why does David Roche keep banging on about being in sub-4 at altitude shape?

So the response to someone who you genuinely think is on the verge of a mental health crisis is to contribute to ripping his career apart on the internet and writing off people who believe in him? But the basis for a lot of the dislike for him is that people think he’s not treating others well? I think the back and forth banter is kind of fun and entertaining, even if I am on one side of the discussion. If l had a genuine concern for someone’s mental health, though, I’m not sure I could bring myself to trash them on the internet (even if I thought they were exaggerating a Strava file).

I’m not genuinely concerned about his mental health. He cares so much about his image that any criticism is immediately “triggering”. The way they talked about being bullied by Koop last year made it sound like the world was ending. If online comments affect you that much it’s a good sign that you need to either spend less time on the internet or stop caring so much about what other people think. If you are going to put yourself out there as an “expert in the field” as well as a “world class athlete”, “amazing writer” “nicest guy ever” blah blah blah you are going to get some attention. If it’s legitimate you shouldn’t need to keep shouting it to the world, because the world will recognize you. Instead it comes across disingenuous, desperate and passive aggressive.

“I love you guys. I’m running on love on this one…and a LITTLE bit of hate.”

lol

Thank you for clarifying that! I do agree that anyone who puts themselves out there and makes a name for themselves is going to have people who love them and people who hate them and everyone in between, too. It definitely comes with the territory!

"Ah, the ‘if you can’t handle the abuse, log off’ defense—a timeless gem. But let’s pause on that for a second. You say you’re not actually concerned about Roche’s mental health, but you also argue that if criticism gets to him, he should just disappear from the internet. That’s a pretty telling contradiction.

And let’s be real: if you truly believed his ‘fraudulence’ was self-evident, why the need to relentlessly hammer the point? If he were as disingenuous, desperate, and passive-aggressive as you claim, surely his audience would see right through it. The sheer intensity of this takedown effort suggests something else entirely—almost as if his success (and yes, attention) is aggravating to those who feel they deserve it more.

It’s all got a very Amadeus quality to it—‘I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.’ And yet, even as Salieri insists that history will vindicate him, he spends his life consumed by the one thing he claims to despise. Funny how that works."

who hates him, exactly? certainly not me. I'm merely and calmly pointing out his lies

Too be fair I think there have been some malicious statements in this thread that are a bit overboard and as far as people who are “defending” him or playing devils advocate etc.. I think you have been very reasonable in your critiques.

lmao this is amazing

Funny. This has been mentioned so many times, but you didn’t take it as a valid point before.

He is a public figure. He actively puts himself on podcasts. He wants attention. He says things as truth, which means the burden of proof is on him. When people call him out and criticize him and dislike him for his narcissism, they are told they are haters. It doesn’t matter what you call them, they are allowed to post anything they observe or think.

David and Megan could actually just not be so online. They could actually update their posting behavior to reflect some humility also. They are hyper sensitive and defensive with every sincere attempt at exposing something they got wrong. It’s legitimately a bad look and just plain bad when it comes to being good coaches and honest influencers.

Yuck. It’s all just yuck. I’m done here because the Riches and whoever is so far up their butts want to detract from why they might be disliked and found dishonest. There’s no attempt to engage in that stuff.

"Ah, ‘the Riches.’ A simple typo? Or a little slip of the unconscious, revealing more than intended?

Because if we take a psychoanalytic lens to this, it’s not just a mistake—it’s a condensation of the anxieties swirling beneath the surface. ‘The Riches’ isn’t really about wealth in a literal sense, but about a perceived excess—of attention, of confidence, of cultural presence. It’s an attempt to collapse the Roches into an archetype: not just flawed individuals, but figures of overindulgence, of too-muchness, of something that must be corrected.

It’s all very Great Expectations—not in the way the critics imagine, where they see themselves as Pip, exposing frauds and demanding justice. No, they’re Miss Havisham, locked in a self-made prison of grievance, obsessing over perceived slights, convinced that if they just seethe hard enough, the past will change.

And so we end up here: another dramatic exit, another promise to be ‘done,’ another piece of kindling thrown onto a fire that never quite goes out."

I saw this video earlier on my YouTube feed, thought it was interesting, and reminded me of the high carb ideas mentioned here.

It's pretty into the biochem weeds, but the tl;dr is that there are many reasons 90g/hr+ of carbs may not work for many runners, especially slower or recreational runners - if you lack the mitochondria to metabolize high levels of exogenous carbs ingested, they'll likely just sit in your gut and do more harm than good.

My take away is that David, Megan, and their elites can run an ultra at a higher relative intensity to their LT2 than virtually any runner I know. I have tried, and failed, to maintain a road ultra at the very top of my Z2 HR (based on lactate testing correlation), so I probably don't need as many carbs as they do per hourr to get through a long event (and may crap my pants if I try too hard to eat a gel every 8 minutes or so).

I typically don't engage in threads that reach this level of debate over minutiae, but I listen to the SWAP podcast. If this writer isn't Roche, it's a really good take on his diction.

I don’t think you hate him necessarily! I do think some people on here might, but I was just agreeing with that notion that publicity brings that upon itself. Sorry that I didn’t acknowledge that more before too.

"It’s telling that the Roches’ most persistent critics remain fixated on their use of the word ‘love.’ Again and again, the charge is made: it’s performative, it’s insincere, it’s saccharine. The assumption is that love, deployed as often as they deploy it, can only be some kind of affective sleight-of-hand.

But what if this is a category error? What if the problem isn’t that the Roches are misusing love, but that their critics are misinterpreting it?

Michael Hardt argues that love, in its fullest sense, isn’t just an emotion but a political force—a means of reorganizing relationships, breaking down barriers, and fostering new collectivities. Love, in this framework, isn’t the opposite of competition; it’s what makes competition meaningful. It’s not about denying ambition but about recontextualizing it, shifting it away from individual conquest and toward something communal, relational, expansive.

This is, I think, the deeper logic of the Roches’ project. The insistence on love isn’t a branding exercise; it’s a structural intervention. It’s a direct challenge to the idea that athletic success must be defined by scarcity, by exclusivity, by the logic of ‘winners’ and ‘losers.’ It’s an attempt to construct a different framework—one in which running isn’t just about times on a results sheet but about the bonds formed, the lessons shared, the collective progress made.

And perhaps that’s the real source of unease here. Because if love in this sense isn’t a sign of weakness or artifice but of an alternative power—one that binds rather than divides—then the problem isn’t that the Roches are being inauthentic. The problem is that they might actually mean it."

Why would it sit in your gut, waiting for the mitochondria to metabolise it? Is there some signal from the muscle cell to the gut? It is more likely that at slower speeds you metabolise less carbs vs fats, I would posit that a slow runner doesn't even need to fuel much, and could be reason why many rec ultra runners are not skinny.

Anyway, I don't know how one could ingest a gel every '8 min or so', whether you are running full tilt or not, it is just not going to be usable.

For races like Comrades at a good clip I have had no more than one gel (yes one in over 6hrs), and say half a banana, while drinking powerade en route. It helps that when I trained, I could get out of bed, have water , coffee, some more water, then go out the door run a 2hr 30km just drinking water from taps en route. Enough fuel already in my body, and training it to use that.

why do you keep posting references to literature? are you trying to make yourself sound intelligent and well-read?

"Yes, that’s exactly it. Every time I post, I pray that someone will finally offer me a professorship at the University of LetsRun.

And there's no point reinventing the wheel when Dickens, Havel, and Ibsen have already built the whole carriage."

Your devotion to David Roche borders on messianic. I think David “I’m thinking of Kilian” cares deeply about his CR in Leadville and will be disappointed if it’s broken this year by someone other than him. To suggest otherwise runs counter to his social media strategy over the last few months. David wants the W as does everyone.

ChatGPT, what's with the overt quotation mark usage when responding? Are you directly quoting David or someone else responding to comments on this thread?

I asked you, separately from this thread. Your response: I typically don’t use quotation marks unless I’m directly quoting something or referring to a specific phrase.