Seth Demoor admits he only sleeps 4-5 hours a night... foreshadowing for Rotterdam?

This surprised me, so I scrolled through and saw he did his 10 miler at 10:29/mile. I also don't understand this. I don't watch his videos and only know about him from here, but isn't that very slow for a guy aiming for an Olympic qualifying time? Does he explain why he does this and can anyone tell me his reasons for doing this? Does he do this often? I know people talk about the Kenyans running easy runs slow, but, not like this?

I imagine some of the slowness is him trying to set up his camera shots. Most of it is due to his stubborn training habits of running a lot of volume but at a crawl of a pace. Sometimes it is due to weather and altitude. But mostly the first two reasons I listed.

I’d say half the people who enjoy discussing him on this forum are really just intrigued to see if his wonky training style will result in some PRs.

He did run a high 1:05 half in Florida just over a year ago. I don't recall him ever training "correctly," but a 2:17 should be within his reach, given.

That said, 2:21.37

I appreciate your answer - and it was specifically about his training habits I was asking, but if he explains his habits - specifically if Seth himself explains why he runs that pace. Does he say somewhere in his videos "I run 10 milers at 10:39/mile pace for these reasons..." and espouse the usefulness of running at that pace? I assume he thinks its a good idea, just wondering if he explains why he thinks it is.

No he does not explain why he runs so crazy slow. He just says easy days easy.. And then one day he blabla about his HR (that he gets via wrist!!) and says I don't look at it blabla.. but I wanted to see if I can run below 100 HR. And thats what he did. He ran as slow as possible to stay below 100 hr......... always measured via wrist 🤷‍♂️

He has zero discipline and is very chaotic. At best he provides some illogical reason for why he does things. But mostly it's just chaos. This is why he is annoying. And why his dreams of coaching are lunacy.

The content is more important than training specificity in his mind. He would rather tippy toe through the high mountains to rack up volume and get beauty shots/B roll for the vlog.

I think that it is a huge reason why he falls apart in road marathons. The marathon rewards efficiency and the ability to run comfortably at a certain cadence on roads. SJD hardly ever practices this in his training. He gets lots of slow two foot long strides on soft technical mountain trails and a large amount of plodding along bike paths but never really practices pace or does long work on hard surfaces. I think that his late race fades are a function of legs that are not trained to take a beating. He's an aerobic machine but he isn't tailoring his work to the event. I watched the video linked up thread about his track workout and had to laugh when he described his kilo reps as "creating muscle memory" for marathon pace. WTF?!

Trail or road? It's not particularly slow for trail miles with some elevation change. Not blazing fast, but certainly a reasonable easy pace on a mildly technical trail.

I think it's interesting to compare what he is doing training-wise and with his intention to get the trials qualifier to say someone like Reed Fischer who is on a similar race schedule (albeit he is aiming for what - 2:09 or something?). Both did a tune up half, both aiming for a marathon, very different training and paces (both training in greater Denver).

This is all probably true but I think you're overcomplicating it. He struggles in road marathons because he doesn't train! He runs, and he runs a lot, but he doesn't train. In terms of volume, sure it looks cool to crank out 110+ mile weeks. But a huge chunk of that volume is zone zero. In terms of heart rate and intensity it's equivalent pushing yourself to walk fast on a steep hike. Which is a cool way to stay in shape if you're not a runner but has no correlation to marathon development.

The days that do have some intensity are waaaay too few and far between and then not dialed in for the proper training effect. He was doing some infrequent threshold runs a little slower than his goal marathon pace in his buildup to the half, which was the right idea, but he's totally abandoned them since that race. Instead he is running kilometer repeats at slower than marathon pace, which is nonsensical. Basically he took the one good thing he was doing-- the threshold/tempo runs-- and gave himself a rest after every kilometer. Bizarre.

Yes, it is true that he has some fast times and good competitive performances. It is also true that he ran 2:23 in his very first marathon after going out in 67 minutes for the half. And yet he hasn't been able to improve on that performance in three and a half of full-time running. I don't care if you're a professional or a 3:30 marathoner, anyone who paces that poorly for their first marathon should be able to make substantial improvements moving forward.

Yeah, I mean they have different goals and ability levels, but there is absolutely no reason Seth can't do what Reed is doing, adapted for his own pace. Obviously there is professional coaching involved but it's a pretty commonsense approach overall. It's all sitting right there for Seth to see if he ever looked outside of his own bubble and accepted that the conventional wisdom in terms of training for a marathon actually works.

I am confused if he runs this slowly on his easy days if he would then be recommending literal walks for easy days for his future coaching clients whose marathon pace is 10 min per mile... also it is concerning that his two harder efforts which proceeded this run have taken so much out of them that he required two days of recovery at this glacial pace followed by one in "the 9's." not exactly an indication that his quickly approaching marathon is going to go very well at all.

Give that man an Oscar for Bad Acting in a Daily Vlog!

I think that it is all a con job. An act to convince his flock that he just like them. Plus, to monetize that video and stretttttcccchhhh it out, he can spend an additional eight minutes of mostly silent footage of rolling out and stretching punctuated with, “Ohhhhh baby!” and repeatedly telling us how tired he is. I am sure that his fatigue doesn’t come close to that of his wife. She’s the hardest worker in that house for sure.

- his priority is living off his blog.

- doubt he really cares about the outcome of races except for the views it generates.

- shoe reviews are a huge part of that so he needs to run lots of miles to review lots of shoes.

- guessing he really doesn’t want to take any chances of getting injured.

- he also probably only road races because there is a bigger audience. He clearly prefers trails.

I believe he has addressed slower runs as runnning by feel for recovery not looking at pace, but I imagine to get to 10:xx probably includes snow/camera slow downs.

Seems mayb he oversubscribed to the "do your slow runs slow part"

I know some people who do very slow training runs like he does but they fill that in with intense hard sessions which he rarely does ...

I personally have never been able to do my slow runs that slow. It's just not enjoyable and feels like i'm not getting anywhere