The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

Sirpoc isn't even a YouTuber. In fact, he doesn't really do anything, other than begrudgingly wheeled out every now and again and even that seems like he's annoyed he has to do it. My guess is that is why people universally like him.

As a Brit, sadly indebted into the running scene here working within the influx of influencers, creators and elite end for over 20 years, this is my take.

Floberg (who I’ve never consumed any content of because yanks are so, so boring) is widely discussed here because he’s the closest thing to a consistent channel of uploads that touches on being somewhat someone who wants to train towards a performance specific goal (as an elite would), yet lets themselves down because they don’t know the difference between a lactate threshold session at LT1 and a 5k road race which lets themselves open to a slaughtering here. Every forum needs a scapegoat.

Ran To Japan - runs a load of miles, a USP apparently. Immensely boring and uninteresting beyond his crazy method for a white dude from Bedford, let’s not kid ourselves into assuming he’s a maverick on content creation or broadcasting. That ethos, mantra and methodology will die very quickly in 2026 and I predict he gets a coach or pivots to the shorter distances or way longer than marathon to stay relevant. Good for him though, hopefully it makes him a fiver.

Bester - he is just an utter prat. For anyone that’s outside the UK and even more specific the London running scene will agree with me when I say he’s a stain on the running industry here in the UK. Any righteous fella that wants to strut, yes strut around in full gear with their face, name and tag line on, is a whopper of the highest degree and the people he attracts are people that either are severely unloved, unliked or in need of a friend, which I for one, probably wouldn’t buy a pint for in my local if they walked in lost looking for the bus stop.

Floberg will continue being an average runner.

RTJ will maybe get a little faster but should and likely do well in the road ultra scene, because he has the fast twitch fibres of a slow debilitating disease.

Bester will get slower and slower as he gets older and older and will likely eventually put his missus to work on Only Fans to pay for his 750k house that the thick people paid for paying for Best Athletics coaching.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.

PS. Matt Fox, you can jog on too, you wee predator.

The key to being universally liked, appears to be, don't make any of your own content or do much more than pop in a few times a year as a guest on others.

Basically, we hate content creators is what we are saying. At this point. That's clear.

Let's not forget this was the year one of the Youtube creators literally went to prison while trying to maximise their race performance (by smuggling drugs into a country with zero tolerance for that stuff)

I think 2025 was a very fine vintage for running creator mayhem, and I salute the entire cast.

But off course ..

Sirpoc:

Run your easy runs below LT1 .. So to be safe below 70% max heart rate.

That is it .. No more no less.

Random Youtuber:

Hello everyone .. Here I am running randomly in the landscape .. Blah blah blah .. My best race time was 31:57 in the 10K, but I'm hoping to beat that soon .. Can I do it? ... Blah blah .. Very exited for 2026 ... Blah blah ..You know at first I was a 48:XX runner and struggled for many a year, but ....

20 minutes later after some long winded story about random races and so on finally he gets to:

And that is how I learned that it is very important not to run your easy runs too fast ... I'll soon many another video, where I'll let you in on how I run my easy runs

-

Even the guys that aren't shilling and seem like decent chaps quickly become unbearable ... and that is only a very small percentage. Most are knobs.

I think just the scenery in Japan, but also the glimpses for japanese culture and RTJ's personality is really good. I think you are a brit, but I wonder if some of his british mannerism is lost on the american crowd. Calling himself a carthorse etc. Also, who else would have the copenhagen marathon experience he had without making a constant sob story out of it.

Saying "train harder, not smarter" after being admitted to the hospital is him being wry.

No hate either, he’s from Philly so live that represents our city (and represents it well)

I currently live about 2 hours west and saw him on a billboard for addiction and recovery (this is public knowledge as he posted his background story previously). So he’s doing stuff outside of running as well

Just dropped a nearly nine-minute-long video of coy nothingness. To save you some time, he's learned to bake pies and makes the kid's lunches. 2025 was a tough valley but...but...we're gonna rise out of that valley stronger! Not going to do daily videos. Been thinking about the DGR family a lot, even on date nights with True Love. Loves drinking out of his DGR branded merchandise mugs because it's like sharing a coffee with you.

It's Christmas so it's time to check in with our favorite running YouTubers.

Spencer Brown, aka The Athlete Special aka the Local Legend, ran a holiday 5k while his fiancee was out of town running USA XC. He beat Adam, the fast forty year old, I'm calling Spence out here on not racing the USA XCs, it was open and had people running slower than his times!

Kofuzi is smelling his New Balance shoes and perhaps a free New Balance sponsor bib in the future as he really says he loves the very mid New Balance Rebel v5 after 100 miles.

The Believe in the Run crew is talking about Meaghan getting ready for the Marathon Project (she tried to drop out at half way, but the pacer wouldn't let her and she ran 2:55). Robbe is enjoying the book The Running Ground. Thomas is still in recovery mode from the 50 miler.

Allie Ostrander, Spencer's fiancee, is celebrating her 8th place finish at USA XC by making a long awaited 29th birthday video:

Ben is Running is running a night race around a muddy motocross track.

Ben Parkes is loving the Gel Nimbus:

Phily Bowden is pivoting to swimming:

And last but not least, the Greatest of All Time, Still the Original Running YouTuber has emerged from hibernation and left a nice Christmas message to his fans:

I am wishing all the running YouTubers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy 2026.

"What I eat in a birthday!"

The key to being universally liked is just not selling snake oil. Simple, but something most YTers seem to fail at in one way or another.

That's why I quite like FOD. Genuinely feel like he's just trying to help. Buy these Chinese shoes, you know for a fact he's not making anything out of that. Just trying to help us with the good product. Ironically, was told about them by sirpoc and got him to do a pod special with him and Jimmy runs. Hopefully they'll do another and maybe take questions, I genuinely have about 50 things I would like to ask sirpoc. From if he would ever consider coaching, to does he really hate running and everything in between.

Sirpoc has a book to sell (it's fantastic by the way).

It's quite funny, I saw him make one post about this on Reddit and Strava. It was "here is the link to my book, feel free to buy it if you want" and that was it.

I've not seen him anywhere promistioit. Yet it's #1 in running nee releases still on Amazon. It actually shows you that you don't even need to shill, to sell, if what you have is good.

As for the everything else, what a mess 2025 has been for the YouTubers. London collapses for the chuckle brothers of Fenton and Bester.

Kofuzi getting even worse. Sagusu running just so far up his own arse surgery will be required to remove it and at this point even RTJ has become hard to watch. Gonna need some fresh meat.

I think you hit the nail on the head, although I think “train harder not smarter” predates any hospital stays.

He also used to call himself a “Registered Speedophile” which rhymes with another word when that word is pronounced with a “long e” (British pronunciation) instead of a “short e” (American pronunciation).

They probably belong in the conversation, but that thread would turn into a list a mile long if everyone got added. Almost every running creator ends up dealing with the same mix of pressure, incentives, and burnout once the channel grows.

Oh dear…. after weeks of gleeful crowing by the RTJ doubters post Valencia it’s turned out that the reason for him blowing up so spectacularly in Valencia was nothing to do with his training methods or issue directly or indirectly caused by his training methods

The actual blowup came from him essentially overdosing on iron which is ironically the thing many of the RTJ doubters were so confidently saying he needed to do - have iron infusions and take lots of iron to sort out his deficiency..

Oh the schaudenfraude. No wonder the usual suspects have been so quiet on here the last few days

Nick Bester shared his provisional 2026 schedule in his latest video a few days ago and its... interesting?

Kenya training camp from 17th-31st of January followed by a 10k race on February 1st.

What benefit does he think he's going to get from having barely ten good running days at altitude? It takes several days just to adjust to that environment, several weeks to get actual training benefit.

Racing a 10k the day after he flies back is just the cherry on the top. I cannot think of a more perfect way to ruin your 2026 season.

Source ?