bigmig19 wrote:
How is she not a top athlete again? You mean at everything? If you win a gold medal in the swim bike run, I think that qualifies you to talk about diet and exercise and mindset or whatever sage canaday and every other you tuber is talking about. We only have a problem with her talking about it? Thats weird.
The difference between running social media influencers like Sage and Gwen these days is that Gwen continues to talk a big game, as someone else here mentioned, with absolutely unrealistic, narcissistic, out-of-touch, pie-in-the-sky aspirations and predictions for her own performance, which have fallen short nearly 100% of the time. People continue to reference her proclamation that she'd gold medal in the Olympic marathon for good reason--it was downright disrespectful and absurd, and her performances since then have not even come close to medaling in anything. Yet she continues to talk a big game without the evidence to back it up. Say what you will about Sage, but he hasn't produced much lately in terms of performance (understandably so given the not insignificant life events he's been through lately), but he doesn't talk himself up. His channel is 100% focused on discussing the sport of trail/mountain/ultra running, training philosophy, etc without the extraneous and unbacked self promotion and hype that Gwen produces. There's a lack of humility in Gwen that is off-putting. I get it that you medaled in the Olympic triathlon, and that is awesome, but it gives you no right to go galavanting around the sport of running, talking your mouth off, without actually producing. Contrast this to a triathlete like Morgan Pearson who has run some impressive events lately (USATF Half Marathon Championships) who does not do this--just keeps his head down and works hard, and produces results.
Also, someone mentioned that they don't understand how she is not a top athlete in the sport of running, given that she holds some of the fastest 5k and 10k splits off the bike from her triathlon days. A couple of thoughts: 1) (as already mentioned here) perhaps she responded better to the stimulus of high volume triathlon training with lots of nonimpact bike/swim base; and 2) the occam's razor explanation: she's getting older. She's 35 now, and medaled in Rio 5 years ago.
I agree that she left a potential triathlon dynasty on the table, which is a shame for her sporting legacy--but she made the choice she did to explore her potential as a pure runner +/- have more family time. At age 35, she could still be crushing it in long course tri, but we'll never know what could have been possible with her in that regard.