Heartbreaking: Your Roommate Just Ran a Marathon and Won’t Stop Talking About it for Another 3 Months

MADISON, WI - When people discuss the harmful impacts of social media on teenagers and young adults, they often refer to “pipelines”. More specifically, it’s the idea that social media algorithms direct users toward extreme or dangerous content and then trap them in echo chambers where the user is increasingly exposed to only that content. Social media pipelines have been linked to political polarization, drug use, and supporting the Kansas City Chiefs, but there’s another pipeline, more dangerous than all the rest, ensnaring the youth at breakneck speed, all while flying under the radar of almost everyone. And you’ve just come face-to-face with it because your roommate has officially fallen victim to the most dangerous online pipeline of all: Running.

It started innocently enough, at first. One day, your roommate mentioned going to some kind of running club on campus that was holding its first meeting that afternoon. You didn’t think too much of it at the time; both of you were active people who went to the gym and played sports, so staying in shape was nothing unusual. From time to time, you would even go for a brisk walk on the Nick treadmills. That afternoon, your roommate came back a sweaty, disheveled mess. He claimed he was reminded of why he didn’t run and that he “definitely wasn’t going back”. You figured that would be the end of it, another random undertaking that would soon be forgotten. Oh, how terribly wrong you were.

Later that week, your roommate claimed he’d had a change of heart. He said he judged the club too harshly and was going to go to another meeting that afternoon. When he came back, he said he felt much better than the last time, had enjoyed talking to some of the people in the club, and was going to start running regularly. This was the first true warning sign; maybe if you had stepped in and intervened then, you could’ve stopped what was to come, but who could predict how bad it would get? Surely it wasn’t your fault; who knew he would get addicted so fast to something so stupid?

Over the next few weeks, you watched with increasing horror as your roommate, someone you thought you once knew, fell victim to the running pipeline. He downloaded a strange new social media app called Strava, claiming that all other social media was “repressive and harmful” and that this one “allowed him to actually express his true self”. As far as you could tell, it was merely an echo chamber for runners to post their runs. He began using strange phrases like “taper”, “pronating”, and “lactic threshold”. His wardrobe changed as well, as he started wearing shorts that exposed embarrassingly pasty thighs, and your house became littered with various new pairs of shoes. Once he tried explaining the difference by using words like “carbon plating” and “energy transfer”, you knew he was past the point of no return. You even reached out to his parents when they came for Parents’ Weekend, but they were unable to break through.

The horrors didn’t end there, though, as one Sunday morning, looking forward to sleeping in to start a peaceful day, you were awoken by a cacophony of ringing alarms at 5:00 AM. Stumbling into the kitchen, you found your roommate loudly playing motivational podcasts while making a sandwich. When you angrily asked him why he was up before the Sun rose on the weekend, he cheerfully replied that the marathon he was running was that morning. Taken aback, your face grew pale as you desperately racked your brain for any previous mention of this, concluding that it must’ve gotten lost in the endless stream of running jargon coming out of his mouth recently.  Before you could beg him not to go or tell him to think about how this would affect his future, he was out the door, and you knew the version that walked out the door would never return.

The rest of the morning was anything but peaceful, as you sat in nervous anticipation, wondering how you could let your roommate do this to himself. That morning was also the coldest of the season so far, with temperatures near 0˚; choosing to run a marathon in those frigid temperatures and biting winds was just another sad confirmation of how far gone your roommate was. Finally, several hours later, he returned to your apartment. He was red in the face and walking gingerly, and for a split second, you had one last glimmer of hope that he had finally come to his senses and broken free from running’s mental grasp on him. But that hope quickly evaporated to horror, as he excitedly began recounting details of the race before finishing with the most vile eight words ever spoken to you: “You should run one with me some time.” Mumbling a quick excuse, you hurdled the couch, dashed back into your room, shut the door, and prayed this was all just a bad dream.

This was no dream, however, as the following few days brought out a side in your roommate you’d never thought possible. His outfits consisted solely of marathon attire, and he walked around in a way intentionally designed to draw as much attention to himself as possible. He began wearing a medal given to all finishers everywhere in a desperate attempt to lure an unassuming passerby into a conversation about it. He even made a LinkedIn post about what running a marathon taught him about B2B sales. If that wasn’t bad enough, he soon began trying to indoctrinate others with his sick ideology, encouraging them to take up running and follow in his footsteps. Every conversation was another opportunity to bring up the fact that he’d run a marathon, and you grew sick of hearing things like “that reminds me of the marathon I ran” or “well, you know, I’ve run a marathon, so”. It began to affect his volunteer work at the Children’s Oncology ward of the hospital, where he repeatedly told young cancer patients that he’d run a marathon, so he understood how they felt and the struggles they endured.

Some stories have a happy ending. This is not one of those stories. You’ve lost a roommate, someone you thought would be a lifelong friend, to this sick, twisted plague of running. And while it’s too late for you to save him, there are others out there, impressionable, innocent youth, who have yet to go down such a dark path. It’s not too late to help these people, dear reader, and save their friends from going through what you did. We as humans are not meant to “exercise” or “reap the long-term health benefits of cardiovascular activity”. So, go, spread the word, sit on the couch, doomscroll TikTok, order DoorDash, get drunk because it is Wisconsin after all, and do not, under any circumstances, ever think of going for a simple jog. That’s the gateway drug, and if once you do it, you’ll be gone forever before you know it.