The Rise Of Performative Running Culture

When people care more about the perception of running...instead of actually going for a run.

The term “grifter” has been increasingly thrown around in online communities, and I never actually knew what it meant until recently. I feel that now is the perfect time to educate myself on this term, why it’s relevant in run culture, and provide some commentary on what I’m seeing. This topic has been brewing in my mind for quite some time, and I was inspired by South Central Run Club co-founder Zaakiyah Brisker’s article Clout Chasing Is Killing Us to finally get something on paper.

The modern definition of a grifter is someone who builds influence, identity, or authority in a way that feels deceitful to gain money, attention, or social status. In running, it might be an influencer who builds a gigantic platform giving coaching advice and selling training plans, but doesn’t have any qualifications. It could be the guy who started a run club to sell merch and make a profit, instead of truly giving back to the community. We see the running grift more and more these days because running is trendy and marketable. Content creators continuously chase extremes to farm engagement. Everything feels commoditized, and it feels like we’re so far gone from the purity of the sport.

Maybe I’m just too online. I swear it never used to be like this, though.

The irony is that influencers and brands so badly want to embody that purity, because it’s real. There’s something so sexy about running when it’s in its purest form. It takes years of discipline to get there and refine. So when running is rushed and turned into a marketing playbook, it loses its shimmer. The brands that are patient with running resonate the most.

What is Performative Running?

Performative running cares more about the perception of running vs. actually running. It’s when the image of being a runner becomes more important than the experience of running itself. It’s what models do when they’re asked by ALO to run around the Eiffel tower to sell a trail shoe. It lacks depth and understanding.

The ALO Trail: A $295 trail shoe worn and tested by European models.

The opposite of being performative is to run with intention. That looks different for everyone, but it’s rooted in something meaningful. It’s not about how long you’ve been a runner, how much mileage you do, or how fast you are. I think it’s quite simple—you care about the sport and the people in it. You care about evolving and learning about yourself through the defiant act of putting one foot in front of the other.

For me, running is intentional because I am in love with this sport. I love every little wonderful and stupid thing about it. If you took away Instagram and Strava and told me I could only race in Brooks Adrenalines and cotton Soffe shorts for the rest of my life, I would still do it everyday without hesitation.

All the girls remember Soffe shorts, right? Photo source: someone’s Poshmark.

Now that running is exploding in popularity, a lot of people see running as a financial opportunity for themselves, instead of a contribution to running’s rich history of community, training, and competition. This is sad to me, because they are missing out.

Why The Satisfy Circle Pit Bothered So Many People

I wasn’t even going to mention Satisfy in this article originally, but here we are. Let’s lay out the facts (aka my opinions):

• I think Satisfy criticism is trite. It’s expensive running gear and it’s not for everyone. I like buying Balenciaga shirts and Louis Vuitton wallets. Some people like buying $350 running shorts. I don’t have a problem with it. I wish they cared to sell sports bras or crops for women, but they don’t and I’ll live with that.

• The Circle Pit was optically cringe. I don’t care if you ~had to be there~, or if everyone invited was actually super chill and nice. Satisfy used adidas’ global marketing budget to buy themselves a rockstar fantasy dream weekend in the desert, complete with a manufactured punk concert, a “race” on a pump track designed to break ankles, and influencers who were paid to be there. The result was a goofy display of luxury consumerism masquerading as run culture.

• That was not punk and it wasn’t hardcore. I know I don’t look like someone who went to hardcore shows in my youth, but I did. Anyone from Massachusetts will remember The Palladium in Worcester, or when Warped Tour came to Foxborough in the early 2000s. The Circle Pit tried to recreate that scene by having runners bodying themselves into couch cushions mosh pit-style while they ran around in circles.

• @yaboscottjurek is showing no mercy.

Live coverage of the Satisfy “Circle Pit”.

The online reaction to the Circle Pit was fairly binary. Those who attended the event had an amazing time with friends and were grateful to be a part of an “unforgettable” weekend, while everyone else thought it was over the top and lame. And both parties are right.

Runners, including myself, are at a point where we’re completely exhausted by this kind of content. The influencer fatigue is real, and the Circle Pit was a tone deaf display of what happens when a brand tries to manufacture cool. The content on social media was an open target range for people to voice their frustrations, and people weren’t afraid to do so.

The Satisfy Circle Pit bothered so many people because it was a painfully obvious example of why people hate manufactured influencer content. We’re getting smarter as consumers—we can suss out when something feels off. We have to in a world slowly being taken over by AI. So when Satisfy tells us their brand is punk and hardcore and only for cool people worthy of being invited, we call their bluff.

The Rise Of Running Aggregator Accounts

If you are on Instagram, you’re familiar with the aggregator accounts that share photos as inspiration and moodboards. A few examples in the runner category include Runner’s Mood, Curated for Runners, Runner Alerts, and Run Lifestyle. They post curated carousels of running content from brands, run clubs, events, athletes, and cultural running moments. They all look so similar that sometimes I can’t tell them apart. I follow all of them, and I do find them helpful from a marketer’s perspective to see what’s happening in run culture vs. the traditional world of elite performance.

My main criticism of these accounts is grounded in the ethics of creative ownership. These accounts started out by repurposing (actually, stealing) content from photographers and online creators to curate an Instagram grid that feels premium and branded. They take screenshots of things they see in the moment (or pull images from search), repost them in a carousel, and oftentimes don’t tag the original creators. As these accounts have grown, they’ve built large followings and now have brands paying them to post about their products. Oftentimes, there’s no disclosure that it’s sponsored, although everything feels like an ad.

If these accounts simply remained moodboards that received permission to use content, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. However, they are turning their profile grids into end-to-end marketing agencies and businesses capitalizing off others’ work and running communities across the globe. They repurpose style, influence, and brand affiliation and claim it as their own.

A slide from a media deck I received from Runner’s Mood.

I was happy to see Cole of Running Supply call it out the other week in regards to the recent Instagram update, which cracks down on aggregator accounts, generic AI-style carousels, and screenshot content. This “echo chamber” of content is becoming another advertising and PR distribution channel for brands to leverage, not a place for community or running inspiration.

“Instagram recently announced it will be cracking down and penalizing posts from aggregator accounts that do not post original content. The lineage is Complex, Hypebeast, Outlander Magazine — the repost-and-overlay format built into a media business by aggregators who figured out it was cheaper and faster than original work.

These aggregator accounts add very little to the Instagram noise beyond pushing the latest launch from whoever is paying them. It’s contributing to the online echo chamber of Instagram to what now has become UGC ads.” - Running Supply

The Runners Who Lie About Their Race Results

Nothing says performative like lying about your race results to appear faster. The Official Marathon Time Integrity Unit (OMTIU) is a fairly new account that features “case reports” of influencers inflating their time on social media. Part-satire, part-internet-sleuths, they focus on influencers who use Strava or GPS data to share marathon results instead of their official chip time. We know that Strava and GPS watches are almost always giving you faster times because the distance is off by a few hundred meters.

The more egregious cases feature intentional manipulation of results, like people stopping their watch early or at various points along the course. Someone was listed as DNS, but she posted herself at the finishing line with a medal. There’s even someone who photoshopped their race results to say they ran a 2:39 marathon instead of a 2:41, which I find odd because 2:41 is such a great time.

This account highlights a theme in performative running—the need to be validated and praised for hard work, without doing the hard work. In running, there are no shortcuts. You can rent one of those fake private jets for Instagram photos, but you can’t fake a race performance. Lying about running a few minutes faster in a race is an odd choice, but it's reflective of a deeper insecurity people have in the age of social media.

Performative Running Final Boss

The bug-eyed Oakleys. The $200 half-tights. Carbon-plated shoes for a 2-mile run around the block. A look that says “I sip coffee at Deus while sliding into every girl’s DMs.” I’ve seen an increase in this aesthetic on the internet, and I wonder where it came from. I love that running is fashionable and cool, but I am confused sometimes. This archetype skews heavily male. It’s become a toxic bro culture and it’s comprised of some of the worst people you know in running.

How To Run With Intention

As I mentioned earlier, the opposite of performative running is to run with intention. Here’s how you can accomplish that.

• Show up consistently within your running community. People and brands come in go in this space, but the most valuable parts of running for me have been when I plug into a community and show up every week. During my 10 years living post-collegiately in Boston, I joined 2 run clubs. That’s it! I came to practice every week, raced with a team, and I’m still friends with all of them today.

• Work on getting stronger, better, and smarter with training. If you’re not learning anything in training, then you’re not evolving. The most beautiful part about running is that you get to improve over time and discover what you’re capable of.

• Stop using running as a way to social climb. Stop! Just stop. It’s cringe, it’s obvious, and it’s happening way too often in run clubs.

• Treat your body with respect. Performative running means you’re probably not being smart with training because you prioritize “what’s next” instead of properly recovering from a race or a hard session.

Until next time.