Yesterday, Paul Ryan got in a little trouble for telling Hugh Hewitt in a radio interview that he had run a marathon in just under three hours. As I wrote, runners were skeptical, and eventually his claim was revealed to be untrue: he actually ran a marathon in just over four hours. Last night, Ryan gave The New Yorker a statement:

“The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three. If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight.”

Does the misstatement—or lie, or fib—matter? As James Fallows pointed out on The Atlantic, in one way it obviously doesn’t. It has no bearing at all on the republic how fast Paul Ryan ran. Ryan could also surely beat any of the other major candidates, or the Supreme Court justices, in a foot race. But in another way it is important: Is the potential Vice President the sort of person who lies congenitally? In that sense it matters.

Here’s the transcript of what Ryan said to Hewitt:

H. H.: Are you still running?

P. R.: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or [less].

H. H.: But you did run marathons at some point?

P. R.: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.

H. H.: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?

P. R.: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.

H. H.: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…

P. R.: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

What’s striking about the exchange is how he responds to Hewitt’s “Holy smokes.” A four-hour marathon, for a twenty-year-old, is not something that elicits a “holy smokes.” It’s entirely average; in fact, for the race that Ryan ran, it was below average. In the marathon in question, he finished in nineteen hundred and ninetieth place, out of just thirty-two hundred and seventy-seven male runners. (A 2:55 would have had him at a hundred and thirtieth.) But Hewitt’s reaction didn’t set off any alarm. Instead, Ryan could tell that he had just impressed his host, and he reinforced it, saying “I was fast when I was younger, yeah.”

Is it possible that his memory just bollixed up the time? For someone who doesn’t run, the difference between a four-hour marathon and a two-fifty-something may seem inconsequential, and easy to confuse. But for someone who does run seriously, it’s immense. To make an analogy to an activity that Ryan is unquestionably good at, it’s like the difference between doing twenty-five pushups (not bad!) and a hundred (holy smokes!).

Runners—and Ryan says he continues to be one—also just don’t forget race times. They talk about them with their friends; they think about them when running. If they’ve just missed breaking four hours, it probably bothers them a little bit. It probably bothers them particularly if their brothers run faster. People also ask about marathon times often. Note the ease with which Hewitt queried Ryan’s time. The congressman, who talks frequently about fitness, has surely been asked the same question dozens, or hundreds, of times. When did he stop answering “four hours” and start saying “a two hour and fifty-something”?

Was it just a flat lie? There’s one very strong argument that it wasn’t: how the campaign responded. When I first contacted them and asked about the race, a spokesman immediately wrote back, “Sure—it was the Grandma’s marathon in Duluth, MN as a junior in college, back in 1991 to the best of his recollection.”

If the campaign had known that he was close to getting busted for a fib, that’s not how they would have responded. They would have dodged the question, immediately apologized, or tried to mislead. “He can’t really remember; it was some race near Minnesota when he was in his early twenties” would have been a more logical response for a campaign in danger.

So what was it? A lie, or a mis-remembrance? Only Paul Ryan knows, and the evidence is mixed. If there aren’t more fibs of this sort—if he doesn’t magically transform himself from the bottom half to the top four per cent in other matters—I’ll let it pass. If more fibs, in more interviews and speeches, are found, I’m going to think that he lied. After Ryan’s convention speech, and its many dubious claims, Ryan Lizza wrote, “Ryan started this race with a reputation for honesty. He’s on his way to losing it.”

See more: How fast can Paul Ryan run? and Ryan’s marathon memories.

For more New Yorker coverage of running, read Mark Singer’s piece about Kip Litton, Malcolm Gladwell and Nicholas Thompson’s exchanges about Olympic track, Thompson’s piece about David Rudisha, and Peter Hessler’s Profile of Ryan Hall.

Results-magazine image courtesy Grandma’s Marathon.