The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

A thread was bumped not too long ago from last year where I think I, and most people on here, probably first heard about Truett after he ran Boston within like a week of running another marathon. Both PBs and I think both in jeans around the mid 2:30s at the time. The biggest red flag then wasn't Truett's physique relative to his marathon time but rather that he ran 2 PB marathons within a week of each other. That level of recovery seems pharmacological in nature to me from the outside and I'd wonder how much of that could stave off the injury concerns or the rudimentary training. Again, he AIN'T getting an OTQ unless he does some real cheating (I don't even think daddies PEDs will get him there alone) but if he can make it to the end of his "journey" and whittle his marathon time down to the mid 2:20s, he and his followers can pat themselves on the back just the same!

Also I told myself I was gonna ignore Truett and stop posting about it but my algorithm knows I can't stay away from the haterade. Some random 2:30 marathoner on my feed was supporting Truett and I had to read the comments. Of course, the man himself was there to thank the random citizen for his support but there was a funny comment because this guy had mentioned Truett's pull-up world record as a piece of evidence for why he could get the OTQ. This astute commenter asked why a pull-up record was relevant to running a marathon and the poster responded something like "grit." I do love the braindead hand waving that everything is somehow achieved through hard work and pure determination! By these guys' logic, every construction worker should be multi-millionaire and be achieving all their dreams via grinding!

The enhanced games has a road running champs coming together all by itself with these lads. Between truett and deardon at least one better get some out of competition testing. Is that even done for non elites? Ironman have a tip off site for age groupers.

ButterMyBananaBread wrote:

Truett is also in a pretty serious calorie deficit and down to 155 pounds (dude must be a short king!), despite allegedly running ~20 miles per day.

While being skinny can be a cheat code to run faster, being a short dude certainly is a cheat code to look buff on IG.

Is there a bigger grift currently than the one Ben Felton has got going?
Guy gets flown to Spain for a Brooks event and decides to turn it into a month-long holiday with his now unemployed girlfriend.
All of this despite the bloke knowning sweet eff all about running and shoes.
The people who support this grifter financially by signing up to patreon seriously need to get their heads checked.

In theory, because he's a USATF member, Truett can be out of competition tested. USADA has a tip site;

https://www.usada.org/playclean/

But for an amateur like Truett to be tested doesn't make sense when the cost of a test is low four figures. The reality is nobody cares who finishes 33rd at the Austin Marathon. The best chance to test Truett is when he runs CIM; they might have a few test kits laying around if people scratch or drop out, so maybe those could be repurposed to test Truett. Though he should be smart enough to cycle off his PEDs at the race.

I'm here just to ask if DR, dinosaur man, is off limits here? New series has started...

oaclover322323232 wrote:

Is there a bigger grift currently than the one Ben Felton has got going?
Guy gets flown to Spain for a Brooks event and decides to turn it into a month-long holiday with his now unemployed girlfriend.
All of this despite the bloke knowning sweet eff all about running and shoes.
The people who support this grifter financially by signing up to patreon seriously need to get their heads checked.

The dude is living on borrowed time. He will have a serious injury very soon with the way he trains and then what? The YouTube lifespan for a runner actually making decent money is very short. I hope his he and his bird have a long term plan. Looking at their gormless faces I very much doubt it

The thing about making "content" long-term is you need to actually have a unique selling point.

Ben Parkes is one of the OGs and preaches a lot of positivity. He also replies to pretty much everyone on strava who asks for advice.

Ran to Japan at least lives in a different country, can communicate with local athletes and runs heaps of kilometres.

Ben Felton's whole grift is just getting free stuff from prodirect and getting flown to "summits" (trying on free shoes) all whilst looking like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I hope the bloke's got a plan B somewhere because he doesn't have enough personality for this.

oaclover322323232 wrote:

The thing about making "content" long-term is you need to actually have a unique selling point.

Ben Parkes is one of the OGs and preaches a lot of positivity. He also replies to pretty much everyone on strava who asks for advice.

Ran to Japan at least lives in a different country, can communicate with local athletes and runs heaps of kilometres.

Ben Felton's whole grift is just getting free stuff from prodirect and getting flown to "summits" (trying on free shoes) all whilst looking like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I hope the bloke's got a plan B somewhere because he doesn't have enough personality for this.

Pretty sure someone in his family is very high up in pro direct,uncle maybe?

ibarnett01 wrote:

Becky Briggs selected by British Athletics for the 50k World Road Race Champs. Selfies and glitter spraying on the start line?

A few thoughts on this / adding to other comments...

1. This probably explains why Becky recently joined a club (obviously had to be the club with the most expensive (bougie is the in term) kit in Belgrave) - it might also hint at when the selection actually took place as it's usually "athletes must be registered with a UKA club by X date" that corresponds with the nomination cut off... So potentially a few months ago. The 2023 selection criteria was a 2:34 marathon in the previous 18 months - has Becky run that? (I'd assume it was even faster this time)

2. As has been mentioned, I'd assume there was a very high athlete contribution for this. Combined with spring marathons it's probably rolled a long way down to get to Becky.

3. This is a rescheduled event, it was meant to happen in December last year but has been rearranged - also potentially reduced the interested parties .

4. In the last few years there's been a push to have better athlete development in road ultras. England especially are at the forefront in home nations events. Obviously 50k is in reality closer to the marathon but I'd like to know how much overlap there is with the wider push on road ultras (see the 24 hour team last year as an example of the fantastic output of this development pathway), I assume it's not much with Becky being selected - that said others on the team are very high quality and established road ultra runners that'll run really well (and thoroughly deserve these opportunities) so if a team can be filled out with an influencer with deep pockets/parents money to cover support staff, that probably makes sense!

5. It's a shame it's only a 50k, I'd love to see how far off the rails Becky would get in a longer road ultra where you get thoroughly found out for bad preparation, bad support and bad pacing - especially in contrast to the classy teammates who'll turn up with all their i's dotted and t's crossed.

It makes perfect sense for him and his followers. The "Go One More" gym-bro content manosphere espouses this philosophy (which bleeds into the politics of those influencers and their ardent gullible followers). The belief that everyone has access to the same opportunities to be successful and can achieve anything with "hard work" is central to conservative ideology.

The irony is, similarly to your construction worker/ millionaire example, Truett lacks the "opportunity" (here physical capabilities) necessary to achieve his goal (the OTQ) despite his training regime, weight loss, and pharmaceutical assistance. But of course he already knows this (it's why he's taking the good stuff... hard work is not enough).

oaclover322323232 wrote:

The thing about making "content" long-term is you need to actually have a unique selling point.

Ben Parkes is one of the OGs and preaches a lot of positivity. He also replies to pretty much everyone on strava who asks for advice.

Ran to Japan at least lives in a different country, can communicate with local athletes and runs heaps of kilometres.

Ben Felton's whole grift is just getting free stuff from prodirect and getting flown to "summits" (trying on free shoes) all whilst looking like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I hope the bloke's got a plan B somewhere because he doesn't have enough personality for

Fenton.

Bester back from his relatively short altitude trip where he complained about his metrics showing his body struggling says that he woke up with cold sweats, still has an elevated HR and is taking lemsip.

Knowing that he wonders whether he should do a 10k race or a marathon focused long run this weekend, seems like a conversation to have with your coach really. 4 weeks out says it's time to really ramp up the quality - surely the time to do that was a few weeks back, you've only got 1 maybe 2 weeks of quality training left (less if you come down with something off the back of your altitude trip) probably don't make any drastic changes to training at this point.

Also someone who I haven't seen posted before (I think?) Flora Beverley, another Runna sponsored athlete - recently DNF'd the arc of attrition having started it with an achilles injury... And is starting her build to London off the back of said injury being able to run 15 miles/week 12 weeks out from the race. And in a great grifting move says we should all stop buying things and focus on experiences - just like her and her partner who recently went to the Eden Project for his birthday rather than her buying him anything. She then reveals that it was actually a pr trip she'd been gifted not an experience that she'd bought him anyway.

halfagree wrote:

Also someone who I haven't seen posted before (I think?) Flora Beverley,

Shes been around for ages. you've not missed anything.

on a note of positivity.
latest Marm video is quality and includes a lot of FOD Runner - Andy.
Been watching limerickrunning recently and thats been focussing on a very talented young runner Ava Crean. Thats worth a look i think.

truth bro. wrote:

oaclover322323232 wrote:

The thing about making "content" long-term is you need to actually have a unique selling point.

Ben Parkes is one of the OGs and preaches a lot of positivity. He also replies to pretty much everyone on strava who asks for advice.

Ran to Japan at least lives in a different country, can communicate with local athletes and runs heaps of kilometres.

Ben Felton's whole grift is just getting free stuff from prodirect and getting flown to "summits" (trying on free shoes) all whilst looking like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I hope the bloke's got a plan B somewhere because he doesn't have enough personality for this.

Pretty sure someone in his family is very high up in pro direct,uncle maybe?

That actually makes a lot more sense given he went on his first all expenses paid trip with Prodirect/puma back in 2022 to Boston and got to interview Molly Seidel when he had like 30-40k subscribers and was getting like 10k views per video. A proper nepo-baby.

Pretty sure she’s only 2nd claim Belgrave looking at the British athletics website, which says she’s still City of Hull.
She wasn’t picked for the initial champs. They opened up applications for 12 days in early Jan and she clearly took the opportunity for a free vest (to be clear, I also would if I could). There were 2 spots up for grabs and only she got one. You do the maths on how many people must’ve applied.
the expected athlete contribution is up to £500 (https://www.uka.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/World-50km-Selection-Policy.pdf)
It’s just another example of a pretty horrific selection policy from BA if you ask me but will be interesting to see how she gets on given the zero ultra experience, combined with very little competitive marathons racing lately.

RTJ's 1st third of the year "Marathon Season" is out

8 Feb - Saitama Marathon

1 Mar - Tokyo Marathon

15 Mar - Niigata Half Marathon

22 Mar - Toyohashi Half Marathon

5 Apr - Yaizu Minato Half Marathon

26 Apr - London Marathon

To be seen if he makes it through this block in one piece, but if he does not get any setbacks from any big blowups (relatively big if, based on Tokyo'25 and Valencia'25), you would think at least a few of these should be a good outcome

oaclover322323232 wrote:

truth bro. wrote:

Pretty sure someone in his family is very high up in pro direct,uncle maybe?

That actually makes a lot more sense given he went on his first all expenses paid trip with Prodirect/puma back in 2022 to Boston and got to interview Molly Seidel when he had like 30-40k subscribers and was getting like 10k views per video. A proper nepo-baby.

How do people watch someone that has zero charisma and a personality of wet cardboard?

ukrunner9998 wrote:

halfagree wrote:

Also someone who I haven't seen posted before (I think?) Flora Beverley,

Shes been around for ages. you've not missed anything.

on a note of positivity.
latest Marm video is quality and includes a lot of FOD Runner - Andy.
Been watching limerickrunning recently and thats been focussing on a very talented young runner Ava Crean. Thats worth a look i think.

Read somewhere that they are brothers in law, so makes sense