why does David Roche keep banging on about being in sub-4 at altitude shape?

I know. I know. I said I was done here. I lied. Something really bothered me and caused me to 180....

What World Class Coach has ever called themselves a World Class Coach?

I'm sorry...I knew nothing about this guy until this thread....but DAMN I can totally understand why this thread is here.

"Robbie Diamond I like that feedback on potentially inadequate volume, but a couple notes: one, not everything I do is on Strava (I am writing this after a brutal 30-minute heat suit session), and I’m maxing out what’s physically possible for me with 2 young kids and being a world-class coach. Two, I won International Trail Performance of the Year in 2024, and I don’t think anyone would have predicted I’d ever get close to doing that 10 years ago no matter how hard I worked. Tons of more talented athletes have fallen away, and I am here, getting faster at 36. So as both an athlete and coach with long-term vision, I can confidently say it’s working. And hopefully it can be a model to young athletes who also aren’t given the gifts that fully shine on day 1 🙏"

YEP. The superlatives and hyperboles are becoming more and more egregious. In just the LAST WEEK he has claimed, and I quote:

"As a world class coach..."
"As the best 100 miler in the world right now..."
"My numbers are the best they've ever been."
"That was the greatest breakthrough workout I've ever had."
"(Big Alta) The sickest I have ever been."
"(Big Alta) The worst ankle sprain I've ever had."

And that's just me picking it up on the periphery. I'm sure there are gobs more.

Having had 4 concussions, concussion can change your behaviour a bit, so maybe this whole "shoot your shot", "I am the greatest" schtick has been contributed to by the concussion. It can also affect your mental health, fatigue from physical and mental efforts.
Was he always a "love you guys" person before the concussion? I only really found his podcast/website after the leadville win - altho I do remember him from his slowtwitch days also.
Exercise can help in the recovery process, but certainly not high intensity stuff for recovery and certainly not running at that effort.

He has always been a "you're Awesome, you're the Best and we LOVE you so much!!!" guy way before the concussion. Both Roches have humble bragged on social media for years.

I'd say what happened was after Leadville (win and CR) was he just got an even bigger head. That's it!

And now we add Allie O to the long list of very talented and dedicated athletes that the Roches have coached to serious injury. They have now essentially tried to "buy her off" with the fancy new cross training bike as she can help promote them on social media given her engagement and following. Typical "throw money at the problem" and "how to buy friends and influence people" approach they seem to take.

The thing is Allie O basically only PRed by a few seconds in the 3km steeple over the last 5 years because she finally overcame her eating disorder, finally got actual super spikes, and was a bit more mature. All her other performances (Golden Trail Series) were actually quite subpar and bad under David's "World Class Coaching" considering she was an absolute top blue chip talent in high school in college. Allie herself had posted and documented the last few weeks of "super hard workouts" that were obviously pushing her to the brink before this recent injury. Way too challenging given her level imo. David was probably too busy boasting about himself on social media, recovering from his "sprained ankle" and "coaching" dozens of others in his cult to pay close enough attention to the details though. But the writing was on the wall.

There's a fundamental problem with our culture of talking about workouts. People like to share impressive workouts, but it's really the volume that matters more than intensity. The successful endurance athletes have high volume and a structure that is either pyramidal, polarized (90/10 by time or 80/20 by sessions), or Norwegian. But it's not cool to show a bunch of moderately easy workouts even though that's the most important. For ultras the long run may be most important, including sufficient downhill.

And the easy workouts can be low-impact, even cross-training if HR is at least 60% of max HR and uses the same muscles. Downhill can be trained once a week. This is how to avoid injury as a trail runner.

Can one make more money as an influencer or as a "world class coach"? They seem all in on influencing, and making the most they can while they have the spotlight. The relationship with Allie O. confuses me. I would expect that two people, who are so obsessed with their social media presence and work together, would be all over each other's posts. I rarely see them comment or interact online. Rarely even a "you're awesome" or "we love you" to Allie from the Roches. Are they really, really coaching her or are they more of a make believe let's pretend we coach you coach? Hopefully they have a Zwift bike for their condo in Aspen as well, so they can keep showing their as good or better than world tour watts (inside only).

I question a lot to do with the Roches but I do believe they are coaching Allie O- there have been some videos on her channel with David pacing her during workouts. FWIW, Allie seems to really rate him as a coach and seemingly responds well to his 'you're crushing it' style (although Spencer seemed to be taking the mickey out of this when pacing her in a subsequent workout, so not sure how on board he is).

Whether this style of coaching has contributed to her being sidelined with an injury and missing The Ten is another matter...

It was serious question. I had seen him post videos running with her before, but all recent videos have been with her fiancée. The lack of social media engagement between the two is what I find odd. Maybe those two online power brokers need to give each other space so not to step on the uber positive message of the other.

Megan is constantly flexing her Zwift rides on Strava. “Easy Z1 day!” And then you see she was in tempo for over an hour. That on top of obvious weight doping, it’s just pathetic. Why do they try so hard to look “world class”? Lying is not a character trait that fits in well with coaching, or spreading the word of “science” and “research”.

How dare you talk about her weight. Unacceptable in any forum -- apparently.

I have some Assioma pedals I wouldn't mind installing and calibrating on their Ride bike -- oh, and a scale they can have ;)

Just a couple of years ago the Roches were all in on Grayson Murphy too. Given her Chron’s diagnosis (which she was probably encouraged to run through), I wouldn’t be shocked if they’ve moved on to the next thing that can generate likes and clicks.

One hilarious thing related to this: Megan and David are absolutely certain they would have gotten the Colorado Track / XC job after Wetmore got done, if they had applied for it.

A not insignificant part of me wishes this had happened, just to see how poorly it would have gone

The best way to cheat on Zwift is to hook up a motor while you go have a drink and take a nap.

They’d all be running circles in bucket hats and ankle weights…

this thread is one of those threads that just feeds itself.

I had no idea who the Roches were until Koop went off on them on IG over the Awesome Sauce debacle. It was pretty amusing and while it certainly undermined any credibility of the Roche's, it also made Koop look really petty. I wonder how many of the posts here are from Koop?

I believe I heard Koop's gripe with them goes back to them giving his first book a negative review.

I’m not Jason Koop, but some of his initial gripes about the Roche’s training philosophies have merit. They like to sell “12 x 30 seconds fast plus lots of live and a rainbow unicorn” as the secret to ultramarathon success. Meanwhile, when David wants to get fit for big races, what is he doing? Traditional mile repeats or more Koop-type workouts.

I’ll sum it up like this. I paid a pro runner for some coaching help a while back. Their approach wasn’t as sexy as the Roche’s, but over several months I saw drastic improvement. In one of our post-race debriefs, I asked this coach about implementing some more fun, Roche type work in the next cycle. To which they replied, “Who have they even coached?”

I'm down to criticize David when he earns it, and he earns it a lot, but I don't think it's warranted in this situation.

Allie as an athlete is a risky rebuilding project with a history of ED and stress fractures. Because of that history she is doing a lot of cross training volume, even when healthy. It's not at all shocking that someone with her history would experience a re-injury, even when they are doing everything they can to avoid impact.

At the end of the day she knows what she's risking and could chose to retire at any point. I guess you could argue that they should have refused to coach her, but she's an adult who is making adult choices.