The weeks go by. You run some, but something isn’t clicking. You were supposed to feel hungry and dialed in, but you’re dodging what you’re training plan says. Telling yourself you’re tired when perhaps you’re… indifferent. You’re trying to convince yourself that this is the big thing. But this isn’t resistance. It’s more like misalignment. The Fantasy You (disciplined, heroic, “all in”) never came. Now you’re left in a training block that feels like a job you can’t quit. Because quitting would mean admitting that this dream was forced. Then race day arrives and you line up. You fake the fire. You run. And you realize you’re just surviving a decision you never really made with your whole self.

In a world obsessed with spectacle, the ordinary becomes invisible. Yet most of running, most of life, is ordinary. Quiet miles and slow progress., with subtle insights. But these don’t make for viral content. When only extraordinary races are represented, we start to think the everyday doesn’t count. This harms new runners, who may feel their experience isn’t valid unless it mimics the epic. It also undermines the deeper gifts of endurance: patience, consistency, presence. The art of showing up, not showing off.

This essay builds on a post I wrote about choosing a race that “speaks to you.” It’s part cultural, societal critique, or at least just my observations. This is a first piece with some thoughts, and since it is related to my work, I am very sure it will not be the last. Earlier, I called for listening more closely to the season of the life you’re in, your emotional capacity, and relationship to effort. What if the race that speaks to you… isn’t yours at all? What if it’s just the loudest voice in the room? In this essay, I trace how runners (esp. newer ones) are being pulled in by projection: the emotional architecture of YouTube videos, the gravitational pull of ultra-famous figures, the subtle coercion of the algorithm.

And it’s not just about choosing races. It’s about how our desires are shaped. What happens when we chase someone else’s transformation and call it ours? What happens when suffering becomes the story we inherit instead of the truth we build? And how do we begin to listen inward again, in a culture that rewards spectacle over sincerity?

On becoming Max Jolliffe
We don’t always choose our race. Sometimes we inherit them: from thumbnails, from drone shots, from salt-crusted smiles, from YouTube montages that make suffering look something else. We inherit them through admiration, envy, the spiritual FOMO that trail running can produce, and so on. And so on, we chase what cracked someone else open, hoping we’ll break the same way: clean, cinematic, and full of catharsis.

This is vicarious awakening, and all disillusionment it carries. We watch someone finish their first 100-miler, collapse into tears, speak about transformation, loss, finding something or someone at mile 83, and it stirs: its awe, longing, a self-loathing dressed up as inspiration. We admire them, but also we want to become them. So we trace their route, bookmark their gear, and sign up for the same race. We’re not just chasing a goal, we’re chasing someone else’s arc.

I’ve seen this happen. A new runner in full enthusiasm comes to me, after starting running a few weeks ago, and with barely a 4 mile run under their belt, declare their intention to go after a Moab 240 finish, perhaps a win, and also tackle a long 1100 mile Fastest Known Time, within the next half year. They’ve watched the documentary, they’ve seen the shots, the Insta stories, making every move look epic. They want the same: the arc, shrink-wrapped in meaning, buzz, accolades and views.

Most of us discovered ultrarunning as spectators. Before we ever clipped a bib, we watched someone else. We inherited the dream before we built the capacity. However, the trouble with inherited dreams is they come with maps for someone else’s terrain. We sign up because Max Jolliffe made it look like a beautiful spiritual warfare, but our body is still learning how to deal with a normal run. We announce to friends that we’re doing Moab because we want the “experience. ” Deep down, we just want the story to belong to us. That story is tempting because it’s been told with a climax, with applause, and ending with resolution.

We are not immune to image, least of all myself. Ultra media (esp. in the past few years) has reached an almost pharmaceutical level of potency. The handsome, hard-charging, heartbreakingly earnest “King of Moab” has racked up half a million views in a few month. That feels like doctrine to me. I am not surprised novice runners want that, to be that person.

Arcs live off-camera, in quiet, over years. When we inherit the dreams of others, we forget that the cost isn’t merely physical. It takes years of logging unspectacular mileage, of not knowing who you are as a runner, and showing up. Still, we reverse-engineer the climax and assume the arc will follow. Stories aren’t instructions. When we forget they are myths, we stop training, and start performing.

Our season, our body, psyche, and life, it probably is not asking for that. It probably is asking for something quiet or more confusing. This is the difference between identification and alignment. Identification says: “I see myself in you, and so I want what you have”. Alignment asks: “What is actually mine to carry?” That’s the harder question. It requires honesty and for us to untangle our own longing from what the internet has taught us to want.

That said, we live in a projection economy. Race organizers, brands, and content creators all have a stake in our longing. They need our desire. They sell us not just a race, but a revelation. YouTube has become a pipeline not just for ultra inspiration but for ultra misalignment. When everything looks like it means something, we forget that meaning doesn’t arrive on UltraSignup or any registration form. It arrives by relationship, to our effort, our life, the rhythms, and our needs.

The algorithmic identity
By the time you click on that race video, you’ve already been chosen. We are not shown the best options. We are shown a narrow shortlist, algorithmically filtered through “candidate generation.” That shortlist is built using deep learning models trained not on our present but on our past. It matches us with videos that resemble what we’ve consumed, pulling from clusters of users “like us.” That means if we once watched a Moab recap, or hovered on a Barkley breakdown, the system now thinks this is who we are. It keeps refining that assumption until our whole feed reflects a narrow mirror; our past interest, sharpened into future desire. That’s a feedback loop disguised as free will.

The algorithm thinks we’re an ultra god (and we believe it). The algorithm doesn’t want us to run well. It doesn’t care. It wants us to want, for as long as possible. That’s how attention economies work. They don’t reward understanding, context, a careful build toward intrinsic goals. They reward the mythical friction and fantasy. The scroll-stopping shot. The very fact that we paused our thumb for a second. That’s all it needed. We’ve been tagged, as a buyer, a believer. We are one of the chosen few who dream in race profiles and suffer with style. The ultra god poised on the edge of transformation, if only we could commit. And it won’t stop feeding us that identity, because it’s working.

If your feed is full of comeback arcs, “no days off” training logs, and elite-tier performances, it normalizes a pace of self-improvement that’s unsustainable. Burnout is a feature, not a bug. The tech platforms, and race brands, benefit from this. Rest doesn’t trend. Rehab doesn’t go viral. So it disappears from view. So do the people who needed it most. Instead of presenting variety, algorithms funnel users into narrow echo chambers, filter bubbles that erase nuance. No room for sideways or local detours.

The recommendation system isn’t built to show you what’s true, but to optimize your time. YouTube’s engineers call this “multi-objective optimization“: balancing engagement, novelty, satisfaction, and virality. The model predicts which video will keep you locked in longest, not which one aligns with your values. Your hunger for meaning becomes a dataset. Everything you do turns into signals for which version of “ultrarunning epiphany” to serve you next. So, the system learns to sell you your own longing. The better it gets, the more you trust it. The more you trust it, the more it rewires what you think you’re chasing.

YouTube is designed to keep you glued. Google implements a two-stage deep neural network: one stage narrows billions of videos to a shortlist, the second ranks them by predicted watch time. The algorithm disproportionately favors videos that hold our attention longer, even if they don’t actually enrich us. That’s why we’re endlessly fed Moab thrillers and tear‑jerker’s: they’re attention-grabbing, sculpted to prolong session time. The system sees our pause, our re‑watch, and it doubles down, encouraging an endless scroll through spectacle.

The algorithms chases raw minutes called “duration bias,” and learns that longer videos often accrue longer views, so it disproportionately surfaces longer race documentaries, even if they’re padded with fluff. Recent research highlights how this bias amplifies longer clips, regardless of whether viewers stay engaged. So your feed might fills with 30‑60 minute epics that in fact deliver bloated retellings. Content becomes long more than thick.

The algorithmic gender bias identified intersects with this reality in subtle but powerful ways. Male runners (esp. white, lean, rugged, visibly “tough”) tend to align more easily with platform-preferred aesthetics: minimalist storytelling, visual grit, and emotional restraint. By contrast, women and gender-diverse runners face algorithmic incentives to perform hyper-visible emotion, vulnerability, or spectacle to achieve comparable reach. This skews who is seen as authentic, or aspirational, or “epic.” The result is not just unequal representation, but a narrowing of what narratives and identities are allowed to be legible. When the algorithm amplifies one version of endurance it sidelines other truths: collective resilience, cultural difference, queer toughness, or just slow and steady strength.

On top of that, the algorithm doubles down on emotional resonance. Recent audits show YouTube gravitates toward emotionally intense content, particularly negative emotions, creating an emotional filter bubble. As viewership of dramatic ultras spikes, the feed warps: everything that doesn’t fit that mold gets drowned out. Instead, we see more of the high-stakes, visually gripping epics with climactic agony or awe. This is content bias and a positive-feedback loop. Emotional intensity drives retention, retention breeds emotional amplification, and newcomers get gifted a view that true running requires cinematic suffering.

The algorithm feels intimate. Yet this intimacy is one-sided. It doesn’t know why you run. It knows only that videos about 200-milers keep you hooked. This false intimacy creates a dangerous mirror: it reflects your desire, distorted and inflated. Suddenly, your curiosity becomes a targeted campaign for races you’re not ready for. You start confusing algorithmic affirmation for authentic resonance. This is exploitation.

Obviously the algorithm doesn’t love running. It loves friction; creating engagement, between who we are and who we wish we were. That’s the sweet spot. It serves content that lives precisely in that space between admiration and insecurity. “Look what you could be, if only you wanted it enough.” This is engineered dissonance. This is behavioral design. The shaping of what you want to do. These attention architectures don’t operate on neutral terms. YouTube’s algorithm is trained through reinforcement learning to maximize watch time and what keeps you in motion. It doesn’t care whether what you’re watching helps you. The algorithm doesn’t care if you finish a race. It only cares that you crave it long enough to keep watching, buying, performing proximity to greatness. More insidiously, the algorithm collapses difference. Over time, it nudges you toward more extreme or emotionally charged content.

One of the most foundational challenges of recommendation systems is what researchers call algorithmic popularity bias. Algorithms tend to favor content that is already popular, creating a winner-takes-all dynamic. This feedback loop causes high-quality, niche, or experimental content to be buried in favor of content that performs well across basic engagement metrics. In other words, the algorithm doesn’t reward value. It rewards predictable virality. The safeguards demote “borderline” content: anything deemed unpolished, low-production, ambiguous, or too emotionally complex. In practice, that means quieter stories (messy DNFs, years of rehab, etc.) get buried beneath clean catharsis: runner meets goal, conquers self, cue tears.

So it builds a new kind of runner. Not grounded in practice or presence, but in aspirational identity maintenance. We start to manage ourselves like characters. We pick a race that aligns not with physiology or soul, but with narrative coherence. We are less interested in effort than we are in becoming the kind of person who does Hardrock. The deep listening required to choose a race based not on public optics.

The algorithm tells you what should be liked. What begins as a recommendation system morphs into a subtle moral code. It suggests that certain races are more legitimate, certain bodies more disciplined, certain pain more meaningful. It creates a hierarchy of worthiness based on virality. That’s ideology: when a value system embeds itself deeply in your daily choices it feels like your own. The algorithm shapes belief: that Moab 240 means more than our local 20K. That transformation must be visible to count. This ties into Wendy Chun’s “habitual new media” where the line between choice and coercion blurs, making digital systems feel inevitable and natural, even when they’re not.

The most popular ultra videos today are carefully scored and tightly edited epics. They frame suffering as rite and effort as aesthetic. You witness it like it’s a beat in a hero’s journey. Suffering is the currency. Its beauty has become its bait. It’s not enough to finish. You must finish beautifully. With anguish that arcs. With quotes that sound like they were pulled from a grief memoir. The emotional cost is a value-add.

This is where things get dangerous. We sign up for a massive race not because it fits our fitness, or because we want to learn what it takes, but because we want our own moment of beauty-through-collapse. Because we’ve been sold the idea that this is what transformation looks like. The act of running becomes less about your relationship to effort, if it ever has, and more about how that effort will be perceived.

So what’s next? Do we believe our life and races should feel like that? When it doesn’t, when our first ultra feels flat we assume we’re doing it wrong. That our effort lacks depth. Or worse that we lack depth. You were supposed to become someone. So when your experience doesn’t align, it feels not like a difference, but like a failure. And so we register for either more, or entirely give up. That hunger isn’t ours, it’s algorithmic, engineered.

We change. Once we imagine our training as narrative content, every sunrise run as B-roll, every meltdown as usable footage, we stop listening inward. We stop making choices from the body. We make them for the story. This is an existential problem. Our choices are made from imagined visibility. We choose races that read well. We design aspirations that align with engagement and not with our energy. We become protagonists in a saga we didn’t write, but now feel obligated to finish. No wonder we burn out. We weren’t training. We were auditioning.

The medium is the mirage
If the algorithm is the engine, perhaps media is the fuel. Well-edited and emotionally engineered fuel. It scripts, paces the crescendo, color grades the catharsis. We watch and we absorb, and we metabolize these stories into aspiration, quickly calcifying into obligation. The problem isn’t just what’s shown, it’s what’s missing. We rarely see the boredom, doubt, injuries, the therapy calls. How can you fit five years of building a foundation into a 15 minute video? Media collapses the multidimensional texture of a runner’s life into a highlight reel of breakthrough.

The media manufactures the emotional terrain. Documentaries about 200-milers are no longer stories; they’re cinematic liturgies. The runner becomes a character in a spiritual epic. We, the viewer, are invited not just to admire, but to internalize the journey. We are meant to want and need it, recreate it. This isn’t just storytelling. This is branding, for a race, a person. A lifestyle brand built on grit and redemption. Max isn’t just winning Moab. He’s curating a mythology. The filmmakers know this. Here too, there is no such thing as a neutral lens.

Every sequence is a choice, and that choice is often in service of a market. What gets framed as “inspiration” in ultra running media can be thinly veiled brand strategy. It’s not just about the runner, it’s about ROI. “Inspirational” content is designed to sell shoes, 300 USD shorts, race entries, gels, or a version of yourself that performs well online. When we consume inspiration uncritically, we become part of the marketing funnel.

A growing body of research suggests that platforms don’t merely surface what people want, they actively construct desire through iterative exposure and engagement loops. These feedback mechanisms condition creators to chase certain metrics by fine-tuning thumbnails, headlines, and formats to align with what is algorithmically rewarded. The algorithm thus becomes not just a distribution tool, but a powerful editorial actor. In this system, the most visible content is often not the most meaningful, but the most predictable in how it captures attention.

Ethnographic research uncovered how video producers develop what scholars call algorithmic imaginaries; informal models of how they believe platform recommendation systems work. These imaginaries shape the topics they select and the pacing, thumbnail choices, visual composition. Even narrative structure of their content. Producers are continually negotiating their creative decisions with the constraints and opportunities presented by opaque algorithmic infrastructures. The result is content that appears organic but is in fact highly curated to meet the invisible demands of the platform. This form of anticipatory design is now central to digital storytelling across genres.

In our media, whiteness isn’t just overrepresented, it always was the aesthetic ideal. Many of the most-watched films, if not all, whether by design or inertia, center white men in dramatic terrains. This isn’t merely a reflection of who signs up for races; it’s algorithmic whiteness in action. We design documentaries to follow men. The Chase in Cocodona. The failed attempt of Unbreakable 2. As if the highly competitive women’s race wasn’t worth capturing.

Studies like Algorithms of Oppression show how platforms reinforce dominant racial narratives by privileging content that already aligns with majority expectations. In running, whiteness is algorithmically safe; all the traits that recommendation systems have learned to associate with click-through and retention. This entrenches a cycle where BIPOC runners are either sidelined or selectively platformed through tokenism. The algorithm doesn’t just ignore diversity, it keeps shaping the sport’s public face into a narrower, whiter, more sanitized version of reality.

You can decide whether this is evil or not, but it certainly is extractive, and it takes something intimate (your effort, pain, longing, your life), and turns it into a product. Joy Buolamwini’s work reminds us that algorithms commodify culture: the emotional labor of ultrarunning becomes monetized, aestheticized, and exported. In return we receive a distorted benchmark for what our own running should look like. This is how media creates expectations and hierarchies.

If we continue, I am afraid we slowly stop trusting our own rhythms, we stop listening and looking for the race that might actually be the most meaningful for us.

What’s the alternative?
What if the best race for you… would flop on YouTube? What if it’s short, local, friendly, unremarkable? What if it ends without tears, or big questions, or voiceover-worthy revelations? What if you run it well, recover fast, and get brunch with your friends? Would it still count? Those are the questions the algorithm never wants you to ask. Real meaning, the kind that lives in us, not our reels, doesn’t perform. It persists off-camera.

The next time you find yourself moved by a reel, a doc, a montage that grabs you and whispers, “This is who you could be…” enjoy it, and pause. Not because it’s wrong, but because it might be not yours. Sometimes, what you’re feeling is real. Sometimes, it’s just residue from a beautifully edited projection. This new skill we need as athletes today isn’t discipline, or gear, or volume: it’s discernment.

There’s courage in chasing massive goals. But there’s also courage in choosing right-sized ones. In saying no to the races everyone’s excited about, but that don’t speak to you. In stepping out of training cycles that corrode your joy. In choosing a 21K over a 200-miler, an FKT in your backyard over UTMB. In a world where suffering is a badge and epic-ness the default, that kind of restraint is radical. That’s where real running begins: not in spectacle, but in something quieter. A build that’s slow. A life you’re living. So before you sign up, I would ask: What am I actually chasing? What season of life am I in? Is this race shaped like a fantasy, or like an invitation?

That difference, between mimicry and meaning, could save you from months of injury, burnout, self-doubt, and maybe your love for running. In an economy of algorithmic attention, the most radical act is not to want what you’re told to want. Refusing the fantasy, stepping out of the trance of curated catharsis, is how meaning gets made again. That might look like choosing a race that fits your current mileage, not your future myth. Or signing up for something local, short, low-stakes, and, of course, quietly perfect. It might mean not signing up at all. Letting a season pass without the arc. Bearing witness without turning it into your own narrative.

A non-algorithmic relationship to running doesn’t mean abandoning ambition. It means decoupling your goals from virality. It means asking: What am I hungry for, really? In my gut, bones, what feels like a true yes? It’s recognizing when a goal is yours. That discernment is both spiritual and practical. It’s how you save yourself from a cycle of misalignment and burnout. Maybe most importantly, it’s how you fall in love with effort. Because it’s true. Run the race no one wants to film. Choose the effort that won’t trend. Train in ways that would bore your followers but nourish your spirit. The algorithm won’t reward you for it. Your body will. Your joy will. Your future absolutely will.