A lot of "influencer" used and will use running as a stepping stone to get traction, yes it is an amazing sport and everyone wants to show their gains, but not everyone will have enough discipline to go through all the ups and downs and keep a solid consistency, along with everything else in life.
Not sure how long kofuzi has been running for, probably many years and is ok to take a break I guess, but the reality is that a lot of well known influencer you see today won't be able to sustain this for long term, some of them started running mainly to bring content, I wonder how many would stick around with no social media..
Many of the YouTubers have mentioned in videos that they don't necessarily like running but they like getting faster. Cole, Fenton, Philly and Flopberg to name a few.
Where will they be when the PBs dry up? I can't imagine Fenton "doing a John Broom" and enjoying battling for masters titles and looking at his age grading.
These people don't like running. They like what running brings them. Some sort of minor celebrity and success. Where they go when the floodlights fade who knows?
I think that might be a slightly simplistic view, generally speaking- there is perhaps a difference between acknowledging that good practice generally involves a fair bit of stuff that's boring or uncomfortable and genuinely having no interest in any of it. That probably goes for most 'skill' hobbies, and it does necessarily become a bit more relevant when you involve significant outcome goals and/or doing it for money in some capacity.
Those mentioned do have something of a habit of training themselves into a hole past the point of productivity and setting a bunch of unrealistic expectations, which i daresay has a bit to do with it.
The thing that really annoys me about Fuze and Fordy’s shoe reviews is how they essentially lie.
They make statements like “The Nova Blast is a great shoe up to around steady pace, beyond this, you need more speed foam”. Then you have Alfi running 3.30s KMs in Vomeros with no issue. I am sure Fordy's leg turn over in his 5min k intervals won't be impacted by a slightly more padded shoe.
The reality is that most of us just need a good pair of daily shoes and a race shoe (many won’t even benefit from carbons). FOD appeared to share this narrative for 5 minutes before his Puma contract. I am sick of these people shilling shoe rotations that 99.99% of us don’t need.
The thing that really annoys me about Fuze and Fordy’s shoe reviews is how they essentially lie.
They make statements like “The Nova Blast is a great shoe up to around steady pace, beyond this, you need more speed foam”. Then you have Alfi running 3.30s KMs in Vomeros with no issue. I am sure Fordy's leg turn over in his 5min k intervals won't be impacted by a slightly more padded shoe.
The reality is that most of us just need a good pair of daily shoes and a race shoe (many won’t even benefit from carbons). FOD appeared to share this narrative for 5 minutes before his Puma contract. I am sick of these people shilling shoe rotations that 99.99% of us don’t need.
To be fair I don't think FODs message has changed due to his involvement in the Puma project. They sent him a pair of Deviate Elite 4 and he wasn't exactly glowing in his review.
What has he said that makes you think his views have changed due to a very tenuous link to Puma
"Shoe rotations" and shoes for fast/ easy runs is the wokest shoetuber thing going. And its all a bunch of marketing cr*p.
I would say having a separate race shoe is good even if its not carbon just for the phycological aspect of putting that shoe on when you are in race mode. Other than that I would just stick with a shoe that you like and wear it until it falls apart, then buy the same shoe again as long as you haven't had any problems with it and repeat. If you are a serious runner doing track workouts then spikes for those but there is 0 reason to be rotating between 5 pairs of trainers.
When I see guys running 4 hour marathons talking about their shoe rotation for the block it just makes me cringe. Goddard a prime culprit for it with comments about how great X/Y shoe feels for speedwork when his 1k reps are slower than a half decent hobby joggers marathon pace
Videos were Fordy talks about race day shoes..... man!^^. He talks and talks and talks just for the minutes. Its not like he is running sub3 or something. The shoe doesnt matter. He can run in every daily trainer and achive his times, its fine. But he talks about carbon plates and weight!.....
I have no problem with shoe rotations, as long as people run the same mileage with their shoes until they retire them.
Assuming one does that it really doesn't make a difference if one buys a pair of shoes and then the next after hitting a certain mileage. Or if one buys two shoes at once and runs them for the same total distance alternating between them.
Do most amateur runners need a rotation? Probably not, but different shoes give a different experience. And if that increases the enjoyment in their hobby that's a good thing in my book.
Similar story - know a very good sub elite athlete with absolutely 0 social media, not even strava. Was invited to an athlete development day thing with one of the major shoe brands - and are now supported by them with shoes, kit for racing/training, and a stiped for race entry and travel.
Asked them how they did it and apparently the marketing manager told them that they were the only person who emailed ahead to introduce themselves and thank the brand, followed up by a post event thank you/debrief on the event. Just being nice goes a long way in building relationships when you just need to convince one or two people that you're worth throwing a relatively small amount of annual budget at.
Like with Aubrey he doesn't seem like he'd be particularly good value for money vs lots of others - he's not reaching anyone new particularly, lags behind on content (although he does seem to spend that time producing some fairly well made videos so...) but he does seem like he'd be a very good networker and you can sell his content/concepts quite easily I think
I’m interested, what kind of times are we talking here?
Don't wanna make them too identifiable given the choice to be anonymous but think UK top 10 times at their chosen event. Few wins and podiums in decent size events in UK, Europe and the US.
What is going with Aubrey (bigger than running)? How does he keep getting opportunities like Tokyo etc? I know he has family friendly content but he doesn’t get many views. He then posts his pre race video two weeks after the race.
Also, I know he featured on a TRC video recently, maybe the lack of videos on his channel is a sign that he’s joining them?
I know someone with no youtube channel and a modest IG following, who gets trips to all the marathon majors in return for doing a bit of advertising for one shoe brand on their posts.
I think some of it is just down to your rapport with the brand managers, if you're easy to get along with and happy to jump in the trips they organise then you're going to keep getting invited. Aubrey brings good vibes, and has a solid social media following, that's all you need in this game really.
[By the way I find his content a bit cringe, but I'm putting myself in the shoes of a social media brand manager trying to pick accounts that get attention from a wide section of the running community - my taste will be totally different from the masses, but what's to my taste is irrelevant]
The relationship with the individual/team within a brand is as important as raw numbers a lot of the time. I train with someone who had a contract with a shoe brand and who was running faster times as the contract went on, and increasing social presence (this was late 201x's so pre influencer boom)... So more than met expectations... But the brand manager they'd worked with left the shoe company and they cleaned house of the athletes they supported.
It's pretty clear to see when this happens with brands and the lurches in strategy that last 6-24 months before a big change in tactics.
One that's caught my eye this year when a big change is Precision Fuel - used to be mainly triathletes with a few runners supported, but this year they seem to be supporting anyone on an ironman start line whatever their performance level, and runners that pump out eyebrow raising/content designed to generate controversy. I'm expecting Dental Twat to be wearing one of their caps soon. I like their products and enjoyed their engagement with Inside Running Podcast in the past but this clear change is a bit off-putting to me and I'll vote with my wallet if I don't like who they're engaging with, maybe the influencers will start to be seen as a negative soon?
I have no problem with shoe rotations, as long as people run the same mileage with their shoes until they retire them.
Assuming one does that it really doesn't make a difference if one buys a pair of shoes and then the next after hitting a certain mileage. Or if one buys two shoes at once and runs them for the same total distance alternating between them.
Do most amateur runners need a rotation? Probably not, but different shoes give a different experience. And if that increases the enjoyment in their hobby that's a good thing in my book.
It's not that I have a problem with people having a shoe rotation. It's about people like Fordy and Fuze claiming they need different shoes to run what that call fast and slow paces.
About a month ago, I purchase some SB2s and, honestly, they are fine for all of my runs. There is no thinking, just put the shoes on and out the door.
I like having a separate race shoe, though. Like someone said above, it's a bit of a phycological boost.
The thing that really annoys me about Fuze and Fordy’s shoe reviews is how they essentially lie.
They make statements like “The Nova Blast is a great shoe up to around steady pace, beyond this, you need more speed foam”.
This is absolutely moronic and made shoe reviews utterly confusing for me in the start. Every single shoe was seemingly just for slower paces Maybe, just maaaaybe it could be used for a marathon. Luckily I realized that fast and slow isn't exactly objective, and that if any good runner though the shoe was good for easy paces it was great for me trying to run a 10k pb.
Honestly it sounds like flexing. Ah these shoes, I couldn't dream of using them for slow runs, that would be way to fast for what they are designed for.
Respectfully, how can you have such volume of opinions, yet such little knowledge of this? 😂
Take 5 seconds and his Instagram bio. He’s sponsored by Represent, Nomio and he’s Head of Running at Marchon. At least 2/3 of those will be paid.
Plus he’s mentioned multiple times in posts he’s a Coros athlete, which for the content supplied will be paid at least.
Bar Rory, he’ll make what Hoka pay look like pittance.
He sold Trackstaa as well last year, not sure how much he would've got for that but probs a decent amount.
Also I'm pretty sure he's fairly close with the Represent guys, so probably is bringing in a decent chunk from them.
decent amount? have you heard of companies house, it has a value of under 10k. dont understand why anyone wanted to buy it, there was never any coverage from it and the name sounds like it was created by a thickoo who cant spell
The thing that really annoys me about Fuze and Fordy’s shoe reviews is how they essentially lie.
They make statements like “The Nova Blast is a great shoe up to around steady pace, beyond this, you need more speed foam”. Then you have Alfi running 3.30s KMs in Vomeros with no issue. I am sure Fordy's leg turn over in his 5min k intervals won't be impacted by a slightly more padded shoe.
The reality is that most of us just need a good pair of daily shoes and a race shoe (many won’t even benefit from carbons). FOD appeared to share this narrative for 5 minutes before his Puma contract. I am sick of these people shilling shoe rotations that 99.99% of us don’t need.
playing devils advocate, 3:30s is alfies steady pace probably
OMTIU going after the official Garmin account for posting a photo of someone holding up a Garmin watch with their medal that reads 3:58 vs the actual chip time of just over 4:00.
Does he want them to print out the chip time, frame it and hold that up for their post or something? Whoever is running that account is such a weirdo
Interested to know if he's got 2:29:59 as his target via runna and he's hitting their targets. And what settings you put in to get Runna to get it to recommend a 50k weighted run as a workout for the marathon...
Another case of runna athlete fails to hit goals. Although this was probably the most clear, no way was he doing 2:30 off the back of his last one; nobody with any sense thought he was doing that.
Top grifting was having huel label out during his vo2 max test, honestly gotta respect that game.
Something I noticed recently from people I follow on Strava that are using Run*a is that the sessions they get assigned seem to all be basically the exact same no matter what event type/time/goal they are going for.
Its always the same 2 or 3 sessions (Over under K reps, 800m repeats etc) and recently I see they have added a new session a "Drop set" and no joke I have seen 5 or 6 different people all doing it on the same day, all training for different races from 5k to marathon to Olympic triathlon.
Surely even if you are just blindly following this plan with no thought process you would notice that you are doing the exact same training as other people that are training for completely different goals and would start to get suspicious??
Just seems like a bonkers business model to so openly and blatantly have such a lack of sessions in the algorithm. Just off the top of my head i can think of 15 different ways to do an interval session, I guess Ben Porker and Scamya Culling aren't as imaginative...
OMTIU going after the official Garmin account for posting a photo of someone holding up a Garmin watch with their medal that reads 3:58 vs the actual chip time of just over 4:00.
Does he want them to print out the chip time, frame it and hold that up for their post or something? Whoever is running that account is such a weirdo
I completely agree that the dude is clearly weirdo and agree with most of the criticism of that account on here, but this one I think actually needed to be called out. Garmin have tonnes of sponsored/supported athletes and are on the wrist of thousands of people who will have run a legit time that day, blows my mind that they went with someone who's claiming sub-4 watch time when they didnt run it on chip time. And OMTIU put forward some pretty valid reasoning as well, especially the bit about Garmin effectively highlighting that their GPS is inaccurate and measures short, hense the time discrepancy.
Shady/sloppy marketing practices should be called out, just probably not by an account that believes they are an authority on race timing - If the Coros account had spotted the chip-time discrepancy and replied to the Garmin post, I guarentee everyone would be loving the drama!
"Shoe rotations" and shoes for fast/ easy runs is the wokest shoetuber thing going. And its all a bunch of marketing cr*p.
I would say having a separate race shoe is good even if its not carbon just for the phycological aspect of putting that shoe on when you are in race mode. Other than that I would just stick with a shoe that you like and wear it until it falls apart, then buy the same shoe again as long as you haven't had any problems with it and repeat. If you are a serious runner doing track workouts then spikes for those but there is 0 reason to be rotating between 5 pairs of trainers.
When I see guys running 4 hour marathons talking about their shoe rotation for the block it just makes me cringe. Goddard a prime culprit for it with comments about how great X/Y shoe feels for speedwork when his 1k reps are slower than a half decent hobby joggers marathon pace
GPS is inaccurate by nature but that doesn't mean it can never ever be used, any serious runner knows that a watch is just a useful tool that cant be relied upon for exact measurements however Garmin is advertising to 4+ hour runners who wont know or care what the difference is between watch and chip time and honestly I don't think they should.
When my partner goes out and runs a 25 minute 5k on the weekend and tells me that they got a new PB I don't need to lecture them on the nuance of GPS timing and tell them that they need to roll out an exact 5k loop for it to count. Because to them they are just running to feel good and keep fit and as long as it is close enough to being accurate that is good enough for them.
Certainly until you get to the decent club runners I just don't see any benefit in calling people out for minor discrepancies
Every flog runfluencer seems to be British, why is that?
Because we don't have an engineering workbase anymore, don't mine coal, don't build ships, don't make shoes, clothes or furniture and we're a bunch of feckless, useless, lazy little s**** so people have to do c*** things like runfluenzing.
GPS is inaccurate by nature but that doesn't mean it can never ever be used, any serious runner knows that a watch is just a useful tool that cant be relied upon for exact measurements however Garmin is advertising to 4+ hour runners who wont know or care what the difference is between watch and chip time and honestly I don't think they should.
When my partner goes out and runs a 25 minute 5k on the weekend and tells me that they got a new PB I don't need to lecture them on the nuance of GPS timing and tell them that they need to roll out an exact 5k loop for it to count. Because to them they are just running to feel good and keep fit and as long as it is close enough to being accurate that is good enough for them.
Certainly until you get to the decent club runners I just don't see any benefit in calling people out for minor discrepancies
Yeah of course. My point isnt about calling out the people. My point is that its sloppy from Garmin to have used that person for their marketing when they likely had plenty of other athletes they couldve posted about who hit the advertised goal - Garmins post literally starts with 'Under 4' and then chip time is over 4, plus its a photo with a finishers medal from the marathon so you'd expect chip time to mean something. Completely different to the example of your partner - If Garmin had posted someone looking super happy in a park somewhere, showing off their sub-4, clearly not ran as part of an official marathon, Id be completely fine with that.
I don't even really care haha. I was just trying to say that it's less egregious than the rest of OMTIU