Here's why I'm not excited about this self-Iron distance, even with the promise of live streaming.
Here is her recap of her World Record marathon.
Look at the dates. This recap is posted January 26, 2018. The race itself, it even says in the artice, was May 17th. She waited over EIGHT MONTHS before she mentioned "oh I ran a marathon and was just waiting for Guinness to certify it."
Here is her first blog after May 17th:
Training had been going well until a long run two weeks ago where things went seriously wrong. I was out of town and scheduled for the longest run of my training so far. I had chosen a path that was billed as flat and paved. As I walked out to get started I rolled my left ankle (the one the I badly sprained earlier in the year.) Regular readers know that my ankles are hyper-mobile and roll all the time so I wasn’t too worried. It felt a little bit sore but totally serviceable, so I decided to do the run.
The path was really hilly – way more climb than any run I’ve ever done in any run.
First off, the path was not really hilly; Mainly Marathons are basically the flattest looped course you can do outside walking 106 laps on a high school track. I don't think she's lying per se, as much as the fact that to an obese person, any sort of incline no matter how small is going to seem like a mountain during a marathon.
Second, she described it as "she was out of town and scheduled for the longest run of my training so far." So it sounds like she went on a speaking gig and just happened to have training scheduled that day. She made no mentioned that she was going to walk a marathon or had walked a marathon in her blog or any of her social media until the January 26th post eight months later. The only people that knew before this were people on her subreddit and I forget how her subreddit found out (maybe a lucky Google search or something.)
So as much as she says she is going to "livestream" the attempt, either one of two things are going to happen.
1) She will never do a damn thing (most likely outcome).
2) She will post from "race day videos" well after the event, make up some wild story about having actually done it, will not provide a shred of proof Garmin or otherwise that she did it, and then proclaim that anyone who claims that she faked it are haters and trolls out to kill fat people.
Also, for those of you that didn't follow Ragen's sprint triathlon this year (.25 mile swim, 10 mile bike, 5k run), these were her paces:
Swim: 4:16/100m
Bike: 8.64 mph for 10 miles
Run: 24:04 min/mil for 3.1 miles
Now, here were her 2018 super sprint paces:
Swim: 3:33 min/100m
Bike: 10.50 mph average for 6.35 miles
Run: 23:23 min/mi for 1.65 miles
So, even giving Ragen the benefit of the doubt (since why not?), and saying that she can perform a full Ironman race at her 2018 super sprint pace (she can't), here is how long it would take her to complete the distance in a best case scenario
Swim: 3.55 * 38 = 2 hours, 15 minutes
T1: 15 minutes (because she will take her sweet-ass time since there are no time limits)
Bike: 112 / 10.5 = 10 hours, 40 minutes
T2: 15 minutes
Run: 23.38 * 26.2 = 10 hours, 8 minutes
Best Case Scenario Total: 23 hours, 33 minutes
Also, that doesn't take any fatigue into account, nor any sense of urgency since she doesn't have to rush (and would probably be encouraged to "rest" by her friends to not push herself too hard), nor the fact that the last time she walked she tore her foot ligament, nor the fact that you can't complete a long distance at the same speed as a short distance, nor the fact that she will probably be at least 20 pounds heavier next year than right now.
TL;DR - One day, Ragen is going to fake some pictures/videos, proclaim that she completed the distance, make up a bullshit story, and say that anyone questioning her are alt-right bigots.
