I miss Ben Barrows

Ben Barrows wrote:

Draggin ballZ wrote:

In our current world of over the top cringe influencers, I miss Ben Barrows’ simple and modest videos more than ever. I hope coaching is going well for him, he always seemed like such a good dude.

I'm honored that this post has so many upvotes. I've always loved Letsrun and still check it daily and I know this is a very tough crowd to please.

Coaching has been fantastic. I still love the sport as much as ever, I've got an amazing group of runners and people that I'm fortunate to coach, and I love Pitt State and the MIAA and Division II. Even though this is technically already my 9th year coaching in some capacity, the past 2.5 years have been very different from previous years with being in charge of a group now and being the one to make all the decisions. It's definitely a lot more stressful having that responsibility, but it has been fun learning to blend together the science and the art of coaching. There have been so many cool things happen in the past few years with championships, records, etc. and there's so much more to look forward to. The process and the journey with the people I get to do it with is more enjoyable than anything though.

I do miss the days of training hard, being fit, and making some videos on the side. I wouldn't say I regret being a running YouTuber because there's a lot of cool things that came from it, but I do wonder how my running career would've panned out if I never did it. No idea if it would've been better or worse. It's just so common to see nearly every running YouTuber start off doing pretty well, and then they go through challenges and eventually everything fizzles out. I am certainly no exception to that category. My first small series of breaking 15 in the 5k went well and I picked up some steam, and then my series for training for Houston and the race itself was the absolute peak for me as a runner and as a YouTuber, and then everything went slowly downhill in my opinion. I was never able to recreate that magic again or even come close to it. In the early stages, the YouTube channel gave me some extra motivation and accountability to do things right and be disciplined in everything I do. If I didn't have that, I might've given up on running sooner than I did, but maybe not - there's no telling.

The whole YouTube thing started just as a genuine enjoyment for making videos and tying my love for running into that. I've always enjoyed creating videos no matter the content. When I was in elementary school, one of my neighbor friends and I would use his old school camcorder and make our own stupid Saturday Night Live-esque skits. Throughout my life, I'd always find something to make videos about, whether it was goofy stuff with friends, guitar covers, disc golf, and eventually running. As a running YouTuber, I mostly stayed true to that and made videos just for the sake of my own enjoyment and the fulfillment that I got from people being interested in an average joe's journey. I hesitated to monetize my channel and did not do until about 6-7 months or so after my Houston race. I've never done anything solely for money, but it did get in the way sometimes of making decisions in my training or video creation as opposed to making a decision that would've been best for my progress as a runner. The chase of the OTQ marathon physically destroyed me, thinking about stuff like my 150 mile week and the video that came along with it. Part of me looks back on that and is happy that I was that aggressive with my pursuit of that goal. I evaluate myself as a person who wasn't super talented and needed some extreme training to achieve that OTQ time. I'm not sure that I had the talent to achieve it regardless of whether the training was smart or not. But then the other side of me wonders what my potential would've been with smarter training that would've allowed me to stay healthier in my late 20's. Oh well though, nobody ever finishes a running career with zero regrets about how they did things and there will always be "what-ifs". Either way, I was happy to pursue it with everything I had.

But anyways, some of those decisions on video creation were definitely driven by "this would be a really cool video" or "this should get lots of views" or "it'd be nice to have a little extra money to offset this high electric bill in the winter" rather than "this is the best thing for me as a runner". I think every running YouTuber that gains some traction deals with that to some extent. That's why I think my biggest regret with the running YouTuber thing is monetizing my channel. The money did help, but it's not like I raked in a significant amount of income in the grand scheme of things. If I never monetized my channel, then everything would've stayed 100% to just doing all that because I loved it. Like I said though, there were definitely cool things that came out of the YouTube channel. Most of all, I think it gave me a really special connection with several of my athletes that enjoyed following my journey as much as anyone, especially when they get to see more of the day-to-day and behind-the-scenes stuff. It's not nearly as frequent anymore, but occasionally, people I've never met still come up to me at meets and strike up a conversation about my YouTube channel and that's pretty neat.

I'm sure it would be fun for me and people would enjoy if I documented things from a coaching side of things, but there's no chance of that happening. Other things are far more important such as looking out for my athletes' safety while training, making sure they're doing the training right, maintaining a competitive environment and privacy, etc. Making videos would remove focus from all of those things which is non-negotiable. Even if someone else wanted to make the videos for us, I enjoy how we try to train away in silence and let our results at championships do the talking. It's not a thing of "we have the best training, nobody can see what we do or how we do it" but it's just more of a "I don't want to show our hand". Everything has the focus to try to be the best that we can when it matters the most at championships and there are many factors in that outside of the training.

I don't run much at all anymore. It's not uncommon for me to go several weeks in a row without a run. In my collegiate and post-collegiate training days, I saw myself as a guy that would run forever, but I've always struggled with moderation and being an "all or nothing" type of guy. I just haven't found much joy in running for myself without the pursuit of being the fastest I've ever been. That might change eventually but there just hasn't been much motivation to run. I try to maintain some sort of health by not eating as much and by walking to/from work every day multiple times per day. Fun fact, I went from late December 2022 until Thanksgiving 2023 without filling up my gas tank lol. Don't think I'll ever beat that record.

Not exactly sure why I took the time to reply and write all that - I guess I just kind of get in this reflective mood every now and then and I figured some people out there would enjoy some sort of update from me. I've had thoughts of making a video at some point as a big reflection on my running career and how the YouTube tied into that, but I probably never will. This message can slightly fill that void. Hope you all are doing well. On to 2024.

Ben Barrows wrote:

Draggin ballZ wrote:

In our current world of over the top cringe influencers, I miss Ben Barrows’ simple and modest videos more than ever. I hope coaching is going well for him, he always seemed like such a good dude.

I'm honored that this post has so many upvotes. I've always loved Letsrun and still check it daily and I know this is a very tough crowd to please.

Coaching has been fantastic. I still love the sport as much as ever, I've got an amazing group of runners and people that I'm fortunate to coach, and I love Pitt State and the MIAA and Division II. Even though this is technically already my 9th year coaching in some capacity, the past 2.5 years have been very different from previous years with being in charge of a group now and being the one to make all the decisions. It's definitely a lot more stressful having that responsibility, but it has been fun learning to blend together the science and the art of coaching. There have been so many cool things happen in the past few years with championships, records, etc. and there's so much more to look forward to. The process and the journey with the people I get to do it with is more enjoyable than anything though.

I do miss the days of training hard, being fit, and making some videos on the side. I wouldn't say I regret being a running YouTuber because there's a lot of cool things that came from it, but I do wonder how my running career would've panned out if I never did it. No idea if it would've been better or worse. It's just so common to see nearly every running YouTuber start off doing pretty well, and then they go through challenges and eventually everything fizzles out. I am certainly no exception to that category. My first small series of breaking 15 in the 5k went well and I picked up some steam, and then my series for training for Houston and the race itself was the absolute peak for me as a runner and as a YouTuber, and then everything went slowly downhill in my opinion. I was never able to recreate that magic again or even come close to it. In the early stages, the YouTube channel gave me some extra motivation and accountability to do things right and be disciplined in everything I do. If I didn't have that, I might've given up on running sooner than I did, but maybe not - there's no telling.

The whole YouTube thing started just as a genuine enjoyment for making videos and tying my love for running into that. I've always enjoyed creating videos no matter the content. When I was in elementary school, one of my neighbor friends and I would use his old school camcorder and make our own stupid Saturday Night Live-esque skits. Throughout my life, I'd always find something to make videos about, whether it was goofy stuff with friends, guitar covers, disc golf, and eventually running. As a running YouTuber, I mostly stayed true to that and made videos just for the sake of my own enjoyment and the fulfillment that I got from people being interested in an average joe's journey. I hesitated to monetize my channel and did not do until about 6-7 months or so after my Houston race. I've never done anything solely for money, but it did get in the way sometimes of making decisions in my training or video creation as opposed to making a decision that would've been best for my progress as a runner. The chase of the OTQ marathon physically destroyed me, thinking about stuff like my 150 mile week and the video that came along with it. Part of me looks back on that and is happy that I was that aggressive with my pursuit of that goal. I evaluate myself as a person who wasn't super talented and needed some extreme training to achieve that OTQ time. I'm not sure that I had the talent to achieve it regardless of whether the training was smart or not. But then the other side of me wonders what my potential would've been with smarter training that would've allowed me to stay healthier in my late 20's. Oh well though, nobody ever finishes a running career with zero regrets about how they did things and there will always be "what-ifs". Either way, I was happy to pursue it with everything I had.

But anyways, some of those decisions on video creation were definitely driven by "this would be a really cool video" or "this should get lots of views" or "it'd be nice to have a little extra money to offset this high electric bill in the winter" rather than "this is the best thing for me as a runner". I think every running YouTuber that gains some traction deals with that to some extent. That's why I think my biggest regret with the running YouTuber thing is monetizing my channel. The money did help, but it's not like I raked in a significant amount of income in the grand scheme of things. If I never monetized my channel, then everything would've stayed 100% to just doing all that because I loved it. Like I said though, there were definitely cool things that came out of the YouTube channel. Most of all, I think it gave me a really special connection with several of my athletes that enjoyed following my journey as much as anyone, especially when they get to see more of the day-to-day and behind-the-scenes stuff. It's not nearly as frequent anymore, but occasionally, people I've never met still come up to me at meets and strike up a conversation about my YouTube channel and that's pretty neat.

I'm sure it would be fun for me and people would enjoy if I documented things from a coaching side of things, but there's no chance of that happening. Other things are far more important such as looking out for my athletes' safety while training, making sure they're doing the training right, maintaining a competitive environment and privacy, etc. Making videos would remove focus from all of those things which is non-negotiable. Even if someone else wanted to make the videos for us, I enjoy how we try to train away in silence and let our results at championships do the talking. It's not a thing of "we have the best training, nobody can see what we do or how we do it" but it's just more of a "I don't want to show our hand". Everything has the focus to try to be the best that we can when it matters the most at championships and there are many factors in that outside of the training.

I don't run much at all anymore. It's not uncommon for me to go several weeks in a row without a run. In my collegiate and post-collegiate training days, I saw myself as a guy that would run forever, but I've always struggled with moderation and being an "all or nothing" type of guy. I just haven't found much joy in running for myself without the pursuit of being the fastest I've ever been. That might change eventually but there just hasn't been much motivation to run. I try to maintain some sort of health by not eating as much and by walking to/from work every day multiple times per day. Fun fact, I went from late December 2022 until Thanksgiving 2023 without filling up my gas tank lol. Don't think I'll ever beat that record.

Not exactly sure why I took the time to reply and write all that - I guess I just kind of get in this reflective mood every now and then and I figured some people out there would enjoy some sort of update from me. I've had thoughts of making a video at some point as a big reflection on my running career and how the YouTube tied into that, but I probably never will. This message can slightly fill that void. Hope you all are doing well. On to 2024.

strava dms wrote:

Ben Barrows wrote:

I'm honored that this post has so many upvotes. I've always loved Letsrun and still check it daily and I know this is a very tough crowd to please.

Coaching has been fantastic. I still love the sport as much as ever, I've got an amazing group of runners and people that I'm fortunate to coach, and I love Pitt State and the MIAA and Division II. Even though this is technically already my 9th year coaching in some capacity, the past 2.5 years have been very different from previous years with being in charge of a group now and being the one to make all the decisions. It's definitely a lot more stressful having that responsibility, but it has been fun learning to blend together the science and the art of coaching. There have been so many cool things happen in the past few years with championships, records, etc. and there's so much more to look forward to. The process and the journey with the people I get to do it with is more enjoyable than anything though.

I do miss the days of training hard, being fit, and making some videos on the side. I wouldn't say I regret being a running YouTuber because there's a lot of cool things that came from it, but I do wonder how my running career would've panned out if I never did it. No idea if it would've been better or worse. It's just so common to see nearly every running YouTuber start off doing pretty well, and then they go through challenges and eventually everything fizzles out. I am certainly no exception to that category. My first small series of breaking 15 in the 5k went well and I picked up some steam, and then my series for training for Houston and the race itself was the absolute peak for me as a runner and as a YouTuber, and then everything went slowly downhill in my opinion. I was never able to recreate that magic again or even come close to it. In the early stages, the YouTube channel gave me some extra motivation and accountability to do things right and be disciplined in everything I do. If I didn't have that, I might've given up on running sooner than I did, but maybe not - there's no telling.

The whole YouTube thing started just as a genuine enjoyment for making videos and tying my love for running into that. I've always enjoyed creating videos no matter the content. When I was in elementary school, one of my neighbor friends and I would use his old school camcorder and make our own stupid Saturday Night Live-esque skits. Throughout my life, I'd always find something to make videos about, whether it was goofy stuff with friends, guitar covers, disc golf, and eventually running. As a running YouTuber, I mostly stayed true to that and made videos just for the sake of my own enjoyment and the fulfillment that I got from people being interested in an average joe's journey. I hesitated to monetize my channel and did not do until about 6-7 months or so after my Houston race. I've never done anything solely for money, but it did get in the way sometimes of making decisions in my training or video creation as opposed to making a decision that would've been best for my progress as a runner. The chase of the OTQ marathon physically destroyed me, thinking about stuff like my 150 mile week and the video that came along with it. Part of me looks back on that and is happy that I was that aggressive with my pursuit of that goal. I evaluate myself as a person who wasn't super talented and needed some extreme training to achieve that OTQ time. I'm not sure that I had the talent to achieve it regardless of whether the training was smart or not. But then the other side of me wonders what my potential would've been with smarter training that would've allowed me to stay healthier in my late 20's. Oh well though, nobody ever finishes a running career with zero regrets about how they did things and there will always be "what-ifs". Either way, I was happy to pursue it with everything I had.

But anyways, some of those decisions on video creation were definitely driven by "this would be a really cool video" or "this should get lots of views" or "it'd be nice to have a little extra money to offset this high electric bill in the winter" rather than "this is the best thing for me as a runner". I think every running YouTuber that gains some traction deals with that to some extent. That's why I think my biggest regret with the running YouTuber thing is monetizing my channel. The money did help, but it's not like I raked in a significant amount of income in the grand scheme of things. If I never monetized my channel, then everything would've stayed 100% to just doing all that because I loved it. Like I said though, there were definitely cool things that came out of the YouTube channel. Most of all, I think it gave me a really special connection with several of my athletes that enjoyed following my journey as much as anyone, especially when they get to see more of the day-to-day and behind-the-scenes stuff. It's not nearly as frequent anymore, but occasionally, people I've never met still come up to me at meets and strike up a conversation about my YouTube channel and that's pretty neat.

I'm sure it would be fun for me and people would enjoy if I documented things from a coaching side of things, but there's no chance of that happening. Other things are far more important such as looking out for my athletes' safety while training, making sure they're doing the training right, maintaining a competitive environment and privacy, etc. Making videos would remove focus from all of those things which is non-negotiable. Even if someone else wanted to make the videos for us, I enjoy how we try to train away in silence and let our results at championships do the talking. It's not a thing of "we have the best training, nobody can see what we do or how we do it" but it's just more of a "I don't want to show our hand". Everything has the focus to try to be the best that we can when it matters the most at championships and there are many factors in that outside of the training.

I don't run much at all anymore. It's not uncommon for me to go several weeks in a row without a run. In my collegiate and post-collegiate training days, I saw myself as a guy that would run forever, but I've always struggled with moderation and being an "all or nothing" type of guy. I just haven't found much joy in running for myself without the pursuit of being the fastest I've ever been. That might change eventually but there just hasn't been much motivation to run. I try to maintain some sort of health by not eating as much and by walking to/from work every day multiple times per day. Fun fact, I went from late December 2022 until Thanksgiving 2023 without filling up my gas tank lol. Don't think I'll ever beat that record.

Not exactly sure why I took the time to reply and write all that - I guess I just kind of get in this reflective mood every now and then and I figured some people out there would enjoy some sort of update from me. I've had thoughts of making a video at some point as a big reflection on my running career and how the YouTube tied into that, but I probably never will. This message can slightly fill that void. Hope you all are doing well. On to 2024.

Your channel was a lot of fun to watch. Why did you remove a lot of your videos from your channel? Were they ones you were ultimately unhappy with?

Looking back from the current running youtubers, your channel was probably one of, if not the, most grounded and felt like a normal runner documenting his training. It's kind of interesting to hear even you sometimes felt you were doing things for "content" instead of making the best training decisions. This gives me some more perspective on the running youtube community.