The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

Go for it - we need more women shoetubers who are actually decent runners and not just in it to plod for 4 hours and/or show their tits off.

Ignoring his treadmill runs, he seems to be doing most of his easy days in the 8-8:30/mi range which doesn't seem that fast for someone who just ran a 74 min half?

His easy pace seems fine, around 5:00-5:15/km?

What do you run your easy pace at?

I actually stood next to Kofuzi briefly in the corral on Sunday. It astounded me how many people were simping over him going out of their way minutes before a race like that. I didn’t care enough to say anything to him, but had people pushing me out of the way just to give him and high five

Did you ask him why is his content so repetitive?

Or how a guy with a video announcing he is a stay at home dad, never seems to actually be home?

Or why he calls every travel video a “weekend”, regardless the length of the trip or if it falls on a weekend? Is it so he can relate to the common man?

Or why he didn’t meet up with his best buddies Sage and Gnoza in Houston? Gnoza has always loved a good circle jerk influencer shakeout run. Seems odd he wasn’t there. Was there a falling out?

Just wait until you see how people react to Sam Sulek or the tren twins.

Yeah!! What's up with that?!?! 🍿🍿🍿

I only saw his quick video from his Houston Half and he was screaming like an eight year old Swifty when them guys ran by in the full marathon. So I don’t know.

The Austin half is screaming downhill the entire way which is probably why it was a popular influencer race. The instagram algorithm will unfortunately be filled with painfully mediocre runners with insanely inflated egos milking videos of how they ran their PR at the Austin half for the next month or so. You can probably get 7-8 videos out of it - “what I ate to run a PR”, “what I wore to run a PR”, “how much I slept to run a PR”, “how many times I brushed my teeth to run a PR”, “how many scoops of G1M sport did I mainline in my ass to run a PR”. What a time to be alive. Go 1 more.

If he were fresh, yeah it's fine. Even going sub-8 would be fine. But he's pushing mileage and tired. He's hitting over 70% max HR sometimes, and often camping in the upper 60's. It's just plainly not optimal. Easy mileage isn't about how fast you can get away with. It's about how slow you can go and still get the benefit. Cuz otherwise he just has unrealized gains -- adaptations he could have gotten from his workouts that evaporate because the following days weren't easy enough.

If he's casually enjoying the sport and doesn't want to run so slow all the time, then I'd have no criticism. Running easy mileage a little hot isn't gonna ruin the sport for him. But his whole angle is being goal-oriented and optimizing this and that, doing everything he can to get better (unless it means sacrificing something that's higher priority). Slowing down his easy mileage is some really low hanging fruit. And when he says that's the advice he's received and he intends to do it, and then fails to do it, I just don't get it. It's not that hard.

Like many, he is too concerned about what his pace on Strava looks like to slow down his easy mileage. Simple as that.

Matt Choi just released a video about running 1:19:22 at the Austin Half. Much more subdued tone in this video than past videos. There were a number of Shoetubers at Austin. Midlife Runner run the Austin Half in 1:20:35. As discussed previously, Floberg was there as well.

Sage paced Serious Runner at the the Houston Marathon to a respectable 2:57:47 and another BQ. Of note, it looked like Sage shotgunned a Michelob Ultra while also managing to do a competent job pacing.

The OG GOAT Seth James Demoor has announced that he will be pursuing a PR at the Jersey City Half on April 13th. He has taken on a rather rugged look, and he's moved the Shoedeo from a commodious space with modern amenities in his home to a primitive shed.

Kofuzi announced that he will likely be pursing shorter faster races (currently seems to be a popular theme among Shoetubers) until he starts training for the Sidney Marathon which takes place August 31.

Oh yeah, it's officially a major now that Ko has a bib! LFG!

Kofuzi had to do some pleasing for the sponsors to get that bib. We need more info on the fall out of Sage and Kofuzi.

Couldn't possibly be that Kofuzi abruptly dropped Sage and Sandi for that Runna money.

Looking at it in a more positive light, perhaps Kofuzi didn't want a potential bad performance to reflect poorly on Sage and Sandy.

Kofuzi also mentioned that he doesn't think the "long threshold reps" that both Sage/Sandy and Runna prescribed work for him. So, maybe it was difference of training philosophy.

Maybe they can rekindle the coaching/athlete relationship for Sidney. Kofuzi noted that he's currently thinking about coaching himself for Sidney.

I'm sure he'd train with the V.O2 app or Stryd if they throw money his way, though.

Would Kofuzi hook up with BPN and train under Cunningham!? That'd be an interesting partnership.

The original Shoedio was the shed at his old house. When I started watching him in late 2019, it had running shoe boxes crudely attached to the walls. At some point he changed it to the more familiar white geometric pattern with shoes on the wall. It was still the same shed though.

He may be going retro.

That f@cking idiot has no idea WHAT works for him or anyone else as he’s never actually done anything but jog around pretending to have a clue.

He ditched Sage because he was afraid he’d lose subs to an actual runner and decided the relationship made him look bad. The worst kind of ignorant, dolt.

Seth with the ragged beard vlogging from a plywood shed. The true OG.

Well I'll tell you one thing that happened:

We were coaching Kofuzi and then all of a sudden he surprised us with an email out of the blue saying that he had "signed with Runna" and therefore wouldn't be coached by us anymore.

It would have been nice to have a heads up in communication before he decided to sign with Runna as we had agreed to multiple collab videos on YouTube that still hadn't happened yet and that I was waiting on. The whole "collab" I'd say was not what was originally outlined and promised at all.

We don't have big money like Runna to throw around in advertising so these collabs are generally a big deal for me and Sandi. I had met up with Kofuzi in person for runs and in Boulder over the years and felt like it could have been a more mutually beneficial collab that also could have been really informative as a "case study" of a guy in his 40s trying to get marathon and half marathon PRs and to keep BQing while balancing a fairly busy travel/life/family schedule. The videos didn't happen though.

Honestly when we were coaching him he was super busy traveling basically all summer and spring for events all over the world....from the Olympics to the Boston Marathon etc. I actually think he had a lot more consistent training and dedication focus this Fall and Winter for the Houston Half as he was traveling quite a bit less it seems. The Runna app seemed to just throw him random, challenging workouts based on an algorithm pace range and sequence though. Which honestly can get you in shape...but he did run about 1-min slower at the Houston half this year despite running pretty consistent high mileage (for him).

Personally I've gotten somewhat "burned" by multiple influencers over the years (and ironically it's them reaching out to me first to "collab"). I guess the future lesson is that legal contracts need to be pulled out to ensure people follow through with content specifics.