It’s now 41 days until Ragen says she will swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles, and run 13.1 miles in under 8-1/2 hours at the Arizona IRONMAN 70.3 in Tempe, AZ.Note: Please see the update at the end of the post. -IFC

Yesterday Ragen posted a new IronFat Selfie Sunday update with photos supposedly showing her hard at work training for Tempe. Unlike last week’s botched effort where metadata proved Ragen had faked many of the photos, she was careful to only post one photo per day and give them vague descriptions this week. Unfortunately she still couldn’t resist describing a photo taken at 10:21 PM as an “early morning run” (apparently Ragen considers it more impressive if she wakes up before dawn to “run”).

The biggest news this week is Ragen’s claim that she finished a 50 mile bike ride on Sunday morning. A full half-century.

This builds on last week’s 42 mile effort, which was the logical progression of her training, three weeks after… riding two blocks in traffic and doing some figure eights in a basketball court. Ragen has written an entire year of IronFat updates at this point. She’s gone from low effort spin bike workouts, to her first bike ride for 20 years on May 31, to barely being able to stop her bike without falling off in June, to learning to shift and brake up and down small hills on August 4. It has been a slow and tedious progression of minor improvements most people make when they first learn to ride a bike at a young age.

At the end of August, Ragen admitted she may not finish the 70.3 in October. She started posting a litany of excuses to explain her impending failure. Days later, Ragen’s bike training took an astronomical leap with the 42 mile ride, followed by the half-century only a week later. She includes no proof beyond a photo showing her holding up five fingers and barely breaking a sweat, nor does she address the issue of the fake selfies from last week, instead choosing to rant about another mysterious “hate group” that is supposedly sending her more threats and sharing maps to her home. In photos she is clearly wearing the Garmin GPS watch we know she owns, and she has shared the location of her training rides on multiple occasions, which are nowhere near her home. For some reason Ragen, the person who toots her own horn for the most inane personal victories imaginable, won’t even share a redacted Garmin Connect screenshot of one the most significant athletic achievements of her life.

This supposed improvement in Ragen’s bike training is beyond all reasonable belief. It goes hand-in-hand with her recent “two hour” swims and “24 mile” long runs. At this point it appears to be part of her excuses for October. When her girlfriend has “car trouble” driving to Tempe and she can’t compete, or she has an unfortunate “injury” at the last minute, or she simply bombs out in the first stage, she can now point to her IronFat blog as “proof” she trained hard and was ready for the 70.3.

To make it clear how implausible Ragen’s bike training performance improvements over the last few weeks truly are, we’ve assembled a timeline of every single IronFat bike training update. It includes some details not shared in the posts themselves. We believe the facts speak for themselves and demonstrate yet another facet of Ragen’s continuing pattern of profound intellectual and personal dishonesty.

September 20, 2014

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/so-im-doing-this-thing/

Ragen starts her IRONMAN training and says she hasn’t ridden a bike since high school.

November 24 and 26, 2014

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/spin-spin-sugar/

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/double-victory/

Ragen’s coach tells her to “shoot for above 75RPMs, 80 would be awesome, 85 would be outstanding” for her first workout. Ragen the elite biker manages 85 rpm for 45 minutes on a spin bike at an unknown resistance setting. Two days later she completes a similar workout.

January 6, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/swim-bike-run-laugh-cry/

Ragen claims she was gifted a bike that belonged to a friend’s deceased husband at some point, but it was stolen from her home and the police refuse to give it back to her.

January 27, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/my-bike-is-out-of-jail/

Ragen apparently recovers her bike from the police and decides to name it “Clyde”.

March 4, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/a-kick-to-the-gut/

More than a month after getting her bike out of “bike jail”, a bike shop has modified it as much as humanly possible. Ragen completes her first and only ride on “Clyde”, managing two hours connected to a bike trainer, again at an unknown resistance. Because her midsection is so large, she’s unable to pedal the bike in any position without kneeing herself in the gut on every stroke. She never rides Clyde again.

March 10, 2015

Image metadata shows Ragen’s secondhand road bike arrived today. She doesn’t mention it on her blog until May.

May 16 and 17, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/first-blood-on-the-bike/

After several months with no bike training updates, Ragen announces she has acquired the road bike that actually arrived in March. She didn’t mention it before because she was physically incapable of riding it in the original configuration. It took her three months and three separate bike shops to find one that would mangle it to her specifications and turn it into a bizarre and dangerous combination of a road bike and hybrid bike. On May 16, she goes for her first ride in the parking lot of the bike shop and promptly falls off and injures herself because she’s unable to brake.

May 27, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/waking-up-from-my-bikemare/

Ragen still hasn’t properly ridden her new road bike, but she’s begging for donations because it was so expensive.

May 31, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/taking-to-flight/

More than three months after ordering her road bike, Ragen goes for her first real ride in over 20 years, managing 4 miles at a very slow pace. She refuses to ride the bike in traffic. She falls off her bike attempting to stop it.

June 1, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/getting-back-on-the-horse/

Ragen is learning to stop her road bike. She falls off the bike 70% of the time she attempts to brake. Due to her central obesity and the modifications to extend the handlebar stem beyond the safe limit, she is unable to straddle the main tube during stops, and must instead perform a complicated maneuver where he throws herself over the bike and lays it on the ground. She describes the maneuver in her post.

I can’t touch the ground with my feet while in the saddle, and I don’t fit comfortably between the seat and the stem so I can’t just hop off and straddle the top tube. So there’s a specific technique that’s involved wherein I have to slow to a near stop, throw my leg out far enough that I don’t trip myself when I lay the bike to the side whilst pushing it backward.

Ragen’s idea of a successful training session at this point is managing to stop her bike three times in a row without falling off.

August 4, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/every-scary-thing-on-one-bike-ride/

After a long IronFat hiatus, Ragen goes for a short trail ride with some friends. She walks her bike up and down a small hill because she’s still unable to shift and brake properly. Her friends teach her to use her brakes to ride down a hill without wiping out. She rides in circles in a basketball court and finally manages to do a few figure eights. The highlight of the day is riding two blocks in traffic.

August 20 and 28, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/the-cry-every-day-stage-of-my-training/

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/inspiration-thursday-success-and-failure/

Ragen accidentally includes an admission she might not finish the 70.3 in the footer of her August 20 IronFat update. She quickly deletes it when it appears on Reddit. A week later she writes that she has “chosen a big goal” and concedes she may not complete the 70.3. New excuses immediately start piling up, as documented in 50 Days, Ragen’s New Excuses.

August 31, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/journeys-destinations-and-selfie-sunday/

Ragen starts “Selfie Sunday” with a bang, posting a number of fake training photos. Three weeks after doing figure eights in the basketball court, she has suddenly completed a 42 mile training ride.

September 6, 2015

https://ironfatblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/selfie-sunday-2-0/

Selfie Sunday 2.0. Ragen claims she has completed a 50 mile training ride. She provides no evidence other than a photo showing her holding up five fingers, despite the fact she is clearly wearing a GPS watch. In the span of a few weeks, Ragen has supposedly gone from 11 months of barely being able to ride her bike to doing half-century training rides.