I recently re-read a section of Life-hacker Tim Ferriss' book the 4 Hour Body. There's a part dedicated to running, where Tim has a guide to go "from 5K to 50K" in just a couple months. (12 weeks?)
His approach was comically ignorant. I understand his style of approaching things revolves around finding genius tricks to get great results fast, but running is something where this just doesn't happen. Let me explain.
His advice was basically: do 400m intervals, crossfit (lol), pose technique, some certain static stretches (recommended by crossfit dude - lolol), some other minor things, and voila. In only 2-3 months, you can run a top notch 50K even though you've only ever ran 5K max. After all, crossfit dude did it, and so can you.
Tim Ferriss usually tries his experiments himself, to PROVE his approach works. Except in this case.. he left his readers hanging. Instead of writing about his results, he linked to a website of his that has not been updated since the book came out. We are left to believe he'd post his ultra race report there, or something at least explaining what happened. Did Tim Ferriss ever run his ultra? I suspect not.
A few running/fitness bloggers have pointed out that Tim failed to deliver. I guess Tim's strategy is to ignore this topic, not comment on it, and hope it goes away.
To me it serves as a reminder that with running, there are no shortcuts. Our tech culture has convinced people that with all things in life, you just need to learn some hawt new hack and boom. You'll get results ultra fast. But in reality, you'll never do that ultra fast.
Tim, shame on you.