The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

I wonder how much they paid him to make the video.

Yeah Cole has had a lot of injury issues particularly in the last year or so.

Really needs to focus on letting his body recover which considering he's an osteopath sprcialising in injuries he must know.

The volume of running he is currently doing with double day sessions in particular is insane he has that many runs on Strava can't work out what's going on!

I do think some of these runners have addictive personalties that cause them to over train.

It's a shame because I like him and he has great potential.

But if he carries on like this he's surely going to end up injured.

Anyone noticed Matt Fox hasn't been logging anything on social media/Strava?

I'd imagine it's some sort of visa drama.

He ditched his bridging visa to run osaka and could have issues returning to the US.

In the meantime his wife (and dog) face the same problem he had in the US but in reverse. She would need a national visa to stay in Portugal over 90 days so they could be in the process of doing that. I would imagine he would need a similar visa for the EU as well.

He had an entry to the Rome marathon at the weekend but didn't pop up there.

Matt must be a nightmare to be associated with. His decisions continually get him in a bind.

However, he seems pathologically incapable of seeing beyond the selfish pursuit of arbitrary marathon goals.

I think most amateurs, looking to improve, grapple with this issue. However, we reluctantly succumbed to the life/running trade-off.

I've started to consider why these guys are so triggering.

For me, it niggles watching some of these sub-elite guys with commitments and families hyper-focused on marathon training. I guess it triggers the suppressed selfishness a lot of runners have! It's like watching an exaggerated representation of my worst, repressed character traits.

I did think ppl were a little harsh on kofuzi..but then I watched the video.

He put in his recent 5k time of 21 minutes give or take a few seconds and then says he's running 65/70 mile per week......I have no words

Yeah, Fordy runs is almost always insanely rude to anyone who disagrees with him in the comments section of his videos.

I think anyone who starts a 'run club' named after themselves, gets loads of garish and badly-designed merch printed up with their name on and has a merry band of brothers 'walk it in' on every race they enter must be slightly tapped in the head.

I appreciate everyone has their own journey and reasoning for running, but as I live in the UK I must admit I wince internally every time I see a person at a race wearing his merch or entering races as a member of his 'club'. Especially adults.

I don't know what the draw is of joining a low-level internet celebrity running cult, especially when there's so many great actual athletic clubs here in the UK with proper coaching set-ups, very low entry fees and lots of history behind them - weird

Also I get force fed his videos tons in the Youtube algorithm too and definitely think that Fordy really feeds off of being a contrarian when it comes to recently-released shoes to generate clickbait.

It seems he does it deliberately. If everyone says the new Alphafly 3 is great he will say go out of the way to say it's garbage even though the shoe clearly isn't designed for jogging (walking) a marathon in at his pace

Kofuzi back in Italy. Must be an expensive trip.

I see Sarah Hartley from the Running Channel failed in her big sub 20 5k challenge. It appears running 25k a week is not a good enough training stimulus to drop 3 mins off your PB in a few weeks - She even had a video out the other day "This workout will get you to sub 20!!" - Well, it didnt

6,000 views in 24 hours for Kofuzi's infomercial. Did Runna pay a dollar a view? Who is going to tell them that Google will sell you YouTube ads for $.10-$.25 per view? Despite what influencers and robocaoch apps want us to believe, infomercials are not popular with the public. And never have been. And as for the robocaoch, people crave authenticity in the modern world, the opposite of AI.

An all expense paid trip more like it!

Kofuzi's results while using Runna don't reflect well on Runna. It's good to see Kofuzi seems to be more transparent now, however.

I was hoping she'd do it, but was concerned her mileage and workouts weren't there for a sub 20.

The girl is young, has no family responsibilities and running is her job yet she runs 35k a week! most of her runs are filming for the channel she works for.

She was on a Runna plan for London 24 and was "all in" for 3:30. Again, she had nothing at all to back this up, no HM or 10k time even close to 3:30 shape. As usual Runna had her run a few short runs per week then 30k on the weekend. I am sure her max mileage was about 50k in a week. She did a marathon pace run and had to stop because she was crying, turned up at London and was paced to a 3:45 and shouted "I hit my goal"

These channels, alongside Runna prey on the uneducated. Getting faster isn't about a "secret workout" or using some AI algorithm cheat code. To run faster, you just run more!

I'm glad someone has finally called out Sarah. One of her last big workouts was 4 x 1k / 4 x 400m and her pace just got worse and worse, yet people on Strava are commenting that she's 'already there for sub 20'. She needs to run more and stop calling 5 min pace an 'easy run' when she can't break 20.

I don't mind the channel apart from her. There are some legit hobby runners on that channel like Mo who actually seem to put in the work and have continued to improve. It's also fun to see Andy, a formerly very fast runner, take on new distances like the marathon.

Mo and Jess (Who might well be married to the Runna owner or something) seem like legit decent runners

Has anyone watched the channel Run The Planet? It's only small but the guy is running ridiculous mileage and 40k long runs with 3 x 10k at marathon pace and doesn't seem to be getting any quicker than a 3:30 marathon!. He blew up at Barcelona this weekend

Overall, it's a good channel. Andy comes across very well; also, there is no pretence. Just hobby joggers enjoying running.

I do wonder, though, what will happen when the VC funding for Runna runs out! They seem to be propping up the shoetubing economy.