It’s now 20 days until the Arizona IRONMAN 70.3 in Tempe, AZ, where Ragen claims she will swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles, and run 13.1 miles, all in under 8-1/2 hours.

Since our last major update, Ragen has posted almost nothing about her training. She posted a single Selfie Sunday update two weeks ago where she was extremely careful to not take multiple photos on the same day and repeat the mistakes of her first two efforts. She still couldn’t resist describing a late night run as a pre-dawn run, since it apparently sounds more impressive to her if she gets up early to run. Other than that, she has been hard at work with “activism” rather than training for the major endurance event she is registered for in under three weeks.

Earlier this month, Ragen told an Icelandic newspaper she believes she may become a literal martyr for fat acceptance one day. She spent 10 days of the last two weeks out of the country, starting with an appearance at the Weight Stigma Conference (more on that in a future post), followed by holidays in Ireland, a paid appearance at an HAES event in London, then more holidays in Ireland. She has now missed two Fake Selfie Sunday updates in a row, despite promising selfies from Iceland to her Facebook followers. She also hasn’t posted the promised update about her open water swimming and “56 mile” bike ride. In fact, she was so inactive online recently that for several days, Dances with Facts was actually ranked higher than her own blog in Google search results.

In a crucial stage of training, Ragen has spent 10 days traveling around foreign countries, with only a single vague mention of a “run” in Iceland. She is presently preparing for the Fat Activism Conference on October 9-11. A few days later, she flies across the country to Virginia Vermont for a speaking engagement at Castleton University on Thursday, October 15. On Friday, she flies straight to Tempe while her scooter-bound girlfriend makes the six hour drive from California with all her IM gear alone. The event is on the Sunday.

What do we really know at this point, less than three weeks from Tempe? Still almost nothing. Over the last 1-1/2 years, Ragen has posted a stream of vague, useless “training updates” about her glacial training progress, inability to ride a bike, inability to run, and lack of open water swimming experience. She owns a GPS watch that is clearly visible in her fake selfies, but refuses to share any details of her pacing, distances, or routes, first claiming this is “proprietary information”, then claiming she needs to protect herself from the numerous mysterious “haters” who want to rape and murder her.

At the same time as concocting a last-minute perfect storm of excuses about her impending failure to start or DNF, Ragen has casually thrown in a few training numbers that show truly implausible progress to pretend she is suddenly ready for the 70.3. The photos in the Icelandic newspaper article show she hasn’t lost any weight during her 1-1/2 years of intense marathon and IRONMAN training, allaying any fears she might have to explain herself to her followers, but making it clear she is still too heavy to have any chance of finishing a half-IM.

20 days until Tempe.