Natalie Cook “not allowed” to post on Strava?

Not sure if it’s related to this but about 20 years ago the Colorado xc team had an embarrassing situation play out on what was the equivalent of social media back then. I don’t remember all the details other than it was a bullying incident where racial slurs were used & someone might have gotten kicked off the team or out of school. I’m sure that after that incident the team was given stricter guidelines around what they could post on the internet.

Not social media. That was an email that was sent directly to the person that included a threat to drag him behind a car.

It's not really about trade secrets. Strava, like all social media, promotes overtrainers and coaches don't want their kids running extra hard for kudos.

Running is really rocket science. You have to protect your training plans..

Ok I thought it was on AIM or on a message board.

Out of all the ways the emailer could have acceptably threatened to harm someone, they had to go with "dragging behind a car". That was dumb.

To me, it's not about trade secrets. When we are talking about high level footraces where the margins are crazy thin, there is huge value in knowing what your opponent is or is not capable of. Any opposing coach who is halfway intelligent can use this data from training or racing to "scout" opposing teams/athletes regarding their strengths, weaknesses, current fitness, mental worries/sources of confidence, etc.. Then, opposing coach can somehow use this information in a number of ways (subtle ways or significant ways) to be better prepared to capitalize and beat those who are so public with their training or mental states.

I once helped coach a high school state champion who had a huge rival. The rival's Dad posted everything online/messageboards about his darling child (you know, pride). I knew that opposing athlete, especially play by play nuanced race details, and used that constant flow of information from the prideful Dad to assist in preparing my athlete in both training and racing all season long for a winning state meet strategy that would capitalize on what seemed to be, from my evaluation of the public/posted Dad data, regularly demonstrated weaknesses from the opponent. We won. Fun project. And that's just the minor leagues of high school.

But yeah, if all you care about is racing the clock and not trying to get every single legal advantage to help "win or place high in the barbaric footrace" -- you will never see the value in staying private.

Some college coaches are very crazy.

Back on the old Dyestat forum, there was that thread where people would post their daily workouts. While I was in high school from like 2005-2009 (before Strava got very popular), I'd post workouts under an alias and it was pretty cool. Some really accomplished high schoolers, collegians, and post-collegians would post there as well. I recall Kyle Merber and Zach Ornelas posting there. But my first week of college running for a P5 school, I posted some of the times I ran for a 4mile tempo and a 10 mile tempo which were great considering how slow I was in high school -- like 21:20 and 57:40 or around there -- and I got a bunch of encouraging feedback from people who'd followed the thread for a while and I was honestly kind of pumped.

Anyway, the next day I show up for a long run and my coach calls me out by my pseudonym and tells me to stop posting sh!t on Dyestat. Good times.

Is a 2:40 marathon considered hobbyjogging?

feel like most people are full on training around that time, especially older people and women.

Natalie is a wonderful person.

There are people who probably run in HS that use LRC even when their coach says not to, but when they go to the hotel before the race the next day, they are probably on their forums...

For a lot of reasons, it is taboo to publicly mention LRC or acknowledge it exists (no sarcasm) even though it's a good board for the most part. Maybe it's a public stigma thing?!

2:40 is a local or regional class time for men and a near-elite time for women...it's very rare to hit that time unless you are naturally talented.

LRC is full of solid runners who aren't sometimes aware of how fast they are relative to general pop.

I don't have any problem telling people that I read/post on letsrun. This is the best website in the world for runners to discus anything we want!

The talk is someone explaining to her that rapists and perverts can see where you are every day. It’s very easy for them to find a place to kidnap you if they want.

What athletes?

Where did she "say" this?