In a recent edition of a local paper in Britain, a British ultrarunner was credited with having walked a new world best for the 1000 miles, and having set a new End to end record - John O'Groats to Land's End. The claims are unfounded. There was a similar example in Australia earlier this year, when a Sri Lankan runner was credited by newspapers with having broken Yiannis Kouros' 1000-kilometre mark. Over the past twenty years a number of people have claimed to have broken world ultra bests, and their stories have been widely accepted by the mainstream media. When such reports are investigated, tracking down hard facts about times and distances often proves becomes impossible.
Claims also change in response to new queries.
Reporters don't know Newspaper reporters are not experts on ultrarunning. If some one tells claims to have run a 1000 miles in nine days, chances are they will probably print it. And if such things can occur now, the possibility was even more so 140 years ago when information often took months to communicate, and communities were often isolated. Thus, as far as I can tell, much of the detail and claims relating Mensen Ernst's feats seem to stem from reports and accounts produced by himself. It is possible that there were first hand accounts of people who actually saw him run incredible distances in front of them.