I went very hardcore with herblore the first 2 weeks (was top 10/15 for a while) and I can tell you almost every person swapped gp.. Once falls took over #1, the race was over. nobody swapped close to the stack they did.
I got to talk with him while he was still training, he was superheating addy bars and rune bars, making kites/legs/platebodies out of them. He also sold me 15k iron bars.