The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

Floberg has had low HR for years. I don't know if his Coros band is bad or he doesn't know his max HR. He says it's 190 but he's barfing and puking at 160

He has a chance to pull off the elite move of running a 'thon in less time than it takes to watch one of his videos

So now we have a running YouTuber, The Welsh Runner, pointing viewers to a podcast if they want to hear more detail about his, errrm, running. I thought that was what his videos were for, but it appears they’re just fluffy filler now, to promote his appallingly named podcast instead.

To be fair WelshRunner has just run a 1:11 Half at Cardiff about 2 weeks after doing Berlin. Which is an impressive time considering the conditions in Cardiff were far from ideal. Extremely humid and warm on the day.

But yet he doesn’t seem to want to talk about the detail on his YouTube channel, pointing viewers to his podcast instead? I really don’t want to get personal, but I will just say I don’t think he has the engaging voice needed for a podcast.

As bad as the Battersea park 10k conditions which I hear were dreadful?

Thomas from Believe in the Run using Maurten bicarb before running at 4+ hour marathon.

Watched an Adam Wood YT video and this guy Michael Ottensen makes an appearance. He's also got a YT channel and a 2:15 marathon PB. So I watch one of his day in the life videos. Dude gets up in the morning, runs, drives to work, works out/runs during lunch break, drives home like an hour. All while wife takes care of child while he's gone and also works. I was like WTF. You continue training like a pro, meet up regularly with dudes to train, make YT videos on the side and basically live the life of a single guy with a nice hobby while wifey also works and takes care of your child?!? I bet she doesn't get a hobby where she spends hours daily while you solo parent. I mean how.

Men: the bar is in hell. Do better if you don't want the divorce to come "out of nowhere".

Can we please stop mentioning THAT 10k.

I think some you guys in this thread are hella projecting based on a few snippets of a YouTube video. You're no better than the dude projecting his own personal trauma with his dad on every Floberg video. You have no clue about their private lives.

I don’t know this specific video (have never come across Adam Wood) but I have seen content from Michael Ottensen, and had the same impression. I’m competitive, albeit not as fast (2:20 - hopefully faster soon!), with a full time job as an attorney and a child. I cannot fathom having the time to film, edit, and deal with YouTube on top of this. We have the same 24 hours in a day. I usually get up at 4:15 already to run, work 8-6 (+/- a few), and handle household tasks, including childcare, in the meantime. I’m already sleeping <<7 hours/night and genuinely don’t know where the extra time comes from - unless, as you suggest, he’s just avoiding family, childcare, or his job.

Not to say I have it the worst (there are many runners in my orbit far, far busier!) and in some ways his ability to add video production on top of the usual is commendable but, man - I really hope his wife isn’t slaving away with dishes and bedtime while he cooks up his next great thumbnail.

When I got back into competitive running, I looked up pros on Strava and whoever seemed to have good HR data (you can tell by the graphs when it's unreliable), I'd look at their race HR's and look at their workout HR's and get an idea of how hard they ran their workouts relative to race efforts. It's easy for me to remember because I put everyone's HR in terms of my own HR. So someone will be about the same as me, or they're 5 higher, or 10 lower, etc. I've had this habit before I joined this thread.

When I started following youtubers, naturally I did the same thing. For Floberg, I pulled up his races and got an idea of his HR relative to my own and now whenever I see a new activity, I can glance at it and get an idea. His HR is indeed on the lower side. But his HR this training cycle has absolutely been suppressed beyond his norm.

There is no way it's reflecting improved fitness. If it weren't suppressed, it'd be indicating he's like a 2:25 guy or better. But from the RPE of his HM and his workouts, it's clear that his body can't raise his HR properly even when he's asking a lot from it. As mentioned above, Bakken points this out as a red flag. High HR and low lactate (if you're testing lactate) is what you want. You're getting fitter and your body is performing well. Abnormally low HR paired with normal or high lactate (at the same pace!) would lead one to cancel a session or take it very easy. You're not getting fitter and your body is just trying to survive the training.

As you get fitter, your HR should actually be HIGHER at your LT2. Your max HR doesn't change. But as you improve your threshold, you can clear more and more lactate. Which means you can run at higher intensities without blowing past LT2. This means higher % of vo2max, and higher % of max HR. So as your lactate clearance improves, the HR you can sustain for 1 hour goes up.

I believe Floberg's training this cycle has resulted in some helpful adaptations. So in a way, I think he has gotten fitter. Has he properly prepared himself for racing a marathon? No. He's left a lot up to chance. I don't even think that the aspect of fitness that he's improved is his current bottleneck. I think he's theoretically gotten better at running a 50mi race, but the intensity of a marathon is enough that some other physiological aspects come into play and will limit him.

If the taper gives him a chance to catch up on sleep and convince his body to be in "performance mode" rather than "survival mode" then he could have a great race. More likely is that he's not going to get the most out of his body on race day. He'll feel comfortable and not anywhere close to his limit in one way, but another bottleneck will affect him and he'll fade, and it'll feel like he had a bad day when actually he's just not properly prepared. If this were phase 1 of his training and he took a down week and went into phase 2 on 80mpw that was like a Canova special block, then I think he'd actually run 2:28. Coincidentally, the timing is perfect for him that he should've done CIM and ran Chicago as a training run like I am.

Final prediction: if he'd go out in 5:46-5:50 pace he can negative split for a high 2:30 at best, or a 2:31. Easy win for another PR. Live to run sub 2:30 another day. If he goes out low 5:40's or faster, he's going to fade to 2:30 or much worse, depending how hot & humid it is for the last hour of his race. Most likely time: another 2:32.

Y'all are wild for having no faith in Rory. I don't think Boston was a fluke. The only thing I'm worried about for Mantz and Rory is getting sucked into Korir's sub 2:01 attempt and it blows up their races. It's really tough being an elite where there's huge value in staying in the pack but the pack is too fast for most of the people in it. I'm feeling optimistic for both of them if they can make the right choice between staying with the pack until they die or letting it go and finishing strong.

Worth noting for any non-Brits here... The marathon FOD Runner is doing - Abingdon - is properly s*** for fast times. You're running on the path next to a road for a lot of it. He'll be solo for most of it too!

For some reason in the UK all of our decent closed road marathons are in the spring (despite 3 being owned by the same company) so there's slim pickings in autumn.

That said, Andy man you need to be kinder to your future self and fly to the continent for a race. Abingdon has an automatic 5 minute penalty.

Straight from the Matt Fox/Sweat Elite playbook. Though to attain full Foxy scammer mindset, WelshRunner needs to point his podcast listeners to another of his podcasts where he actually talks about his training (this one being behind a paywall, of course).

lol, only this thread could find fault in someone like the Welsh runner. Outside of LetsRuns snarkiness he is pretty much the most beloved non elite runner in Britain thanks to his absolute heroics at the London Marathon

Yowana has confirmed on Strava that he's not running Chicago this year. He seems to be in good shape so I'll be interested to see how he'll perform in the next marathon.

Interested to see how he’d get on in a 10k currently. Nick & Ben absolutely smashed it at Vitality 10k which sets them up perfectly for Chicago and Valencia

No..but what he's shown us is he works full time with a long commute, films+edits YT videos and trains 12 hours a week. There's just no time in the day left for him to pull his weight as a Dad and husband let alone do some housework. I just can't respect a man like that so won't watch more.

‘Earth credits’ cracks me up every single time. Just fantastic