It all started during an interview a while back wherein one of the interviewers, who would later become my peer as I was got the job, asked me about the marathons which appeared on my resume. I answered the question in typical interview fashion saying career success and earning trust was much like running a marathon – you had to run a steady pace to achieve success. (Cheesy but effective) I followed my answer with a question of my own: Are you a runner yourself? She replied yes and almost in an atypical boastful manner claimed to have completed 16 marathons – two of which were in Boston. As everyone knows, none of us boast about our achievements – we are proud of them but we also recognize that we are still slow pokes compared to Reid, Kara, Ryan and Meb.
Time went on and my colleague and I would chat from time to time about running. She always claimed to run a daily 5 miler after waking at 4:30am…nothing unusual there. One day she said she would be participating in the Scotia Waterfront 5K on the Saturday as part of the Marathon weekend races. I wished her well. The Saturday morning shortly after the race finished, she emailed me with a short note “nailed it – 19:54”. I was very impressed...mainly because she never spoke of her times. I don’t know what prompted me to look but I went on sportstats.ca to look for her time/ placement. She wasn’t on the board at all…in fact had she raced a 19:54 she would have placed 3rd overall. Now I was skeptical and curious. Why would she lie? Maybe I misunderstood? – Nope she definitely wrote 19:54.
I searched the sportstats results 57 different ways for her past results. Nothing showed up except for one half-marathon in 1999 that she ran in 1:58. Now, that is a very respectable time but it is far from lightning fast. I searched – marathonguide.com - again high and low and nothing showed up. A Google search yielded no results. ..except for a 1999 half marathon result of 1:58 of course. At least I confirmed the Google search worked.
A short month later, she claimed to have been caught up in the 2007 Army 10 Miler Heat wave which claimed one runner’s life. She said it was horrible but they got through it by picking up discarded water cups and sipping what they could. Of course, I empathized for what they endured. No, her name didn’t show up in the results.
In the end, I never did ask her about her lies – after all, I knew what I knew and what could I possibly gain by outing her? It did cause me to be very careful around her – what I did and said was always guarded.
Crazy chick!
