Moayedi owns and operates a race series called I Ran Marathons, which stages weekly marathons, half marathons, 10Ks, and 5Ks. Moayedi holds her races on San Antonio running trails, but she was born and raised in Iran—thus the punny name of her series.

Over the years, fellow runners had flagged Moayedi's behavior at several high-profile races. In 2013, after logging a suspiciously fast split time late in a 100-mile race in Texas, she was disqualified. She was disqualified from the 2016 Houston Marathon after her timing chip failed to register splits at several checkpoints. Murphy also suspected Moayedi didn't run all of her own races, even though she's often listed in the results, in order to boost her record numbers. A few years ago, he noticed that she was listed in the results of an I Ran marathon in San Antonio on June 1, when her social media account seemed to indicate she was 8,500 miles away in Nepal, having run a marathon there on May 29. He alerted Guinness, but officials there reviewed the evidence provided and wrote back saying they had “not found any grounds to disqualify her attempts.”

Murphy was undeterred. He was set on proving his case and decided there was only one way to get her records invalidated: catch Moayedi in the act. He invited me to come along.

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On February 16, 2019, I met Murphy at 6 am at a hotel in San Antonio. I'd been talking to him on the phone, but this was our first in-person encounter. Murphy, who has close-cropped, receding gray hair and a bit of a paunch, was dressed for the occasion in black Nike running shorts and a gray Under Armour sweatshirt. We made our way to the race site and crouched behind a parked minivan, slinking around like a couple of middle-aged Hardy Boys, then fixed our eyes on a dozen runners who had gathered at a trailhead. They were standing near a green, white, and red banner that read I RAN MARATHONS START/FINISH.

“That's her in the black coat,” Murphy whispered, pointing to a short woman with curly gray hair dressed in black track pants, puffy coat, and baseball cap. “She definitely doesn't look like she's dressed to run a marathon.”

The run began at 7:30, but Moayedi didn't join the racers as they ambled off. Murphy walked over to the start line, where several copies of her self-published book, Iran to America, were displayed on a folding chair, on sale for $20. He picked up a copy and began flipping through it.

Moayedi approached us and Murphy greeted her with a cheerful “You did all this!” as he held up her book describing her record-setting runs. “You're a legend! Can I get my picture with you?” This struck me as an awkward move, but I played along, snapping a photo of Murphy and Moayedi.

Two days after the San Antonio event, race results were posted on the organization's website. Though we'd seen no evidence that Moayedi left the starting area, she was listed as the 10th-place finisher, with a time of 7 hours, 29 minutes.

Murphy sent an email to Moayedi telling her what we witnessed and questioning her Guinness records. Moayedi didn't respond. I also reached out to her, many times, by email, voice message, and also certified letter. I wanted to hear her side of the story, but she never answered.

Murphy contacted Guinness again. The organization responded with a nearly identical email to the one Murphy received a few years before; there would be no disqualification. In late April, Murphy reached out to another Guinness employee, an adjudicator who, Murphy says, might be more serious about getting old records invalidated.

I wondered if he was obsessing too much over Moayedi. After all, she was doing good for health and well-being, and her race series allowed casual runners to try out long races without much pressure. “At what point do you just let it go?” I asked.