The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

crisscrosscountry wrote:

stagnant is not good wrote:

It's not bad, but he won't be happy. He was "chasing 2:20" in Valencia in 2022, two years later, finally has a coach, and he didn't even get his PB. Hopefully he stays injury free and can put in another good block, but I still think he's a good way away from cracking 2:20.

Ben is one of the shoetubers I've been impressed with the level he's reached. It really like most are in the "lucky to break 3 hours" crowd and just kind of hover around that level before inevitably getting injured or aging out of fitness. But with these guys running genuinely fast times and trying to improve, there's a more interesting game going on. They clearly have a pretty good level of running talent that allows them to train and improve quickly but then they also get to that point where their next goal is more ambitious and their training starts to top out. So, unlike the casual 3 hour guys, these guys suddenly have that level of performance and expectation. Then they have to get educated on more serious training methods/trends, get a coach, and really become "experts" in running. But, they are still relatively young in terms of training age, so they then have to deal with serious injuries and fitness loss for the first time but with the added pressure of being more committed to running, both personally and as part of their income because of their shoetuber status. And finally they enter the weird stage where despite being able to train pretty much full time, having a coach, and educating themselves about every training term in popular literature, they just can't seem to match that same time they ran when they were relatively young and naive to running. It's a very interesting thing to see them grapple with but one I imagine most high school/college runners had to deal with at some point, minus the audience of tens of thousands of subscribers.

ShoeTubersHaveNoEthics wrote:

Koflated wrote:

In the last couple of minutes of his latest “Runner’s Weekend” video, Kofuzi admits to being burned out — unsurprising, given the pace of his travel this year. He’s pledging to significantly scale back in 2025. (For the record, I quite enjoy his travelogue videos, but this one has a forced-march feeling; runvlogging for profit is a tough racket.)

Video:youtu.be/Azdkc3r8rYE?si=ZdxUjIBGg5jVbz...

He seems to be depressed over the presidential election. He put out a video a few days after the election that ended with, "Now more than ever we need empathy." Put that together with his vlog ending in a podcast with Thomas where they were lamenting the cost of the six star bonus medal (and that's what it should be called to point out the ridiculousness of the entire concept), which they put at $30k and how expensive running is in general, and I think maybe it's dawning on Ko that taking endless free trips to Jamaica, the Olympics, Boston, New York, Berlin, London, Budapest, and on and on because you have X amount of followers while people are struggling to pay for rent, food and daycare doesn't exactly send the message he wants it to send (heck Trump almost won Ko's home State of Illinois).

Within 200 miles of Ko's home, you can run an Indoor Track Marathon for a hundred bucks, you could run the Carmel Indiana Marathon for a hundred bucks, you could run the Fort Wayne, Indiana Marathon for $90, you could run the Wisconsin Marathon (Kenosha) for $85 and Ko could probably run that one for free, his 2:56 PR would probably get him entry into the elite field of that race, you could run the Kalamazoo marathon for $95, and you could run the Grand Rapids Marathon for $115 bucks. All of these races could be done for $500 or less. Some could be done as day trips where the only cost is registration and gas to and from the race. Then there's the weekly free 5ks 20 miles from Ko's home base of Crystal Lake and just a few minutes outside of his old stomping grounds of Chicago.

The influencers want you to believe running is expensive because they need people to buy lots of things to fund all their trips around the world, but the reality is it isn't. You can run on an accurately measured 5k course for less than $20 in most places, in a lot of places you can do it for free. You can run Master's and All Comers track meets for $10 or less per event in a lot of places. You can even find free turkey trots or turkey trots where a canned food item is the cost of registration. You don't need to pay $100 for a turkey trot, show up in $250 shoes, custom made Rabbit Kofuzi Run Club singlets and buns costing a couple hundred bucks and Oakley sunglasses to run your 21:30 goal time (sub 7 minute pace is what most regular people consider fast for a 5k). You can also join an actual run club, not the virtual run clubs the influencers all like, that has group runs, workouts and coffees for $40 or less.

It'd be refreshing for an influencer to go against the grain and emphasize that running can be an extremely affordable and fun hobby that builds community. If you're really that concerned about the election results, get people offline and into building real communities like running clubs. And read or re-read "Bowling Alone." Real communities and real connections build real trust, which is the antidote to online disinformation. A running influencers like Kofuzi covering the running community near his town and who is in it and what their stories are might lead to people joining real communities in other towns. But that might eat into the virtual training plan "Winter Grit" and virtual run club merch sales.

$baby wrote:

foxypossum wrote:

Fox gets another sub 2:20. The juice is on the loose.

yeah who knows what drugs that guy is ingesting but also his new diet is so questionable. he explains it a bit in his most recent video, on some recent podcasts, and one of videos from a few weeks ago. he's basically eating 1500 calories with almost no carbs outside of work out days and the night before work outs to lose a bunch of weight. in his last pre-race workout he literally says "i thought i'd feel terrible because i'm hungry but it felt okay, just a little bit of hunger."

obviously the weight loss has helped him achieve his sub 2:20 goal (among other training changes and the fact that he is not traveling much as he waits for his VISA (and bc no self-respecting pro athlete wants to work with him anymore)). but this kind of thing is a recipe for an injury and/or burn-out (and maybe a disordered relationship with food as well) and imo as a COACH of other runners is kind of irresponsible... I get we are all adults here and if you see someone else doing things that are dumb you have the autonomy not to copy them but his "fans" have got to be so uniformed so as to be followers in the first place that it wouldn't surprise me if they start thinking this is the way to go about things to improve their marathon times.

so, just a really risky way to go about things. then the day before the marathon (see Chicago and CIM pre-race videos) he eats about a million carbs (though not as stupidly as Floberg who chugged like a gallon of juice). it's funny how these guys are objectively good runners and "healthy" people but if you are not involved in the sport and you just casually observed this behavior you'd be like "what the hell?" compulsively watchable content but foolishness at its finest really.

ShoeTubersHaveNoEthics wrote:

His whole video was so, so weird. He tries checking in at the elite table and they can't find his bib--turns out he's a pacer and has a pacer bib. Then he's randomly walking around the technical meeting room and CJ Albertson looks at him and his bib as if to say, "No way is this guy going to pace me." Then the Pacer Matt Fox decides to race and not pace with his Pacer bib. I mean I've seen 3:00 half marathon pacers take off and run way faster than they were supposed to. But come on, if you're going to pace, pace. Then they cut to he and his girlfriend talking about her race. I guess her goal was sub 3:20?

I just found the thing odd. You have a pacer bib but you didn't tell us what the time or who the person you're supposed to pace is. Was it Calli Thackery? I guess that could make sense. If so, I wonder what happened that caused her to not want to be paced by Matt.