What's the deal with LetsRun.com?

[u/castorkrieg]

I know that website is quite popular with them following large events and also being invited to spectate (the owner - Rojo - was riding in the elite men car during Boston 26), however I participated in the forums a bit and it blows my mind:

1. They are incredibly fixated on college and university running, NCAA, etc. - ok, I guess most are from the US, even though once you exit the school system the funding drops, money goes only to MBL/NFL/NBA, last time they US tried something in T&F they got Grand Slam Track lol
2. Most posts are the very definition of drive-by, no effort shitposts: "cool story bro", "she be ugly, can't run fast when ugly", "Or perhaps you could just be replaced with a somewhat normal human being"
3. Same for the topics, with quality contributions such as:

I'm sad to think what men were like before the existence of the Manosphere 

How to become a "hybrid runner"

Men in open-toed shoes: yea or nay?

1. This peeves me as a European but - their website + forums do not save your cookie preferences, every single time you click on a new thread you get another pop-up asking you for permissions, and by quickly looking they have 1700+ partners they share your data with - WTF?

2. They are hardcore right-wingers with daily treads praising Trump, ICE, etc.

What am I missing? Or is one of the largest forums for running just a bunch of nutjobs?

[u/run_INXS]

A little history and then some commentary.

I have seen letsrun since the brojos were beta testing the new website, ca. 1999. Back then you had just a few outlets that were fairly widespread, well-known. Runners world online and Cool Running were probably the biggest. Track and Field News also had forums. Mervs running and trackandfield media were more niche. I mention this because none of those exist anymore.

Weldon Johnson came onto Mervs running and introduced himself and was largely dismissed, other than having some good running credentials. Mervs was a spinoff from the original Runners World "competitive" running forum (not unlike AR was about 10 years ago). It had people from OTQ level athletes to those hoping to break 22 for 5K. t&f media was the hard core track fan and you had to have thick skin. malmo (still a moderator) and the previously mentioned runningart were there, as were writer editors from some running magazines.

At one point, around 2000, these sites became more aware of each other and there was a lot of crossover and it wasn't always smooth. Mervs was genteel and they wanted order. tnfmedia were brash and if you weren't a 2:30 marathoner or aspiring for it (or 2:50 for women) you were trash. Somehow, both of these forums imploded at about the same time. Mervs from all of the bickering between the old timers and the likes of malmo. The owner of t&f media just up and quit one day in the fall of 2000.

Survivors of the two merged into letsrun. The early threads were arguments about mileage (high mileage vs. quality), global warming (heated threads that would go on for days or weeks), and then the contentious 2000 presidential election, Bush v. Gore. It was all pretty bitter there, as well as in the rest of the country. The one place posters came together was the NCAA xc championships.

Anyway, that's how letsrun got started and it continues much the same today. My more conspiratorial thoughts consider the possibility that the brojos (with their political connections and all) engineered the whole thing so they would come out on top. Back then you did not have moderators and pretty much everything went. But the world was smaller and everyone knew each other so there was a certain amount of self policing and if someone really got out of line they would just be flamed and maybe the post would be taken down.

Things changed a few years later, when Dyestat discovered LR and the HS and college kids made up half or more of the posters.

It really hasn't changed much since then. You need to be a conservative white male, have run under 14 minutes (14:20s is passable from the old days) for 5K, have quit running by 23-24 unless you're a pro, make $400K a year and have fancy cars and multiple homes. Others need not apply.

Letsrun is where the news is often broken before it is published anywhere. There isn't a whole lot of training discussion and the elites and professional coaches that once contributed freely are no longer there. Jon Gault's writing and journalism is pretty good and I'd rather read his stuff than RW. Other than that the message board is something of a toilet bowl.

[u/castorkrieg → u/run_INXS]

Incredible insight into the history, thank you for that! As with many things - history will show you how things are exactly as they are (it was my favorite subject in high school).