I recently interviewed an elite marathon coach about his after thoughts about the Olympic Trials Marathon. I brought up this website during several questions and he laughed at me. He told me that the average post on the message board has greater insight than the Johnson Bros when it comes to the marathon. I was kind of taken back. He went into detail about the fact that Robert would of had a tough time beating Shalane on his best days and that Weldon was a huge underachiever in the marathon.
I wouldn't say the "Average poster" but neither have any credentials to expertly input on the sport. They are like most of us. Rabid obsessive fans of a sport that they love. And devoted themselves to. Running addicts.
One was a one 28:07-28:20 10k guy and tried the marathon once. Before the big injury and decided he was best focused on a better bet. The other was a 2:23 marathoner who with the Ivy League degree and this website landed a D1 coaching job.
They do pay attention. I wouldn't call them experts at anything other than managing enough controversy and sensationalism to keep people coming back to their website.
That's what they do well.
As a 21 year old student, I thought that the TRIALS PREVIEW and 2016 PREDICTIONS had some sort of merit behind them. I referenced them during the interview and was laughed at.
I hate that people think your PR's give you credibility. As fans we should all have the right to discuss and criticize professional athletes. I hate when people use the "What have you ever done compared to Webb/German/Rupp/Ritz/etc?" argument.
On the subject of your question, I think "fanboy journalism" is one of the problems with the sport. So yes the Brojos are fans and I rarely care for their editorial pieces, but I think the way they collect articles is incredibly good for fanship of the sport.
I absolutly love this website but anything that requires an opinion is almost always way off base. The Brojo's have been involved in the sport long enough to have created relationships. This means that they have become bias based on who they like and who they don't. Horrible journalism but fun site.
break it up wrote:
I wouldn't say the "Average poster" but neither have any credentials to expertly input on the sport. They are like most of us. Rabid obsessive fans of a sport that they love. And devoted themselves to. Running addicts.
One was a one 28:07-28:20 10k guy and tried the marathon once. Before the big injury and decided he was best focused on a better bet. The other was a 2:23 marathoner who with the Ivy League degree and this website landed a D1 coaching job.
They do pay attention. I wouldn't call them experts at anything other than managing enough controversy and sensationalism to keep people coming back to their website.
That's what they do well.
completely agree. however, i don't think that this website is all fanboy material. I'd classify the Brojos as amateurs, this website is incredibly good at what it does. 28:07 is still a really fast 10k time, and 2:23 is still pretty good.
school newspaper wrote:
As a 21 year old student, I thought that the TRIALS PREVIEW and 2016 PREDICTIONS had some sort of merit behind them. I referenced them during the interview and was laughed at.
Good point. They do a much more credible job of those predictions than the old days of Track and Field News who would try to predict the top 8 for the Trials and do well to have 2 or 3 place that. They put in a semi-daily and definite weekly focus.
I eat the brojos for lunch.
The way I see it wrote:
As fans we should all have the right to discuss and criticize professional athletes.
fan /fæn/
noun
an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime, celebrity, etc.: a baseball fan; a great fan of Charlie Chaplin.
You, sir, are NO fan.
school newspaper wrote:
I recently interviewed an elite marathon coach about his after thoughts about the Olympic Trials Marathon. I brought up this website during several questions and he laughed at me. He told me that the average post on the message board has greater insight than the Johnson Bros when it comes to the marathon. I was kind of taken back. He went into detail about the fact that Robert would of had a tough time beating Shalane on his best days and that Weldon was a huge underachiever in the marathon.
I'll bite.
Upon reading this post, I thought "this post is total bs".
Its just obvious to me now when people post pretending to be someone else.
From looking at the ip addresses I'm 99% its from someone associated with a training group and they are upset how we picked athlete(s) in the group.
I actually personally like the group of the athlete(s) I guess we didn't pick high enough.
Nonetheless, I thought the Trials preview was pretty good and I didn't write it. The main point it got across was Ryan Hall was not the lock everyone said he was and that Desi should not be a huge favorite over Shalane. That proved to be correct. Of course many individual picks were off.
The people who cause the biggest trouble on the message boards are not juvenile posters, its insiders in the sport who want to prop themselves up or tear others down.
Nonetheless calling me a fan is not a knock. I'm a huge fan of the sport of running. I feel I know a lot about it too. But if you're going to question my expertise, just come up with a better ruse or be straightforward about it. Or how about an email saying, "I disagree with what you're saying about X". Merhawi Kefleizghi has done that twice with Meb and I have learned a lot more about Meb both times.
I just thought no way a journalist goes and talks to a prominent coach and then runs to LRC to post, "He went into detail about the fact that Robert would of had a tough time beating Shalane on his best days and that Weldon was a huge underachiever in the marathon."
by definition wrote:
You, sir, are NO fan.
Haha, I'm a fan of running, not of every runner. I wish we could treat running like a mainstream sport. Plenty of people trash talk Tim Tebow or Lebron James even though 99.9% of them could never play in the NBA or NFL.
The way I see it wrote:
I hate that people think your PR's give you credibility. As fans we should all have the right to discuss and criticize professional athletes. I hate when people use the "What have you ever done compared to Webb/German/Rupp/Ritz/etc?" argument.
On the subject of your question, I think "fanboy journalism" is one of the problems with the sport. So yes the Brojos are fans and I rarely care for their editorial pieces, but I think the way they collect articles is incredibly good for fanship of the sport.
Translation:
"I am a guy who has never run under 3 hours for the marathon or 18 minutes for the 5K, but think I know more about the sport than most people way faster than me because I have read every copy of Joggersworld."
What would qualify someone as an expert in track? A trackology degree? It's certainly not PRs, because that would disqualify, for instance, Vin Lanana, Joe Vigil and Renato Canova.
That being said, those marathon predictions were straight up bogus. I mean, Ritz for the win? He's a great runner and all, and I think most people thought he'd make the team, but that was the only prediction of Ritz winning that I saw, and it was based on very flimsy reasoning.
Concerned Citizen wrote:
What would qualify someone as an expert in track? A trackology degree? It's certainly not PRs, because that would disqualify, for instance, Vin Lanana, Joe Vigil and Renato Canova.
That being said, those marathon predictions were straight up bogus. I mean, Ritz for the win? He's a great runner and all, and I think most people thought he'd make the team, but that was the only prediction of Ritz winning that I saw, and it was based on very flimsy reasoning.
If being right making predictions makes one an expert, then there would be no experts in the field of economics, would there?
What makes one an expert is having an extraordinary knowledge of the subject matter. Period. Brojos, even though sometimes coming off wet-behind-the-ears, qualify.
Besides the gratuitous nature of it, telling someone they "underperformed" in the marathon, or any other event, clearly establishes the lack of expertise from the critic.
With that said, I have no clue at all what the whole thing with Olinger was about?
Concerned Citizen wrote:
What would qualify someone as an expert in track? A trackology degree? It's certainly not PRs, because that would disqualify, for instance, Vin Lanana, Joe Vigil and Renato Canova.
Let's start right here, because this is 100% correct. You don't need to have been good at a sport to be an expert on the subject. Many many many great coaches at all different sports, never played them. I think we all know that. To think that a person needs to be good at something in order to have an opinion on the matter is just plain naive.
As for the Johnson's, I think it's definately fair to call them experts in the sport of running. Now, that certainly doesn't mean they are the best, just extremely knowledgeable. A good example would be to look at doctors. There are thousands and thousands of them, and obviously there are some better than others. But all of them are experts on the subject of medicine. Just relate that to running. You don't have to be the best at what you do, to be considered an expert on the subject.
Concerned Citizen wrote:
That being said, those marathon predictions were straight up bogus. I mean, Ritz for the win? He's a great runner and all, and I think most people thought he'd make the team, but that was the only prediction of Ritz winning that I saw, and it was based on very flimsy reasoning.
Ritz was not far from winning.
I'd say the Brojos are experts. Both have run pretty seriously and have presumably studied training methods pretty thoroughly. Both have done work on maintaining this website for over a decade, following the sport day in and day out. One of them is a college cross-country coach. From the articles they seem to know everything that goes on in the world of distance running. I'd say they qualify as experts, and of course also as fans - I don't think those are really mutually exclusive; it's actually hard to imagine a track expert who wasn't a fan.
As to what I said about the marathon, I still maintain that picking Ritz for the win was a bad prediction, mainly due to the reasoning that they gave. One bad prediction doesn't make someone not an expert though.
Relax wejo, that guy is ------. You and your bro certainly rate as experts along with malmo and others here.
I consider myself an expert based on more years of running and racing then I care to admit. I've had press credentials to The Trials and several Meets - does that also make me an expert? Runners ask me for training advice, especially for the marathon? Does that make me an expert? I don't know and don't much care; if someone don't respect my opinion go find another that they agree with. I've never qualified for The Trials or a Worlds team.
We are all in left field sometimes. f
Oops, here comes the grammar police. "doesn't"
In other words wrote:
Translation:
"I am a guy who has never run under 3 hours for the marathon or 18 minutes for the 5K, but think I know more about the sport than most people way faster than me because I have read every copy of Joggersworld."
15:50
4:16
1:55
50.0
and my dick is 7.75in
I've got nothin to hide