Youtube Star Kofuzi goes home DEVASTATED!

That said, more power to him for pioneering a new sport.

He is not running enough. He needs to bump up his miles. He also needs more cumulative miles in his body. It will happen but not right away.

Also, he just turned 40. It's a bit harder at that age than let's say early 30s.

Im not sure if he did any speedwork this entire build up, just increased mileage and ran at a slow pace. He did some testing and seemed happy with the pace @ HR improvements a few weeks ago.

Dude is wearing like long tights, 3 shirts, and shorts for a race in TX. Wtf? Questionable wardrobe choice

Put the damn camera down and actually run.

Also, needs more miles overall and more tempo (mp minus 10s per mile) work. Long intervals.

Kofuzi's a good dude. His shoe reviews are always honest, he balances work and his running and YouTube hobbies, and he's just a good guy in front of the camera documenting the life of an amateur. I don't see why people want to jump on him so badly.

reed wrote:

I haven't seen anything beyond his 3:17 result...but this guy ran 3:0x in 2019 and BQed, though it was a downhill qualifier. But still, he's a 3:05-3:09 guy legitimately.

How can the HADD training be so bad that he only ran 3:17? I could just run 7:00-7:30 pace every day for 12 weeks and run much closer to my PB than that. over 10min off of a PB...should be basically a training run.

if he jsut had a bad race or got sick....that's a whole diffeernt story. it's fine to have a bad race but if 3:17 was his actual fitness....that's weird

Looks like he bonked hard based on his splits. More like he was in shape for 3:10 and tried to run 3:05. If he trained with the MAF method I don't wonder why he was far from his PB shape. But I guess trying a different training method for one race could be good for youtube, it's a new storyline for the audience to follow.

Don Juan wrote:

The man has been trained by a Nike coach in prior marathons the was interval & strength work heavy, now for the Houston marathon he trained using the Maffetone method.

Why can this man not break the three hour mark? He could not do it in the Vapor Fly 4% or Next%, and sure as hell not in those Hoka's he raced in.

he could not break the 3 hour mark because he is not good enough runner yet. The fitness is not there. However, he would have done much better without the Maffetone conman. Now he went backwards. In my opinion there were 3 mistakes made. First, the Maffetone training, secondly inadequate carbo loading. So he has to run hungry and thirdly, choosing the Hoka Carbon Rockets which are 1 mm drop racing flats.

Most of us knew before the race what is going to happen. So I feel that I need to quote Renato Canova to emphasize the point:

"I am against the idea that marathon is something strange and after 30 kilometers there is the wall. Is something strange when there is not good training. But when you prepare exactly what you are able to do, you know. And only if you do some mistake, become problem for you but if you don’t do any mistake, you know very well what will happen ’til the end. Nothing strange"

illinoisjones wrote:

You want to talk crap about other running youtubers? Go ahead, Kofuzi is not the one you should be bashing. He is doing this for enjoyment. He is not whoring out like some of the of the other running youtubers.

He honestly gives wrong advice. I agree with you that he is a good dude but he doesn't know much about training and knows basically nothing about running shoes. So when a person gives advice publicly, he kind of should be willing to deal with the criticism.

There are a lot of runners who gave valuable feedback about Maffetone that he just ignored. He wasn't really ready to run a marathon at this point and therefore he failed. Of course he is not professional or a very good runner but anyone can run faster than a 3:17 marathon with much less training when it's done wisely.

reed wrote:

How can the HADD training be so bad that he only ran 3:17?

problem was that his HR is so high than in order to stay in that Maffetone range, he basically had to walk part of his training runs. Once you have done training like that, how you can expect to run a PB in a marathon race? When I have had an injury that has restricted me to do the key workouts, I have always been very far from my peak performance and would not even consider racing. The philosophy was all awry.

Moo Goo wrote:

He is not running enough. He needs to bump up his miles. He also needs more cumulative miles in his body. It will happen but not right away.

I don't think so. In my opinion, he ran too much if his target was a 3:10 marathon. That honestly doesn't require much running and 40 years old is not old. He is something like 6 years younger than me. Running less and doing key workouts would bring better results.

Metathon predicted that he would run 3:15:20. He said that the weakness in the model is that it looks so far back (8 weeks) that it doesn't give you opportunity to show what you have done in that finishing part of the marathon training. He doesn't understand that you cannot build capabilities to run that marathon pace in a couple of weeks. For example Metathon is saying that I could run a 2:55 marathon right now but I have 4 months time before my marathon and I have started my marathon training blog yesterday. I am doing a Canova style fundamental phase now and later on move to more marathon specific training. Last 10 weeks will be the weeks when I am building my race performance. So I know that I will be in much better shape in May and am kind of only checking that predictor every now and then to see that some progression was made. Also I work and run late in the evening or early in the morning but I take my training runs seriously. Work is not an excuse. I don't believe some mambojambo dude in the Internet who is saying that you should run only slowly and then expect to do well in races. When it comes to Maffetone paces, for me it wouldn't be such slow jogging that he did but a little bit above my aerobic threshold. It would be stupid to run all the time at that pace. I couldn't do high mileage weeks because I wouldn't recover and all real workouts would be missing.

Wow, quite surprised at the hate / negative vibe being projected at Kofuzi. I feel it's not warranted. He is just out there sharing is running experiences.

Okay he isn't an elite runner, he isn't going to be a top 10 finisher, but he is a quick recreational runner - running times probably most of us hobby runners aspire too. Not everyone can be sub 3hr - while having family and full time office jobs.

What I get from him, is he passion for running and all the stuff that goes with it. From training, trainers to tech. He's out there spending his own money on stuff and giving his honest reviews on it, good or bad ( he recently even openly shared his YT revenue - around $2k pm - so not big money) so he's not doing it for the money and as others have stated he is providing sponsorship every week to other runners around the world. Kudos.

Fair play to him for putting himself out there. His use of MAF training has obviously not work - and i'm sure we'll hear about the why's and wherefores and how he felt it went wrong. Isn't that better than the many other YT'ers out there asking for monthly subscriptions for secret plans, and tips - he's just out there sharing.

Baltsu wrote:

illinoisjones wrote:

You want to talk crap about other running youtubers? Go ahead, Kofuzi is not the one you should be bashing. He is doing this for enjoyment. He is not whoring out like some of the of the other running youtubers.

He honestly gives wrong advice. I agree with you that he is a good dude but he doesn't know much about training and knows basically nothing about running shoes. So when a person gives advice publicly, he kind of should be willing to deal with the criticism.

There are a lot of runners who gave valuable feedback about Maffetone that he just ignored. He wasn't really ready to run a marathon at this point and therefore he failed. Of course he is not professional or a very good runner but anyone can run faster than a 3:17 marathon with much less training when it's done wisely.

This !

He does sound like a decent dude but I've watched a few of his videos and quickly found a bit of a disconnect between his pretty assured ramblings on all kinds of things (training, shoes, earphones, etc...) that end up showing that he doesn't really understand what he's talking about and worse doesn't learn from his experiences or listen to what people commenting have to say.

For instance he didn't think much of changing his LSR to running the Chicago HM full on, just two weeks before the Chicago marathon. It was obvious to anyone with the smallest running experience how that was going to end, and would have been obvious to anyone paying attention to the more thoughtful comments. But then you have "fanboys" encouraging him to go full gas in the HM and then in the FM...

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot wrote:

Bottom line, he wants attention for his running insights and he's getting it. Narcissists aren't automatically evil or harming others. No doubt he truly believes he's contributing a positive influence.

Another day, another video from Millhouse.

illinoisjones wrote:

He did a video where he explained that he is taking an indefinite hiatus from wearing Nike apparel. He cited the Mary Cain story and the Alyson Felix pregnancy story as examples for the maltreatment of women athletes. Since he has two daughters, he took a moral position to not wear Nike running attire. For this reason, it made him feel uneasy wearing Nike clothing. Whether warranted or not, that is his decision, and I respect him for it.

Did he start wearing Nike because of unorganized child labour, Gay shoes, Megan Rapinoe and Colin Kaepernick?

Just seems silly to try to run a sub 3 thon before you can run a halfway decent 5 or 10k....has anyone broke 3 hours who hasn’t broke into the 18’s for 5k? Seems unlikely.

He let numbers dictate his pacing and raced poorly as a result. He went through he half in 1:34:14 and said it was slower than he wanted. He probably had 3:11-12 fitness but blew that up with his calculators and mental masturbation (I don't know how to put it more diplomatically). Been there, got the blowout whe I raced marathons in my teens. My best races I didn't even know my early splits, just went by feel and ended up with pretty even splits. Also, did he do a marathon-paced trial or half-marathon race in the buildup? Doing so is key in terms of fitness, mentality and pacing.

I did Maffetone for a year or two. It is fine for ultras and Ironman, and in finding out what easy recovery running feels like. I used to train in the 150's and was always kind of beat up. Now I run in 130s/140s most days and get perfect recovery (82 miles last week comfortably after no weeks over 45 miles the last half of 2019). So doing maffetone did benefit in getting me donto an appropriate pacing. My unadjusted MAF pace is 117, which is zone 1 and pretty excrutiating as a main diet for me. 80/20 is much better for most purposes, maybe 90/10 in base training.

Pretty sure he “trained with Nike” for only one marathon, Chicago 2019, but that doesn’t matter much.

Why does he film himself during a marathon? Kind of a douchebag move in my opinion, which means nothing. I personally always find these idiots to be annoying And obnoxious during a race. I think if he ran 3hrs in multiple marathons then ok, he’s got this down and if it’s really his “thing” to record himself with a selfie stick, sure, it may not slow him down since he’s completed multiple marathons in 3 hours or less. But, if he’s never done it, maybe he should focus on running instead of trying to get “content” for his channel?

As far as his vlog...sometimes I’m genuinely interested in the topic, but the guy just rambles aimlessly. Sometimes it’s like listening to an eight year old babble and taking 20 minutes to get to the point of a short story. He really needs to be more concise.

That being said, I’d imagine he’s a nice guy and a good family man. Just think his vlog is overrated by his fans and I don’t understand why he thinks running with a selfie stick during a marathon isn’t inhibiting his ability to meet his goals.

Bye, Let’s Run!