Official Seth Demoor Gasparilla Half Marathon Prediction Thread

neednewshoes wrote:

Go pro in Seth kitchen closet wrote:

This is always so tiring to watch. My guess is 1:12.

He spends too much energy on low quality youtubing.

What I don't understand is how/why people consistently tune in. On the one hand, modern conventional wisdom tells us that humans have zero attention span, and any content he makes is battling with so much other content for their attention. But on the other hand, you have people who watch this content, which to me has the density of whipped cream, every day. Like I guess it's hard to initially snag someone's attention, but once connecting with your content is a part of their identity, they stick around? Or they develop a parasocial relationship with the content creater?

I guess all this to say: I have no idea what someone gets from watching Seth's videos every day.

They don't. Less than 10% of his subscribers watch his videos. Most people who subscribed have tuned him out by now. His numbers are way off what they were a year ago.

neednewshoes wrote:

What I don't understand is how/why people consistently tune in. On the one hand, modern conventional wisdom tells us that humans have zero attention span, and any content he makes is battling with so much other content for their attention.

I'm pretty interested in this as a general point. You're right that conventional wisdom is that our attention span is shrinking. Is that really true, though? I don't listen to Joe Rogan, but aren't his podcasts like three hours long? There is a Youtube video criticizing NFTs that everyone is talking about right now-- it's over two hours long and it has 4.8 million views.

I'd be interested in whatever research has been done, but my theory is that people have a lot of time during their days where they don't have to be fully engaged. Commutes, working out, doing mindless tasks for work. During those times their timespan is pretty much unlimited. I would not be surprised if a lot of people watch Demoor's videos while working out in a home gym or on a treadmill/elliptical.

This is all pretty interesting.

What we have now is trust fund people (like the Brojos and Seth) creating content for the bored masses at home.

The new reality of the 2020ies.

But a lot of content on youtube is like that. I watch sometimes some DIY woodworking videos. A lot of them are made by trust fund kids. They have workshops with machinery better than any carpentry just for making some silly things for etsy.

Its not a secret that Seth idolises Casey Neistat (who also runs a little, and isn't bad) where most of his videos are just him bumming about living a dream lifestyle in New York. Seth is basically like a bargain basement Colorado version of him, or he wants to be anyway. He really should stick to running content which isn't bad and he is a decent runner, as his personality is too grating for a lifestyle 'influencer' style video blog.

For some real quality RUNNING YouTube content, I'm really digging Sweat Elite's output, short to the point, good questions from sensible people, good mix of pro/semi-pro runners, loving it.

Setting the tone for an epic failure next weekend.

I did a random scroll through the video. The dramatic sighing made me laugh so hard. For sure there will be some excuse when he misses his goal. It's fun to see him trying to craft his narrative. Watching his wife baby him while he is so smug is so gross.

On the other hand 6:23 per mile with 127 HR is kind of impressive. Is that accurate or does he do Strava shenanigans?

If its a wrist based heart rate monitor I would not believe it at all. Everybody I know uses them and the hr data is always low, when in reality its not correct. I'm sure when Seth does his 7:50-9:00 pace runs his hr is closer to the listed 123bpm, but I would bet anything under 6:45 is more in the 140-148 range. I have no skin in the game, so who really knows.

Can you blame overtraining when you set your training schedule?

As for the HR, this really gets his Strava stans hard. I’d say it’s relatively accurate because he’s done so much mountain running at altitude and he probably has quite a high V02. He’s also said he has a resting HR in the mid 30’s. But really that just means he has a large heart relative to his size and has a strong base. Doesn’t mean much in regards to top line speed. I am in my mid 40’s now and do easy runs 5mins per k with a HR around 110 and early 30’s had a resting HR in the 30’s. It doesn’t automatically equate to elite. It means you can go long at slow paces and stay comfy.

came to LetsRun to see if anyone was talking about this. I don't follow Seth anymore but the title of the video caught my eye.

He is Cooked with a capital C. Not being able to sleep isn't a function of "too much goodness" in your body. It's a fairly common symptom of overtraining. Much too late to salvage at this point but nothing he's done training-wise looks like the right thing to do (still doing hard long runs a week out).

The hard thing about self-coaching is that it's hard to be honest with yourself and look at your training objectively. You can justify just about any training move you make in the name of "self-coaching" or "knowing what works for me" even if it's not actually good for you. It's frustrating to watch people who could benefit from coaching assure themselves that they definitely don't need it.

Hope he proves me wrong, truly. But I don't see it.

So if he is doing all these runs at ~120bpm HR he is just doing long easy runs mostly. High volume mileage but relatively little actual speed work. Why? His aerobic base has never been the issue. His reluctance to do the higher intensity work required for getting faster for marathons is really frustrating.

All I’ll say is I’ve never seen Seth Demoor and Joel olsteen in the same room at the same time...

Now it all makes sense.

I want Joel's wealth and Seth faith, not the other way around.

That was absolutely painful to watch! I don’t know what was the worst:

Seth setting his workout clothing in the family’s breakfast crumbs and bacterium?

His contrived sighing and tiredness that made pron acting look Oscar worthy?

True Love’s forced “Stand by Your Man” call out to his critics?

Awful content delivered with smug insincerity! He is just mailing it in these days. Even the cinematography was terrible. What does the paying fan base see in this guy?

Ok,
"His Catholicism and toxic positivity was too grating in the end."
Too positive ?
Wow if you want to be trashed as an underperforming runner, I can help you.
You are absolutely ridiculous as a runner ! Can't event break 2 on the marathon !
You are a very bad runner, low performing, my mother walks faster than you run.
Do you feel better now ?
Seth is what he is, just helps others run and feel better. Obviously this positivity is a bad thing.
You are a lower performing sh**. Your performances are ridiculous. You run so slowly... maybe you are just walking (slowly at that). Don't talk to runners you slow walker !
Done

Right off the bat I need to acknowledge that I don't watch any of his videos, but I do follow him on Strava. He is pretty interesting to follow and think about if you're interested in the limits of what purely aerobic training can do... kind of similar to the discussion of Nils van der Poel's training log and the way he "purified" his aerobic base phase.

As far as Seth goes, though... it's all base. There is no payoff. Like I said, I'm not watching his videos, but if he's claiming that he is overtrained that is nonsensical. He is significantly undertrained. Or, to be more precise, his aerobic capacity is fully developed, and his ability to train/race at anything zone 2 or higher is severely underdeveloped.

By the way, I don't think he sucks or anything. The guy has very strong PRs. His goal of an OT in the marathon is entirely reasonable. This is a guy who ran 2:23 in his debut marathon after going out under 67 minutes for the first half. Breaking 2:18 when he is able to train full-time should be imminently doable. To be honest, I'd kind of love to see him do it even though I find the whole schtick annoying.

But when I say he's undertrained, I mean I've never really seen anything like it. He's got Gasparilla this weekend and I would assume the goal if he's shooting for an OT in Rotterdam has to be around 65 minutes. Let's say 5:00 mile pace.

In 2022, he has logged four runs under 6:00/mile pace-- so in other words, he's done four workouts in the past seven weeks while training for a half marathon. He ran a 5k threshold at 5:10 pace, which is barely a training stimulus for someone at that level. 2x5k with some speed afterwards would maybe be a better approach.

He ran a 10k at 5:22 pace, which again, barely a stimulus-- that's slower than his goal MP. Maybe that's good for an easier tempo day when supplemented by other workouts. He ran 15k at 5:23 pace. Cool. That's a decent workout-- 15k at a little slower than MP. Again, you'd probably want something faster on another day that same week. Finally, he ran 20k at 5:21. Certainly encouraging, but not at all specifically tuned to the upcoming half, which is going to require a faster pace unless he's just planning to run it at MP (which, ok, that would be a choice). He "warmed down" from that 20k effort by running another 13 miles at 9:00/mile pace, which is maybe why he's feeling run down? A completely unnecessary addition to a good workout unless you're obsessed with weekly mileage to the detriment of all else.

I do wonder if he's just planning to add 5k to his threshold run every week or so until he runs 40k at MP. The way he has scheduled these thus far fits that pattern. It reminds me of the training philosophy pioneered by the great Marshall Burt. I see no flaws here:

Briefly looking at his Strava, he ran over 12 miles at around half-marathon pace (considering altitude conversion), then the next day (eight days out from Gasparilla), ran a pretty hard 23-miler containing vertical, at altitude. This upcoming half is a step toward his upcoming marathon. In the past, has has used the term ‘functional over-reaching’ .

I'm basically a new runner and watch some of his videos (running content focused parts). IMHO, he has no real idea how to train and is mileage focused instead of training focused. There's been so many times that I've thought, "Get a coach! You have good talent and could do so much better if you had a coach." I'm not elite nor sub-elite, so I only have a TP plan with good access to the coach (always upbeat and answers my questions quickly).

I learned a long time ago, if you want to be great at something, get a coach in that discipline. The best in world in any discipline have a coach. Elliot, LeBron, Tiger, Olympic gold medal winners, TdF winners, on and on and on.

With no high-school offers, he coached himself to walk-on at Colorado U.

He was coached in college by arguably one of the best and notable coaches in the USA (Wetmore).

After taking time off after college, starting a family, etc., he came back and recently trained himself to be an elite mountain climber, winning the Pikes Peak Marathon the last two years.

I've seen that. It describes my running for much of my life, but I don't claim to be training for anything, at least since my early 20s (had a 2-year bout with chronic fatigue syndrome and didn't expect to ever reach my earlier level after that).

If he were to do a few more harder sessions, he could probably pop off some good, shorter distance races. Up into my 30s and some of my 40s, I'd be able to pop off 15:xx/32:xx 5K/10Ks after literally only jogging easy mileage for a year or two, and only doing a few harder workouts in the weeks before, or racing into shape doing one race per week. It's how someone like me runs as a hobby and pastime and for fun, but isn't trying to ever set PRs (since that opportunity was over after age 22 for me).