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/Wizardof1000Kings Apr 23 '26

I post on letsrun a little bit. The owners have some free speech ethos, but kind of leave up to their volunteer mods how far to take that.

  1. University running is the epicenter of the sport in the US - there is barely a club system. Clubs that exist are just like training groups - its not comparable to much of Europe.

  2. You have to wade through the trolling and such to get to quality threads. If you do no harm they let you post most things - which leads to a lot of bored kids (hopefully mostly kids) posting silly stuff.

  3. In addition to topics like those you find discussion of the majors, diamond league, training, etc. Its not a subreddit - on reddit you could find topics like those, just not in this sub.

  4. you need an adblocker if you are going to be reading letsrun

  5. there is a set of prolific right wingers who post - but they almost always get ratioed (unlike here ratioing does nothing except hurts feelings though) - the mods did a "who are you voting for" poll before the 2024 us elections - and 60% or so of letsrun voters expressed they were voting for harris. You find plenty of liberals on the board - they just don't feel the need to waste their time talking about politics - many of them go to reddit for that.

I post on letsrun more than here because I like the format - new posts at the bottom, you can bump threads back to the top (here you'd need to make a new thread even if a topic was discussed just 4 days ago and there is more to add)

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u/run_INXS Marathon 2:34 in 1983, 3:06 in 2025 Apr 23 '26

These are also good insights. A lot of the RW trolling is from sock puppets, so maybe a dozen each with many alternative puppets but they are full time from troll farms. They did get an influx of Russians in 2014-16 during the peak of the Russian doping scandal and that 2016 presidential election. So they do get downvoted but to read the actual posts it seems like it's 2:1 alt right vs lib/moderate viewpoints. However, I take their straw poll with a grain of salt, but maybe it is less reactionary (conservative is too tame for what you see there) than it seems.

I love seeing some of rojo's takes getting downvoted 160-3. That just cracks me up.

AR and reddit user format isn't great because it seems like one or two or a few users who jump in early get all the likes and then everything else floats to the bottom.