You all suck, no wonder actual legit runners hate Lets Run.

op is so toxic. i can't believe they hurt my feelings as a letsrun member.

In defense of LRC:

1. I have seen nothing but praise here for Athing Mu, a black, female, child of African immigrants. She seems to be roundly celebrated by both the Bro Jos and the posters. This really counters the narrative that LRC is racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc, etc. I think it's more that due to the anonymity, people feel much more comfortable calling out BS like Caster Semenya, in ways that are not PC-allowed in many other places. The LRC hivemind is actually a pretty good BS detector over the long run on many topics, though it is admittedly beset by too many right wingers and anti-vax nuts, and I do not think the brojos should allow/encourage the mass spamming by a few lonely souls.

2. LOL at all the posters here who apparently know LRC well, hate LRC, yet...here you are. Which leads us to:

3. There is no viable alternative. There is no other community on the web with as many informed fans. So you can bet that ALL the pros check LRC. There's no significant coverage anywhere else. Which leads us to:

4. Can we please stop with the running self-hatred that ours is a sport "nobody cares about"?? Apart from NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, soccer, golf, tennis, and top motorsport like F1 and NASCAR, running is no worse off than any other sports.

Go to olympics.com and bring up the list of all summer and winter sports. The unwashed masses don't "care" about any of those sports MORE than running.

When people reach stardom, the human element seems to be taken away.

Aside from outliers like Usain Bolt, outside of this tight knit small community pro athletes in track are not recognized by the general public. They have little to no idea what goes into being a successful runner nor do they care to know.

Because our community is so small, I have been lucky enough to have had pro athletes and national record holders come to talk to my team for no money just because they wanted to make a positive connection and inspire young athletes. Try getting a figure like Tom Brady to your local high school practice. I have had the equivalent from our sport spend time with my team.

One pro-athlete and national record holder that took the time to speak to my athletes has been bashed here from time to time on these boards. For this athlete personally, I can speak for them in saying that this site is a place to avoid. It does not have to be like that.

The fact that many of them don't come here or have to tune us out on these boards in order to stay focused is a loss for all of us. When someone says that they don't care what is said here, it is not a win for them, us, and especially not for LetsRun!

I keep coming back for the honest discussion amongst anonymous posters here. Anonymous posters trading shots with each other is fair game. Anonymous posters attacking high level amateur athletes and pro athletes we should be supporting is not cool.

Weldon...I truly appreciate LetsRun and thank you for it, but you can do more to keep the forum respectful for our star athletes. Maybe you get more traffic short term from the negativity, but it is not a good long play.

I personally couldn't care less if any "real" runners came here or not.

X running back, DB, kick returner and sprinter here, and a track history buff up to the 400m. After that I lose interest. Not a little runner type.

Anyone who has some need to play critic on a messageboard needs help, this is just fun n' games cheap thrills. So relax, chill and have some fun with it.

Bottom line.....nobody cares what you think.

Story response?

begawn wrote:

I personally couldn't care less if any "real" runners came here or not.

can't imagine it would be very fun if everybody had to walk on eggshells kissing @ss. Professional runners don't deal with 1/1000000 the crap that somebody in the NFL or NBA deals with.

85% of this board is still upset over trans Mr. Potato head. So yeah OP; you’re not wrong.

B Franklin wrote:

CarlyRaeJepsensMalort wrote:

if the elites truly didn't care about letsrun then they wouldn't feel the need to regularly offer their stunning and brave opinions on how toxic it is and how they ignore it. sorry, but if you're talking about it, you're not ignoring it. same goes for all of you screeching about how bad this place is - ok, cool, you're free to leave any time. i'm very far left politically and find the covid stuff tiresome, but i just don't click those threads and as such quite enjoy the time i waste over here.

+1, yep. Most of these pros check the boards, or have people close to them check the boards for topics about themselves.

Any track or XC runner worth his or her salt will check the boards even if the coach tells them not to. They will just do it with their hotel room doors closed (assuming travel on the road to meets, etc.).

OP and all OP-agreeers, have you ever been to a real sport like a football, baseball or hockey game? Or to a sports bar?

Sports fans love to INSULT athletes as much as praise them. Take out the insults and it's not a real sport.

Gatlin 2017 in London was the only time I've ever heard a track crowd decisively jeer anyone.

This is an underrated point.

I come to letsrun because there really is no other running media source that allows objective and open dialogue about the sport. Media sources like Citius Mag, while valuable to the sport and appreciated by many, will not openly criticize anyone in the content they produce, even if it's warranted. Why? Because they want to maintain a positive relationship with people in the sport in the hopes they'll interact with Citius in the future.

Again, I said Letsrun is the only place that allows objective and open dialogue... Is it always pretty? No. Do I think all the criticism message board posters dish out is always fair or warranted? No. But is it valuable nonetheless because there's no other place to have that kind of dialogue? Absolutely. Personally, I don't feel like our sport should be treated like some hobby jogger fun run 5k where you can only inflate each other's ego about their crappy time and no criticism is allowed at all.

It's funny too, because the media in literally every big name sport (NFL, MLB, NBA) is fine with openly criticizing their sport. Lord knows that kinds of things are said online with those sports worlds. But for some reason, it isn't tolerated in running outside of LRC. For that reason, I will continue to tune into LRC's media before any other source.

The co-founders set the exact tone you outline OP for pretty much the reasons you outline, that's precisely the type of audience they want to bait to this message board. Outside of this site, the Brojos athletic accomplishments are wholly forgotten.

This forum is for losers. I hadn't check in for years and it's worse than before.

It's been fun, but there is just too much negative energy here and too many new as$holes who post bull$hit and lots of great people who used to post all the time who have left or gone underground. I'm out. Life is too short. I'll be in kona. Hope to see some of you there. Paulo knows how to find me.

I'm just very selective about what threads I follow.

I DO think that the moderators are cowards- they can delete some comments and threads.

I've always felt that any unfounded drug accusations should be deleted- they detract from the thread.

Discussing the possibility of PED use is fine. The definitive, "they all dope" or "to the gills" comments should be deleted.

They're harmful, yes, but they also detract from the intelligent conversation.

There's a guy- Armstrongitis, or something like that, who destroys every thread he posts on with his baseless, contrarian posts. He should be automatically deleted every time.

Clean it up, get rid of trolls and it's a potentially great place for discussion.

In short- moderators, man up and do the right thing.

Saying "you're genes suck" proves you're no different. Just that in addition to being self-loathing you're also sanctimonious