Athlete Special 1500 tonight. Predictions?

I don't care about these people's social media. I care about their performance. This dude is so whiny and unoriginal and I hate the "athlete special" name. He may be special in the way slow kids that need a cork on the fork for safety are special but the constant DNS and slow performances are just old.

Was an early subscriber but it's just not a good look. He shifted from his college workouts/races (which were insightful, fun, and worth watching) to "here's me eating a breakfast burrito with my friends" which is what they always end up doing.

Now he's saying he's too busy to make videos? Sorry, but people go to college full time and run sub-4 miles. Spencer himself did it. The time it takes to make a 15min youtube video ( especially when you have a flipping cameraman) is not what is limiting the effectiveness of his training.

He literally said a long time ago he was running 100 and 200m repeats in high school and taking names. He ran high quality low quantity in college and thrived on it. Now he runs tempos and gets injured every 6 weeks. Like wtf.

"Elite" Runner Youtubers all end up in the exact same place. Tinman and TAS get settled in to doing lifestyle vlogs, their performance on Instagram improves and they stagnate on the track. Evert Silva did it. Everett Smulders got the speedrun record for it, took him like one Outdoor season to just become a tshirt salesman. Rheinhardt Harrison is well on his way to doing the exact same thing.

Notable exceptions are Ben Barrows, who is retired from competition and changed to be about the D2 school he coaches, and Chase Easterling, who has not yet started filming his cool friends doing cool stuff in tiktok clothes.

Chase Easterling sits in front of a camera and recaps his strava with the very occasional workout video. Why the heck would I care to have him sit down and read off his strava to me in a video? His videos are more boring than Spencer Brown's and it absolutely baffles me that people watch him. He's incredibly privileged with his parents giving him money to buy literally every single piece of Tinman gear ever released while sitting around without having to work. Would love to see him have to do some type of hard work instead of running all day while his apartment is paid for him

Spencer was a flat out better runner in college. True he had covid but being injured is more a function of his training. Being injured stalls progress and development.

I would recommend going back to more of what he was doing in college.

I agree with what you say about Easterling, and to be honest I don't watch his videos anymore. Maybe just another way of making mediocre videos.

I do think its weird how he literally never got injured in high school or college. Then all of a sudden he gets to Brooks and he’s been injured 3 times(idk if i count him having covid). Lowkey think the Empire Elite group would be better for him. Closer to home. Still good training partners in similar event categories

with that being said tho. I think it’s more of a mental thing than anything and unfortunately that is affecting his physical health as well. His college experience was cut short. U can tell even with the kinda mediocre indoor season he had in 2020 that he was having fun, enjoying himself, not worrying about much. Then it all halts when he has a decent shot with a 3:39 pr to make outdoor nationals. He didn’t have that big breakthrough like the sub 4 mile. Jumping abruptly into the pro scene basically as the worst male runner on the team with huge expectations, leaving DC immediately and moving around the entire country does a lot to someone’s health. I don’t think he was ready and u can tell with the vids he makes now. Most of the recent vids are super forced. I do think he deserves another shot, possibly one more year to run fast and be a pro. But I think moving back to the east coast, and having somewhat of a fresh start will help. He was running fast when he was enjoying himself

Since I’m not actually Danny Mackey, I don’t know the facts here, but this post has some merit. Spencer was an inconsistent runner in college and has talked a bit about the mental aspect of running.

I suspect his confidence is just shot at the moment. Training with a bunch of studs sounds like fun, but when you are a level behind in talent and can’t get in peak shape it must get pretty miserable pretty quickly. Explains the lack of YouTube content.

I’m not sure that he is injured. Would have come out of nowhere and Will Hoffman posted on Strava that he’s been running with Spencer in Seattle this week. Also don’t think the Beasts would cut him mid-season, they don’t seem to be Nike-level assholes at Brooks.

My guess is that he is either

a. Trying to get some fitness in for a shot at something late August.

b. Writing off this season and getting an early start on building a proper aerobic base.

Whether he is still at Brooks next year is anyone’s guess, but given Danny’s multi-year approach to developing athletes and his relationship with Allie O I would be surprised if Brooks keep him around. It’s a feel-good story and probably doesn’t cost them much cash.

I hope he makes some content addressing the mental pressures of running, I’m sure a sh**-ton of athletes suffer.

Like I said, I might be off-base here, just my suspicion.

*Don’t keep him around.

charl wrote:

trackrun47151 wrote:

+1

I assume the performances likely will not yield him another year on contract, but I’m rooting for the guy. Hope brooks gives him another shot, or that he keeps training/documenting.

His being with brooks has worked on me from a marketing standpoint at least. I found myself rooting for ribbich, wynne, and kidder at the trials just because I recognized them. Also rooting for Kerr at olympics. Is that just me?

Identical experience for me. Their athletes pop off the startlists/results pages for me now.

Yep. Nia falling in the 800M final sucked, rooting the hardest for Kerr in the 1500 than any American. Hoping Yorks gets healthy and runs well again, etc.

Still haven’t bought Brooks shoes tho 😰

You're probably right about a lot of that, seems like the Beasts were more than he could handle right now. His mental health and injuries are likely tied together in a self-defeating cycle unfortunately.

Brooks needs to get Spencer to make the channel about Brooks, and not about Spencer. Spencer has the experience to manage the social media presence of the team. They have had some great (mens') marks this year - 331, 334, 336, 144. I want to see more content about those people.

I am sure he is a nice guy, but the story around SB is not really as compelling as the other stories all around him.

Absolutely. My fiancée and I were exclusively rooting for Brooks runners during the trials because of the Athlete Special's videos.

I too enjoyed the look into Brooks that Spence provided. I hope he is able to stay with them in some way or another