The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

Let's face it, whenever people get together and do business and there's money on the table it's inevitable there will be disagreements and misunderstandings. The more experience you have, the better you are generally at seeing this stuff coming.

I was asked to arbitrate on a business deal (friends of friends, so I was independent of all parties) where everything was conducted through whatsapp, no contracts and it had turned into a mess because they hadn't covered the situation they'd found themselves in. Most people might well say "Why the fk wasn't this all drawn up in a contract?" but in real life people take risks not doing that because it's expensive, time consuming and they just don't know how to go about it.

There's a court case at the minute where someone is chasing one of the biggest gamblers in the world for several million, and the details seem to boil down to a degree of misunderstanding over whether an agreement had finished or not. I have no doubt that the gambler had proper contracts drawn up, but it has still turned into a mess.

Link? very curious to read about this

Gambler is Tony Bloom, owner of Brighton football club. The beard is George Cottrell (connected to Farage) and Ryan Dudfield is the guy (ex employee of Star Lizard I would think) claiming he's been done over.

theguardian.com

Billionaire gambler Tony Bloom denies owing millions to former colleague

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/anna-isaac

Brighton & Hove Albion football club owner confirms placing bets through accounts of Reform UK adviser George Cottrell, according to legal documents

Open link

Nick is actually just a nice guy. Pretty simple really, like the vast majority of runners. I can’t imagine him being a dick in a starting pen. Of course there’s always a bit of jostling and people trying to start where they think they should so maybe some inexperienced joggers have taken offence to this. But in my experience he acknowledges the people he knows and he’s always smiling - if that annoys you then you should probably stick to doing laps of Battersea on your own.

Embarrassing exchange between callum elson (the distance project) and jake under jake's most recent strava post:

Callum: "Take you didn't ask for: think like an athlete not a youtuber, you've done what's needed to grow an audience & (assume) earning well now with 100k subs, no need to prove yourself or build suspense with "tune in to find out" type stuff. You're better than 99% of people who ever try to run, clearly have a great work ethic & with a different approach (and some guidance perhaps) you have every chance of climbing rankings and fulfilling all your potential. Follower growth will slow and maybe some income too... but looking back and saying you were 1 of very very few to ever represent your country or run 2:xx will mean more than any of that. Just my 2 cents from a far away observer - best of luck with the marathon & hats off to you for getting this far in both the sport and with your following!"

Jake: "you definitely are a “far away observer” if you think anything I do with my running is for YouTube or other peoples’ approval 😂 I don’t know myself yet if I’ll be racing, I need to see how my knee reacts over the next couples days. I also can’t reveal to people what I’m aiming for yet since they haven’t announced the pace groups… hence why people need to tune in to find out on Saturday. I thought the whole gimmick of your team is that it’s “professional running, done differently” with a promotional YouTube channel to match? I’m surprised you don’t seem to understand why I’d want to build anticipation for my races and tell my story through YouTube!"

Hate to say it, but Jake is just as bad as the rest of the shoetubers when it comes to his insecurity and projection. He just hides it better in his scripted videos.

I found it interesting that she made a story saying she was going to delete her reel due to negative comments on the post , of which she had three negative responses and most people gripes were that she was slagging off radiologists.

Shes rage baiting as she would love more eyes on her like Mary, and hasn’t deleted the reel.

She’s lining up the excuses for a bad run already

4+ hour marathoner Sagusa Running has now been posting 30+ minute long critical reviews of shoes he tries on at running stores for 5 minutes.

If you want to be taken seriously your shoe test should be more minutes than the review video.

Maybe Callum was genuinely trying to be supportive but he just comes across as condescending. Like Jake said, would expect Callum to understand the desire to tell the story through YouTube. Doing YouTube and being a top level athlete are not mutually exclusive. Seems like someone is salty about RTJ’s massive success and popularity. I don’t really think Callum is all that much closer to the top of the sport than RTJ

Comparing Team Makou with RTJ is silly in this context though. TM stuff is not filmed, produced or edited by the athletes themselves and the stories in the videos are only around the races and training that they would be doing anyway, led by an actual certified running coach (no, not Nick Bester). I don't think RTJ changes his training for YouTube too much but I'm sure it's a consideration for him when he's considering whether or not to run Tokyo - he will no doubt make a lot more money from his content at Tokyo Marathon than he would from not running it.

I personally think he'd be stupid to run Tokyo and don't really disagree with anything Callum said, although the tone was a bit condescending. Some strange comments in on that post though, people trying to advise Jake to aim for a 2:13 marathon when he says himself he's in 2:20 shape at best. Are they hoping to watch him die on the live stream or something?

Power ranger full kit tit.

The bits that will have got under Jake's skin are suggesting he's playing his YT audience rather than thinking about his long term athletic career, and later when he suggests "with a different approach (and some guidance perhaps) you have every chance of climbing rankings and fulfilling all your potential" which is directly questioning Jake's training philosophy, and implying that Jake won't reach his potential on his current path.

Jake returns fire talking about "the whole gimmick of your team" which is a bit disrespectful, but understandable that he's kinda annoyed.

What they should do is arrange an MMA fight to clear things up. With Bester vs Fox on the undercard.

Funny how he maybe runs 20 miles a month, yet somehow manages to run in dozens of different shoes and comment on things like their durability. What a joke.

*week

All these armchair physios are annoying and it's especially annoying when a guy like Callum tries to come across like an expert with his advice. It's just fake, also the guy doesn't have a clue about the marathon distance, he should stay in his own lane.

He did seem to ruffle Jake's feathers a bit. I do think Jake could have responded better but I get it, it's a stressful time for him.

Jake came off as a right prick in his reply, totally changed the tone from respectful suggestion to snarky.

Do you really go from 2:10 goal to 2:20 in a few days off. Is Jake prepping excessive excuses for a bad performance? The I could run 2:10 only for X is getting very like the guys who claim they “coulda gone pro in soccer only for their dodgy knee”. You’re only as good as your race performances not your kaizen/coros/garmin/workout predictions.

Lol what? Callum opened his unsolicited advice by telling him to stop thinking like a Youtuber. Seemed pretty condescending to me.

Worth mentioning they compete in different events. Callum's out here pretending he's Phil Sesemann. If the comment came from him, I could almost understand it.

I listened to the whole thing and it's a truly wild ride. Broadcasting stuff like that where you're accusing people, by name, of doping, sexually harassing people etc. is really pretty much asking for a defamation case to be taken against you.

I'm under no illusions that there's plenty of doping in Kenya and that some of these agents can be exploitative but who is this Selva Yoga guy, is he remotely credible? My gut says he is a spoofer.

There are various posts and (alleged) first hand accounts of this. People I've spoken to about it corroborate the view so I buy it. Here's a series of posts from a race where people says they've seen it

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=11792925&page=50