There’s no catch, if you can complete the task you get the money. There’s no negative consequences either way.
You don’t have to enter a race or a tournament, you just have to run the distance straight in a place where the billionaire can see you.
What do you do?
I’ve always been very quad dominant rather than glute dominant. Even during exercises like hip thrusts, I used to feel my quads more than my glutes.
Recently I started doing glute activation work before running, and I’ve noticed something interesting: during threshold workouts (like continuous 20 min at threshold pace or 4x2k sessions), I’m currently running about ~10 sec/mile slower than before at the same perceived effort.
One important detail: during the run itself I’m not consciously trying to “use” or force my glutes. The change seems to happen naturally as a result of the activation work beforehand.
My theory is that I’m starting to recruit muscles that were previously underused, so my running economy temporarily got worse while adapting to the new movement pattern.
Does this make sense biomechanically? Has anyone experienced a temporary drop in performance after improving glute recruitment?
Also, could this actually be beneficial long term because tendons/joints have more time to adapt gradually to the new load distribution instead of forcing the same paces immediately?
For context: