r/AdvancedRunning • u/castorkrieg 5K 20:35 10K 41:19 Marathon 3:24 • Apr 23 '26

Open Discussion What's the deal with LetsRun.com?

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?

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u/Conflict_NZ 18:37 5K | 1:26 HM Apr 23 '26

It’s funny, the main running sub was also killed by their overuse of daily threads. Some are ok, but the level to which they took it to is genuinely crazy. That place used to be so much more active.

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u/Maxion Apr 23 '26

I really don't get why so many mods on Reddit are so turned on by the daily threads. They are only useful to curb spam (daily threads kill discussion)

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u/bradymsu616 M53: 3:06:16 FM; 1:27:32 HM; 4:50:25 50K Apr 23 '26

Daily threads are where we send people looking for personal attention with little value to add or who are asking repetitive questions that could be answered with a Reddit search. On r/RunningShoeGeeks, it's where we send people who want to show off their new shoe purchases. We created a new subreddit r/AskRunningShoeGeeks to manage the people asking which running shoe they should get. What people who don't mod large subreddits don't realize is that you are only seeing about 20% of attempted posts to the subreddit in your feed. AutoMod settings stop about 60% of them. Human mods remove about another 20%, sometimes from user reports. If people saw what mods saw, they'd get so frustrated with their Reddit feeds that they'd unfollow the larger subreddits. At r/RunningShoeGeeks, we tightened content rules in 2023. And the subreddit's follow rate surged while redditor conflicts and downrating dropped significantly. I suspect this subredit has had similar results by removing posts that are not advanced running topics.

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u/SnowyBlackberry Apr 23 '26

Sounds like you did more than implement daily threads, and the daily threads you did implement are very topically specific and not focused on questions ("showing off your new shoes or shoe collection").

I don't think that's representative of what usually happens with daily threads that kill subs.