LetsRun was a completely different forum in 2003. Wow.

I think the difference now is that we have a better common understanding of how to train well. We know how to train speed and endurance appropriately. That's why we pay more attention to the quirky new things being tried rather than having big discussions about training blocks.

Continuer of things wrote:

Was that really Mr. 666 Energy Drink himself? I started coming here just around the time that he was announcing his departure. I'm impressed that he stuck to it. Although I can't say I miss him.

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

The more things change, the more things stay the same:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030428021927/http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=105610&thread=105610

(But most of the first page of the board that day was on running.

He's calmed down a lot over the years from his earlier days at letsrun.

As with a lot of people, you shouldn't judge them by their online persona. Jason is a good guy, and in his prime was faster than just about anyone other than the upper elites who posted here.

beer can wrote:

If the scholars among us did that, the trolls wouldn't find this such an exciting place to hang out.

Have you ever tried it? The high-school and college kids have infinite ego and infinite energy to do post after post. The informed generally are more conservative with where they spend their energy since they are wise enough to have learned about impact and influence.

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

The more things change, the more things stay the same:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030428021927/http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=105610&thread=105610

(But most of the first page of the board that day was on running.

Good stroll down memory lane if you sift through those pages. Definitely more talk about running. Political stuff just flared up sometimes, like during elections or when war was declared.

They banned users more often then, but deleted fewer threads. The trolls and mods hadn't really taken over. Frank and malmo had huge fights that spanned three or four message boards.

Things got wild in 2004 during the election season and it's been downhill since.

rojo wrote:

Training information used to be revolutionary. Once everyone got it out there and the US stopped totally sucking, there was no need to talk training.

You'd better shine your little light on U.S. marathoning, then. The sucking there is just getting started.

wejo wrote:

Clearly a troll. Elites have rarely posted under their own names on here.

However, maybe we should encourage people ie pros to post under verified handles like on twitter.

dope as hell

troof be told wrote:

You'd better shine your little light on U.S. marathoning, then. The sucking there is just getting started.

Lol I don't know why I found this so funny

Welcome to the new Letsrun. wear 17 will get you 20.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=5708287&page=0

I disagree, there is a lot still to be learned in running. and Jack Daniels is not the end all and be all. Bit overrated if you ask me. The craft of becoming a better distance runner has come a ways, but is far from being perfected. A good coach is intuitive too. I have also encountered numerous raining variations which are not shared on these message boards.

rojo wrote:

reggae rob wrote:

Running is not that complicated. After discussing it for a couple years, what else is there to say?

Bingo. It's like a game and once you solve it - why bother.

Training information used to be revolutionary. Once everyone got it out there and the US stopped totally sucking, there was no need to talk training. The focus became instead - drugs.

Now that everyone is training pretty well, who is training to well.

I'm thinking about doing a piece on my time at Cornell. But it was so much easier to be successful in say 2003 than it is now. If you got a guy just reasonably good, he dominated as so many peopl were doing awful stuff. Then all of the advice got out on LetsRun/Internet and now everyone is running fast.

rumors lies and innuendo wrote:

[quote]jjjjjjjjj wrote:

They banned users more often then, but deleted fewer threads. The trolls and mods hadn't really taken over. Frank and malmo had huge fights that spanned three or four message boards.

Things got wild in 2004 during the election season and it's been downhill since.

What fights?

Continuer of things wrote:

Was that really Mr. 666 Energy Drink himself? I started coming here just around the time that he was announcing his departure. I'm impressed that he stuck to it. Although I can't say I miss him.

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

The more things change, the more things stay the same:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030428021927/http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=105610&thread=105610

(But most of the first page of the board that day was on running.

Jason is still around, he posted here a few weeks ago:

rojo wrote:

reggae rob wrote:

Running is not that complicated. After discussing it for a couple years, what else is there to say?

Bingo. It's like a game and once you solve it - why bother.

Training information used to be revolutionary. Once everyone got it out there and the US stopped totally sucking, there was no need to talk training.

...

I'm thinking about doing a piece on my time at Cornell. But it was so much easier to be successful in say 2003 than it is now. If you got a guy just reasonably good, he dominated as so many peopl were doing awful stuff. Then all of the advice got out on LetsRun/Internet and now everyone is running fast.

Interesting. The internet was around in the 90s, but most of the training information back then was about heart rate zones. Now, there's the tempo run as the cornerstone. I sucked in the 90s because I tried to do the heart rate thing and never did tempo runs.

One thing that is still lacking very much here and elsewhere is information about injury prevention, injury identification and injury healing.

The 10% rule is f'ing stupid and totally out of date. Also, any non-team athlete without premium health care really struggles what to do when they have nagging mid-foot pain. They can't get an MRI and need to know if they have to sit out 6-8 weeks or not.

asfadsfads wrote:

Gotta disagree with you. Renato Canova still tries to post about revolutionary stuff on here, but all he gets in response are troll posts accusing him of doping his athletes. Think of how many luminaries used to post here who've since left.

And some of those trolls are former elite runners like Tim Hutchings.

Ralph Wiggum wrote:

rumors lies and innuendo wrote:

[quote]jjjjjjjjj wrote:

They banned users more often then, but deleted fewer threads. The trolls and mods hadn't really taken over. Frank and malmo had huge fights that spanned three or four message boards.

Things got wild in 2004 during the election season and it's been downhill since.

What fights?

What fights? Epic fights. To say these guys hated each other is an understatement.

Here's the story, saw the entire thing unfold, ca. 1999-2000 to 2003-04, and it could be corrobrated by dozens.

FrankS was a chief denizen of MERVs running, a semi-private site which was fairly active at the time. malmo was doing what malmo does at TnFmedia.com and the message board worlds were separate. However, one day a frequenter of both sites (not me) put out a call to arms to TnFmedia, and it was like the Huns meets the suburbs. A lot of clash of personality and style ensued.

After some time and dozens of flame wars, malmo did a little background check on Frank and found that his PRs were lies, so on top of being a blowhard and control freak Frank hadn't been truthful. Over time MERVs sort of fell apart into anarchy (it too did not have registration so like here trolling became the norm) and you didn't know who was saying what or who was friend or foe.

The acrimony was mostly kept at MERVs for a couple years, but about the time that this place started taking off-- 2001 to 2002/03, Frank would troll malmo and malmo would call him out and they'd go into a dozen name calling posts apiece, both concluding that the other was a MFing a-hole. The interpersonal attacks were brutal and crossed into a couple other message boards too.

In the end malmo won out, the facts were on his side, and Frank was relegated to a footnote and an example of a lyin' cheatin' troll.

rumors lies and innuendo wrote:

What fights? Epic fights. To say these guys hated each other is an understatement.

Sorry to ruin your fiction, but the "fighting" was one-sided. I never hated Frank or anyone else. Frank, of course, hated me.

Now for the real story. One day tnfmedia uber-troll Brutal, who was getting no traction harassing the locals accidentally discovered Merv, a very small, and intensely cliquish running site for joggers. Brutal, was a self-proclaimed expert on sprints, who, like many one-topic trolls, would hijack any and all threads to turn them into Sprint Jeopardy.

One day I found out about what Brutal had been doing so I decided to bring a posse to that message board and rout him out. I pretty much did a bang up job at exorcising the Demonic Brutal, but due to the parochial mature of Merv, I became one of the "Outsiders," and a few Malevolent Mervert peasants took up their torches and pitchforks to storm my Black Castle on the hill with no success, instead they torched their own village.

As far as the saga of Franks PR's. I had no interest in the contents of that peasant's straw bed; however, it was the Knight Kemibe that uncovered his straw bed was made of crabgrass.

I often wonder if he's still alive?

ritz won bronze at world junior xc and world half marathon champs.

Thanks for chiming in malmo. You are right that I can't say that you hated Frank, although both of you had some strongly worded exchanges.

I remember some things differently as far as how things changed, and I do have a pretty good memory. It was magpie who made the first post in TnFmedia. Brutal and others followed. I first encountered Brutal in TnFmedia, the uber-troll of all time, and he was common on other running-type websites for at least another decade.

Mervs was cliquish, and the first thing they'd do is check on someone's PR and see if it was legit. And then they'd (well it was just a few) brow beat them with rules of what to say and how to say it.

But it wasn't all joggers either. Out of maybe 70 regulars (somewhere between 50 and 100 at it's peak, it was never a big message board), there were at least three US Olympic marathon qualifiers, a DII national champion, and a Canadian national champion. One regular, who came up short on an OT qualifer, went onto win Western States 100 and some other major ultras.

I proudly blame myself thank ya very effing much

welllll..... wrote:

It might also be because that demographic back then that was passionate about running doesn't run as much as they used to... but are still on here, but posting about other topics in addition to running. I know I don't run as seriously as I used to back then, and while the training threads are interesting, don't read them as avidly as I once used to. Now some of the off-topic threads are probably the reason I keep coming back.

This is surely true. I'm in my 30s now, and I don't really compete anymore. I still come back to Letsrun because I got to know the board when I was really serious about running in my early 20s.

As for the role of Letsrun in improving US distance running, I don't really think that's disputable. Obviously the website helped to widely disseminate training theory. But there's more to it than that. Getting a multiplicity of perspectives is incredibly valuable, because training is as much an art as a science. It's one of the reasons I love talking to masters runners. They often have interesting perspectives on things like how to structure the mileage in one's week, how much recovery to take (each week, month, year), how much relative emphasis to place on different kinds of workouts, and on racing tactics. This is all the kind of stuff that you can't really learn just from science. Letsrun gave younger runners, in particular, access to the kind of collective running wisdom that you can't get from reading books.