The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

Sorry brudda but the 2 of you are not even on the same stratosphere of running ability.

That account has no balls. Most of the runners they call out probably don't know any better. Who really gives a toss if someone claims a 3:47 instead of a 3:53 or a 1:43 HM instead of a 1:48. The people want to see them call out the influencers we actually know about, and there's Strava PBs everywhere. Mary McCarthy has a pinned 5k PB post of her 16:57 time. Impressive run but in reality she would have been low 17s without the GPS time. She acknowledges it's unofficial but...a GPS time isn't accurate enough to even be an unofficial PB. At least attempt that on a track so you know you ran 5000m and can reasonably claim it in good faith. One of many examples.

There’s a UK marathoner on instagram Charlie Sandison who is a full time teacher with a 2:15 marathon. Trains with a group called cottage relocated. Guy seems hardworking and humble but he’s said in a comment in response to someone saying he’s surely one of the “faster marathoners working full time” that he is actually in the second pace group in his own training group of people who work full time.
If there’s a group within this random training group of full time employed people running faster than 2:15 that’s really good going from what I assume is a small pool.
Plenty we consider really good like Hugo fry, RTJ etc who are not working outside of running not up to that level.

Charlie seems like a great guy and is clearly both talented and hardworking, but I find the content incredibly dry. Cottage is indeed a very good group and has grown exponentially in the past year or so. It's coached by Mark Lloyd and Phil O'Dell who are both well known in UK club running. They aren't a club as such but rather attract runners from the sharp end of various other clubs in and around London who as you mention are mostly in full time employment.

Also for as much as I agree that the official time is the one that counts, I find their way of doing things to be quite intrusive, commenting posts of random people, calling them out publicly, taking screenshots to then repost on their stories, so putting those people to shame for not much of a reason.

I can't care less if someone that ran a 1:58 half is claiming 1:57, is not like their strava time will get them to win a prize or qualify for a race etc.. Everyone has a phone to go and check strava time against official.

The path they've gone down stinks, doing it to people pushing coaching / influencers was fine. randomers is weird.

On the other hand I remember seeing you could nominate your mates to them, which is unreal patter tbh

Yea, no s***… I was just using him as an analogy for someone that has the ability to do this full time vs. myself

It is pretty dry tbf but it’s almost refreshing against some of the OTT hop around trends you see from others, he’s got more realistic energy levels for someone training those miles.
Ah interesting, hadnt heard of them before him, group like that is great way to elevate club runners.

This is the same group of people that complains when somebody goes on a “random training trip to Kenya”, now when someone else posts normal training.. it’s “too dry” lol. All are valid opinions, just seems there’s no pleasing this thread; so if you’re a running content creator reading this, just continue to ignore this now ludicrous thread. “Too juiced” “too slow” “too Donato” “too excited”

The Cottage group has been going donkey's years.

There's only one Donato.

The one only D-Dog. A crazy cat. The absolute GOAT. Donato never fails to entertain. The best running channel around , oh yes

I find Charlie's content refreshing amongst the usual dross. Give me that any day over Fry eating rice, or Mccarthy drinking a coffee, proper snoozefest. But I guess being a full time running youtuber, they don't have a lot going on in their life, so they need to scramble around for any kind of "content".
Hats off to likes of Charlie who work full time and run those kind of times, much more impressive that someone who can spend their whole days training and recovering.

I call this the 'The internet is one person fallacy'.

People act like they are dealing with a single person when reading opinions on the internet.

Commonly seen in political discussions online, as well.

The Letsrun "The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers" thread is one person, oh yes, and that person is Donato aka @poetwithpace, that's right.

Yes, but if you count the upvote:downvote ratio for any post, you can get a pretty decent sense of the opinions of thread readers, unless of course someone has many many alts. My original point stands.

Y’all are frikin idiots if you’re here criticising Charlie Sandison. His content is honest and sincere, all whilst working 9-5. He is what running used to look like and what I only wish it could look like again. Honestly, if you want Fenton fapping over Jakob, Parker claiming false PB’s, McCarthy doing zoomies in a boot, Bester screaming like he’s had 10 coffees and Jonny D acting like Churchill, you need to look in the mirror and give up. These are the people ruining our sport. They’re pulling your pants down and taking your money. All whilst Sandison is delivering an honest and concise narrative with no commercial support. If this gets 100 upvotes I’ll also tattoo boomshakalala on my forehead

I'd like to understand what it feels like to sell your soul so blatantly. Like does he feel a twinge uploading his reels of the open masters games pretending he's won a legitimate race.

Mate we can see it's the most unprofessional thing going, despite all the glitzy pr and race org nonsense. There's a guy who starts three business days early, and some runners rocking around in tennis shorts or full on tracksuits.

I’ll bite, I don’t think Nico should even be in this field anymore. He’s not much of a running influencer when every marathon he tries now he drops out due to DNFs and puts it to mental health issues. Kid doesn’t need to stop running, it’s one of the greatest joys of our day, but he needs to get a handle on his own life before trying to document every short and reel on “here’s what I eat/do/day in the life/ while training for a marathon”. Whether that’s racing, or trying to sell minutes on social media to make a living, the guy just needs to walk away from the internet because it’s only making his mental health deteriorate.