To lie about completing a fundraising challenge

She sounds very untrustworthy. You should tell her it looks really suspect and there's no need to lie. That she will lose friends by bending the truth more than she will for failing some running challenge. I'd strongly advise you not to give her any more 'donations'.

Well, if she’s an old and valued friend, surely you’d address it with her rather than just distancing yourself over something so trivial? Or just mute her on SM if you can’t bear to talk about it? Pretty cowardly to just slink off, I’d have said, if she’s a good friend.

I have a good friend who does extreme ultramarathons in the Arctic and things like the Marathon des Sables. I just say ‘No, offence, P, but I’m interested in whether you saw the northern lights or a mirage of an oasis or were kidnapped by nomadic camel herders, not your blisters and how long your training runs are.’

It is the often the same people using their hobby to ‘raise’ money for their chosen charity; they seem to expect the same friends and family to repeatedly dig into their pockets. The overseas trips are pretty bad; I don’t see much virtue in it all but see it’s a useful method for charities to gain income.
Your friend would really annoy me with the constant posts whether or not she’s done the miles and I wouldn’t fork out for so many fundraisers in such a short space of time.

@Katrinawaves I don't do social media other than twitter - and if I did I wouldn't bang on about my donations to charity or the amount of volunteering that I do.

Could it be that she is taking her total steps and distance over the whole day. So having run 5k but made up say 3k in steps walking through the day and calling it 8k covered in total?

But your original post is full of detail about her dishonesty, that she’s lying about her totals for every run, that you find it ‘infuriating’ that she’s lying ‘blatantly’ on sm to ‘make herself look good’!

I am so proud of her for running

be honest, no you aren't.

Has it not always been like this, though? Kids would knock doors asking for donations and nobody had any idea if they actually did the thing they were claiming to when they handed the cash over.

Which I suppose is a bit different because it's kids, but does it really matter? I get that you say you'd rather donate to causes of your choosing, but like, just do that then? I'm not understanding why you can't just do that instead of donating to a cause you're not interested in and then getting grumpy over feeling deceived. If you cared about the cause, I don't think you'd be bothered. Because you'd donate either way.

All these fundraisers are is an attempt to encourage people to donate by making it personal to them. You care about your mate, so if they're doing something to raise funds, you're more likely to donate. It's your friendship the charity is accessing, really, not the amount of miles she runs.

It takes a special kind of insecurity to believe that a friend’s social media pages are more popular than your own because they have chosen a random charity to fundraise for 😂😂😂

donate or don’t. Mute them for the period of the fundraiser if the posts irritate you. But why be a bitch about them? That’s unnecessary and speaks volumes about you.

Or donate to a charity that you like, consider well run and support the cause (and if your me, have read their accounts and are happy with them), plus gift aid the donation if you're in a position to, rather than something random your friend thinks will boost her social media pages.

I find this attitude quite distasteful. These fundraisers (I've never done one btw) are often completed by people who have personal ties with the charities, and the fundraising is a part of their process of dealing with sadness or grief. It makes me really sad that someone would look at, say, someone running a marathon to raise money for a cancer charity that supported their late mother, and think "ugh, virtue signalling."

Is she running more than once a day?

Maybe she is doing two runs some days? So the longest she’s ever done in a single continuous run is 9k but on the day you noticed, she ran 8k in the morning and went out in the evening and did a shorter 4k?

Its a bit harsh to assume she is a bare faced liar based just on this!

For those who hate fundraisers that’s fine, and you are entitled to feel that way but again criticising others for doing them when significant funds are raised for the charities they support is a bit mean spirited. I often do these things for a charity close to my heart. I don’t pressure my friends to donate (am grateful when they do) and when the challenge is completed I quietly match the donations so the charity receives double. Part of the way in which the donations rise however is by doing daily blogs or social media posts. You can always put friends on mute over the period in question if you are irritated by these but I usually find I have a gang of people spurring me on and bantering on these posts so not everyone hates them

I ignore my friends when doing charity things tbh, it's all a bit wow I'm so good look at me

I couldn’t be bothered wasting energy worrying about this. I’d try to avoid her posts if it’s triggering you

If the charity gets the money, who cares? Surely people don't say "well, she didn't put in the miles, so I'm not going to give my donation"? Or do they??? It's all about raising awareness of the charity concerned.