The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

So now Truett adds a 2:29:xx to his palmares. The guy acts like he's totally shocked to not set a PR when he ran his 2:25 on a downhill course. He must be on the good stuff.

I'm glad he's finally reached the point like Floberg where he can't PR anymore. These guys are far more insufferable when they are rapidly improving.

Thoughts on getting aid from supporters on course? I think most marathons ban this but not sure about Valencia. Seems a bit reckless in such a busy marathon, especially when he says he had option of his own bottles out on course at official points..

Insane he really thought he could run 2:25 low or 2:24. I wish he'd post his training to see how delusional this really was. He seems to not be discouraged. I think he thought he was going to run sub 2:20 in 2026 and now he has to re-evaluate how far he is from that goal. I wouldn't be surprised if that's his new series for 2026 regardless. I imagine if he even split rather than going out at 2:24 pace over the rolling hills, that he maybe could've run high 2:27, low 2:28? It's an enormous leap to sub 2:20 from there, which I think he still thinks he can make by losing a ton of upper body muscle mass. Come on Truett, let's see the Christian Bale Machinist training cycle and see where that gets you.

In other news, this Floris Gierman bozo attempts a sub 3 marathon to promote his new book, except he fails to run sub 3, and while he's preaching about achieving a flow state and running in the zone, after 20,000 miles and 100+ interviews and writing a book, he gets thrown off by a mudslide altering his route, forcing him to finish through a busy town instead of the trail he'd been planning. Then he explains he was carrying a 2 pound book the whole way and hasn't been training as much recently since he's been working on the book. And that he initially didn't want to release the video because he didn't run sub 3. Dude, if you had actually internalized any of the things you preach, it wouldn't look like this. What it looks like is typical social media slop of saying all the "right" things and getting pat on the back for being "vulnerable" and not hiding your failures.

Weird he never gave any hint in the video that the run was 4700 feet downhill:

strava.com

☀️ First long run in the Alpha Fly 3, nice and poppy | Strava

What’s up with the rocks getting stuck in your shoes though? 🙄 Started off well first 20 ish miles. Downtown Redlands was a shit show with many traffic lights, street closures, police etc. Couldn’t find my river ditch route...

Open link

Appreciate you got to get that bag while you can, and nothing but respect for Yee, but I do hate to see him give airtime to Culling, Parker et Al of the Runna brigade

Welcome to the cult. And he most likely saved Jake's life with that little pep talk. Boomshakawanka.

Yee was an early investor I believe.

If anyone wants to watch some real running rather than these youtube dickheads there's World Cross Country on BBC on Sunday.

*Euro Cross Country. And there is some Youtube interst with the Makou boys taking part. Efrem on a firm course, rather the an muddy Irish trials race, should go really well. Rory Leonard came 9th last year and is definetly capable of another top 10 finish. Scott looked great at the trials and I think could challange for a medal on his best day. Elson is also racing in the mixed relays.

The Dental Athlete sure knows how to make good videos. Especially shorts. Literally addicted to his content right now.

Nick Bester shorts?

An explosion like that would have shocked your central nervous system. Just getting to the start was an achievement.

Slightly odd Strava update from ol' Seth. He's posted what appears to be an AI video of an eagle eating a weirdly generated garble of beaks/talons that vaguely resembles a four headed goose. Also the eagle's wings magically pass through a branch so I'm 99% sure this isn't something he has filmed on the trail.

What an enigma that man is.

RTJ's dad posting an update on him in a comment on Strava:

"Man's not well. Time for rest, blood tests, and then return stronger and harder"

awww

They must be very worried about him; his body shutting down on a run that has less training load than a lot of the training runs he done. Something is very wrong.

But maybe return stronger and slightly less hard???? The (almost entire) absence of physical injury does not mean that he's not doing a real number on his hormonal health and adrenal system. Think of Ryan Hall's essentially forced retirement as an example. The body cannot just hammer huge mileage combined with frequent high intensity with basically no rest. Jake explicitly said on his livestream post-Valenica that Suguru Osako is such an outlier setting the Japanese NR because most Japanese runners retire at age 25... yet there he goes copying Japanese training plans from decades ago.

He then mentioned that he continues to pummel himself into the ground because he is convinced that this "run through a brick wall" approach is the only way he has been able to run even under 2:20... as a blanket response to criticism about his training. But how does he definitively know a change to a more sustainable methodology will be unsuccessful (especially when layered on top of a huge aerobic base)? Obviously the iron (and/or additional still undiagnosed) health problem(s) are/is an additional issue but that's a symptom of the crazy mileage rather than the sole cause for the in-race blackout.

He absolutely buried himself on Sunday in a way few of us will ever experience and which will take a sizable amount of time from which to recover yet he wants to race at least three more hard efforts this year. That is objectively insane (yet nevertheless applauded by his viewers because his channel is fun and engaging). But, think if this was a woman influencer/ runner. EVERYONE would be up in arms about "exercise addiction" and "unhealthy compulsion," and "likely eating problems" (for good measure). I'm not saying Jake exhibits any of these issues necessarily but it's an interesting thought experiment.

And, yes, I love the channel and have watched each video from the early days.

hes fat and sh1t, why would u wanna take any advise off a guy who runs 4:30 for 1500m, u15 girls run much faster

Rory has had 10 DNFs in the last 4years and has been poor all year other than a one-off 10km in early Jan. his run last year was strong and its a weak field this year but dnt rate him highly

Gidey will do well to make the Irish team (top 3), they have some much faster 5km lads. his run at the trial was around his level, as hes only a 13:25 5km man.

i dont get the excitement with this squad, there training sessions are odd. the girls are often running a 6 minute mile to open there session, whats the point of this?! everything seems far to slow compared to other elites, i know these guys are not top level but theyre not far off if they get a lucky break. need some horrible people with pace in there to shake them up, cant stand anymore of Rory crying about doing 400m reps