Ignorance of letsrun staff on ultras

And women are slower and are out there longer and in Ultras they’re out there a lot longer.

Sorry, but this isn't just ultras. The Letsrun guys is some old white dudes with fossiled brains, thus not able to change their opinions or form any new ones.

I did a bad job explaining. The lack of diversity is no different — it's a class problem. Ultra and trail running have the same general diversity problems as road running, but it's magnified because it's a less accessible sport. It's not caused by some systematic racial bias within the sport, which I'm sure exists to a certain extent in certain places, which is what that article purports. Sure, you can probably find some BIPOC to participate in ultra running. If you do, congrats, pat yourself on the back.

I've seen efforts to drive recruitment for non-white people in road running, and while the core of the problem, class inequality, is the same, at least with road running it's 100x more accessible. You need relatively safe streets, it's way cheaper, and if you live in an urban area there's tons of races and it's easier to start a club. For ultras, they have none of that convenience. You need big hills or mountains. You need a car to get there. You need lots of money for gear and fuel and races. You have to live near a spot to train.

It's hard for me to see that research and its findings as nothing more than feel good lip service. It's like a yacht club saying, "Why aren't there more black people here?" I recognize we can't solve class inequality overnight, and every little bit helps, and baby steps, etc. But this just feels so tone-deaf and highlights this weird self-importance in the ultra community.

To be clear, I've encountered some of these exact same sentiments in the road running community, but it's never felt quite as rampant and disingenuous there.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

tl;dr: Rich guy asks poor guy, "Why don't you just have more money?"

I won an Ultra Marathon National Championship. I made the cover of a running magazine, yet I know that if someone fast showed up, I would have been runner up that day.

Let's be honest with each other. The talent is chasing whatever money is out there.

I always get a laugh when Ultra runners talk about their Crews, like they’re The Rolling Stones on tour.😂😂

We understand ultras perfectly. Shuffle shuffle stagger shuffle stagger slip stagger walk walk walk walk shuffle pass out. Look i made it. I have no skin on the bottoms of my feet, and it will take me months to physically recover from the effort. Awesome sport.

You left out the part when they stop for a five course meal and then take a nap.

Nonsense.

You can only race the people who show up on race day.
Otherwise you can downtalk any race: What if so and so showed up at the Olympics?

Yes indeed. That's very funny.
At my last 100 miler most crews included: Grandma, Grandpa, mother, dad, runners spouse and their 1-4 kids. It was ridiculous and it lengthened the runners time on the course by hours.

One thing I notice about ultra runners is that they sometimes have the dumbest training. Some completely abandon speed and then trudge around in the mountains endlessly. I’ve seen good but not great ultra runners log in more than 12 hours a week all year long. Some of them are compulsive vert aholics and need to gain like 15k a week consistently to be pleased with themselves. I like ultras myself but some people get into it for bad reasons. They are just trying to mask some other life issue with this sport.

You are right about that. The sport has changed quite a bit in the last 15 years. Not for the better.

The thing now is you find these middle of the pack (no offense to anyone I don’t care) runners that are get hard try hard Goggins like ex military types who get into ultras bleeding over from cross fit. They are totally annoying and there are a lot of them that live near me. I’ll take the middle pack hippy types from 10 years ago over these new self important people.

Funny argument in that I am telling you that I was declared a national champion (true story) and I know it was not a big deal and you disagree.

Thank you for the compliment but I am very aware of where I stood in the sport. I was a good club runner. No more than that.

Ultra = a long walk with lots of snacks.

It's possibly the least athletic event there is; those taking part look shuffling zombies

Ultra will never be mainstream in the US because too many of the population centers are flat hot car dependent suburban hell holes. There isn’t enough population close enough to train where it actually is nice to trail run.

Dauwalter and the other rising star of US trail running Sophia Laukli started as Nordic Skiers. Laukli has won a several trail major marathons in Europe this summer and she is just sprinkling 25 miles per week of running into her national team Nordic ski training and has beat a bunch of Africans in the process.

Nobody cares about your version of running. You are all insecure babies that need to make the race you compete in absurdly difficult (boring) so that nobody with talent or a brain challenges you.

Like actually, this is not running, get off the board please. You're pathetic, stop trying to pretend like you have value. Your existence makes the sport of running worse.

Let’s see you beat Tom Evans or Jim Walmsley in the marathon. Hell can you even beat Blanchard? I’d be shocked.

Imagine if the millions of people playing soccer instead went to distance running. The East African dominance would come to a complete end.

You mean, like most people running a marathon?