While it's easy to be distracted by the Roche cult members' lack of courage, drive, intelligence, and integrity, raw masochism is what most strongly unifies these freaks

Running as a "thing" has never been more unattractive to people with a concern for reality, a developed sense of self, and a persistent inability get off on the smell of our own farts

Anyone who agrees to be coached by David or Megan Roche is a pro-cheating, myth-embracing, scam-enchanted moron of privilege; the members and supporters of Team S.W.A.P. are gelatinous, block-and-mute narcissists with the charming temerity to call others deranged haters for boisterously pointing out the factual flaws in statements like “trans women are women.” While adducing evidence to this sweeping claim about this crew’s almost limitless array of irritating deficiencies is no longer necessary for the regulars, a review of the “thought processes” of Roche cultists is nevertheless instructive.

About five weeks ago, I mentioned a comment to an UltrarunnerPodcast.com post in April 2020 bitterly complaining about me for criticizing a David Roche article, an exercise that had not yet become a habit. I noted that the comment’s author, one brave “Doug R,” had surmised that I had “probably never known the touch of a woman,” thereby establishing how serious he was. But I deferred an exploration the rest of this fellow’s piercing insights. One of these was accusing me of “straight up inaccuracies,” including my claim that Roche had linked to one of his own paywalled articles.

Here’s Doug R’s “debunking” of that claim:

Just yesterday, I hit a paywall on David Roche’s 200 mile training plan. What do you know, before I emailed the dude, who is super cool and would’ve given it to me, I found it for free on his website.

That a paywalled article happens to duplicate easily located non-paywalled content, and is therefore pointless, does not make the relevant paywall nonexistent. And while the existence of people as bone-gnawingly stupid as Doug R. makes the Roches’ “coaching” career possible, these dolts and their goggle-eyed heroes do not negate the existence or the results of applying logic, reality, or merely basic “look at the world, bro” sense to appropriate scenarios.

Here’s another interesting paragraph from that comment, especially the part I oomphasized:

Beck – what you did in this piece was despicable. While people like Sage Canaday can have a constructive argument, you’re coming from a toxic place in this article, and it speaks to someone that has a lot of anger inside. To attack someone on several personal levels because you have an anti-trans opinion (I agree they have an athletic advantage, fine), speaks to an unhealthy mind.

If this simp really wanted to address me directly, he could have commented on the Beck of the Pack article Eric Schranz linked to. Instead, he pretended to assume that I would both see his Ultrarunner Podcast spiel and be willing to sully Mr. Schranz’s comments section for the sake of knocking him and maybe a few other unusually agitated special-needs shitlibs to the electronic mat.

Moreover, Doug R. (who, not incidentally, writes like a classic geezer himself) slips in a grudging concession, one he attempts to trivialize but is in fact critical: He agrees that males posing as girls and women have, all else the same, an athletic advantage over actual girls and women. He obviously doesn’t like the florid ways in which I expressed this, yet weirdos like him who gravitate toward the Roches, despite their alleged rules about rudeness, clearly feel free to unload on their intellectual and moral betters in safe online spaces (e.g., carefully curated Instagram profiles) in ways they would never replicate in person—not just because they’re gutless but because they’re factless, a weakness a lot more damning on the ground than in easily fled online exchanges.

Doug R.’s closing statement is re-aimed at other cult members:

Read David Roche’s work, and read the rantings of this toxic raging boomer, and you decide for yourself, is David Roche one of the best coaches and podcasters out today, or an ideological tyrant on a wokism quest. What a joke.

I missed being categorized as a Baby Boomer by almost five years. But such unironic and scattershot insults are all Doug R brings to his rage-fest. Of more relevance is the false dichotomy Doug R. invites fellow cultists to consider: Is David Roche the absolute best, or is he a tyrant?

As it happens, many other choices exist. Among these is “David Roche is spineless man, a terrible writer, and an inept thinker who expresses himself exactly like every empty-headed ‘science maven’ feigning a niche form of intelligence. And his grift would be impossible without the emergence of sizable American cohort of affluent, brainwashed, authoritarian, insecure neurotics calling themselves progressives despite being the most misinformed Americans in history.”

Because most of the Roche cultists have been awarded college degrees and been financially comfortable all their lives, they appear to have consciously invited or invented their own complaints, including their undeniable and often serious mental problems. One of these is clearly enjoying being perceived as assholes despite their nonstop complaining about being perceived as assholes. When the first thing you notice about a group of people is that they’re clueless, self-important cowards, it's easy to forget how fundamentally driven by raw, unadulterated masochism such people invariably are. And by "these people," I mean everyone, runners and otherwise, who call themselves Democrats or Biden supporters nowadays.

I just mentioned the amazing number of instances of "mental health" in Outside's e-sharticles lately. Meanwhile, former chief Women’s Running harridan-scribe Erin Strout—now hilariously and thankfully back to protecting her X posts from meanies like me—is playing an unspecified role in an upcoming book about an alleged mental health crisis in women’s sports. This is perfect given that Strout is both dumber than a waffle iron and a woefully maladjusted human being who knows zilch about anything important—she probably owns at least one Fauci-form dildo and thinks Joy Reid and Ben Collins are bastions of accurate, intrepid reporting.

It's been plain for a while that the shitlibs of running cannot stop advertising how scatterbrained, unethical, and unwell they are. But it's easy to miss how much they consciously revel in their own ostensible discomfort. Most of the especially the really low-wattage racist bozos like Emilia Benton who drone on about being exhausted by the evils of bigoted MAGAts are not complaining about this state of emotional turmoil, but instead using it as fuel to carry out their worldly duty and bitch, bitch, bitch. These “discussions” are always unilateral and never include adversarial operators, of course, because these people are weak and barren to their socially stunted, credulous, and rotten cores. An ignoramus in a $750 ski jacket is just a warm, pleasing-looking barking imbecile, and often a person who should be pitched off the chairlift or (this takes real effort) through the window of a gondola into an ominous pile of rocks thousands of feet below for failing to shut up and listen for once in their preening, programmed lives.

And these people like being pussies. They like playing the victim, and not just because it provides them with a strategic grifting advantage in some situations; it's because they enjoy it. They revel in being seen as semi-vegan, kelp-farting bulimia-glorifiers who probably invest in Ex-Lax stock, too. These are wan, chronically injured or on-the-shelf closet vomiters whose coach says a tempo run is anything anyone says a tempo run is, that trans women are women, and that it's sensible to simultaneously propound opposing ideas or define the same term in multiple ways. Almost none of these people will improve the level of their running in this “coaching” situation, even if the lameness of trail and ultra running ensures that the few characters who wander onto the scene with elite-level talent enjoy increasing accolades.

But man, can these mofos bask in optional suffering. David Roche, in addition to again broadcasting being in the grip of unresolved body shame, claimed in a Trail Runner article published yesterday that “restrictive practices may risk causing long-term health issues”; meanwhile, his newest star coaching client, Allie Ostrander, has returned from a doping-related suspension to essentially play up being an active bulimic on her YouTube channel.

But yeah, I’m the sick-minded old fuck out to ruin everything.

These people’s embrace of masochism is easy to miss not only because of their conspicuous across-the-board offensiveness of character, but also because it seems odd that anyone would publicly revel in having a pronounced decrement in mental functioning while claiming to be among "their" sport's genuine know-it-alls. Although this is about 3,348th in importance on the list of civilizational problems, we now live in a fitness-media kakistrocracy-kleptocracy, with a “media” controlled by daft, already well-off greedheads striving to further enrich themselves using scams that only people who are not merely gullible but masochistically gullible could fall for. 

In New Hampshire last night, Joseph Biden Junior, who apart from his dementia should have been impeached, ousted from office, and imprisoned a long time ago, got almost 70% of the Democratic vote despite not even being on the ballot thanks to boycotting the state's primary process and giving Dems who want any realistic choice in this cycle the finger. All of those Granite State Dems went out into subzero weather last night to write in "Joe Biden," in so doing emulating that Ziopathic bribe-fattened anti-American disposable monstrosity's galactic confusion and proven corruption.

While primary voters tend to be loopier than the general herd, this was a display of pure, "BEAT ME HARD!"-caliber masochism. This helps explain why fewer people than ever (27 percent) identify these days as Democrats (the number if the same for Republicans). Similarly, Roche cultists are perpetual opt-in victims gamely trying to redefine running as n activity for well-off degenerates and liars, and I don’t think this is how the world should necessarily see runners or running.

Up soon for similar treatment is perhaps the dumbest thing the incredibly brain-damaged Zoe Rom has ever written for public consumption. I sometimes wonder how this twat and the folks she chums around with even feed themselves. And I have wondered for years why I bother feeding myself anything besides a stack of cyanide crystals on whole wheat. My own running these days is unaffected by the existence of people this brazenly and stridently worthless to humanity, but I still rue the fact that a self-debasing cadre of ugly, unathletic, uvula-tickling, science-averse, drool-bib-ready, yet somehow arrogant bunghole-plumbers have marauded the visible arm of the sport.