Speaker 1: Didn't check did you check the weather on that day so september 27th is when the marathon was and i only mentioned weather because she did mention not feeling well that can mean several things you're running a marathon but wondered if weather played a part so this was sunday september 27th 56 000 runners out there and as a reminder A marathon is 26.2 miles. Now, they do it differently. They do kilometers in some places. It's 42.2 kilometers. Did you get weather reports?
00:14:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was 73 degrees as a high. That is warm. Again, Berlin has just had several in a row that have been much higher than typical. Global warming isn't a thing, apparently.
00:15:04
Speaker 1: So now I think it's a hot marathon because it's all I hear every year since you ran it.
00:15:07
Speaker 2: You're right.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: It's hot as hell.
00:15:08
Speaker 2: In the last several years have all been exceptionally hot. Hot. Hot for a runner is anything over 65 degrees. I know that's for typical runners. This one here likes his marathons hot. The moment I, and humidity for me. Oh my, as soon as there's humidity, my best half marathon I've ever run, it was 19 degrees when we crossed the finish line.
00:15:31
Speaker 1: Almost quit running after that one.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: It was amazing. It was my fastest, fastest marathon.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: It was my angriest.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: I know. You almost said I'll never run another race.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: I wanted to quit running after that one. It was horrible. And she had the best day of her life. So what does that tell you? 56,000 runners out there in Berlin. On Sunday the 27th. Okay. So this young lady, and again, Ro, she has a big following. Her name online, how do you pronounce what she's known by?
00:15:56
Speaker 2: A beer?
00:15:56
Speaker 1: A beer is her name, is what she goes by online. But her real name, again, is.
00:16:01
Speaker 2: I looked this up. So just apologies for me not pronouncing this correctly with my American accent. But I looked up a Mandarin site to try to figure out how to say her name. Swoon Yuen Yuen.
00:16:11
Speaker 1: All right.
00:16:12
Speaker 2: Is what I believe is the best way I'm going to be able to.
00:16:15
Speaker 1: Say her name.
00:16:15
Speaker 2: Is it funny?
00:16:15
Speaker 1: How do you spell it?
00:16:17
Speaker 2: S-U-N, so they say swoon, and then U-N-U-N is Y-U-A-N, Y-U-A-N.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the young lady we're talking about. 30 years old, influencer, and a stunner, if you see her online. She's gorgeous. Looks like a model. Okay, so she finishes this race. Her time, Ro, was 4.53.46. Fine. A sub-five. A lot of people have that as a goal. So.
00:16:40
Speaker 1: She said it was a personal best. So when you get done at the end of the race, they immediately put that medal on you and it's time for pictures. And sure enough, she has some glorious pictures up of her. Didn't, I mean, she didn't necessarily look like she just run a marathon. I don't know how we look at the end of our races.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: You usually have salt all over your face.
00:17:01
Speaker 1: A mess is what I'm saying.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: I usually am wiping vomit from my mouth. It's not a good look.
00:17:08
Speaker 1: And that's also not a joke. I'm not kidding. So she finishes, got a medal, gone. The pictures are wild once you realize afterwards what she had done. And sure enough, Robes, afterwards a picture emerged from a group that I didn't know existed.
00:17:25
Speaker 2: I love this group. I love that they exist. And the name is the Official Marathon Time Integrity Unit. That is their social media page. And they are there to literally... make sure that people are following the rules and that's an important part of it. So yes, they're there, they check times, they check splits, they check to see if there's a sudden burst of, you know, an anomaly that can't be explained that usually indicates cheating of some kind. And so yes, they found out that not only had she knocked off six minutes from her previous split and they posted her splits on their page, But then, yes, they posted this picture that someone had taken of her. Yeah. And because she was a fitness influencer and she was posting all about the marathon, they see her being, she is sitting on the back of a bike with someone else pedaling. How did she not think she was going to get caught?
00:18:22
Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Let me try. She has a full apology. We're going to read every word of it. Is it possible, Robe, she had a bad moment and maybe she didn't plan on cheating?
00:18:43
Speaker 2: Well, that's the question. Okay. Did she have someone waiting for her with that bicycle in case or was someone, did someone kind of monitor and just was there waiting just in case she needed a boost? I don't know. I just, for me, my experience, and again, it was the year after COVID. There weren't a lot of people out there. There were some, nothing compared to New York City. But you didn't have the same, I didn't experience the same hospitality where you had people presenting. When you go to the New York Marathon, even the Chicago Marathon, they've got bananas and they've got orange slices and they have Twizzlers and people have water and they're there waiting for you. Yes, there are the official water stations, but you have a lot of people anticipating your needs along the way. I didn't have that in Germany, so it's hard for me to imagine there was just a kind German person waiting for her with a bike in case someone needed a lift.
00:19:35
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's, okay, two theories of how she didn't cheat. One, the idea of maybe having somebody waiting for her. Okay, she didn't do that. What if, though, she did get in trouble, right? She wasn't feeling well and hopped on and said to somebody, can you give me a ride?
00:19:52
Speaker 2: Then you leave the race and you say, I'm done.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: But did she hop on? I'm trying to give her space that maybe she wasn't feeling well. You got to get out of here.
00:20:00
Speaker 2: She probably wasn't feeling well.
00:20:01
Speaker 1: And somebody put her on the bike and get out of here. You know what? I'm feeling better. Drop me off right here.
00:20:06
Speaker 2: And then... But then you'd have to say, it doesn't count. I didn't run the whole way.
00:20:10
Speaker 1: I'm trying to give her a space.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: We don't even walk. I feel like if I'm going to say I ran a marathon, I ran a marathon. Even if I'm slowly, barely running, I'm running.
00:20:20
Speaker 1: We had this fight on the course at about mile 21 in Chicago, 2024, did we not? Because I ended up ultimately in an ambulance with an injury. But in that time, you were trying to talk me into, we could just walk it. And I think there was an event per se. Hey, just walk it. You could still get your medal at the end.
00:20:39
Speaker 2: I was hoping that maybe if you walked a little bit of the way, you'd be able to loosen up whatever was causing a problem. We could maybe slowly limp over the finish line.
00:20:49
Speaker 1: Don't count. But that still counts. Not for me.
00:20:51
Speaker 2: But I hear what you're saying.
00:20:53
Speaker 1: You would never walk a mile in a marathon and then cross the finish line and hold up a medal.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: But a lot of people do. And it still counts. It's still official. Not for us.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: But a lot of people do.
00:21:05
Speaker 2: We do see. I'm always shocked at how many people are walking at the end. I'm thinking to myself, wow, did you train? Because obviously we both had to go over to the side for different reasons. But I go over to the side and I collect myself. And I guess you could keep walking, but I don't want to do that. So if I have to puke, if I have to catch my breath, whatever it is, work out a cramp, then you go back and you run again. That's just us, though.
00:21:32
Speaker 1: Okay, fine. But I think that's most... Most people don't enter a marathon to walk it.
00:21:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it would take a really long time.
00:21:39
Speaker 1: And most people wouldn't enter a marathon to think they're going to get a ride and still... I was trying to give her space for something.
00:21:44
Speaker 2: The point being is if she felt that bad, she should have either said, I can't do this anymore, like what happened to you in Chicago... Or you take a beat, you get some water in you, and even if you have to go to a medic station, they've got tents there, they can even pump some IV fluids in you, and then you get back up and you keep running. And yeah, your time might be six hours, or it might be 5.30, you might not get your personal best, but at least you did it honestly. So I get it that she might have been feeling terrible. We all feel terrible. And sometimes, yes, I've had to stop. But then if you get back in the race, you have to keep running.
00:22:20
Speaker 1: You don't get on a bike. But we are on the same page. We don't think she went to Berlin planning to cheat. Is that fair?
00:22:27
Speaker 2: I don't think she did.
00:22:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. She just got in trouble and like, oh, my God, I got to finish this. I'm an influencer.
00:22:32
Speaker 2: Right?
00:22:33
Speaker 1: Isn't that probably it?
00:22:34
Speaker 2: She probably felt the pressure of succeeding and not just crossing the finish line, but crossing the finish line with a personal best. And maybe because here's the deal. When you're in Berlin, you get this promise of, You'll get your fastest time yet. Guess what? I didn't because of the heat. I ended up, my fastest has been, my number one and number two fastest have been in New York. And I thought I was going to get a personal best in Berlin. I didn't because of the heat. I thought I was going to get a personal best in Chicago when I finished. I didn't because I just didn't. Sometimes that's the way it works.
00:23:08
Speaker 1: You know what? Now that we're talking this out, she probably felt a lot of pressure, didn't she?
00:23:11
Speaker 2: Because everyone thinks if they go to Berlin... They're going to run the fastest marathon of their life.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: But I'm saying pressure to the public that she's serving, the followers. And she has a shoe company. Yes, a company, an athletic company sponsoring her. She needs a good performance. This needs to be a celebration and not a failure.
00:23:28
Speaker 2: Taking shortcuts never pays off.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: She probably felt that.
00:23:32
Speaker 2: Whether it was a crime of opportunity or if it was a planned, just in case I might need this, can you be here at this mile marker? Whatever it is, it doesn't matter whether it was premeditated or a moment of a lapse of judgment. Either way, she still cheated.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: You know, babe, that, you know, and I know you know it, but man, it gets in your head when you're on mile 21 and you got an injury or some problem. Like, wow, I've been training for five months and I'm just going to throw it all the way right now. That's hard. That's probably very hard. That's hard. So yeah, she ultimately was, it didn't take them too long to figure it out. She was disqualified and she did lose a sponsor. We have the sponsor statement, but we should share what this young lady said. She had to issue an apology along when she put on Instagram, I do believe, but here she is swooned Yuan Yuan.
00:24:23
Speaker 2: Yuan Yuan. Sun Yuan Yuan says, I solemnly apologize to everyone regarding my behavior of riding a bicycle in the Berlin Marathon. It is indeed a violation of the rules of the competition.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: My favorite line.
00:24:39
Speaker 2: You don't say.
00:24:39
Speaker 1: That's good.
00:24:40
Speaker 2: I will not make any excuses for the above behavior. And then she goes on to do it. Even if there is physical discomfort on the track, it should never be a reason for my violation. My behavior is disrespectful to the fairness of the competition and the spirit. of the marathon. I deliberately concealed this fact in the external sharing. It's a very dishonest behavior. It also violates the sportsmanship of marathon fair competition and I feel deeply guilty about it. Here I solemnly apologize to everyone and reflect deeply. If you are wrong, you must accept criticism and supervision. Finally, I would like to say to everyone again, I'm sorry.
00:25:26
Speaker 1: I mean, best you can do, right?
00:25:27
Speaker 2: That is the best you can do. And she'll just have to make sure that this is a very hard lesson that she learned, that you cannot take shortcuts. You cannot cheat. It's far better to get the whatever time, the 530. Oh, the time when I could not stop throwing. We were about to get a personal best in New York City. And I just could not stop throwing up. And My goal, my dream had always been to get a sub-4 marathon, and we were on pace to do it. My dad, I could hear him in my ear because we have our AirPods in and people send you messages, and he was following me, and he was like, way to go, Ames, you're about to... I was like.
00:26:04
Speaker 1: We were killing it, man. We were killing it.
00:26:07
Speaker 2: I think we ended up with that one at a 4.16, 4.15.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: And we stopped a lot.
00:26:13
Speaker 2: We did, because I couldn't stop throwing. So yeah, 15 minutes of hell, basically, for the last few miles. It was so demoralizing. We were doing so well.
00:26:23
Speaker 1: With your dad's messages, they were... Like, you guys okay?
00:26:26
Speaker 2: Are you okay?
00:26:26
Speaker 1: We noticed you stopped.
00:26:28
Speaker 2: Why have you stopped moving? Yes, I didn't get on a bike. And we didn't walk. We ran.
00:26:37
Speaker 1: I am trying to leave space for this young lady. And you said the lesson to be learned here is just that thing, babe, the pressure of, I guess, disappointing followers, right? When you put yourself out there. Even I was nervous to say publicly that I was running a marathon because then I thought that some, Pressure would be on me to maybe do something. I have a pretty difficult injury, and I didn't want to feel that pressure to maybe push myself or go too far. But in this case, babe, we were talking about it. This is not the first time something like this has happened. Some pretty wild cases that are worse than this one we're going to share in a second. But, Robes, you talked about why was the shame, the personal shame, not the thing that kept you from doing it? It's only the public shame thatâ caused you to have a problem.
00:27:25
Speaker 2: She'll have to do some, some soul searching on that because that's something for me. I don't know how you live with that. If you hadn't been publicly outed, you still now have private shame. Are you ignoring it? Do you tell yourself you didn't do it? Do you tell yourself you had to do it? I don't know what we all say to ourselves to justify bad behavior. We've all done a much smaller version of that. But this is such a public spectacle. You would feel like such a fraud. Eventually that would catch up with you.
00:27:54
Speaker 1: You think?
00:27:55
Speaker 2: I just think it does something to you in your soul deep down. If you are completely putting out a very different image or a very different outcome than what you know to be true.
00:28:06
Speaker 1: How could she would have gone the rest of her life? My personal best. I got it. The Berlin Marathon. I think she would have told that.
00:28:14
Speaker 2: Every time she said it, her chest would have gotten tighter. Her stomach would have maybe churned a little bit, she would have felt it. Maybe a little less each time she told the lie.
00:28:24
Speaker 1: You saw those pictures.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was triumphant.
00:28:27
Speaker 1: Yes!
00:28:28
Speaker 2: She was triumphant in her social media posts. That feels so icky.
00:28:32
Speaker 1: Those feel icky. Well, Brooks, I mean, again, she's pretty serious. Brooks is a very big-time athletic company. She's wearing their shoes, their very light marathon shoes, so they outfit her. They put out a statement. She doesn't speak for them anymore.
00:28:57
Speaker 2: No, Brooks put out this statement. Upon verifying the facts, Brooks China immediately terminated its relationship with the influencer and publicly reaffirmed the brand's commitment to integrity, fairness, and the spirit of running.
00:29:12
Speaker 1: Didn't even say her name.
00:29:14
Speaker 2: The influencer. That was actually a way to just, oh, I thought about that too. Like, ooh, didn't even say her name.
00:29:21
Speaker 1: Oh, she's gonna be fine. I just, I hate this. This is embarrassing. How could she not Bro, she's in public. There are 50,000 people out here. She has her name tag on. The race is going on and we see a rider, a runner, riding a bike. She didn't think anybody was.
00:29:42
Speaker 2: She wasn't even pedaling.
00:29:44
Speaker 1: No, she was hitching.
00:29:44
Speaker 2: She was the passenger. That's like at least there would have been some physical exertion maybe.
00:29:50
Speaker 1: Stay loose.
00:29:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was just taking a beat. Yeah, sit down, by the way. We've seen people have to do that. Take a beat on the curb.
00:29:57
Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
00:29:58
Speaker 2: Sit down. Collect your breath. Nobody wants anyone. Marathons have killed people. Half marathons have killed people.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: Yes, they have.
00:30:05
Speaker 2: Take your time. Catch your breath. Take a walk for a sec. Get yourself hydrated at the water station. But don't ride a bike. Sorry.
00:30:17
Speaker 1: She is not, Robes, obviously the only one. Some of the other stories of people who have cheated in marathons, are hilarious, including one here in New York where the lady took the subway for part of it. That's incredible.
00:30:32
Speaker 2: It's hard to believe.
00:30:33
Speaker 1: It's so New York, though. There's something about her taking the subway. This was in 1979, I think it was. Rosie Ruiz, very famous because of what she did in marathons, but she was trying to get a decent enough time here in New York so that she could qualify for Boston. She had some weird motivations like her boss would, Pay her way, she was just trying to get a free trip She wasn't a big time marathoner Came out of nowhere Robes, she wins The damn marathon Wins the 1980 Boston Marathon Eight days later She was disqualified You know what was discovered Robes She didn't run a little bit Hop out, hop back on Robes, she hopped on In the last mile She only ran the last mile of the Boston Marathon and declared herself the winner.
00:31:30
Speaker 2: That's unbelievable.
00:31:32
Speaker 1: How does she think she's going to get away with that?
00:31:34
Speaker 2: She wasn't in any pictures during the entire race.
00:31:37
Speaker 1: That's how she was caught. Everybody was like, wow, what a feat she's done. Where is she?
00:31:42
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
00:31:44
Speaker 1: For 25.2 miles, she's nowhere to be found.
00:31:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. And nowadays that would never happen because they have helicopters, they have cameras on the front runners the entire time you're watching it. We can see all of the elite runners ahead of it. They're all being tracked and monitored. Obviously, this was before a lot of that technology. That type of deceit could never take place now, but it's still amazing they caught her regardless.
00:32:09
Speaker 1: The only amazing part of that is that what was set off an immediate red flag is that her finishing time in Boston was 25 minutes better than her finishing time in New York.
00:32:20
Speaker 2: You don't get that big of a.
00:32:22
Speaker 1: Half hour. No. She knocked a half hour off a marathon time.
00:32:25
Speaker 2: When we knock a minute or two off of our finish time, we're like.
00:32:30
Speaker 1: Hell yes! Bottoms up, baby.
00:32:34
Speaker 2: And then there was Robert Madrazo.
00:32:35
Speaker 1: This man is amazing. He's amazing.
00:32:38
Speaker 2: 2007 Berlin Marathon. Same one. Won his age category at 55. His time... 241.12. That's pretty impressive.
00:32:46
Speaker 1: Isn't it?
00:32:47
Speaker 2: That's very impressive.
00:32:48
Speaker 1: Now, do you think even... I don't know the... Like the age categories they have now, is it possible for men that age running that fast of marathons?
00:32:58
Speaker 2: I don't know. Like I said, I'm just hoping for a sub four one day. A sub three would not even be something I would dream of.
00:33:05
Speaker 1: So he's 55 years old at the time. And he is a Mexican politician, Robes. He actually lost in the presidential election. So he was a known guy. So he was disqualified not too long after. Robes, he did have electronic tracking. It showed clearly that he didn't show up in two checkpoints on the race. They go back and look at his time robes. He ran, and you do the math for the people at home.
00:33:35
Speaker 2: Nine miles?
00:33:36
Speaker 1: He ran nine miles in 21 minutes.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: So that would be what, like a two-something minute mile, which is impossible.
00:33:44
Speaker 1: Humanly impossible.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: Humanly impossible.
00:33:46
Speaker 1: It actually is.
00:33:46
Speaker 2: How did he think that he was going to be able... The record for that stretch is 41 minutes. He did it in 21 minutes.
00:33:54
Speaker 1: The fastest anybody has ever run it is in 41 minutes. He did it in 21. At the age of 55. No. Impossible.
00:34:01
Speaker 2: So, yes. He was caught.
00:34:04
Speaker 1: So, this is the funny part about this guy. Folks back in Mexico are like, yeah, that old Robert Robes. He has been in trouble and accused of lying and cheating... during his political career, including being investigated for fraud and stealing millions of dollars. Another one, Robes, he had told police that he was kidnapped, beaten, tortured, but then escaped his captors some seven hours later. Robes, police never found any evidence of the such, and they believe he made that up for sympathy during the election time.
00:34:35
Speaker 2: So he's a pathological liar.
00:34:37
Speaker 1: Robes, so.
00:34:39
Speaker 1: The marathon was small potatoes for him almost. My goodness. As far as deceit.
00:34:43
Speaker 2: Well, at least he's consistent. All right. And then Dr. Frank Meza, he started running marathons in his 60s. In 2019, he ran the LA Marathon. He ran the fastest marathon ever for a man his age, again, 70. And his time was 2.53.10. Again, anyone who can do a sub three... Beyond impressive.
00:35:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, no matter what age.
00:35:05
Speaker 2: Beyond impressive. I mean, some of the most fit people I know, they'll get like a 330, and I'm like, holy moly.
00:35:12
Speaker 1: It's bizarre.
00:35:13
Speaker 2: So sub threes are.
00:35:15
Speaker 1: And for a 70-year-old... Yeah, so he was disqualified not long after, and yes... Evidence that he had left the course at one point and reentered the course, cut some time off. He denied these allegations. Robes, he had a history, actually, of being... He had been banned from other races. He had a history of this and had been tracked. I remember I told you we covered this story at GMA. This guy, it was days after his disqualification from LA, died by suicide.
00:35:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, finally, look, at the end of the day, I do believe when you have lived that much of your life in full deceit and... getting, I think the worst part is getting praise for something you didn't actually accomplish. That'll catch up with you eventually. Maybe it's a good thing that this 30 year old fitness influencer got caught because maybe if she didn't, she would have kept doing and trying to get away with accomplishments that she didn't earn. And I do think eventually it does eat you up inside.
00:36:13
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it. So now was this her first time doing something like this?
00:36:17
Speaker 2: I'm sure they'll be looking into it. Because if it's her personal best, that means she has run other marathons before. The question is, did she follow the rules in those other marathons? I'm absolutely certain they're looking at that.
00:36:29
Speaker 1: Can they ban her from the others? They can make a choice whether or not to let her.
00:36:32
Speaker 2: They certainly could if they feel like this is not just the only time. And I think it's pretty easy these days to figure out if they look into it, they will be able to determine if there was fraud or not.
00:36:43
Speaker 1: Ah, look. We love it. We are passionate about it. It has meant a whole lot to us and gotten us through some of the most difficult times of our lives. And we just can't stop. We got the running bug. And so to see a story like this, yes, you grin a little bit and look, not necessarily angry at this young woman, but it is one of those things and a reminder. No, no, no, no. We, we earn this, not just on race day. Yes. I mean, look, I'm, What is the calendar over there? How many weeks is that?
00:37:14
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a five-month. It's a 20-week training program.
00:37:20
Speaker 1: We have it up on the wall here as we're talking.
00:37:23
Speaker 2: We absolutely do. And it's one of those things my daughter made fun of me because at one point I actually had aâ we don't have the wall space for it here, butâ I had one for you, too. We had a display, hanging display for all of our medals. And we had it by the bed. And Ava's like, you're hilarious. You're like a little kid and her trophies. And I was like, you run a marathon and tell me you won't display every single one of those medals. Be careful what you say out loud because she started to run now. And I am waiting for her. She's thinking about a half marathon. She'll have that medal hanging on her wall when she finally crosses the finish line.
00:37:58
Speaker 1: A half marathon. All of my marathons tattooed on my arm. That's how serious it is, folks. So stop riding bikes in marathons, please. Oh, we always appreciate you. This was a lighter one. We needed a break. There's been some heavy stuff lately. This only involves some cheating.
00:38:17
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:38:17
Speaker 1: But no murder.
00:38:18
Speaker 2: No murder. Thank goodness. Let's keep it that way.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It's happened to us all, right? And we hate it every time. You bust your butt for something, and then somebody right next to you cuts corners, but then end up getting the same credit that you are getting. Maybe somebody didn't study for that test, and then they wanted to cheat off you. Don't you just hate that? Well, we, as marathon runners, are irked, to the point of our heads about to explode over what a young influencer has done at the Boston, no, no, no, not Boston, the Berlin Marathon. Let me get that right. Welcome, everybody. That's Robes, I'm TJ, and yes, we are marathoners. And these stories come up every once in a while, but this was a pretty blatant example. Robes, does she really think she's gonna get away with this?
00:00:51
Speaker 2: I do think she thought that she was going to get away with it, and if someone hadn't taken a very specific photo... And sent it to a very specific social media account, she might have gotten away with it.
00:01:05
Speaker 1: You don't think she would have come around and conscience would have gotten to her and she would have just come out and done the right thing? No.
00:01:13
Speaker 2: I do not think that because she posted... a picture as a social media influencer of her with her Berlin Marathon finisher medal and her time, which she claimed was a personal best.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: Okay, this influencer has a half million followers, so this is not, she's not, and she has sponsors.
00:01:35
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:01:35
Speaker 1: So she is a legit influencer. And apparently she is a runner.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: She's a fitness influencer.
00:01:40
Speaker 1: Specifically. And when you see her, Rose, I saw her. I would have thought she was a model before I thought she was a marathon runner.
00:01:45
Speaker 2: She looks like a model, 100%. And maybe she does that as well. But she's a model who runs. And she was posing as a model who finishes marathons.
00:01:56
Speaker 1: Yes. And she finished it. She crossed the finish line. But we only found out very recently that she got a ride from part of the way, and there's photographic evidence. If you haven't seen this picture, it's hilarious. We have pictures of her in the marathon robes running. The same woman in the same outfit is riding on the back of a bicycle.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Yes. And for some very specific miles. And anyone who's run a marathon knows after mile 20, mile 20 is where you hit the wall. And it's been explained to me that the reason why this is a universal experience is that your body actually runs out of glycogen in your muscles. So yes, I know you see a lot of runners, maybe you've never understood it, taking those gel packs and sucking them down and throwing them down or gummies or bananas or oranges, whatever it is, is to keep getting that sugar essentially in your body quickly to keep your fuel going because after mile 20, you are literally, your body has to go into your muscles to pull out energy to get you across the finish line. It's painful, it's debilitating, it can cause cramps. For me, you can start vomiting, which is what I tend to do around mile 22, because your body just starts to say, what the heck are you doing to me? It's universal.
00:03:23
Speaker 1: When you say that out loud, we sound like lunatics. But folks, that is what marathon runners do. It's ugly, it's painful, it is not pretty. And mile 20 to 26, that is where you separate the men from the boys. It's true.
00:03:40
Speaker 2: Those last six miles are the hardest six miles you'll ever run.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: So to your point, Robes, this young lady, mile 22 to 25, essentially, she, according to the electronic tracker, she ran mile 22 to 25 six minutes faster than she ran the previous segment. Six minutes fast.
00:04:07
Speaker 2: That is virtually impossible.
00:04:09
Speaker 1: It is impossible. You cannot do it. It does not happen.
00:04:13
Speaker 2: I don't know of anyone who's ever been able to pull that off.
00:04:17
Speaker 1: You can't do it.
00:04:17
Speaker 2: When you train for a marathon, the best advice I've ever been given and we try to use is your slowest mile should be your first and your fastest mile should be your last. That's in any race. even in a marathon.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: Sounds crazy.
00:04:29
Speaker 2: It can be aspirational. It hasn't always worked out. I think the first marathon I ran, that was the case. But most of them afterwards have not been the case because I have been pretty miserable crossing the finish line and they've been my slowest miles. But the point is, yes, theoretically, the idea is to slowly build and just slowly get a little bit faster. There's no way that at mile 22, all of a sudden, boing, you just get this burst of energy, and you're sprinting the fastest you've run the entire race.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Not possible. So even had that not shown up on her stats, the picture is there. Even if we didn't have the picture, we would have had the stats. She would have been disqualified without the picture, I firmly believe. The difficult part here for us, Robes, Her pictures after the race, right before the con, before we knew she had cheated, Robes, the picture, and she has apologized, so I'm not just calling her a cheater. She's apologized and said she did this, but Robes, seeing her with the medal.
00:05:35
Speaker 2: Looking gorgeous.
00:05:36
Speaker 1: The personal best, the whole thing.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: So excited. The fact that she was like touting her PR. Yes. That was, I think, the worst part about it because, look, I don't know how. I personally don't know how you feel okay with yourself cheating, first of all, on something like that where, look, 1% of the world has run a marathon.
00:05:56
Speaker 1: That's the stat.
00:05:58
Speaker 2: It's there's a reason why it's really hard and it requires months and months and months of training and then race day. It requires incredible mental strength because every single thing in your brain is telling you to stop, to stop, to stop. So when you push through and you get on the other side of it. It is a true victory, both physically, mentally, emotionally, and yes, socially, because we are big believers. I think most runners who cross the finish line of a marathon, we will wear our medals the whole day and maybe even the full next day. And you walk around. I get chills thinking about it. It's the only time I feel like in your life where you have strangers and people just celebrating you and congratulating you. And you don't feel shy about accepting that praise because you earned it. So to have cheated your way to a medal, to be receiving praise and honors and to get likes and to be flaunting it on social media and talking about how great you did, that takes to me an exceptionally deceptive person where you're actually trying to get praise for something you didn't do.
00:07:15
Speaker 1: I don't know if folks normally with our cameras can see these, but we keep it right here next to. It's on our shelf. They're all displayed. Every single one of those, we had to earn every single mile of those to see someone. And you just said five months.
00:07:31
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:07:32
Speaker 1: You start training so early on and you change your life to train for a marathon because you have to set aside time certain days a week. And on the weekends, you have your long runs. And sometimes those long runs get over to 10, 12, 15, 18. It's your life.
00:07:48
Speaker 2: Then you have to fuel and refuel, and you have to make sure what you're eating, when you're eating, how you're eating, what your sleep, everything revolves around marathon training all leading up to marathon day.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: So we say all that to say, to see somebody taking a shortcut and then taking credit for the thing we just trained five months for puked for, went to doctors for, got shots for, that is difficult to take.
00:08:20
Speaker 2: You're in the middle of training as we record this for the New York City Marathon.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:08:25
Speaker 2: And you are nursing an injury. You are going in and getting painful injections in your foot.
00:08:31
Speaker 1: I literally have my foot wrapped as we speak.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: In a heating pad. Yes. All to run the marathon. Yes.
00:08:40
Speaker 1: This is what we do.
00:08:41
Speaker 2: And it's funny, as I'm cheering you on and excited and doing my normal runs because I am opting out this year and I'm gonna be cheering you on from the sidelines, I already feel FOMO. It's funny, it's like you know what it takes and I just decided to take a break, but because it is so intense, I just said, I gotta take a beat, I gotta take a moment, I gotta take a pause, and I'll get back into it. Because that's the toll it takes on your body to be in marathon shape. A half marathon, half marathon shape.
00:09:11
Speaker 1: It's our jam.
00:09:11
Speaker 2: That's my jam. Marathons are a whole other beast. They're not just twice as hard. They're a hundred times harder.
00:09:17
Speaker 1: They are, babe. People are just doing the double the amount.
00:09:20
Speaker 2: No.
00:09:21
Speaker 1: It's not. When you hit mile 20, your life changes and you find out a lot about yourself. Yes.
00:09:26
Speaker 2: I could actually, if they had a 20 mile race, I actually, you still have to train for that. But I would be so much more on board for that. They have 15 milers, I believe. there's something about that 26.2 miles. And even the last 0.2, it's as if it's another 10 miles.
00:09:42
Speaker 1: You know, going through Central Park, the way they set it up, it seems like it's like, where is it in here?
00:09:48
Speaker 2: Fifth Avenue, for anyone who is familiar with New York, the last leg of the New York City Marathon, it looks like it's flat. Every time I've walked on Fifth Avenue near Central Park or driven on it, I never realized it was a, incline the whole way. It's not a steep one, but you feel it.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: That's a tough stretch.
00:10:07
Speaker 2: You feel it, those last few miles.
00:10:09
Speaker 1: So if y'all can't tell, this is hard. To hear that this woman took a bike ride, it's a little funny to most people. I would say it's head-scratching to others. Some just shake your head. What a shame. But this will piss some people off who are big-time runners, who are into the integrity of running, who do it competitively, who socially it means something to them. Running is a culture, and folks do take it seriously, and there is integrity in it, even when it comes to shoes and what equipment you're supposed to. Runners help each other out in giving counsel to each other. Some of the best Some of the best social activity we've probably ever had is in that VIP tent before the New York City Marathon with the New York Roadrunners. And we just collect in there. It's a small group of us, but it doesn't matter who you are, if a movie star over here, if it's this, whatever we're from, we're all equals in the same spot about the, there's something about that.
00:11:11
Speaker 2: The marathon, running a marathon, people always ask why, because we seem insane, and I understand. My own daughters have been like, mom, why? And after you've done one, why isn't that enough? You just want to keep doing more. But there is something so beautiful about looking around you, people from around the world, and from all shapes and sizes, all ages, being All races, ethnicities, everyone comes together collectively and suffers together. And there's something about that collective suffering with a real goal at the end. When you can get past the other side of pain and recognize that you're stronger than you think mentally and physically and that you can do really hard things. I got into it after my cancer journey because I felt so, I just felt betrayed by my body. I felt weak. I felt vulnerable. And all of a sudden starting to recognize that I actually could build back something and I could do something I thought was impossible. And I really thought it was impossible. That gave me a whole new lease on life. And that is why I run marathons.
00:12:18
Speaker 1: And Rose, after you were the one that told me, you said it's people that run their first marathon, you're going to be one of two people. You're either going to say, I can't wait to do this again, or I ain't ever doing this again.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:12:29
Speaker 1: And I happen to be the former.
00:12:31
Speaker 2: We're repeat marathoners now.
00:12:32
Speaker 1: Love it.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: You've got your medal on. Wait, can I have my Berlin Marathon? Because actually, we're talking about the Berlin Marathon. I ran it in 2021. 2022. I ran it in 2022. I was supposed to run it in 2021. It got canceled because of COVID. Yeah. And so I ended up running it in 2022. It was 77 degrees when I crossed the finish line. And you get greeted with a beer. That was my favorite part of the Berlin Marathon. A lot of times they have water stations and Gatorade stations at the end in Berlin. As soon as you pass the finish line, they have a beer station. And I'm telling you, it was the best beer I've ever had in my life.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: That reads for Berlin, I guess. So yes, let's go to Berlin again. It is known as the fastest of the majors because it's flat.
00:13:18
Speaker 2: It's flat.
00:13:18
Speaker 1: But it's usually hot.
00:13:20
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's not usually hot, but it's been hot the last couple of years. You're right. There have been several in a row that have been exceptionally hot. So when we went to Berlin, I believe for a few days leading up to it to acclimate with all of the travel. And it was like in the 50s and misty every day. We're like, that's perfect running weather. And then the day of the marathon, it's a brilliant blue sky. It starts out at like 65, which is way hotter than normal, and ended at 77. And that was, I was on the struggle bus. I remember crossing at the halfway point, 13.1, and feeling like I could just run forever. I played Bon Jovi twice. Whoa, we're halfway there.
00:14:02
Speaker 1: Did you really play that?
00:14:03
Speaker 2: I did. And we're singing it. My best friend Nikki and I were. And we just thought we were so awesome. And then if you had seen me in Mile 22, you basically go, you see the gate, the Bredenburg Gate, and you know you're almost there. I kept going, where is that damn gate? Where is that damn gate? Yeah. Things can turn quickly. And that is what apparently happened to this band. young influencer so i.
00:14:24
Speaker 1: Didn't check did you check the weather on that day so september 27th is when the marathon was and i only mentioned weather because she did mention not feeling well that can mean several things you're running a marathon but wondered if weather played a part so this was sunday september 27th 56 000 runners out there and as a reminder A marathon is 26.2 miles. Now, they do it differently. They do kilometers in some places. It's 42.2 kilometers. Did you get weather reports?
00:14:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was 73 degrees as a high. That is warm. Again, Berlin has just had several in a row that have been much higher than typical. Global warming isn't a thing, apparently.
00:15:04
Speaker 1: So now I think it's a hot marathon because it's all I hear every year since you ran it.
00:15:07
Speaker 2: You're right.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: It's hot as hell.
00:15:08
Speaker 2: In the last several years have all been exceptionally hot. Hot. Hot for a runner is anything over 65 degrees. I know that's for typical runners. This one here likes his marathons hot. The moment I, and humidity for me. Oh my, as soon as there's humidity, my best half marathon I've ever run, it was 19 degrees when we crossed the finish line.
00:15:31
Speaker 1: Almost quit running after that one.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: It was amazing. It was my fastest, fastest marathon.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: It was my angriest.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: I know. You almost said I'll never run another race.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: I wanted to quit running after that one. It was horrible. And she had the best day of her life. So what does that tell you? 56,000 runners out there in Berlin. On Sunday the 27th. Okay. So this young lady, and again, Ro, she has a big following. Her name online, how do you pronounce what she's known by?
00:15:56
Speaker 2: A beer?
00:15:56
Speaker 1: A beer is her name, is what she goes by online. But her real name, again, is.
00:16:01
Speaker 2: I looked this up. So just apologies for me not pronouncing this correctly with my American accent. But I looked up a Mandarin site to try to figure out how to say her name. Swoon Yuen Yuen.
00:16:11
Speaker 1: All right.
00:16:12
Speaker 2: Is what I believe is the best way I'm going to be able to.
00:16:15
Speaker 1: Say her name.
00:16:15
Speaker 2: Is it funny?
00:16:15
Speaker 1: How do you spell it?
00:16:17
Speaker 2: S-U-N, so they say swoon, and then U-N-U-N is Y-U-A-N, Y-U-A-N.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the young lady we're talking about. 30 years old, influencer, and a stunner, if you see her online. She's gorgeous. Looks like a model. Okay, so she finishes this race. Her time, Ro, was 4.53.46. Fine. A sub-five. A lot of people have that as a goal. So.
00:16:40
Speaker 1: She said it was a personal best. So when you get done at the end of the race, they immediately put that medal on you and it's time for pictures. And sure enough, she has some glorious pictures up of her. Didn't, I mean, she didn't necessarily look like she just run a marathon. I don't know how we look at the end of our races.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: You usually have salt all over your face.
00:17:01
Speaker 1: A mess is what I'm saying.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: I usually am wiping vomit from my mouth. It's not a good look.
00:17:08
Speaker 1: And that's also not a joke. I'm not kidding. So she finishes, got a medal, gone. The pictures are wild once you realize afterwards what she had done. And sure enough, Robes, afterwards a picture emerged from a group that I didn't know existed.
00:17:25
Speaker 2: I love this group. I love that they exist. And the name is the Official Marathon Time Integrity Unit. That is their social media page. And they are there to literally... make sure that people are following the rules and that's an important part of it. So yes, they're there, they check times, they check splits, they check to see if there's a sudden burst of, you know, an anomaly that can't be explained that usually indicates cheating of some kind. And so yes, they found out that not only had she knocked off six minutes from her previous split and they posted her splits on their page, But then, yes, they posted this picture that someone had taken of her. Yeah. And because she was a fitness influencer and she was posting all about the marathon, they see her being, she is sitting on the back of a bike with someone else pedaling. How did she not think she was going to get caught?
00:18:22
Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Let me try. She has a full apology. We're going to read every word of it. Is it possible, Robe, she had a bad moment and maybe she didn't plan on cheating?
00:18:43
Speaker 2: Well, that's the question. Okay. Did she have someone waiting for her with that bicycle in case or was someone, did someone kind of monitor and just was there waiting just in case she needed a boost? I don't know. I just, for me, my experience, and again, it was the year after COVID. There weren't a lot of people out there. There were some, nothing compared to New York City. But you didn't have the same, I didn't experience the same hospitality where you had people presenting. When you go to the New York Marathon, even the Chicago Marathon, they've got bananas and they've got orange slices and they have Twizzlers and people have water and they're there waiting for you. Yes, there are the official water stations, but you have a lot of people anticipating your needs along the way. I didn't have that in Germany, so it's hard for me to imagine there was just a kind German person waiting for her with a bike in case someone needed a lift.
00:19:35
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's, okay, two theories of how she didn't cheat. One, the idea of maybe having somebody waiting for her. Okay, she didn't do that. What if, though, she did get in trouble, right? She wasn't feeling well and hopped on and said to somebody, can you give me a ride?
00:19:52
Speaker 2: Then you leave the race and you say, I'm done.
00:19:55
Speaker 1: But did she hop on? I'm trying to give her space that maybe she wasn't feeling well. You got to get out of here.
00:20:00
Speaker 2: She probably wasn't feeling well.
00:20:01
Speaker 1: And somebody put her on the bike and get out of here. You know what? I'm feeling better. Drop me off right here.
00:20:06
Speaker 2: And then... But then you'd have to say, it doesn't count. I didn't run the whole way.
00:20:10
Speaker 1: I'm trying to give her a space.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: We don't even walk. I feel like if I'm going to say I ran a marathon, I ran a marathon. Even if I'm slowly, barely running, I'm running.
00:20:20
Speaker 1: We had this fight on the course at about mile 21 in Chicago, 2024, did we not? Because I ended up ultimately in an ambulance with an injury. But in that time, you were trying to talk me into, we could just walk it. And I think there was an event per se. Hey, just walk it. You could still get your medal at the end.
00:20:39
Speaker 2: I was hoping that maybe if you walked a little bit of the way, you'd be able to loosen up whatever was causing a problem. We could maybe slowly limp over the finish line.
00:20:49
Speaker 1: Don't count. But that still counts. Not for me.
00:20:51
Speaker 2: But I hear what you're saying.
00:20:53
Speaker 1: You would never walk a mile in a marathon and then cross the finish line and hold up a medal.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: But a lot of people do. And it still counts. It's still official. Not for us.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: But a lot of people do.
00:21:05
Speaker 2: We do see. I'm always shocked at how many people are walking at the end. I'm thinking to myself, wow, did you train? Because obviously we both had to go over to the side for different reasons. But I go over to the side and I collect myself. And I guess you could keep walking, but I don't want to do that. So if I have to puke, if I have to catch my breath, whatever it is, work out a cramp, then you go back and you run again. That's just us, though.
00:21:32
Speaker 1: Okay, fine. But I think that's most... Most people don't enter a marathon to walk it.
00:21:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it would take a really long time.
00:21:39
Speaker 1: And most people wouldn't enter a marathon to think they're going to get a ride and still... I was trying to give her space for something.
00:21:44
Speaker 2: The point being is if she felt that bad, she should have either said, I can't do this anymore, like what happened to you in Chicago... Or you take a beat, you get some water in you, and even if you have to go to a medic station, they've got tents there, they can even pump some IV fluids in you, and then you get back up and you keep running. And yeah, your time might be six hours, or it might be 5.30, you might not get your personal best, but at least you did it honestly. So I get it that she might have been feeling terrible. We all feel terrible. And sometimes, yes, I've had to stop. But then if you get back in the race, you have to keep running.
00:22:20
Speaker 1: You don't get on a bike. But we are on the same page. We don't think she went to Berlin planning to cheat. Is that fair?
00:22:27
Speaker 2: I don't think she did.
00:22:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. She just got in trouble and like, oh, my God, I got to finish this. I'm an influencer.
00:22:32
Speaker 2: Right?
00:22:33
Speaker 1: Isn't that probably it?
00:22:34
Speaker 2: She probably felt the pressure of succeeding and not just crossing the finish line, but crossing the finish line with a personal best. And maybe because here's the deal. When you're in Berlin, you get this promise of, You'll get your fastest time yet. Guess what? I didn't because of the heat. I ended up, my fastest has been, my number one and number two fastest have been in New York. And I thought I was going to get a personal best in Berlin. I didn't because of the heat. I thought I was going to get a personal best in Chicago when I finished. I didn't because I just didn't. Sometimes that's the way it works.
00:23:08
Speaker 1: You know what? Now that we're talking this out, she probably felt a lot of pressure, didn't she?
00:23:11
Speaker 2: Because everyone thinks if they go to Berlin... They're going to run the fastest marathon of their life.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: But I'm saying pressure to the public that she's serving, the followers. And she has a shoe company. Yes, a company, an athletic company sponsoring her. She needs a good performance. This needs to be a celebration and not a failure.
00:23:28
Speaker 2: Taking shortcuts never pays off.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: She probably felt that.
00:23:32
Speaker 2: Whether it was a crime of opportunity or if it was a planned, just in case I might need this, can you be here at this mile marker? Whatever it is, it doesn't matter whether it was premeditated or a moment of a lapse of judgment. Either way, she still cheated.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: You know, babe, that, you know, and I know you know it, but man, it gets in your head when you're on mile 21 and you got an injury or some problem. Like, wow, I've been training for five months and I'm just going to throw it all the way right now. That's hard. That's probably very hard. That's hard. So yeah, she ultimately was, it didn't take them too long to figure it out. She was disqualified and she did lose a sponsor. We have the sponsor statement, but we should share what this young lady said. She had to issue an apology along when she put on Instagram, I do believe, but here she is swooned Yuan Yuan.
00:24:23
Speaker 2: Yuan Yuan. Sun Yuan Yuan says, I solemnly apologize to everyone regarding my behavior of riding a bicycle in the Berlin Marathon. It is indeed a violation of the rules of the competition.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: My favorite line.
00:24:39
Speaker 2: You don't say.
00:24:39
Speaker 1: That's good.
00:24:40
Speaker 2: I will not make any excuses for the above behavior. And then she goes on to do it. Even if there is physical discomfort on the track, it should never be a reason for my violation. My behavior is disrespectful to the fairness of the competition and the spirit. of the marathon. I deliberately concealed this fact in the external sharing. It's a very dishonest behavior. It also violates the sportsmanship of marathon fair competition and I feel deeply guilty about it. Here I solemnly apologize to everyone and reflect deeply. If you are wrong, you must accept criticism and supervision. Finally, I would like to say to everyone again, I'm sorry.
00:25:26
Speaker 1: I mean, best you can do, right?
00:25:27
Speaker 2: That is the best you can do. And she'll just have to make sure that this is a very hard lesson that she learned, that you cannot take shortcuts. You cannot cheat. It's far better to get the whatever time, the 530. Oh, the time when I could not stop throwing. We were about to get a personal best in New York City. And I just could not stop throwing up. And My goal, my dream had always been to get a sub-4 marathon, and we were on pace to do it. My dad, I could hear him in my ear because we have our AirPods in and people send you messages, and he was following me, and he was like, way to go, Ames, you're about to... I was like.
00:26:04
Speaker 1: We were killing it, man. We were killing it.
00:26:07
Speaker 2: I think we ended up with that one at a 4.16, 4.15.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: And we stopped a lot.
00:26:13
Speaker 2: We did, because I couldn't stop throwing. So yeah, 15 minutes of hell, basically, for the last few miles. It was so demoralizing. We were doing so well.
00:26:23
Speaker 1: With your dad's messages, they were... Like, you guys okay?
00:26:26
Speaker 2: Are you okay?
00:26:26
Speaker 1: We noticed you stopped.
00:26:28
Speaker 2: Why have you stopped moving? Yes, I didn't get on a bike. And we didn't walk. We ran.
00:26:37
Speaker 1: I am trying to leave space for this young lady. And you said the lesson to be learned here is just that thing, babe, the pressure of, I guess, disappointing followers, right? When you put yourself out there. Even I was nervous to say publicly that I was running a marathon because then I thought that some, Pressure would be on me to maybe do something. I have a pretty difficult injury, and I didn't want to feel that pressure to maybe push myself or go too far. But in this case, babe, we were talking about it. This is not the first time something like this has happened. Some pretty wild cases that are worse than this one we're going to share in a second. But, Robes, you talked about why was the shame, the personal shame, not the thing that kept you from doing it? It's only the public shame thatâ caused you to have a problem.
00:27:25
Speaker 2: She'll have to do some, some soul searching on that because that's something for me. I don't know how you live with that. If you hadn't been publicly outed, you still now have private shame. Are you ignoring it? Do you tell yourself you didn't do it? Do you tell yourself you had to do it? I don't know what we all say to ourselves to justify bad behavior. We've all done a much smaller version of that. But this is such a public spectacle. You would feel like such a fraud. Eventually that would catch up with you.
00:27:54
Speaker 1: You think?
00:27:55
Speaker 2: I just think it does something to you in your soul deep down. If you are completely putting out a very different image or a very different outcome than what you know to be true.
00:28:06
Speaker 1: How could she would have gone the rest of her life? My personal best. I got it. The Berlin Marathon. I think she would have told that.
00:28:14
Speaker 2: Every time she said it, her chest would have gotten tighter. Her stomach would have maybe churned a little bit, she would have felt it. Maybe a little less each time she told the lie.
00:28:24
Speaker 1: You saw those pictures.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was triumphant.
00:28:27
Speaker 1: Yes!
00:28:28
Speaker 2: She was triumphant in her social media posts. That feels so icky.
00:28:32
Speaker 1: Those feel icky. Well, Brooks, I mean, again, she's pretty serious. Brooks is a very big-time athletic company. She's wearing their shoes, their very light marathon shoes, so they outfit her. They put out a statement. She doesn't speak for them anymore.
00:28:57
Speaker 2: No, Brooks put out this statement. Upon verifying the facts, Brooks China immediately terminated its relationship with the influencer and publicly reaffirmed the brand's commitment to integrity, fairness, and the spirit of running.
00:29:12
Speaker 1: Didn't even say her name.
00:29:14
Speaker 2: The influencer. That was actually a way to just, oh, I thought about that too. Like, ooh, didn't even say her name.
00:29:21
Speaker 1: Oh, she's gonna be fine. I just, I hate this. This is embarrassing. How could she not Bro, she's in public. There are 50,000 people out here. She has her name tag on. The race is going on and we see a rider, a runner, riding a bike. She didn't think anybody was.
00:29:42
Speaker 2: She wasn't even pedaling.
00:29:44
Speaker 1: No, she was hitching.
00:29:44
Speaker 2: She was the passenger. That's like at least there would have been some physical exertion maybe.
00:29:50
Speaker 1: Stay loose.
00:29:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was just taking a beat. Yeah, sit down, by the way. We've seen people have to do that. Take a beat on the curb.
00:29:57
Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
00:29:58
Speaker 2: Sit down. Collect your breath. Nobody wants anyone. Marathons have killed people. Half marathons have killed people.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: Yes, they have.
00:30:05
Speaker 2: Take your time. Catch your breath. Take a walk for a sec. Get yourself hydrated at the water station. But don't ride a bike. Sorry.
00:30:17
Speaker 1: She is not, Robes, obviously the only one. Some of the other stories of people who have cheated in marathons, are hilarious, including one here in New York where the lady took the subway for part of it. That's incredible.
00:30:32
Speaker 2: It's hard to believe.
00:30:33
Speaker 1: It's so New York, though. There's something about her taking the subway. This was in 1979, I think it was. Rosie Ruiz, very famous because of what she did in marathons, but she was trying to get a decent enough time here in New York so that she could qualify for Boston. She had some weird motivations like her boss would, Pay her way, she was just trying to get a free trip She wasn't a big time marathoner Came out of nowhere Robes, she wins The damn marathon Wins the 1980 Boston Marathon Eight days later She was disqualified You know what was discovered Robes She didn't run a little bit Hop out, hop back on Robes, she hopped on In the last mile She only ran the last mile of the Boston Marathon and declared herself the winner.
00:31:30
Speaker 2: That's unbelievable.
00:31:32
Speaker 1: How does she think she's going to get away with that?
00:31:34
Speaker 2: She wasn't in any pictures during the entire race.
00:31:37
Speaker 1: That's how she was caught. Everybody was like, wow, what a feat she's done. Where is she?
00:31:42
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
00:31:44
Speaker 1: For 25.2 miles, she's nowhere to be found.
00:31:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. And nowadays that would never happen because they have helicopters, they have cameras on the front runners the entire time you're watching it. We can see all of the elite runners ahead of it. They're all being tracked and monitored. Obviously, this was before a lot of that technology. That type of deceit could never take place now, but it's still amazing they caught her regardless.
00:32:09
Speaker 1: The only amazing part of that is that what was set off an immediate red flag is that her finishing time in Boston was 25 minutes better than her finishing time in New York.
00:32:20
Speaker 2: You don't get that big of a.
00:32:22
Speaker 1: Half hour. No. She knocked a half hour off a marathon time.
00:32:25
Speaker 2: When we knock a minute or two off of our finish time, we're like.
00:32:30
Speaker 1: Hell yes! Bottoms up, baby.
00:32:34
Speaker 2: And then there was Robert Madrazo.
00:32:35
Speaker 1: This man is amazing. He's amazing.
00:32:38
Speaker 2: 2007 Berlin Marathon. Same one. Won his age category at 55. His time... 241.12. That's pretty impressive.
00:32:46
Speaker 1: Isn't it?
00:32:47
Speaker 2: That's very impressive.
00:32:48
Speaker 1: Now, do you think even... I don't know the... Like the age categories they have now, is it possible for men that age running that fast of marathons?
00:32:58
Speaker 2: I don't know. Like I said, I'm just hoping for a sub four one day. A sub three would not even be something I would dream of.
00:33:05
Speaker 1: So he's 55 years old at the time. And he is a Mexican politician, Robes. He actually lost in the presidential election. So he was a known guy. So he was disqualified not too long after. Robes, he did have electronic tracking. It showed clearly that he didn't show up in two checkpoints on the race. They go back and look at his time robes. He ran, and you do the math for the people at home.
00:33:35
Speaker 2: Nine miles?
00:33:36
Speaker 1: He ran nine miles in 21 minutes.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: So that would be what, like a two-something minute mile, which is impossible.
00:33:44
Speaker 1: Humanly impossible.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: Humanly impossible.
00:33:46
Speaker 1: It actually is.
00:33:46
Speaker 2: How did he think that he was going to be able... The record for that stretch is 41 minutes. He did it in 21 minutes.
00:33:54
Speaker 1: The fastest anybody has ever run it is in 41 minutes. He did it in 21. At the age of 55. No. Impossible.
00:34:01
Speaker 2: So, yes. He was caught.
00:34:04
Speaker 1: So, this is the funny part about this guy. Folks back in Mexico are like, yeah, that old Robert Robes. He has been in trouble and accused of lying and cheating... during his political career, including being investigated for fraud and stealing millions of dollars. Another one, Robes, he had told police that he was kidnapped, beaten, tortured, but then escaped his captors some seven hours later. Robes, police never found any evidence of the such, and they believe he made that up for sympathy during the election time.
00:34:35
Speaker 2: So he's a pathological liar.
00:34:37
Speaker 1: Robes, so.
00:34:39
Speaker 1: The marathon was small potatoes for him almost. My goodness. As far as deceit.
00:34:43
Speaker 2: Well, at least he's consistent. All right. And then Dr. Frank Meza, he started running marathons in his 60s. In 2019, he ran the LA Marathon. He ran the fastest marathon ever for a man his age, again, 70. And his time was 2.53.10. Again, anyone who can do a sub three... Beyond impressive.
00:35:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, no matter what age.
00:35:05
Speaker 2: Beyond impressive. I mean, some of the most fit people I know, they'll get like a 330, and I'm like, holy moly.
00:35:12
Speaker 1: It's bizarre.
00:35:13
Speaker 2: So sub threes are.
00:35:15
Speaker 1: And for a 70-year-old... Yeah, so he was disqualified not long after, and yes... Evidence that he had left the course at one point and reentered the course, cut some time off. He denied these allegations. Robes, he had a history, actually, of being... He had been banned from other races. He had a history of this and had been tracked. I remember I told you we covered this story at GMA. This guy, it was days after his disqualification from LA, died by suicide.
00:35:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, finally, look, at the end of the day, I do believe when you have lived that much of your life in full deceit and... getting, I think the worst part is getting praise for something you didn't actually accomplish. That'll catch up with you eventually. Maybe it's a good thing that this 30 year old fitness influencer got caught because maybe if she didn't, she would have kept doing and trying to get away with accomplishments that she didn't earn. And I do think eventually it does eat you up inside.
00:36:13
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it. So now was this her first time doing something like this?
00:36:17
Speaker 2: I'm sure they'll be looking into it. Because if it's her personal best, that means she has run other marathons before. The question is, did she follow the rules in those other marathons? I'm absolutely certain they're looking at that.
00:36:29
Speaker 1: Can they ban her from the others? They can make a choice whether or not to let her.
00:36:32
Speaker 2: They certainly could if they feel like this is not just the only time. And I think it's pretty easy these days to figure out if they look into it, they will be able to determine if there was fraud or not.
00:36:43
Speaker 1: Ah, look. We love it. We are passionate about it. It has meant a whole lot to us and gotten us through some of the most difficult times of our lives. And we just can't stop. We got the running bug. And so to see a story like this, yes, you grin a little bit and look, not necessarily angry at this young woman, but it is one of those things and a reminder. No, no, no, no. We, we earn this, not just on race day. Yes. I mean, look, I'm, What is the calendar over there? How many weeks is that?
00:37:14
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a five-month. It's a 20-week training program.
00:37:20
Speaker 1: We have it up on the wall here as we're talking.
00:37:23
Speaker 2: We absolutely do. And it's one of those things my daughter made fun of me because at one point I actually had aâ we don't have the wall space for it here, butâ I had one for you, too. We had a display, hanging display for all of our medals. And we had it by the bed. And Ava's like, you're hilarious. You're like a little kid and her trophies. And I was like, you run a marathon and tell me you won't display every single one of those medals. Be careful what you say out loud because she started to run now. And I am waiting for her. She's thinking about a half marathon. She'll have that medal hanging on her wall when she finally crosses the finish line.
00:37:58
Speaker 1: A half marathon. All of my marathons tattooed on my arm. That's how serious it is, folks. So stop riding bikes in marathons, please. Oh, we always appreciate you. This was a lighter one. We needed a break. There's been some heavy stuff lately. This only involves some cheating.
00:38:17
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:38:17
Speaker 1: But no murder.
00:38:18
Speaker 2: No murder. Thank goodness. Let's keep it that way.