Episode 484: Influencers v. Athletes | Tommy Lewis

Tommy Lewis hosts the podcast, That’s Runnable, and is a content creator with a passion to introduce people to running. He joined the show to discuss the role influencers and athletes play in growing the sport of running, where conflicts arise, and what he believes the path forward is for these two influential groups. 

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Timestamps:

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Alright, Tommy, welcome to the show. Excited to have you on. So excited to be here. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fun conversation. I think that we got set up for today around the topic. I think of just the role of growing the sport, of running and kind of the players within that and how they maybe compete and collaborate with one another, which has been just an interesting topic in general as the sport has grown.

And I know you've had commentary on it and some thoughts on it too. But maybe before we dive into all of that we dive in a little bit more about your background, how you got into running, everything you're doing on or with that's runnable between your podcast coaching and just trying to educate people within the sport.

Yeah, I'd say I'm not. I'm not a high performance outlier, so I dunno if maybe you're running out of outliers to bring on or something, but we fresh out. But yeah, what can I say? I've been a runner for the best part [00:01:00] of 13 years. Got into it when I was, well maybe it's coming on to 14 years out 17 or something.

I probably went for my first proper run. I had a background at school playing rugby and various sports. So I've always been lucky enough to be exposed to sports at some level. And I think, I guess I got into running just as a bit of an energy outlet, like a need to get out the door and get rid of some energy to be fair.

And I don't think I really recognized the sort of power that it had for me until I was maybe in my early twenties where I was really struggling with my own kind of. Headspace and got to a pretty dark place in my life. And running was really like an anchor for me. It was the time of the day where I had peace. That was the first time that I realized that this kind of exercise had more power to it than just feeling good and looking good.

It was actually really powerful for my own head. And then I got into ultra running [00:02:00] when I watched various documentaries as many people did during COVID. I had plenty of time to kill and I was watching all these running documentaries and I was like, man, I can't believe these people are running a hundred miles.

That's not human. Never imagined I'd be able to do it. And I think I just started to escape the house I was in and I stayed. Upwards of sort of two, two and a half hours running each day, which wasn't necessarily all that good for my body. I think I was just seeing what I was capable of.

'cause I was so inspired by these nutcases who were running a hundred miles over the mountains and I get, yeah, from there it's just become an obsession. And I had a bit of a court life crisis, was working in tech and realized I didn't wanna be behind a desk selling software. So I qualified as a personal trainer and tried to make that work.

It didn't work. So I went back to the corporate world and then eventually made it work after making content and growing a bit of an audience online. Late 2024, I finally went [00:03:00] full in for the final time and have now made it work and have a podcast and make content. And I guess I'm all about trying to make sure people recognize.

That all of this stuff isn't just about performance. There's a lot more to it than just performance. There's a lot more that you can gain for yourself as an individual by getting out there and realizing how capable you truly are by doing ultra marathons or just getting out the door and embracing the outdoors.

I guess that summarizes it. Yeah, and that's, I think that's great. I think what you described is oftentimes kinda a path people take with running where it is interesting because up until recently running was this kind of means to an end, I think, in people's minds where they would be doing another sport and running was conditioning for that, or in a lot of cases, punishment.

Yeah. And then I think the pandemic was a big driver for this, but it became something where you need to spend a little bit of time doing it before [00:04:00] it starts feeling different than that. Some people probably have an epiphany right away where they go for a run, they get some, they get a little bit of a dopamine hit afterwards or endorphins afterwards, and they're like, oh, wow, I like that.

And they're, they hit the ground running figuratively and literally from there on. But I think a lot of people, they need to give it a little time to just marinate and then they start recognizing, oh, I see what the value add is here. And I think some of that is just, they'll step away, take a day off, maybe take a few days off, get injured, and then not be able to run.

And they realize how much of a value add that was, even on the days where they feel like they're forcing it a little bit to strap on the shoes and go out for a run. And that kind of perception shift of running, becoming popular versus something you felt like you had to do or needed to do has been just a really interesting dynamic within the growth for the sport.

So I always like to hear people sharing their stories around how they got into it, where the meaning is to it, because. There's just so much difference from one person to the next and towards what would actually [00:05:00] draw them into that. The more examples that are out there in the open that they can see and be like, oh, I relate to that, or that's me, the better it is at attracting new people to it and exposing people to it.

Yeah, for sure. When I was at school, I thought running was really lame. I never really, it was not attractive to me whatsoever. I didn't understand it. I didn't get the idea of why would you run if you're not chasing a ball? I just didn't understand it, and to be completely honest, I didn't think runners were very cool either.

Like I just didn't really, yeah. I didn't find my people running until I found ultra running, and I found people who ran, but really they ran because they loved the mountains, and they loved the outdoors. That was like, oh yeah, no I get that 'cause I get that it's adventurous and that's my thing.

But there's the sort of whole solely performance side of it. Never really appealed to me all that much. And it's interesting 'cause I think a lot of people they maybe get into running and they find it really hard and they're like, I don't really understand where I [00:06:00] don't understand where these people find this flow state or they find joy in running because it's just so, it's just so tough.

And I fully understand that. And I think one of the motivations for me to get better is to get more efficient and to increase the likelihood that I can find that flow state when I'm out running because I actually am a big believer in running is more enjoyable when you are better at it. Like when you are more efficient, like running down the trails is far more enjoyable when you feel more capable to run down the trails.

And that requires practice and it requires a real commitment to getting better and getting more efficient and getting fitter and getting stronger. And all those things will actually. Improve your enjoyment of the sport. So I think for no other reason than just enjoying it more, you should try and get better at it.

You should try and commit yourself to the discipline of running. 'cause there's loads of value in that discipline, that daily discipline of getting out the door [00:07:00] and doing it when you don't really want to. Of course, there's all of the value as an individual that you can find in doing that, but there's also value in just getting better at it because the better you get.

I personally think that the more enjoyable it becomes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I agree a hundred percent. And the other thing that's interesting about it too is 'cause it, it seems like such a simple concept where, like at one point it's, we're getting away from this with all the gear and gadgets in running now.

But it was something where it's oh, it's just such a simple thing. You just, all you need is a pair of shoes and the desire to go out. And it's that, that is true. But then there is also the understanding of how to engage with it in a way that's balanced enough where you're doing some of the harder work at times, but you're also pulling back and running easy.

And in some cases that means for people in the new, newer to the sport, taking walking breaks and things like that to make it sustainable. Keep it enjoyable long enough for them to get to that point where they're good enough at it, where they can really fully express themselves within it. And if people aren't there [00:08:00] to walk people through those steps and educate them on it, then it's just like anything.

You remove the education piece from a process and you just have more failure and more people finding themselves outta the sport for something that could have been prevented had they just been exposed to the right person at the right time to help them navigate the journey better. Yeah, I mean there's that old adage that you can't be what you can't see.

Right? And I think if you, someone who really, within yourself, you recognize why you enjoy running, but you don't see anyone talking about those reasons. Like you, maybe you enjoy running because it brings real presence to your day and you enjoy the outdoors and all that sort of stuff. But then when you go online, all the people are talking about their half marathon PB and carbon plated shoes and all this stuff.

You're not gonna feel very welcome in the space because you are, you're like, I'm, I feel am I a runner? 'cause I go out and run, but I don't really do it for those reasons. So I think even if you are not someone who is doing it to optimize your performance and you're, you do it for reasons that are slightly different, I think it's important to talk about those things as well because there are gonna be loads of other people [00:09:00] who re who that res that message resonates with.

And it could even be something where. It is, you go back and forth between it where let's say you're someone who got into running, you've been doing it for a few years and decide, okay, I'm gonna put this marathon on the schedule and spend four, four months locking in and really going after a goal there.

Once you finish that, it's not always healthy just to hop onto another one and try to continually perpetrate that chase for a better time or a faster experience. And it doesn't have to be that. It could be like after that race, you can pull back and say, okay, I'm gonna use running for a different purpose.

I may be moving through the activities in a similar way without that kind of sharpening piece to the puzzle and a little more relaxed, a little less structured and get a ton of value from that. So I think just the ability to know that you can, you don't have to identify purely as a performance seeker or purely as a hobby jogger or whatever you wanna call it.

You can be both. Absolutely. And I think what's interesting is that we have plenty of apps and wearables and stuff [00:10:00] that track the performance metrics and for obvious reasons, you can actually track the stuff that is trackable, but there's a whole other side which is not objective, that is subjective.

That is your experience out on the run is you know, what it Id the ideas that you got on your long run on a Sunday or the stuff that is more just internal. That's the stuff that you're not tracking, you're not looking at on social media or you're not looking at on your Strava app or chorus app or whatever.

But it's important to consider that stuff as important as important, I think we often forget it because it's not trackable. But it's as important and we talk about it like it's a secondary thing, but for many people it's a primary thing. The primary thing is what it provides you as an individual, what it provides your head.

And the secondary thing is the performance. For me, it's that way round, but quite often I find myself considering my performance far more important. 'cause I'm training [00:11:00] for these big races, they're intimidating. I dunno if I'll be able to complete them or if I have these big goals. And so all of the trackable stuff I start obsessing over and all of the stuff that was actually primary to me, if I'm being honest, it's the stuff that I really, truly value and the reason I wanna do this stuff.

Long into my life is because of all of the untrackable stuff. So I need to prioritize that. I need to get back and review. I need to be like, how did I feel on that run? What is my attitude? How's my head space today? And all of that, as a coach yourself, you'll know that we are people, we're just like these strange, complicated organisms that are trying to operate in the world.

And we're not just machines that can clinically go through all of our training. There's a lot more to it than that. And so we need to look at ourselves with a bit more grace and a bit more understanding instead of just looking at what am I splits, did I execute today? Like how am I fueling these all great and important things, but what's also more important is considering how stressed you are?

[00:12:00] What's on your mind? Like how did you look, what's your attitude towards your run today? I was on a client call this morning. I was, and I literally asked him, how's your attitude towards your training? Because I think that's a huge part. Of the puzzle. It's a huge piece that if you're never considering that, then you're not listening to the signs.

'cause it could be that your attitude is really negative at the moment. Well, that's an indication of something else, mm-hmm. Yeah. That even feeds into the performance side of things too. I know, like one of the things I look for when I'm in a building where I'm gonna be doing maybe two or three blocks or two or three weeks in a row of really pressing the stress side of things higher than I'm typically used to trying to get an adaptation.

If I start noticing like, alright, now my sleep is starting to get a little worse, now I'm getting a little more, like a little more grumpy, a little less optimistic, a little less excited, I start seeing, okay, I'm getting pretty close. If not at the point of, okay, now pull back a little bit, let everything reset.

Yeah. And then get back that enjoyment, that reason you're here in the first place, and [00:13:00] then go and hit that stress button again. To further yourself along, but yeah, learning how to listen to your body intuitively and what those signs actually mean from both is just a quality of the experience, if that's your goal, or even to try to be faster to some degree.

I think some of those subjective things actually end up being quite objective in terms of what your body's telling you and how to respond to it. Yeah, and I would say what's your overall goal as well? So for me, I want to be doing this stuff for a long time. Mm-hmm. And if I didn't have that goal, like maybe I would, maybe I'd be racing far more often.

Yeah. And maybe I'd be, just been, I'd be hammering my training, but I know that I'd lose interest as well. If I was just always racing, always training hard and always doing I'd lose interest. Actually, in January I had a bit of a problem. A bit of a moment. I have this happen to me where I just lose interest and I think, do I even like running?

Was this all for nothing? Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I was doing some free diving, which is a bit of a, kind of a side hobby, which is really refreshing to be fair. 'cause. You [00:14:00] basically can't train properly when you're free diving because you can't really go, you can't really be going under for 30 meters with jacked up legs.

You need to be in a good state so you can't really marry the two. So you actually have to, you have to pull right back on your training to focus on free diving. And it was really refreshing for me and it gave me this new appreciation for my main hobby, which is running. Right.

And I think sometimes we need to do that. We need to step back and go, do you know what, I think I'm more than just a runner. I'm into music and I'm into I dunno, maybe I need to go and have a Guinness at the pub and realize that it's not actually that deep. And I think actually to be completely honest, as much as this.

Amongst runners, we'll talk about this, but I think this stuff is actually quite refreshing for people when they see it online because you don't see much of that. I think people are quite scared to talk about the reality of just being a normal person who's not an elite athlete. Obviously I'm talking to an elite [00:15:00] athlete, so it's a bit different, but I'm not one, and many people are not elite athletes.

And so it's what are you really doing it for? Are you doing it because you want to be the best you can possibly be? Fair enough. If you're doing it, are you doing it because you know that you gain a huge amount from having it in your life? Well consider what is gonna keep it in your life then.

And we need to consider the full picture. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that kind of sets the stage nicely for kind of the topic that we wanted to chat about today, which is just how people engage with this stuff and then ultimately how the people who are essentially. Whether they know it or not, or intentionally are doing it or not, they are kind of those characters on the stage that a lot of people follow, watch, learn from, mimic, do everything they are to do, to help kinda shape their experience to some degree.

And historically, within running that, oftentimes were like the athletes, like the Olympians, the professionals that were going to be put in front of [00:16:00] you through the magazines, the news clippings, and literally on the TV screen if it were a competition or something like that, that was broadcast and. I think that role was something where the athlete kind of could just do what the athlete would do and there just wasn't a whole lot of storytelling outside of that.

Sure. And then now with the online world and essentially the CRA democratization of media where you don't need to have the local news station or Sports Illustrated or whomever decide to tell your story, you can just open your phone and tell your story to yourself. And if people start coming towards it, it grows and it can just gain this momentum.

And we see that all the time with online influencers and things like that. But all that is just to say is like now there is like competition or perceived competition. Anyway, I think we could talk maybe a little about whether that's real or if that's manifested with this, these athletes, these influencers, these online personalities that maybe aren't seeking [00:17:00] performance as their primary or at all are competing for.

Yeah, maybe brands support people's attention, which ultimately becomes brand support if you want it to. And you see that tension now surfacing of who should we be listening to? And then that competition turns into, I'm not just gonna sell my product, I'm gonna try to degrade your product in the process.

And I hate to see that. 'cause I think these groups have two very different skill sets. And to a degree, those skill sets, if you merge them together, can be a really potent, powerful thing. But if they're seen as competing, then you're not gonna get that merging. And I think that takes a lot of work to get to that point.

But I said a lot, so maybe I'll let you just hop in here and maybe give your first thoughts on the matter. It's a really difficult topic, I think, and I think one of the reasons it's really difficult is because I fundamentally believe running is very different from other sports, but we try to treat it like that.

It's the same. What I mean by that is if we compare it to other super [00:18:00] popular sports like, football, soccer, even American football, basketball, they are predominantly spectator sports. Like that. Most of the money that is in that sport is because there is more of a fandom than there is participants right there.

There are more fans than there are participants in the sport. Running's the opposite. So, you and I don't think that running will ever be a spectator sport as much as other sports are. So we need to approach it slightly differently or at least it will grow and develop very differently from other sports.

That means that the professional athletes, those who are at the top of the game, get the respect of a lot of people, of course. Because there are a lot of participants who recognize how unbelievable their performances are. Like when I do an ultra and the person who wins it is eight hours ahead of me or 11 hours ahead of me, I'm just like, how is that even humanly possible?

As a, [00:19:00] as an average performer myself, I have the utmost respect for these elite performers. However, the inspiration is different. So I'm inspired by these individuals because they feel untouchable and I just think they're such great athletes. But I'm not inspired in the same way that I'm inspired by someone else who's similar to me, but tells a story that relates and that's where it's different.

I think ultimately, and that's where most of the attention actually goes, is to the storytellers. The ones who have who, who bring you in. And in every sport, the most compelling athletes are the ones with the stories behind them. It's just been that there's been brands behind the elite athletes who tell their story and tell it.

Well, they formulate the story and they figure out how to put together the storytelling. Whereas now you have the opportunity to tell your own story [00:20:00] and do it in a compelling way and therefore loads of people are really interested in it. So I think that's like the stage that we're operating on is we, I think we need to consider the fact that we are running differently.

It's pretty, like fundamentally. If I risk offending some people, fundamentally, running is pretty boring to watch, even if you're really into the sport. Mm-hmm. It is. It is still not as exciting as a gameplay sport. Like I love watching rugby. I find it really fascinating to watch. I don't love watching every minute of an ultra marathon because it's not that interesting to watch.

Maybe there are moments that are really fascinating and maybe there's the finish line or, I like to keep up to date with what's happening, but it's not as exciting to watch and I just don't think that, I think the majority of people would agree with that. 'cause fundamentally it's a more interesting thing to participate in than it is to watch.

Mm-hmm. So, the stuff that's interesting to watch [00:21:00] are the YouTube films that they put on together. Like it's the documentaries, it's the stories that are told. It's not the actual event itself. I'll leave it there. So maybe you can jump in. Absolutely. No, you said some awesome stuff there that I think would be fun to dive into a little bit.

And I actually think of this to some degree, like when I was a kid before I cared about running to any meaningful degree and I grew up in Wisconsin and I'd follow all the popular sports. And it was interesting to even see what you described in variances within the popular sports where you get, like NFL football was very captivating, very action packed, very like boom, like type of activities to the degree where you could just have a guy up there talking about the play as it happened with very little color commentary and still be engaged and then you move over to like major league baseball, which still had explosive stuff and some exciting things happening, but it was a lot slower moving.

So if your team wasn't good, it was [00:22:00] really easy to lose interest. And we would see this where the bad teams would barely sell any tickets and the good teams would be packed every night. And the reason this kind of clicked with me. At one point early in my life the Milwaukee Brewers at the time were terrible.

They couldn't win a game to save their lives half the time. And they had a really good broadcaster who would just tell stories during the boring parts of the game and when it was like 10 to nothing in the fourth inning. So people would listen to it. And he got like really popular just because people liked to listen to the games regardless of whether the brewers won, lost, got smoked, or were in the playoff cont Well, they were never in the playoff race back then, but it was this interesting thing where you knew at the beginning of the season they weren't gonna make the playoffs.

They were probably gonna lose 20 or 30 more games than they were going to win. But people would listen to every one of the games when they could to listen to Bob Ker talk about things. And I think we're seeing that to some degree too, with what you said. And then even with the live streams within the sport of ultra running, where the live streams for these long multi-day races have [00:23:00] gotten so popular.

So much faster than I think they did with the shorter distant ultras, because now all of a sudden you have enough time to really unroll a story and you almost have too much time. So you have no choice but to tell stories because otherwise you're just watching people move. Yeah. Four miles per hour through 200 miles of desert or whatever it happens to be.

And I find that really interesting that it's like long enough for someone to get an idea of who this person is at a grander scale than just, oh, this is a fast person, this is an athlete. And now all of a sudden you get a little bit of a merging of what you said, where now there's a personality, now there's a story behind this person.

Now there's something I could gravitate to that I can learn from that isn't just about pure performance or what they did that was impressive on that day, but as a whole. Yeah. And I think it's actually really easy for people to forget. Ultra running is still a really niche sport. When you are in the sport and you are into the sport, [00:24:00] you think it's really interesting and you are like, yeah, like I'm fascinated by these elite athletes and I find them really interesting and I wanna hear about all of their training and their breakdown and all this sort of stuff.

That's because you are into it. You are really into it. But if you actually want this sport to grow, because let me remind you, it's still tiny. It's still a tiny sport. It's a niche. It's a small sport within a small sport. When you actually look, when you actually look at the stats, if you want it to grow, then you.

Have to appreciate the fact that those who are telling the stories, those who are bringing the audience in, they're the ones that are getting all the attention and for good reason because they're the ones bringing interest in. They're telling interesting stories. And so if you are into, I always say there's a difference between being into the sport and bringing people into the sport.

At the end of the day, you can be into the sport and it's gonna be really easy for you to be fascinated by the top athletes of [00:25:00] the day. But bringing people into the sport requires so much more work because it's boring to watch. And so you have to bring people into the stories and you have to inspire people in different ways.

Then they become a participant. Then they get interested in the more elite athletes because they're a participant. I'm interested in Tom Evans because he is an elite athlete and I'm fascinated by his performances, but I'm into the sport. I run ultras. I've done like 14 of them now. So I'm in it, I'm really into it.

But those who are not into it and don't run it, they, they have to be brought in a different way and they have to be brought in with stories, and the brands are only gonna be interested in this niche sport if there's an audience. And so it's up to us to bring people in. That's my position ultimately is that if there's any, if there's any kind of distaste or disdain, and I think some people deny that there's any kind of [00:26:00] negativity towards influences.

There absolutely is. If you go on these, if you go on these running forums, it's disgusting. It's like actually these running forums, they have up votes and down votes and you go in and you see someone who's pretty well liked in the space, mentioned maybe they're mentioned and recommended or something, and just the down votes because they're an influencer.

So I don't like this guy. Ultimately, it is true that people like people talk negatively about influences in space. Like it, that is a truth and I think like this, I don't know for sure why, but I have a strong feeling that it is because they gain more attention and they gain more attention than the elite athletes and elite athletes.

Basically think they deserve more credit or attention. Now, that's not me saying they don't, I think they do. But the reality of the situation is that they're not going to, because running's very different from [00:27:00] other sports. Like they're not gonna get the attention because most people who are participating are not into it as much as a lot of people.

And so you've gotta bring them in. And so if you think about how brands work, brands care about the bottom line. So they're interested in those who have big followings, and those who are telling stories and they're bringing people in, that's what they care about. And so the sad reality is that you have this kind of flipped scenario where influencers get paid more than elite athletes because they have more attention on them.

And we want to push people towards being interested in the elite athletes. We want to have more people in the sport. We wanna grow the sport. More investment in the sport. More interest in the sport means more brands get involved. There's more money that can be allocated to elite athletes. Elite athletes who, by the way, are potentially the most capable athletes in the world.

You see these performances [00:28:00] and it feels so unfair that they have to balance a full-time job or a part-time job with this stuff. It's unbelievable. So we all want them to get their fair share. We all want 'em to get paid properly, but that doesn't happen if you don't celebrate the stories and if you don't celebrate what influencers are doing for the sport.

And that is bringing loads of people in. And the same goes for events. If you have these big events that have documented the, these events and they become massively popular and loads of people, let's take BPN for example. Let's call it what it is, BPN maybe, I don't know necessarily whether I recognized this fully as a Brit living not in the States.

I don't think I knew much about the founder of VPN and whatever. It's a little bit contentious that people's views on the brand itself, and there are fair reasons to scrutinize BPN to scrutinize their athletes potentially. But I think we should [00:29:00] celebrate the fact that they're putting on a backyard that's getting even more attention than bigs.

It's getting huge. There are people who don't run who will come up to me and say, oh, did you see that? Did you see that backyard thing? And they've never heard of a backyard. And they're like, have you, did you see that thing where they're just doing loops and they go on for three or four days?

I'm like, oh yeah, that's a backyard. That's the BPN backyard. It's amazing to me. I'm like, oh, that's so sick that they've not known anything about ultra running. They don't even know what a backyard ultra is. But now they do. And now they've signed up to a local backyard and they're supporting a local backyard and they're into it.

And then maybe they'll get into ultra running and then maybe their path will be that they'll get into elite ultra runners and then the brands will start recognizing that there's, the brands will start seeing more incentive to go and support the elite athletes because there's more people in the sport.

That's how it all happens. So when I see people ridiculing things just simply [00:30:00] because. They're the new thing and they don't fit the mold, and they're like the new big thing and they're getting all of the attention and the elite athletes should be getting more attention and all this sort of stuff.

I'm like, you don't get it, man. You should just be celebrating growth in the sport however it looks, basically. Yeah. I was gonna ask you about, you said a lot of really interesting stuff there, but I would just say I was gonna ask you about the BPN stuff because I thought, I think that's a really interesting lens to this topic because I would agree with you.

I think BPN has this kind of polarizing element to it within the sport of running because they're an outsider that came in. Yeah. Yeah. And the problem with the problem, I should say for people who wanna see VPN fail is they are really good at marketing and storytelling.

So they didn't need to have a legacy brand. To get big within the sport. And what I'm seeing happen there is, since they're so good at that, [00:31:00] they are bringing, like you said, they're bringing in people who otherwise would never have even had the idea of entering the sport of running. So they're in a position now where they don't have to sell it to the average runner.

They don't have to be like, alright, we need to convince you to let us in and participate in this. Because they're like, oh. If you don't want us in, we'll just build one entirely independent of you with a whole new group of people, which there are a ton of, because like you said, it is a relatively small sport.

So the people who are already established are a really small group of people compared to the pie that it could become if like literally everyone got a fair crack at doing some, running in a structured scenario like this. And so I see them, I've seen them get to a point where they don't have to care if they don't want to.

Mm-hmm. So like you, you can hate them and not disagree with them and feel like they should be kicked outta the sport, quote unquote. But if you do that, they're just gonna keep building and keep growing and they're gonna keep doing that in the [00:32:00] opposite direction of any of your values if they choose to.

'cause now they have no reason to compromise or no reason to engage with you. 'cause they're doing something almost totally independent with just a similar vehicle of expression, which is running. And I find that really interesting and just maybe a spot where the sport needs to realize that versus trying to ignore it because ignoring it's not gonna help.

I think it also probably benefits from some of the negative attention to some degree too because of that. Because since they're building with a non-traditional type of customer in a lot of cases, that person maybe gets gassed up when they see someone that they don't relate to talking smack about the brand.

They like, they're gonna, in their intuition's gonna support BPN and defend BPN, even if I don't even have good evidence to do so. So it's actually fascinating to watch. And I'll add one more thing too, is. To to your point where these things actually, if you're patient as an elite athlete or as a professional athlete, will give you opportunities.[00:33:00] 

Mark Dole is the perfect example of this. So, Mark did a really good job of building a brand before BPN. I don't wanna say that. Mark is here just because of the BPN Last Man standing. Oh for, mark, mark put in the work, he did the storytelling, he did all that stuff ahead of time and he built what was looking like something that was a promising future for him if he just kept doing what he was doing and being successful at it.

He goes to BPN, last man standing and his online presence in his marketability doubled within a couple of days for winning that event. And some of it, there's a lot of criticism on that event too, about how it was broadcast with oh, it's basically just these live IG streams and it's like people wanted five or six other options to engage with that event.

And I was thinking about that. I was like, they probably would crush a lot. A YouTube live stream. But part of me wonders, and I have no inside knowledge of this, I'm not in like the BPN marketing strategy stuff, but part of me, I have a little bit like, okay, I'll be curious what you think about this.

'cause my thought is like [00:34:00] these IG streams, they force you to engage with that event through Instagram, which just really balloons up those numbers versus distributing it across a bunch of different areas. And since everyone involved in it. Like the athletes involved in it, in their crew. Like Instagram's about the only really great option to do their own content.

So they package it all into Instagram because that's the most seamless way for everyone involved to help grow. But it's not just the event. 'cause I've seen commentary on this too as well. BP N's just trying to sell products BP N's, just trying to grow their Instagram page. And I have no doubt that they would like to grow their Instagram page and would like to sell more products.

But what's interesting is they're not spamming you with a bunch of BPN ads. There's no BPN ads. I mean there's the signs and it's obviously put on by them. So they're getting top of funnel attention, but they're not like running this like ten second clip of oh, get your go gel or your G one sport.

And as a result, I think just look at, just go and look at Mark Dole's Instagram engagement [00:35:00] from the day he started posting about, or the day he arrived in Austin and was setting up for that event to the, until now essentially. 'cause he's still. Ride riding that wave. And the reality is, since BPN said we're gonna really go all in on Instagram with this, and we're going to, make this something unique that stands out and looks different and attracts a different type of person, now Mark Doll is going to be able to live like a professional athlete if he chooses to do so based on that experience being built off of what he had already done before.

And I think that's like such a rare opportunity to be able to, if you're actually an elite backyard runner and you're not getting good brand support, if you think it's soft at VPN, go to VPN and win that thing and you will be a professional athlete fully funded in at the back end of that.

I promise you. So that's just where I find such an interesting scenario that you don't often see. Yeah, it's so. So fascinating, you said so much there. That I think is interesting. I would say I do have a little bit of inside [00:36:00] knowledge as to how BPN approaches this stuff.

Firstly, I've spoken to a couple of people that were there. BPN intentionally does not promote their supplements. They are adamant not to. They want the, so they have a whole, they obviously, they invest a huge amount in documenting this race. And so one thing I find frustrating is that, like you, there are plenty of things to scrutinize BPN on, and I, by the way, am not a fan of BPN.

I know it starts to get a bit political and I think like I, I put out a video and it took on a life of its own and there were comments and it got a bit political and all this sort of stuff. I was like, man, I just didn't really necessarily realize all of this. And so there were plenty, there's plenty of stuff to scrutinize it on if you want to, but if we're just, if we're just looking at it objectively as coverage of the race and what it's doing for the sport.

BPN covered the race in a certain way. They may not have done like a viper style commentary and live streaming and may not have been like a, it may not have been like [00:37:00] what you expect from an ultra in some ways, and that's fair feedback. I think it's fair to say, why don't we have some commentary that would be a great improvement on their third edition.

By the way, this is their second edition of Yeah. Right. The race. So on their third edition, maybe let's have a bit of commentary. Great feedback. That's not a justifiable reason to say I wasn't a fan of the whole thing, just to say I didn't like it because they didn't have commentary or they didn't cover it the way I would've done it.

That's not enough for you to say, so there's an underlying reason that you don't like it. You are saying that's your reason, but what I will say is like they, they're intentionally not promoting their brand like it's done by BPN. It's the writing's on the wall. Obviously they're trying to promote themselves and be a successful business.

Like they're not quiet about that. Why would they be? I think it's fine for them to do that. I also think it's fine for. Ultra to sponsor an event or Hoka to sponsor an event. I also think it's fine for there to be [00:38:00] promotions during races and stuff like that if we want, if we want commerce in the sport, we want investment in the sport, we want brand interest.

That's what I've just discussed. I think we shouldn't be. Protecting that too much. That's my opinion. I think if we wanna grow it, if we want it to become big, there will be events that are big and there will be brands that are interested in those events. And I think ultimately that's a good thing, by the way, also to matter about it.

I love the fact that we are having this discussion. Yeah, is this not interesting? I hope that listeners find this sort of stuff interesting. I hope that they find it exciting that there's more podcasts or more events. There's this, there's discourse happening. If, 20 years ago it just wasn't like this, it was really underground, not, there just wasn't this sort of coverage on a global level.

Second thing I'll say is I completely agree. BPN is very good at marketing themselves. They know where the eyeballs are and they're not trying to appeal to them. Traditional, like dirt bag ultra runners who have been doing this for 20 years, that's not where their interest is. [00:39:00] Their interest is in the masses.

They want to appeal to as many people as possible and they're doing so through Instagram lives and they are such a big calendar event now, and next gonna be absolutely humongous. Like you, you should, you better expect that next year it's gonna be like the biggest event of the year.

Now you are giving athletes an opportunity, professional athletes as well, an opportunity with events like this, maybe, it's not, maybe you're a professional athlete and you don't wanna do a backyard, that's absolutely fine, but you are giving opportunity for people to make a living out of this stuff.

And that's because it's a massive event beforehand, you'd have to be like. Dan Green, for example and to win a major race, you'd have to come onto the scene by winning a 250 miler or something, have to win one of those big ones to be put on the scene and get your Solomon sponsorship or something like that.

You have to be like Killian Co and win all three. I think it's much more difficult outside of [00:40:00] these kinds of disruptive brands that are doing massive coverage of the sport to make anything of themselves. You can't ultimately become an ultrarunner. You can't be coming third at every race and expect to make a living out of it.

Like you have to win a major race. Yeah, no, I think you're, you've said, you said some things that are, that I want to touch on. One is that kind of like, how do I get to the point where I can truly optimize, and I see this storytelling, I can build a career in the sport that's not a professional athlete being a vehicle.

If you even wanna try to be professional to some degree, or at least focus on higher tier performance. I think one of the best examples of this may be the YouTube rant to Japan. Do you follow him at all? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, he's super interesting to me because it's like, he built his brand mostly on content creation and then through that process became a pretty fast runner.

He wasn't, it's not like he was like, slow and then all of a sudden got fast because of that. He was already a good runner, but like [00:41:00] he, he found himself in a position where he could spend enough time similar to a professional athlete that, that he created a vehicle in which to do that would've probably, which would've been probably a lot harder to do if he had to work a job that was a little bit more non-specific to running where he had to go in and punch a clock and sit in the desk for eight hours a day or whatever it happened to be.

So. I think that's the really interesting thing is yeah, there's this and I'm getting into a really like minute grouping of people here where I think your intent is just if you wanna engage with the sport in some way as a professional and make that your job, there's vehicles to do that outside of just becoming like a professional athlete or like a more traditional media person or something like that.

Or journalist. Yeah. I also think that it's hard because you will have professional athletes who are like, I don't wanna become an influencer. Right? I don't wanna, I don't want to be filming myself all the time and doing that. Why can't I just do my, why can't [00:42:00] I just focus on my sport?

I get it. I do get it. I appreciate that you don't wanna always put yourself out. Like it's really, it's actually really, it's really difficult to put yourself out there. I came into making content as a coach and I wanted to. Build an audience to get clients. And then it became much more than that.

And now I really am passionate about the power of running and what it can do for people. And so I make content to try and inspire people in that way and encourage people and give people information. And now it's, that's my passion. I'll never become a pro athlete. I'll never become exceptional at the sport.

But that's not my priority for some people. I get that it's the other way round where their absolute goal is to become a professional in the sport and they wanna just focus on the running. But I don't buy the idea that you don't have time to make content as someone who makes a shit ton of content.

Yeah. I don't buy that. You don't have time. And I know that life is busy, I get it. But I do [00:43:00] wanna challenge some people, some, elite runners and say like, why aren't you. Why aren't you taking advantage of this amazing opportunity that you have to build an audience? Why are you not doing that?

Truly? Because if you're not doing it, you are missing out on a massive opportunity there. And as an athlete, if you want to be known as an athlete, that is putting yourself out there like your, that is attention seeking, like the brand brands will only support you if you gain attention.

It goes back to the first half of this conversation. Brands care about attention and they will care about you as an athlete. If by being an athlete you have attention, but if in running, being a top, an athlete doesn't get you attention enough, the brands won't care. So you have to seek out that attention some other way.

So you have to tell stories or you have to appeal to people in a different way. Sally McCrae is a great example of this. She [00:44:00] tells amazing stories. She offers amazing advice. She appeals to the masses. She has an amazing podcast. David Roach is an amazing example of this. He provides so much information.

He's a coach, but he's a top athlete. Hands Troyer is telling stories. He's like the people's favorite. And they, these guys are like really performing at a top level. But had they not told stories, had they not made content and appeal to people, they wouldn't be known. Like the brands wouldn't care about them.

They wouldn't have any appeal to mm-hmm. Making money, basically. Or, and even if it's not brands, it's like they're selling directly. They're selling, maybe they, some of them sell merch or they, the internet is an amazing opportunity and I think that it's a bit of a, I don't buy, I do appreciate and I get the position.

That many athletes are at I just wanna do the sport. That's what I care about. And I'm not good in front of the camera, but I don't buy the rebuttal to an encouragement to make content by saying, I just why do I have to? I [00:45:00] don't wanna be an influencer. I'm mm-hmm. If the harsh voice in me says, get over it.

You are not, you're not in a sport where you can afford to just perform, you're not playing basketball and you're not, you're not getting the coverage that basketball gets. You are ultra running, bro. So you need to be, even if you're in Olympic distance to some degree.

Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I don't think so, I don't wanna say that you have to make content. You don't have to if that's the, if that's the way you wanna do it, absolutely. But I will say that you're missing out on an amazing opportunity. And for me, it's been a great thing.

It's. It's given me huge opportunities, just appealing to people and connecting with the community online and offering as much as I possibly can and contributing to the space as much as I can. It's been an amazing thing for me, and I hope that, and I know that it's been good for others.

I get messages all the time. It's really fulfilling as well. And if I were to encourage any elite athletes out there, I would say that you can offer something of real value and you can find real fulfillment [00:46:00] in something outside of your sport. And by the way you also future proof yourself a bit more.

If you're looking to stay in the sport for a long time, it's a really good way to stay in the sport because your legs won't perform the way they always have, and if by the time you're 45 and you're no longer performing as well as you were, it's a good way to future-proof yourself and be a good kind of authority in the space and build a body of work over decades.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, what you just said I think is like maybe a reality check. Like it's one of those things where it's like you can want something to be different as much as you can, but if it's removed from reality, it's not gonna go anywhere. So it's like you, at the end of the day, you all you have to return to, alright, what is the landscape actually like?

What are the realities of the landscape? And exist within that to a large enough degree if you want to stay there, if you want to be in there and be part of it. And what you said about just like the content creation, the [00:47:00] storytelling, and how that resonates with attention and brand support versus just purely race results.

I think that is it. If, as an elite athlete, if you decide, hey, I wanna be just. Quiet and then show up on race day, pop off on a result and do that. You can do that, but you're just gonna have to accept the fact that there's gonna be someone who's much slower than you, who builds a massive audience and gets a lot more attention than you, especially when you're not actually at a competition.

And they can do that daily, not just quarterly or bi-annually or whatever it happens to be in terms of how frequently you can show up and pop off a real world class result and I think that's something that just needs to be grappled with. But I'd also kinda like you to challenge that person too, if you're thinking along the lines of, I don't really want to do this, but I see the necessity here.

What's my next move? I think there's a lot of potential within collaborating with the influencers with this type of stuff. Yeah, and absolutely. You can be original if you want and try to share like, I love flipping open Instagram and seeing like some pro [00:48:00] marathon or ripping fees for an 18 mile long run.

But it's like there's only so much of that you're gonna be able to produce. But take me for example. I've been coaching Matt Johnson who has grown huge on Instagram over the last few years and like some of it's just like you just getting over your own ego to a degree where. It's like recognizing, well, what is it?

What does Matt do well that I'm not good at or not good enough at or could learn from? And that's separate from can I beat Matt in a hundred mile race? Yeah. There's, just because I could beat Matt in a hundred mile race doesn't mean that all of a sudden I should not look to him as an example of somebody that I can learn how to story tell better, how to be more creative on Instagram.

Or even simply as reaching out to him and helping him with some of his running and then being in one of his YouTube videos as a result. Because, we're, he wants to shoot a workout and I'm his coach, so I can go there and walk the videographer through the workout and things like that.

And then, there's, I [00:49:00] think there's a bunch of interesting ways for this to become a, Hey, you've got a skill set that I don't have. I have a skillset that you don't have. How do these match that, that helps both of us get where we wanna go, versus you have a competing skill set to mine and we're trying to get the attention from the same person.

I couldn't agree more. I think that there is, I think ultimately what we're talking about in all of this is there is a general sentiment that I really don't like in any growing industry or sport. That is when things change, instead of celebrating that change, instead of embracing that growth and collaborating, it feels like a competition to what, like I see it in, in also, I used to work in a very nascent space and one of the, one of the like poster childs for the early days in that industry when I worked in it, is now like fighting against the growth of it because it's boomed and.

That is running as well. That in ultra running, [00:50:00] especially because ultra running had, and I will say that this vibe I'm about to describe was what attracted me to ultra running in the first place. And I think I recognized this trait in others because I once had it in myself as an indie hipster kid.

Truly, like deep down I'm just a hipster who doesn't want people to know about my niche things. So I see it in others because I see it once in myself. And that is, that there is a vibe. There is a kind of what ultra running used to be that really appealed to a lot of people and they felt welcome in that space, myself included.

And when that changes, so when you see the quote unquote gym bros at BPN or when you see whatever rather doesn't fit the mold kind do well. You wanna fight against it 'cause you're like, oh, this isn't really the vibe I'm used to like ultra running's changed, man. I understand that.

But I think what we're talking about here is that if you really want to grow with this space, if you really want it to grow and you [00:51:00] want to have a future in it, you have to have a collaborative mindset. It's like a, a love for the sport and a love for those who are joining. And you have to get rid of this kind of, I was here first attitude and.

Instead of being negative towards everything new. Try as much as you can to be positive and find the positives in it, scrutinize it. Of course, we should scrutinize as we scale. We want it to grow properly. We don't wanna fall into the trap of growing in the wrong way. And, over commercializing and having loads of really expensive races and, there, there is a wrong way to grow.

Absolutely. And we should continue to scrutinize and protect the space that we love. But we should do so in a collaborative way. We should celebrate the things that are bringing people into the sport. If you truly want it to grow, I think that there are great ways to engage with it. And to have fun.

Just have fun. It's not that serious, it is, it's a sport. It's entertainment. It's something that is [00:52:00] fun to get involved in. It's really beneficial for the people involved in it. You can do so much with it. You can contribute back to the sport. You can raise money for charity. There's so much that is positive about loads of eyeballs being on it.

Even if you feel like the attention is being taken from you and being put on those who you don't think deserve it as much, just celebrate it, celebrate that it's growing, celebrate that there's more interest in it, and collaborate with those who are in it. And you can get inventive, you can get, you can have fun with it.

I completely agree with that and that's the way I really just think that's the way to go. You'll be happier inside yourself if you engage with it in that way and. You will also ensure that, well, you're not secure, but you will increase the likelihood that you will get more attention in a good way as well, and you'll look better for it.

And I think there's this sort of dichotomy of the old classic sort of dichotomy of fear and love. Like you can either operate in fear [00:53:00] and just be really negative towards everything and pessimistic and say, 'I don't like that 'cause of this. And I actually, I'm not a fan of this because it's not quite the vibe.

And it's just no. Or you can operate with more love and say, do you know what, this may not be the vibe I love completely, but I'm actually a really, I appreciate the fact that it's, there's growth in it and I appreciate the stories and I appreciate it brings people in and, it's growing what I love in the sport.

And one last thing I'll say actually on that is like I had a. A bit of a, there was a bit of back and forth on, in the comment section of one of my videos, which was a completely fair point. And that was about the danger in ruining the outdoors and the fact that like the outdoors and the mountains should be accessible and available to everyone.

And we don't wanna over commercialize the outdoors. And I think it's a really fair point, but Killian Kors put it in the best way I could imagine in his substack, which by the way, another way you can engage on the internet is build a substack. You can write, you don't have to put your face on stuff.

Killian Kors wrote that the outdoors is [00:54:00] incorruptible, and I couldn't agree more. Like at the end of the day, I don't believe, yes, we should protect the outdoors and we should operate within them in a considered way. And there are loads of laws, especially in America and the national parks to engage with it in a specific way.

But the outdoors. Nature is very powerful and I don't think we are able to make it inaccessible just because we are commercializing the sport of ultra running. That shouldn't be our fear, and so we should try and grow it as much as possible and recognize that it should just, it would be encouraging people to get out there and appreciate what they love.

Yeah, I think at least some of the criticism with the commercialization and growth from groups of people, I think is, can just be kind, cash out as a skill issue to some degree. Because when I look around the landscape, see, yes, I see the big sports getting a lot of spotlight and a lot of, or the big parts of the sports getting a lot of spotlight, a lot of tension like the u Tmbs of the world, but.

They didn't [00:55:00] erase what used to be there, it's just that spot isn't the premier spot anymore. And it's purely just 'cause more people are doing it. So if I want to experience ultra running the way it was 10 years ago, I can still do that. I just have to go find the right event. Take me for example, this last October, I went to this event called The Equalizer.

It was a 12 hour, and it was actually, I think a six, a 12 and a 24 hour two mile loop course up in Des Moines, Iowa. Like you love a bit that day. It could not have yeah, it could not have possibly been more old school. Yeah. And it cost, I think I paid like $85 for the 12 hour, something like that.

And people might be saying, yeah, well I don't wanna do that silliness that you're doing with those short loops. But I promise you there's a hundred times more trail versions of that event than there are road short loop versions of that event. So those events are out there, they're gonna be there.

And to some degree, I think people just get, they kinda get annoyed with the fact that if they're going hop online a lot, they're gonna see UTMB get thrust into them. Mm-hmm. They're gonna see the whole, like the Boston Mar, I don't [00:56:00] know if you follow this, the Boston Marathon Nike sign was like another Yeah.

An example of this where people felt like they were being forced to watch all the crying about the sign, and that made them angry and then they started crying about the people crying. It was like this weird self-feeding group. Yeah. And it's always funny when someone starts criticizing someone for what they're actually doing at the moment.

What, but I won't go any further into that, but what I'm trying to say with that is just I think the skill issue is like, if you wanna engage with something in a more kind of like traditional way or a smaller scale way and remove a lot of that, that, 'cause some people listen to this will be like, well, I don't want to engage with.

I don't wanna create content, I don't want to, I just want to see what I wanna see and do what I wanna do. I was like, well then you do need to do a better job of curating your social media presence so that you're not seeing some of the stuff you don't wanna see, which you can do. Or just tune off. Yeah.

And like it, it's something where it's like how frustrating it is to see somebody complaining about a Nike sign when you don't think it matters or you [00:57:00] think it's soft or whatever, you happen to label it as, you can just not engage with it. You can ignore them. Like they're gonna be there in their corner of the world outraging, and you can leave them there and go away from it.

And I think for some reason people haven't always connected those dots with the online world where Yeah. Where you can actually just walk out of a restaurant, you can walk out of a topic on Instagram. Yeah. A good friend of mine is good. He's a good friend of mine and a good ultra friend of mine.

He doesn't have Instagram, well, he has Instagram, but he doesn't have it on his phone, so he is like never on it. And I'll meet up with him and we'll go for a run or something, and then I'll start talking about some hot topic. Mm-hmm. And he just says, no idea what I'm on about. He's what are you talking about?

I'm like, oh, it's been like, it's been really controversial in space recently, this thing that happened, blah, blah. And he's oh, is it right? And he has no idea. And it's really refreshing. You're like, oh yeah, you are just switched off from it. And that's so nice. I'm so envious of that because it, like you say, does feel like you can get so riled up by [00:58:00] everything that's happening, but I think it's important to remember that.

The online running community is not the running community, it's what's happening online in the running community. But the running community itself is at the events you go to, it's at the experiences you have, meeting new people. And it's the small events. It's all of these events that are taking place.

They're just not getting as much attention. Like I love BPN Backyard Ultra because it inspires loads of people to do a backyard. I literally had one of my clients this morning, he's out, he's based out in Melbourne and he just signed up to a backyard. We were on the call. He is you know what, I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna sign up now. And he signed up for it next weekend. And that's because he's inspired by the BPN backyard. I help, there's a little not-for-profit called Dynamic Adventures that I've been working with a little bit. And they help get people and kids out into the outdoors and they do things like archery and all sorts of various things.

And over the last few years, they've been putting on this backyard style ultra. They've now got more [00:59:00] than one. They've got I think four different locations around the uk and it's a tiny race. It's 60 pounds to enter. It's like basically $80 to enter. And it's a great concept. It's 24 hours.

The 24th hour is a race. So you do 23 hours and then you just try and gun it round to win the thing. It's amazing. That's for a local little not-for-profit, it's a good cause. It's a really amazing camaraderie and event. There's no coverage of it, but BPN inspires loads of people to go and sign up to things like that, right?

And so we've gotta appreciate the full circle of things and the fact that actually a lot of these small events massively benefit from coverage of the massive events that you don't wanna get involved in. So we have to thank these massive events for. Wanting to sell out and wanting to bring influences to their events because it inspires so many to get involved in the smaller events.

It's a full ecosystem. Yeah, absolutely. And one of my more favorite things to do is, I reached outside of the running ultra world [01:00:00] to some degree by getting on big podcasts a little bit earlier in my career that were not Yeah, ultra running specific, like Joe Rogan, where it was the best example of that.

So a ton of people would reach out to me who had never done an ultra marathon or maybe even a running event before and had no clue about the landscape. And they would be kind, maybe frustrated or a little disappointed 'cause they're like, I wanna do the leadville hundred, or now what, maybe I wanted to get into the BPN last man standing and I applied, I didn't get in, and they're bummed out.

And I tell 'em, I'm like, there's like hundreds of these events everywhere and look, there's one like an hour and a half from where you live. That's gonna actually be a much better first experience for you than trying to get into Leadville and manage all the logistics behind that and.

Nobody's gonna care that you did that one instead of Leadville. You just don't know about it yet, or haven't had a chance to appreciate it yet that those are there. So yeah, I love doing that. When someone has that sort of hurdle in their mind and then you show them like, okay, this is what you actually can do.

If you really wanna engage with the sport in a way that's maybe even better for you. And then see them realize [01:01:00] oh, cool, there's actually this whole world out there that I didn't see on the Joe Rogan experience or on BPNs last documentary. Yeah. And you never know. You might go to a local race and if you're a decent athlete, you could win it.

Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, and that goes back to I'm a big fan of Steve Magnus, like the view of this sort of thing. Oh yeah. Where it's just we need to be better at building structures for ourselves or our communities that allow us to compete locally before trying to compete. Like internationally, because right now we live in a world where you have access to the whole world online.

So if you're competing with the best of anything, you're gonna feel really insufficient. Whereas if you show up to your local 5K, you might finish in the top 10% and be like, well that's really cool. I actually did pretty well. Whereas if you had been, at some big world class event and gotten like the bottom 10%, you might think oh man, why am I doing this?

And you just weren't ready for it yet. Yeah. If I absolutely, I think it's because I get a bit of grief sometimes for going [01:02:00] to UTMB events 'cause people are so opinionated about UTMB. Yeah. I like them for what they are. I don't, they're not my favorite experiences necessarily in ultra running.

But I also go to really small events. Like I went to I did a hundred miler last year in, Pacific Northwest Devil's Gulch, tiny Race, bro. Tiny, but really sick event, like really well put on really nice community. But I'm also signed up to do so. Two UTMB races this year. And I also love UTMB for that.

And I wanna get like top 100 in these races and that's good for me. If I get up towards the front that's a great achievement for me. But I'm not obviously competing, whereas I go to a smaller race and I might compete for the top five. I think they're fun in different ways and you can support small races but still compete in really big races.

I, I, yeah, I think that you can definitely do both, for sure. Mm-hmm. I did have one other topic that kind of maybe rewinds a [01:03:00] a little bit too, too earlier in our conversation I wanted to ask you about, 'cause I'd be curious what your perspective is. 'cause I think there's, it's possible you're entirely aware of this, but it's also possible that you see it, but don't maybe know how it came from.

One. One other kind of like maybe friction point. I often see it, especially when it comes to the whole influencer versus athlete side of things, is if you go back far enough into a kind of running culture prior to the internet and then when the internet started, you still see this a lot on the message boards.

And I thought about this when you were talking about the message boards before. Are there people who like to think of running as a bit more inclusive as a sport? But there definitely has been, and there is still to a large degree today, a hierarchy that kind of imposes itself and it's not always engaged within a healthy way, in my opinion, where you get this scenario where you wear like a race result as a badge or like a placement on the hierarchy of running importance where [01:04:00] it's like.

I'm a two 30 marathoner. I'm a three hour marathoner. Yeah. I'm a two 10 marathoner. It's okay, now you're real prestige. And that in and of itself, I don't find it problematic where we have like results and people like wanting to celebrate the results and show where they're at. I don't see a problem with that inherently.

Where I see the problem with it is sometimes I get this I get this feeling that as people kinda move up that hierarchy, rather than celebrating that and kinda looking at that for inspiration, they start kinda looking back down where they were and now all of a sudden they're like looking down at the rest and thinking less of the people below them.

And that part's, I think this is where you see this in the message boards a lot because most people aren't gonna put their face to this sort of behavior. Yes. Right. I'm not, I shouldn't say that. There are definitely people who will put their face to this sort of behavior, but the majority of people that feel this way probably won't.

So mm-hmm. It ends up manifesting in an unproductive way where their behaviors start reflecting like, oh, well I qualified for Boston, therefore now I'm [01:05:00] at this new level, and I can start looking down at the non Boston qualifiers. Or they hop up on the message board and we don't value your opinion because you're a three 30 marathoner and I'm a 2 45 marathoner now, so now all of a sudden my opinion VA matters more than yours.

Yeah. I think what's important to remember is that running is filled with people and people are flawed and we are all, we're all imperfect and we all have to deal with our ego and. We can all sometimes communicate in ways that are not necessarily the nicest way we can communicate. We can all get riled up by certain things.

We can all have perspectives that are not well-rounded, like we're all flawed. And so I think we should recognize that running is probably the most inclusive. It is the most inclusive sport that I've been a part of for sure. And I think, if we look at the recent Nike advertising debacle, I think it's important to remember that all of the other brands are incredibly inclusive.

[01:06:00] And yes, I don't agree with the sentiment and I think it was probably a bad taste of Nike. But you also gotta remember that Nike has a history of having this winner's mentality, like the mamba mentality and like them, they represent a very competitive side of the sport that exists. And I don't think we should just because it's an inclusive sport, I don't think we should necessarily, I think it's, I think it's, and this is maybe like a difficult take and listeners can, Hey, you can disagree with me if you want. But I think there is also a risk of, and I try to be as inclusive as possible. Like I'm very much, it's that's my thing, I wanna have people included and feel included.

And I think that running is available to everyone and we shouldn't have people feel less than or not welcome and all that sort of stuff. But there is a risk in the rest of running the running community actually not being very inclusive of very competitive attitudes. Mm-hmm. So I think we should also [01:07:00] celebrate.

Those who really want to go all out and get those marginal gains and stuff like that. I think obviously there's more of a risk that we have from the top down, like you said, like there's definitely, I definitely do see those who quote unquote climb the ranks of running with their times and then start looking down on those who aren't as good a runner as them.

I think what I try to remind people of, especially those who are quite elitist in the sport, is that no one is the same. Like this is, each individual is different. They have different genetics, they have different life situations, and they have different experience and interests in the sport and all this sort of stuff.

So. What you are capable of is gonna be very different from what other people are capable of. And once you get to the elite level, you look around at your colleagues and your competitors and you'll realize you all start looking very similar because you're all [01:08:00] genetically quite similar. You're all quite interested in the same kind of thing.

You will run quite similarly in, in reality, once it starts going down to, those who are less fast and less interested and have different body shapes and all this sort of stuff and different life experiences, it then starts to get very complicated. And the comparison, there's too many variables to make strict comparisons ultimately.

And so I think one thing that people forget is that yes, you can really care about the times that you get, but it doesn't actually paint a full picture. Like I've spoken to people who run like two 15 marathons and they started running in COVID. What does that say? It says that they are very talented.

They're very genetically gifted. Yes. They've paired that talent, that gift that they found late in life with extremely hard work. But come on now, like this is not a fair comparison, right? [01:09:00] Like my friend Sally did her first marathon in five hours, 30, and now she does it in three 15. Is that not incredible?

Is that not wildly impressive? Or, another person I know may run extremely slow, but man, they can. They can absolutely chomp up a 200 miler. Is that not extremely impressive, given their history of addiction? I think like we, let's look at, let's look at the fact that all people are different.

All people are flawed, all people have different stories. That's the beauty of running. That's why I find it so amazing about the sport, is that we're all in this from different backgrounds. This guy came from a bodybuilding background. Why is he not welcome? Let's welcome him in because he's in it for the same reasons that you're in it.

He's in it 'cause he wants to see what he's capable of. That's what you are doing it for too. Even though you don't look the same, even though you don't have the same background. Let's accept him in this game. This guy [01:10:00] came from. A history of alcoholism and addiction let's welcome 'em in.

Absolutely. This person came from a track and field background and is destroying at shorter distances. Let's welcome them in as well. I think there's a, it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it's really easy to compare ourselves to each other. It's just not, we're all very different.

We all have different backgrounds. We're all in it competing against ourselves ultimately, until we get to those top levels. And it's a lot, it's a mu, it's a much nicer way to operate. Like you'll feel better about yourself and you'll actually enjoy it a lot more if you operate in a way that considers the fact.

That it's much more complicated for a postpartum woman to be running this race, or it's much more, it's much more complicated for someone with a doted history to be running this race. Like it's mu it's a more interesting sport when you think of it like that. I think. Yeah. You made a really good point to, with respect to, we don't wanna throw the [01:11:00] baby out with the bath water, so to speak, when it comes to the strive for greatness messaging that Nike kind of anchored their brand philosophy in originally.

Because even if, like you said, we have a different personality, we can still learn from that attitude to apply it at the right times for ourselves and not ignore the fact that we do live in a world where it can be easy to get soft. So. So I think humans generally thrive when being challenged to some degree.

It's nice when you can control that and it's not forced upon you in unhealthy ways. But I think that's what the beauty of running can be, is like you have this opportunity to strive for better if you want to in certain times. Yeah. And whether you're the best in the sport or you're just, quote unquote an average runner, you can still apply those principles and see that, get that same feeling of accomplishment.

And I overcame a challenge. I did something I didn't think I could do and can gain and grow from that. So I think that's really interesting. But Nike, I think that the [01:12:00] Nike thing is the most interesting thing about that to me is I think they there, like I said, their brand ethos is to win at all costs.

Just do it, right? Mm-hmm. It's in their brand labeling and we now have a sport where. Even their product line. I could be wrong about this data, but I think it's 70% of their shoe sales, their running shoes go to walkers. So they have this like, how do I, wow. Right? How do I engage with this fact that I built my brand on, just do it.

But a really big chunk of my customer base is just getting into it. Like, how do you thread that needle? And for them, I think there were a couple things that made this particular situation blow up. One was they looked at it as, okay, well a Boston Marathon, if there's a spot to put this sign, this is it.

Because these are people that likely aren't gonna be as inclined to walk, and this is the clientele that's gonna maybe resonate with that a little bit more than others. They didn't realize that, or maybe they did realize, but what, what didn't end up happening is [01:13:00] Boston isn't in. It's not a closed system operation.

Yeah. It's a world viewed thing and people who aren't necessarily focused on performance are still gonna pay attention. And then their favorite Instagram account might start talking about it and all of a sudden it goes mainstream and you get Yeah. Like actual mainstream sports commentators saying, what's going on here?

And I think it's just such an interesting thing too. 'cause it's like Nike had this scenario when we launched the super shoes and the premium foams where they had a monopoly on that product. So there was like a stretch of all, probably almost four or five years where if you did not wear one of their performance shoes, you were going to be slower than you would be otherwise in almost every case.

So that's changed though, like basically since around 20 20, 20 21. We've had brands catch up and now there's three or four, at least three brands for sure that have a product that is as good, if not better, from an efficiency standard. So now people don't have to tolerate Nike's performance line if they don't want to.

And I think we're [01:14:00] seeing some of that now too, where someone who would've been at this kind of like weird bargaining place where they're like, I don't like Nike as a brand, I don't like what they stand for, but I'm going to run faster if I wear this shoe. Now they, since they don't actually like Nike now that they have an option to run as fast or as well in a different shoe, they're gonna do that and they're gonna, they're gonna let you know it.

Yeah. I still don't know where I stand on this Nike ad and I think that usually I would make a video on something like this, but I still dunno where I stand. 'cause like I've had coaches in sports that have taken a very different style of coaching and sometimes being shouted at to get up. Yeah.

It works. Get up, get off your ass. Like I don't tolerate that. That works. That's what we need in a competitive situation. My brother-in-law told me a funny story just this weekend about how he was running a half marathon and he was having a bad time, and he started walking. And it was just at the moment that my sister was there, [01:15:00] and my sister was just like, what are you doing walking?

Probably. And then he was like, oh, all right, I should start. And he started running, and he appreciated this harsh line. Like it's not gonna resonate with everyone. That style of coaching. Sometimes you need to be kind to actually encourage and, but sometimes you need to tell people how it is, and I think, like I had this interesting discussion a long time ago about this. I think sometimes I think that it's not always necessary to, I've struggled to use a different word than soft because, 'cause I think so, because I think softness is really valuable. Sometimes we need the soft touch sometimes, but sometimes it's really not valuable.

Sometimes it's because you are being too soft and you need to, halfway through a race, for example, like my self-talk in a race. Let's say I'm into or 100 k and I've overcooked it and I just can't see how I'm gonna get the last half marathon done. Sometimes I need to tell myself, come on, Tommy, buck up.

Let's go. What are you doing? Stop. Stop listening to your weak [01:16:00] mind. Sometimes I need to tell myself that to really get myself going, and I'm proud when I do that. When I listen to my harsh self and I get going and I start proving to myself that I'm, oh yeah, no, I am more capable. I don't need to be walking right now.

I can do this. So there's a lot more to it I think. I think Nike's word choice was bad. I think also they, I don't think they necessarily, given that they've taken the ads down, I don't think they necessarily realized how inclusive the majority of the sport is. And I think one thing we can be proud of is that the response to this advert was, you can actually go screw yourself.

We are not into that. So I think it's an interesting one, but I do think that, I think that the response has been overwhelming, but I'd be curious to see if there's like a second run of something slightly different in this ad campaign. 'cause everything they're doing is pretty intentional.

I don't know. I dunno if they've made a mistake or if this was what they planned, they reviewed by [01:17:00] marketing teams for sure. So you gotta think of at least a few eyeballs gone, all, almost everything, and they think through a lot of the different potential scenarios. But what you said was perfect because I think what we run into an issue with these sort of things, is it gets so polarizing, it becomes black and white, and then it becomes, getting really gassed up and hard on yourself to get yourself to the finish line sooner is seen as either good or bad or being soft by stopping a workout when you have one or two left in the tank because you know that it's the aggregate of all your training that matters. Not one big funeral workout. It's like that's the perfect example in my opinion.

It's like you need both these tools and then when you start to look at 'em as tools versus black and white, bad or good, you start understanding how they interact in a way that's gonna actually promote your growth. So your example of the race, that's exactly when you need that hard coaching of, look, you decided to do this, you put in all that work, don't quit now.

Don't cry now. Don't be a baby now. That's when we could start using those words. Right? But yeah, [01:18:00] like my example then too, like at the interval session, if I'm coaching someone. And I asked them if they finished a rep, and we're like, how many more do you think you do? Maybe one or two more. I'm not gonna tell 'em to stop being a baby and do three more.

I'm gonna stop that because I want them to be able to show up to the next workout and do well there versus Yeah. Have that one negative over time because I'm running into the ground for one session. Yeah. It is like the conversation about Goggins. Yeah. And I think, who was it on this pod who was talking about the Goggins arc?

Oh, that, that was Mark Dole. That was Mark, yeah. Yeah. I love that because that was great because everyone's gone to Goggins alumni, yeah. Everyone's gone through that kind of well every, a lot of men have especially have gone through that sort of, do you know what this harsh mentality of go out and get it and work hard and all that sort that sometimes you need a dose of that and there's a certain, maybe there's a certain period in your life where you need that. And also in the same vein, like it's not gonna appeal to everyone. Actually it's gonna only appeal to a few people and that's fine.

It's like, [01:19:00] I think sometimes we need to just be a bit more accepting of if that's not for you, that's not for you. Just ignore it. Mm-hmm. I think it's good to step up to it to stand up against things that you disagree with. I think it's really important and fundamentally, like that's sometimes what I do and I get.

I get a bit of backlash. I think there'll be things in this conversation where people will disagree and that's fine. Like you can disagree, but I think it's important to have these conversations. And I also think it's important to, like when you see something that you don't think contributes positively to the space or the opposite actually.

If you see something that negatively contributes to space, I think it's important. Like I find it important to step up to that and to stand up against it and do so in a way that's justifiably aggressive or like assertive more how you say something is as important as what you say quite often, but, and we're not always gonna get that, right.

I don't always get that right. But I think it's important to stand up to things that you think I do, you know what this actually is not the right mentality. And I want to remind people who may have seen this, [01:20:00] that there are people here who agree with who. Recognize that's negatively impacting how you feel about yourself or whatever.

That's important. I think ultimately though, it's important to remember that this sport is extremely inclusive and we will continue to make it as inclusive as we possibly can. That's the, that's what we are trying to do. But remember that there's a whole spectrum of people involved in this, and there are people who have been involved in fast running since they were seven years old, and they want that mentality of, you didn't come all this way to have a walk in the park.

That is quite literally the advert that Nike put up. If you are. If you're offended about that, fair enough. But it is also important to remember the context and remember that there are people who aren't really interested in the sport in the same way that you are. And that's difficult sometimes to swallow because it's a really friendly space.

But just stay in the friendly so just stay involved in this friendly space. It's a wide spanning community and not everyone in the community's gonna be on your [01:21:00] side. That's fine too. But we all have this commonality and that is running, we love running. And let's allow that common ground to unite us instead of trying to find issues with new things and trying to find problems and neg and be negative about things we don't like.

Let's scrutinize and tread carefully. But I think. It's more enjoyable for you to be involved in the sport if you are collaborative, if you engage with positivity. That's what I try to do. Don't always get it right. But yeah, I see the opposite often. Yeah. It is funny 'cause I think it's, it, we, I think we read into disagreements too much sometimes, especially online where Yeah, it becomes like a defining principle of a person.

Like one disagreement becomes like who that person is. Yes, dude. And sometimes you get scenarios online where someone is living a character that is so counter to your worldview that you might probably won't agree on much, if anything. But the way I like to look at it is most of the time you just don't disagree with a person on this one topic.

You might agree with them on a bunch of other [01:22:00] things. And the way I think about it, when I try to reconsider my mind when I'm having an online conversation or debate with somebody where we're definitely not coming to the same conclusion and we're both giving each other the perks of our perspectives, I think.

I don't always agree with my wife on everything and we're happily married, so just 'cause I'm disagreeing with this person right now doesn't mean anything really. It doesn't give me any additional information necessarily about who they are as a person and what value I could get from them down the road, or, how much fun we could have at a race together if we met in person or something like that.

Yeah, I think what I find really difficult about putting yourself online and in these short videos I love my podcast 'cause I'm able to talk at more length and I think people kinda get to, if you listen to the podcast, you get to know someone a bit more. But the small clips in the small videos, like you are only seeing a part of how someone's presenting themself.

Ultimately, I had, I'll say this, a bit of a back and forth. Someone wrote a comment on one of my posts and instead [01:23:00] of commenting to me, it was about me to someone else. So it's I think he is this and he does this, ah, I just don't like that. 'cause it's and the comment was like questioning my character based on another video I did a year and a half ago and this one.

And she'd only seen these two videos and she'd only seen them because there were two successful videos that happened to be like response videos or whatever. And she was judging my entire character, questioning my character based on these two videos of me. So she's judging me based on these two videos.

So I messaged her privately and then the next day we had a back and forth. And what I found really was a real shame was like, yeah. It was clear that she was judging who I am as a person based on just these two videos. And that was really hurtful and frustrating for me because I try not to get riled up by people who are judging me on the internet.

I'm in this game, I should know that it's gonna happen. But also it's really difficult 'cause I know that, I know I'm not a bad person. I know I'm not, like I'm, my intentions are good. I may have come across a certain way to you and, but I wanna, I almost [01:24:00] wanna prove to you that I'm not, I'm not that way.

Mm-hmm. But I think what I'm trying to say here is that people who are putting stuff out there on the internet, I wouldn't necessarily always judge them based on how they come across on the video. It's difficult not to, because some people come across really badly, but it's also really difficult to come across the right way.

And it's actually really, really, I think we should all give each other a little bit more grace in that sense. Like some people, they just come across a certain way, but. If you were to meet 'em in person or if you were to get to know them, they're probably really quite nice. To be honest, I do think that some people engage online in a way that could be improved.

I think some people are always arguing online and I don't think that's good for their own mental health. But yeah, I think it's difficult 'cause we, like I said earlier, we judge the community or we judge those within the community based on the content or based on the online space.

But we forget to remember we, we forget that our experiences at races and our experiences at run clubs and our experiences with people in [01:25:00] person, that's actually also the community. And if you're getting all riled up by stuff, if you're getting a little bit too emotional about stuff related to running, maybe turn social media off for a bit because maybe go for a run.

Maybe go for a run. Maybe go for a run. That's probably the best advice. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, tell me, are you training for anything right now? Always training for the site. Yeah, I, right. Yeah I've got the IGA trail, UTMB in Switzerland. Oh wow. So it's a pretty good race, I've heard. It's beautiful.

That's in July. And then I've got NICE Zu also by UTMB. That's a beast. A hundred miler, 9,000 meters of elevation gain. So I dunno why that is, it is in feet, but you can do the conversion's. It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So if UTMB, if Shay is 10,000 meters, this is 9,000 meters. So it's pretty hefty.

And then I have ultra X. South Africa in October, so not long after. And that's a stage race and is 300 kilometers. [01:26:00] So that's a beast. So yeah, right now I am building and doing so sensibly. Yeah. Until the Arga trail. Yeah. But I travel quite a lot, so it's difficult to always get consistent routine training input.

We do what we can. Yeah. Well maybe I'll have to have you come back down the road and talk about how you train your structure while traveling a lot. 'cause I know plenty of listeners have that reality with their job and it's like always an interesting topic of navigation when it comes to not having that kind of comfort of your home base.

Yeah. It's difficult to work out of, but awesome. Well, and you've got an exciting list of events coming up, so it'll be fun to keep following your content and see how all that goes along with everything else that you put out there. So I appreciate you coming on. Before I let you go, if you wanna let listeners know where they can find you, like websites, social links and things like that.

I can put 'em in the show notes. Yeah. I'm Tommy Run PT on most platforms, so. Instagram. I'm less active on TikTok these days 'cause it's just like a cesspit of awful content. But I just [01:27:00] don't even like going in there. But I'm like Tommy Rue on pretty much everything. Substack and stuff.

That's Runable is the podcast and that's Runable on Instagram as well. It's probably the best place to find me. That's runable.com as well. Yeah. Perfect. Well, awesome, Tommy, it was a blast having you on. I think we covered some really cool topics. I'm looking forward to getting this one out. Yeah, man, it's been an absolute pleasure.

It's been fun.