Marathons

At reference 1 I reported speculating about a 75 year old man claiming to have run 75 marathons in 75 days.

Friday just past, the Metro was at it again with a 34 year old man claiming to have run 401 marathons in 401 days, although he did admit to it not being one on each and every day. He had a few days off sick - including a nasty sounding umbilical hernia - and caught up by doing more than one on some days.

Web site rather more convincing than the other one, including a complete record of all 401 marathons, from which the snip above is taken.

While BH makes the point that a younger person is more likely to have the technology to make a proper record of such an achievement. To which my riposte is that he is also more likely to have the know-how to fake it.

Is the Metro colonising the freaks' ground once in the joint custody of 'Weekend' and 'Titbits'? With these last now obtainable from ebay rather than newsagents, but once freely available in gentlemens' hairdressers, along with the 'will there be anything else sir's.

Is half the fun not being quite sure? With poking around in the record giving the same sort of kick as getting to the bottom of the evening's offering from Agatha Christie?

PS: I ponder now on the extent to which we have to take what we read in newspapers on trust. Maybe the answer is to stick to a newspaper with a good reputation, a newspaper in which you can reasonably put your trust. With provenance as they say in the auction-ring business. Not that there are many such around these days - and not, I suppose, that there ever were. Making it up, or at the very least spicing it up, has been the name of the game all along. Maybe the answer from the right wing will be that we should trust the marketplace. If one newspaper invents a story, another newspaper will make it its business to expose it, to sell its copy by trashing someone else's - and so in the absence of evidence against, we can believe what we read. Well, maybe. Maybe the crow will fly. See reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/platanov.html.

Reference 2: http://www.the401challenge.co.uk/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/theres-hope-yet.html.