The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

Good run from Ben. Congratulations!

Floberg - A few pages ago I commented that I think he still has one more decent jump in marathon time to go and if I was someone coaching him, there's glaring holes in his training that could reap large benefits if plugged. As previous comments have echoed, I'm completely baffled by his entire approach to this marathon. Anecdotally, I have a friend who ran Chicago and improved his pb from 2:33 to 2:29, Floberg, if you do read this thread take note of this next part. He made that jump by not just increasing his volume, but his marathon specific workouts. You're not doing enough (really anything) in training to specifically prepare for the marathon. This is what you need to fix.

2:32 off of no marathon specific work is actually quite a decent effort. It indicates to me that with more targeted work, you could well go under 2:30. Regardless of what anyone here says, holding on shows that you have the required mental tenacity.

However, don't try and paint Chicago like some herculean effort though. 'A PB is a PB' - correct, but you completely underprepared. Take some accountability, stop overestimating your fitness and have a proper think about what the marathon requires vs what you're doing.

He's so fit though. He's the fittest he's ever been. Have you seen his abs?

HAVE YOU SEEN HIS ABS??

I follow this thread but have never watched one of Floberg's videos until this morning. I was shocked by how low his weekly elevation is?? Surely that should be a focus for the future, a bit of conditioning in the legs over hills?

Well done to Ben. Great run. Bet Welsh isn’t happy.

The dude lives in a flat part of the country. What can he do? He also runs pan flat marathons

a runner hitting ~14:40 and ~30:20 (by vdot) should run ~2:20flat. BiR is almost 4mins outside of that, yes it's a PR but also shows even now he's still underperforming relative to his fitness

Looks like Anya Culling blew up around at the 20mile mark, anyone know if this was a A-race for her?

Jeff's coaching only works on people who are juicing.

He's banked good training but hasn't really had the most ideal build for a marathon so I don't think it's surprising that his 10k doesn't exactly translate.

I don't think vdot accounts for the fact that most peoples' marathons are longer than the actual marathon distance. According to his Strava Ben ran 42.59km, and he did the actual 42.2km in 2:22:20.

And Matt Fox out with a stress fracture. He came back too quickly after his four months off.

She is coming off some sort of injury. But I do not think she has ever put the same training in for any race since she ran in the mid 2:30s. I think she found that becoming an influencer off that accomplishment was more fun than training to that level. She is super talented but I am not sure how motivated she is in that regard.

This has to be a troll, right?

Flowy gonna flowy…the videos get longer the mileage gets higher and the confidence hits all time personal bests and yet the performance falls flat. Maybe his 9:30pm 4 mile runs to hit 90 for the week weren’t worth it? I agree with others who’ve asked where he goes now? All that for a 7 second PR. He absolutely races again, Indy for sure. He thinks he’s faster than he was today but you get the race you deserve. I hope he goes to Indy just to see what the comments here would be after.

I hope floberg saves this experience to his core memory. Recognizing what went wrong in his training is the first step to improvement. All those mileage and "suffering" in training for a measly 7 second improvement is very inefficient. He needs someone who could provide immediate feedback to prevent him from overcooking workouts, saying splits, "stay relaxed, don't push".

I completely agree with all the posts about Floberg. I think he honestly needs to get a new coach. Looking back on his training it’s clear he doesn’t do enough marathon specific workouts. All that just for a seven second PR. if I were him, I’d start incorporating more progression runs steady state runs and longer marathon specific workouts. It feels like he has so many weeks where he just does one workout a week.

The Kaizen app that was predicting Floberg would run a 2:25 goes home devastated.

I definitely think there are a few things I could change in marathon training to improve for next time, but I'm not necessarily sure "harder training" is the thing.

Maybe I'm wrong there, but I think I could do with a touch more volume in my marathon specific workouts. However, I think the intensity of those workouts was spot on: I basically ran the exact same pace in the race (with the same HR figures) as I ran in those workouts (if you take out the big hill at 36k).

I'm also aware of plenty of guys who ran over the weekend, who did much harder workouts in their prep than me, who faded much worse than I did in the last 7k of their marathon. Obviously, there's plenty of other variables there - but I think making marathon workouts too hard is one of the biggest mistakes people make in marathon training. Again, I could be wrong there, but it's certainly a mistake I've made in the past.

In terms of easy running, I'm aware that they probably look very slow to other people, but they don't feel that slow to me. I'm blown away that other people with similar times (or slower) can bang out 7 minute miles for their "easy" runs. To me, that just wouldn't be easy at all. And I wouldn't be able to run 90 mile weeks if I did that (I doubt I'd be able to even run 60mpw). But if people can get away with it, and they think it's working, then more power to them.

Guys, we are talking way too much about this loser.