By Mathias Eichler
Little Backyard Adventure
March 13, 2026 - Many twisted loops, one stunning forest - a 12, 6, 3 HR trail running event in the heart of the city.
Little Backyard Adventure
March 13, 2026 - Many twisted loops, one stunning forest - a 12, 6, 3 HR trail running event in the heart of the city.
Electric Cable Car is counting down until the end of the year by reliving the action-packed year 2025 in trail running. Join me and let's walk down memory lane together.
Episode 337 with Alex Bond:
Alex Bond joins Singletrack for one last hurrah of 2025 – and yes, I am fully aware that I’m posting this already in 2026. So, a first hurrah of 2026. We’re chatting about the world of trail and mountain running over the past year and looking ahead and the new one. Hope it will be a happy one for y’all!
The Washington-based brand that’s been shaking up the industry (or at least the trail media) with incredibly low priced gear with surprising quality is sharing their financials for the year on Instagram, and well, when you share financials publicly it allows people to weigh in and form an opinion if this business idea seems sound. And I must say, what I am seeing doesn’t make me feel super positive about it all. Currently it’s a one man show from what I am gathering, and by my calculations owner Alex King had to package and ship over 14 orders every single day of the year. Incredible achievement for a first year of operation, but also wow, that’s a lot of work.
They share some pretty incredible numbers via Instagram.
The Aravaipa media team livestreamed 23 races and hosted 90 streams (longer races require multiple streams) with an increase of 108% year over year in viewership numbers.
What sticks out to me is that this all pretty much what one would expect. Longer races are suitable to livestreams and draw people to “spectate via Youtube”.
This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/RUN 2025 – The Year in Review.
This was September 2025 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.
Wheeee, September, what a month. The afterglow of UTMB inspires a million things to happen at the same time. Directly or indirectly.
First off, everyone has thoughts about UTMB and what it all means. What an incredible sport we’re in, that we don’t just partake, but engage with it and think about what it all means. Love!
Matt Walsh, Brian Metzler, Seth Lareau, Mile and Stone, Chris Z, Liam Fireball, and yours truly, of course all have thoughts on the annual carnival in Chamonix. But some of the best writing of the year comes from 2nd at UTMB this year, Ben Dhiman – a proper race report.
This side of the pond things stay crazy. Michelino Sunseri is found guilty for cutting a switchback – we know how this ends. Aravaipa continues their expansion march across the US. And fucking ICE arrest firefighters at the Bear Gulch fire.
And if all of this wouldn’t be enough, we have a huge doping case rocking the trail running world.
A bit of levity with a bunch of brand marketing fails before we head into the World Trail and Mountain Running Championships:
I leave you with the other amazing blog post of the year: Dakota Jones sharing his experience trying to keep up with Kilian somewhere high in the mountains of Colorado.
This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/Run 2025 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the October edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE/Run.
This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/RUN 2025 – The Year in Review.
This was August 2025 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.
August is supposed to be UTMB month, but it was Kilian’s month. He announced his next big project – which would be all over the media in the early fall, even making it into the NYT and the Guardian, as he completes, seemingly with ease, his ‘States of Elevation’. But the other story, which is now gaining steam in the very late days of 2025 is his post wondering how much aid and support elite runners should have at trail races (Western States in particular) and how to achieve continued fairness during a time that feels like an arms race between coaches and brands aiming to give their elite runners the best possible chance of success.
Nike uses the pre-hype ahead of UTMB to launch/relaunch/announce their All Conditions Racing Department, which is a bunch of sponsored runners wearing shirts with holes. And surprising no one, the UTMB hating crowd of the past years have largely gone quiet as even the last hold outs show up in Chamonix and use the massive platform to promote their projects.
UTMB week was marked by proper mountain weather with rain and snow and everyone, especially the folks who’ve been working on various workaround to the required gear list, were reminded that running in the Alps means running in the mountains and while trail racing is becoming more and more optimized it still at its core is a battle between the runner and the elements.
This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/Run 2025 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the September edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE/Run.
This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/RUN 2025 – The Year in Review.
This was July 2025 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.
July brings both delight and sadness to (my) the trail running world. Of course, I am still riding high from my race at Lavaredo in the Dolomites, but I arrive back home shortly after to the news that a wildfire near my favorite trails in the Olympic Mountains threaten and eventually cancel Rock Candy Running’s Beast of Big Creek races.
More heartache comes with the announcement that La Sportiva is raising their prices on their Prodigio Pros which in the end is just a result of Trump’s moronic tariffs. (Who’s paying for these again?)
In the aftermath of Western States which highlights the continued progress in our sport a few think pieces are worth revisiting:
Finally, after a public call to release the start list for the UTMB Finals, just a couple of days later UTMB shares the list of elite runners. The media rejoices.
This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/Run 2025 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the August edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE/Run.
The Adventure Bakery, trail running’s premier media production company released a short film about their behind-the-camera efforts at UTMB:
When the world watches the UTMB runners take on Mont Blanc, there’s another race unfolding — one that happens behind the lens.
Incredibly well done. The team around Philipp Reiter really are a step above the competition when it comes to this type of “content creation” (man, I still hate that term). Story-telling? Maybe that’s a better one.
Mr. AidstationFireball blogs:
Collecting a number of items I’d like to remember this year in trail and ultratrail running by, and putting them into a time capsule…
Good list of things to remember the year 2025 by. If I’d add one thing it would be that Border Patrol Patch photo that was briefly posted on Instagram (and shortly after removed) during the “Go One More” Last Person Standing event put on by Bare Performance Nutrition supplement company on founder’s Nick Bare’s ranch in Texas. Why would I add this? Because of the sentence I just posted above and how weird this sentence is. Trail and ultra running is changing, fast. We used to have the “American version” and the “European version”, but there’s a new version emerging that is gaining fast mass appeal, works well for the media coverage, is easy to organize an event around, and is so very different than anything we’ve seen before that it feels like to comes completely out of left field. (Or rather right field, considering that above mentioned border patrol patch.) There’s a side of me that wants to completely ignore the backyard ultra genre of our sport, but on another level I think this might be the perfect format for the Olympics. I am torn, but I want to remember that this side of the sport is drawing in numbers, gaining attention fast and creates fascinating storylines. If I like them or not.
Not an official position statement (yet) but posted on their blog the “PTRA Tribune” Emily Hawgood shares her story and opinion on pacers at Western States:
As soon as the topic of having pacers came up on the PTRA group I have had a heart felt need to speak up. We can’t let our elite athlete group change the incredible opportunity that is having pacers at Western States.
Here’s how PTRA frames this post:
Over the next few weeks, professional trail runners explore their perspectives on pacers in our sport.
It’s an interesting strategy, rather than internally debate and official statement the PTRA chooses to share various voices in the sport. I appreciate this approach, and it’s a lot softer than their approach with UTMB in the past. It’ll be interested to see what this will all result in. And in my view, since the debate around pacers at WSER (currently) only affects the elites I don’t have strong opinions. In general I would say that I favor a leveled playing field. This would mean that no pacers and limited support gives everyone the same chances of success, but clearly you can also see it from another perspective and more people in support creates more ‘community feel’ as Emily suggests:
I will argue to the end that having pacers is something special and with Western States being the oldest, most prestigious 100 mile event and paving the way for so many other events that now make up our international trail running calendar I think that a change here would spiral into lots of changes in the argument of free and fair competition but would in fact lead to a loss of the true heart of our community, the uniqueness of Western States and other events, the support for our races and much, much more.
Not sure I agree with Emily’s take here, “slippery slope arguments” are always a bit of a challenge as there’s not obvious connection that one thing has to lead to another. Will be fascinating though to read the other side of the argument when PTRA shares the next opinion piece.
The new year is barely a day old and the rumor mill is already heating up:
All the rumours in the last few weeks point that Kilian would be thinking as a big target for the 2026 season to return to UTMB!!
No further confirmation on this beyond this somewhat obscure IG channel dedicated to trail running… but after a few years of Kilian Jornet missing the Finals in Chamonix it seems time for him to return. He’s already confirmed Western States for 2026 – this would be a nice double. Nnormal usually shares the race and project plans for their athletes in January. We shall see if we get confirmation then.
Just before the holidays, and right after the official announcement that Rock Candy Running’s ‘Beast of Big Creek‘ would join the Skyrunner World Series I was invited by host James Lauriello on his The Steep Stuff Podcast to share the news, the details, how it all came to be, and what this all could mean for skyrunning in North America. I fell into some eggnog and forgot to share this earlier – my apologies.
This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/RUN 2025 – The Year in Review.
This was June 2025 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.
June is and always will be Western States Month. Or at least Northern California Month. With the inclusion and expansion of Broken Arrow and TrailCon the end of the month the trail running world is fully in the gravitational pull of these events in Olympic Valley by Lake Tahoe. I went to Italy though and ran Lavaredo with Courtney and Ben – who both won, while I barely finished. But I still made it back to Cortina in time and am still – over six month later – bathing in the afterglow of this very magical experience. But all these events are at the very tail-end of June so what I covered on ECC for the month of June is about lots of other stuff. Like Freetrail’s Hall of Fame announcement, first signs that Hoka’s stratospheric sales growth might be coming to an end, the Gingerrunner’s High Route winning a (local) Emmy and Canyon Woodward’s pondering about the challenges of trail running’s growth trajectory. Oh, and media is (re)-discovering print with several brands jumping on creating something tangible (and not just pouring money into Instagram ads) – fun.
UTMB was also in the news. It had to cancel Quindio Trail Colombia after month of back and forth. I discovered a UTMB online help center in beta, which as of this writing still is. And UTMB made a splash with their new Mobility Plan, which folks who are planning on traveling to Chamonix from far away didn’t like. Doug Meyer wrote some good words explaining (to Americans, who are all coming from really far away) what mindset this policy was created from – remember that huge landslide burying a town in a nearby (to Chamonix) valley?
Oh and Electric Cable Car turns 3. (Singletrack earlier in the spring turned 7.)
This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/Run 2025 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the July edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE/Run.
This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/RUN 2025 – The Year in Review.
This was May 2025 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.
I’m told to not get too political on here if I want to reach a global audience… not everyone’s affected or interested in what the orange Mad King is doing on a daily basis. But, but, but, hear me out, these tariffs are fucking everyone over more than we want to admit. Zoë Rom takes a stab for iRunFar on what this all means and Norda’s forced to temporarily halt shipments into the US. Not great, and it’s not getting better as the year goes on.
Martin Cox from VO2max Coaching took Koop AI for a spin and has thoughts – thanks for that, I was not going to try it.
In May The Grand Teton FKT finally is on trial, and oh boy did it turn out to be a grand waste of time and money.
May also sees the return of the media phenomenon that is Cocodona, and we get to continue the age old argument if “an European thing”: in this case Tor de Géants or “an American thing”: in this case Cocodona is bigger, better, faster, and more. What a fun way to spend a week in the small world of trail media.
Finally, we’re reminded of what’s really at stake and what we should be paying more attention to. The town of ‘Blatten’ in Switzerland in the Lötschental gets completely buried by a major glacier break induced by the inevitable climate change. And while one genuine feels horrible for the folks living in the valley I saw a note floating around online that points to the voting history of the inhabitants who by a large percentage voted against climate measures in recent elections. What a sad and pointed visual for the world we’re living in right now.
This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/Run 2025 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the June edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE/Run.
This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/RUN 2025 – The Year in Review.
This was April 2025 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.
Continuing with the focus on the media evolution in the trail and outdoor space April brought stories of Outside’s melt down being featured in The New Yorker and the bros at Second Nature are wondering out loud what to do with the brand and property. While all this is going down, UltraSignup quietly brings previous employees of Outside on board to build out their news team.
In the early spring we also hear about UNA the GPS watch that promises to be modular and allows you to replace various elements in the hopes to be repairable and sustainable. The product was supposed to ship in August, it’s now December and they still only take email addresses for their mailing list. Can you imagine trying to build a hardware product in these times when tariffs and other mad king fever dreams are occupying the global business news headlines?
We finish off our recap for April with a bunch of news from Salomon:
At the end of 2025 with ACG taking over Broken Arrow (from Salomon) as title sponsor and with seemingly no races left in the US on the GTWS calendar, the question arises if Salomon, in a effort to be the prime builder of trail toward the Olympics, is innovating themselves away from the sport.
This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE/Run 2025 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the May edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE/Run.
Salomon’s Golden Trail World Series is announcing several “upgrades” to their upcoming season:
Today, the GTWS unveils a set of significant updates for the 2026 season, including increased prize money, clearer overall ranking mechanics, and a strengthened integrity program.
On one side this is an exciting time. To see big brands continuing to up the ante for elites in our sport is welcome and needed. On the other side seeing them “still not having it figured out” is also a sign that there’s room for other players and creative people in our sport to define what ‘trail running on a professional level’ should or could mean. The earliest trail running can be in the Olympics would be 2032. Lots of time… or maybe not enough to fine tune what the sport of trail running will look like on camera.
Episode 336 with Krissi Polentz:
It’s the end of 2025 and I’m joined by special guest Krissi Polentz to chat about this past year in trail running. What stood out? What were the big stories and big misses that shaped out sport and culture? We’re taking a look at the players that speak, the businesses that spend money, and the movers that have shape our sport this past year. And of course, we’re making some predictions for what this all will mean for the coming one. Happy Holidays and thanks for being part of the ride.
Received an email from their press office this week with some fun facts and figures:
- 146,933 runners across 55 events, 266 races, 28 countries on five continents
- 8.9 million kilometres covered and 470 million metres of elevation gain (the equivalent of 53,100 Everest ascents)
- 73% of participants from host or neighbouring countries, reinforcing local impact
- 69% of elite athletes competing on the circuit (+10 pts vs 2024)
- 44,563 women on start lines (30% of all runners, +11,620 vs 2024)
- 105 Adaptive athletes, doubling year-on-year participation
- 400,000 plastic bottles and 900,000 disposable cups avoided
- 23 million UTMB Live views, up from 16 million in 2024
I’ve collected my own numbers after reporting on every event in the World Series this year and had hoped to release my own summary, but I fear that the year-end busyness has had other plans for me. I am buried with work.
Jasmin Sykes writes:
But these aren’t cheap pursuits. Some of the ultramarathons by the UTMB World Series cost close to $700 to enter. And entry to the most expensive Ironman triathlon, at Lake Placid in New York State, costs up to $1,000.
Who’s this article for? Was this written because “endurance sports” have been in the media and they sat around and tried to find an angle? Yes, if you take your hobby serious you’re willing to spend lots of money on it. And… that’s a new thing? Serious amateur athletes are willing to spend insane amount of money on their past time pursuits. It’s called living. We’re not just meant to put all our money into the stock market so billionaires can see their portfolio grow.
What a pointless article. And I linked to it. You’re welcome.
Well, in Canada it never left, with the Minotaur Skyrace. But for the coming year in 2026 there are some big plans for sky running to arrive back in the United States (Don’t send me messages, I know, I know, there’s history here and I’m fully aware of it all.) So, let’s talk about 2026. New races, VKs, under-23 events, a national series and mostly the Skyrunner World Series is making a stop in the United States. Rock Candy Running’s Beast of Big Creek will host the world… and I am freaking out. No idea how this will all be coming together, but I guess I’ll be working through the Holidays to get registration open by January 14th. So. Many. Announcements. Forthcoming.
Good friend Adam Lee gets the recognition he deserves:
Last night was a big night for the podcast as we won a The Canadian Podcast Awards for “Outstanding Sports Series”!!!
Congrats. 2026 will be an exciting year.
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