LetsRun.com is a

Fort Worth Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...

-based news website and internet forum for information and discussion related to

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...

, especially

long-distance running Long-distance running, or endurance running, is a form of continuous running over distances of at least . Physiologically, it is largely aerobic in nature and requires stamina as well as mental strength. Within endurance running comes two d ...

. The website provides pre-race previews, covers races, and interviews athletes. Despite concerns over limited moderation on the message boards, LetsRun.com has been praised for its positive impact on American running and source of importance for the field. It has also become known for the quality of training information on its boards, and a number of internationally recognized coaches and athletes have posted information on their workout plans on the site, including

Renato Canova Renato Canova is an Italian athletics coach. Biography Renato Canova is well known for coaching Kenyan-born Qatari Saif Saaeed Shaheen (3000m steeplechase world record holder) along with a plethora of other great athletes including 10,000 meter ...

and

Henry Rono Henry Rono (born 12 February 1952, in Kapsabet) is a Kenyan retired track and field athlete who specialised in various long-distance running events. Although he never competed at the Olympics, Rono is remembered as one of the most prolific coll ...

History

Brothers Robert and Weldon Johnson founded LetsRun.com in the spring of 2000 while Weldon was training for the U.S. Olympic Trials in

Flagstaff, Arizona Flagstaff ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Coconino County, Arizona, Coconino County in northern Arizona, in the southwestern United States. In 2019, the city's estimated population was 75,038. Flagstaff's combined metropolitan area has ...

, with the goal of creating an online community to facilitate discussion of race results and training as well as to help promote track and field in the United States. According to the Johnsons, in 2009 the website was receiving over 200,000 unique visitors per month, and as of 2020 there have been nearly ten million posts on its message board.

Coverage

Doping

The site extensively covered allegations of ethically gray activities surrounding the

Nike Oregon Project The Nike Oregon Project was a group created by the American corporation Nike, established in Beaverton, Oregon in 2001. The team folded on October 10, 2019 after an investigation resulted in a four-year ban of longtime coach Alberto Salazar. Fa ...

and coach

Alberto Salazar Alberto Salazar (born August 7, 1958) is an American former track coach and long-distance runner. Born in Cuba, Salazar immigrated to the United States as a child with his family, living in Connecticut and then in Wayland, Massachusetts, whe ...

, who was banned in 2019 for offenses related to doping. LetsRun co-founder Robert Johnson shared his perspective with the ''New York Times'' on one of the most prominent individuals associated with the group, athlete

Galen Rupp Galen Rupp (born May 8, 1986) is an American long-distance runner. He competed in the Summer Olympics in 2008 in Beijing, 2012 in London, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and 2021 in Tokyo. He won the silver medal in the men's 10,000-meter run in Lon ...

. Johnson said about Rupp, “I think we should evaluate his career like everyone else but with more skepticism since one athlete is tied more closely to Alberto than anyone else.” LetsRun provided coverage and analysis of the doping allegations against

Shelby Houlihan Shelby Houlihan (born February 8, 1993) is an American middle distance runner, Olympian and World Record holder in the 4x1500m relay who is currently serving a ban. Houlihan competed in the 5000m final at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, finishing ...

, a prominent American middle-distance runner. Houlihan tested positive for an anabolic steroid, which she attributed to consuming a contaminated burrito. The plausibility of this explanation was discussed on the site.

Intersex and gender identity

The website frequently addresses complex issues, including articles on intersex athletes like

Caster Semenya Mokgadi Caster Semenya OIB (born 7 January 1991) is a South African middle-distance runner and winner of two Olympic gold medals and three World Championships in the women's 800 metres. She first won gold at the World Championships in 2009 ...

and transgender athletes like CeCe Telfer. A notable piece on Caster Semenya highlighted her XY chromosome configuration, a detail that the site contended was not widely covered in mainstream media. A November 2022 article from LetsRun opposed the inclusion of

gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the i ...

in sports, arguing instead for competitions based on biological sex. The article criticized the NYC Marathon's non-binary category, claiming it conflates gender identity with biological sex and discriminates against female athletes.

Running controversies

LetsRun has also appeared at the center of several controversies in running. In 2015, following a viral post made by Mike Rossi justifying his children's absences from school while watching him run at the

Boston Marathon The Boston Marathon is an annual marathon race hosted by several cities and towns in greater Boston in eastern Massachusetts, United States. It is traditionally held on Patriots' Day, the third Monday of April. Begun in 1897, the event was i ...

, Robert Johnson wrote a 5,000 word article on LetsRun describing "overwhelming" evidence that Rossi had cheated in an earlier qualifying race, based in part on information discovered by various users and posted to the LetsRun message boards. The organizers of that qualifying race wrote that they could not disqualify Rossi's time "simply because they received no reports of wrongdoing as the race took place," but also stated that "there is data from Rossi’s participation in other racing events indicating that Rossi’s time may not be accurate." LetsRun was also involved in scrutiny of Robert Young's attempt to break the record for the fastest run across the United States in 2016. As skepticism of some of Young's splits grew, one anonymous poster attempted to meet Young in the middle of his run, but instead found Young's support R.V. driving slowly down the road at running speed with no one outside, leading the poster to accuse Young of riding in the R.V. while claiming to be running. Young's performance deteriorated as additional observers began following his progress, and he eventually abandoned the attempt.

Other issues

LetsRun played a role in covering the

Boston Marathon bombing The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, w ...

in 2013. The website's forum became a hub for speculations regarding the identities of the perpetrators before they were officially identified. A user uploaded a photo to a forum thread of one of the eventual suspects, near the finish line before the bombings occurred. This posting to the website's forum contributed to the photograph gaining widespread online attention during the criminal investigation. At the

2016 Rio Olympics ) , nations = 207 (including IOA and EOR teams) , athletes = 11,238 , events = 306 in 28 sports (41 disciplines) , opening = 5 August 2016 , closing = 21 August 2016 , opened_by = Vice President Michel Temer , cauldron = Vanderlei Cordeiro de ...

, a journalist for the website, Jon Gault, asked Ethiopian medalist

Feyisa Lilesa Feyisa Lilesa (Afaan Oromo: Fayyisaa Leellisaa; born 1 February 1990) is an Oromo long-distance runner from Ethiopia. He became the youngest man to run under 2:06 when he ran 2:05:23 in the men's marathon at the 2010 Rotterdam Marathon. He se ...

why he raised his hands above his head in an X at the finish line. Lilesa responded to Gault that he did the gesture to protest the Ethiopian government's treatment of the Oromo ethnic group. Lilesa's political statement garnered extensive coverage, with numerous stories citing LetsRun. The website covered Guatemalan runner

Luis Grijalva Luis Grijalva (born 10 April 1999) is a Guatemalan long-distance runner. Born in Guatemala, he attended Armijo High School in Fairfield, California, where he was a state champion in cross country and track. He went on to compete for Northern Ariz ...

's quest for American citizenship, and the challenges he faced regarding his participation in the

2020 Tokyo Olympics The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the host city during the 1 ...

due to his

DACA Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, colloquially referred to as DACA, is a United States immigration policy that allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the United States after being brought to the country as children to receive a ...

(Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status.

Reception

Coverage of LetsRun has been generally positive. A ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' article called the website “something of a superego for American running”, while an article in the ''New Yorker'' described it as one of the “most knowledgeable and active site for running fans”. The website has come under criticism, however, for the content on its message board, where anonymity allows for a broad range of discussions, some of which are fueled by misogyny, racism, and homophobia. The site acknowledged these issues, and in 2020, it attempted to reduce trolling and

astroturfing Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants. It is a p ...

by putting in place new rules for moderation.

References

External links

* {{Official website, www.LetsRun.com Internet forums Running mass media American sport websites 2000 establishments in Arizona