Yesterday in 90+ degree weather, mid-week through typical awful rush hour traffic I headed to Seven Hills Running in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington for UltraSignup’s annual Dirt Circus. I was joined by handful of other race directors, a selection of techs and sales reps from various shoe brands. Over 300 other runners who came – despite the heat – for an evening to mingle, win a few giveaways, and run with their community. It was hot, and it was wonderful.

Back in 2023 UltraSignup announced their new idea with the following words:

Dirt Circus is an UltraSignup event series featuring our local race directors, running stores, and celebrating our running community. This is where runners and race directors meet, kinda like UltraSignup.com, but live and in person. Come along and join the spectacle.

I was skeptical at first – “shouldn’t USU focus on upgrading their platform rather than put on roadshows” was my thinking – and I wasn’t alone. But now after having been at the event these past two years I gotta admit: I am a believer.

Dirt Circus is a simple concept that truly celebrates and showcases the best our sport has to offer: participation.

It’s a welcome reminder of what this thing we’re doing is all about. What folks love most about our sport is the simplicity. You put on a pair of shoes and go on a run. Yes, we love all that elite spectating at big races, brand’s releasing new and exciting products, the media spectacles with the podcasts and livestreams – all these things are fun and fuel our passion. But at the heart of our trail running, is the simple action of heading out the door in search for some dirt.

My days as a trail runner might be filled with high stakes conference calls, countless email negotiations, and an endless digestion of media reports, but for most folks running is a hobby that means being excited about the newest shoe drop – in their futile hope that it finally makes them faster – and the simple joy of just getting some miles in.

This is what Dirt Circus reminded me of. After coming off a few massively important days at TrailCon and Western States, and amidst the high stakes preparation of the Skyrunner World Series returning to the US, this evening at Seven Hills was a nice reprieve – despite the oppressive heat. More of this, please.

Find the next Dirt Circus event near you.

DCRainmaker with the first takes:

Garmin announced today that it has acquired TrainingPeaks & TrainHeroic (TrainHeroic was part of TrainingPeaks). Garmin hasn’t announced how much it spent, or really much else except that it did. As you can see below, the press release is pretty thin on details. Still, I’ve got some thoughts about what this means for consumers and the industry alike.

The press release (posted in Jay’s article) is thin with details.

It’s also not very clear as to why Garmin might’ve wanted to buy Training Peaks.

…it seems logical that Garmin is looking to see if it can increase its subscription revenue, possibly via putting coaching aspects (plans or otherwise) into some sort of Connect+ bucket, or perhaps just keeping it standalone.

So we’re left waiting and wondering. And folks who’ve been using Training Peaks can now look forward to the uncertainty on what will happen to their tool and platform. This is very much becoming the norm in the tech software space.

US Skyrunning covers Beast of Big Creek in their newsletter this week. Executive Director Ryan Kerrigan:

“Elevated, the race will be” said Ryan Kerrigan, Coach with US Skyrunning. “Previously US athletes generally had to cross the pond to find world level skyrunning competition. Now US athletes will have the opportunity to host their greatest rivals and strongest athletes in the sport on home soil.

“I’m tired of hearing- ‘skyrunning is a European sport, maybe it should stay there.’ We’ve got the mountains, we’ve got the athletes and now we’ve got the race courses to match. Skyrunning is a global sport and next week the world spotlight will be right here with The Beast!”

Let’s get this show started, shall we?

Sage Canaday has been on a heater lately calling folks out and trying to work through these grey area doping issues as our sport professionalizes:

…However the issue with banned performance enhancing drugs in endurance sports isn’t just about winning prize money or making an Olympic team. It’s about honesty and integrity and mutual respect for all runners in a race.

Here we have a sport that’s growing in popularity and still – hopefully forever – let the amateurs toe the same line as the elites. The calls are now getting louder to bring doping controls to the top races where prize money is on the line and much prestige to be gained. Most races are still without any doping controls. There are many runners who aren’t elites in the strictest sense but are influential their own right, and sometimes place high on podiums. They, like in the instance Sage refers to, might event coach other runners and recommend certain treatment plans. On top of all this we have WADA rules which are strict, but not perfect.

Sage continues his post:

I don’t have all the answers to this. I realize taking certain drugs (not all are created equal at all!) can be a very personal and a very nuanced thing for individuals. I believe in enforcing existing rules and WADA/USADA code for competitive races…but I also realize testing is very limited and expensive…

So I’d like to open this up to a constructive discussion of possible solutions and hear other’s thoughts and feelings around this. It can help shape the future and culture of our sport as individuals in the community may see it from very different perspectives.

Doping controls are already a costly and thorny issue. We are far away from even having a handle on the actual elite end of our sport, but this issue needs to be addressed nonetheless. And it will need some of the top players in our sport to not to put their heads in the sand but take a stand and speak out.

The easiest and fairest solution is to apply the rules to everyone equally.

Why this topic is blowing up right now is not because some hobby jogger from the back of the pack got caught cheating, but that “self declared non-elites” are actually reaching podiums, receiving sponsorships, and are influential in the sport with their behavior and opinions. This puts them on the same playing field as elites, therefore they need to be adhere to the same rules as elite runners.

Some weeks you don’t have time to record your own podcasts, so you rely on a little bit of help from your friends. Aaron Shimmons invited me and Robin Vieira Brower to discuss the return of skyrunning to the US. We chat about how it all happened and what it means for the athletes to have skyraces back on home soil.

We are so back! As they say.

Announced today:

Runners for Public Lands (RPL) is thrilled to announce that it has joined Outdoor Alliance, the national coalition of organizations advocating for human-powered outdoor recreation. As the 10th member of the Outdoor Alliance, Runners for Public Lands will strengthen the voice of runners alongside nine of the country’s most powerful outdoor recreation organizations working together to protect public lands and waters.

It’s great to see RPL grabbing a seat at this table giving us trail runners a bigger voice for political advocacy.

I mean, surprise?!

Why not, let’s throw out a last minute prize purse, shall we?

€4,000 are up for grabs at [the Skyrunner World Series] only North American stop on their 2026 Series.

*M/W*
1: €800
2: €500
3: €350
4: €200
5: €150

Plus earn your change for a ticket to the Finals at [Marató dels Dements, Host of the 2026 MSWS Skymasters] in Spain in November [of this year].

I mean… let’s go?

Announced today via Instagram:

[Bad Beard Events] is officially joining Aravaipa Running!

This series has been the heart of Chattanooga trail running since Stump Jump and River Gorge were founded in 2001. Ginny Smith, who has directed these races for almost a decade, is staying on as Series Director to keep leading the way alongside the same local crew and volunteers.

The races, the trails, and the traditions aren’t changing. Our goal is to keep the unique character of these seven events while elevating the runner experience, all while continuing Bad Beard’s commitment to the local non-profits that protect Chattanooga’s backyard.

The Aravapia expansion continues. All jokes about monopolies and comparisons to UTMB have already been made. What I wonder: what’s the draw here? For years US race directors have been operating proudly as independent entities, building their statewide race series and happily operating on their own. Now this nationwide consolidation is happening. And there’s only one player being able to take advantage of it all: Aravaipa. I wonder what this says about the financial viability of the events space of our trail running ecosystem.

José Gómez writing on the blog of Marató dels Dements, the Skyrunner World Series Skymasters event for 2026:

After several years away from the United States, the Merrell Skyrunner® World Series returns to North America with the Beast of Big Creek, the continent’s only race included in the 2026 world calendar.

I’m just over here being blown away by the by all the press we’re getting. Two week until ‘go time’!

Alexis Danjon for L’Equipe (auto-translated):

Elected mayor of Chamonix in the spring, François-Xavier Laffin reveals the changes he will make from the next edition of the UTMB, organized from August 24 to 30, but also the developments he wishes to implement for the next editions in order to renew the relationship between the Chamoniards and this event.

The UTMB Finals have grown too big for the valley and many people living there feel and changes need to happen for the event to continue. Some of the proposed changes: no nighttime arrivals of runners for example seem ridiculous, but others like ensuring access of locals to their own garages seem ridiculous that this has gone even so far to become an issue.

UTMB has been a huge economic boon for the valley and this will be a challenging conversation – several of them, over many months I presume – to ensure that all parties can live with these new rules proposed by the new political leader. And UTMB is not blindsided by this. Many of the changes that have been announced for this year (stricter media access, tighter control on unaffiliated brand activations, course changes for OCC, and the red light headlamps) can be explained by UTMB trying to appease the locals and prepare for further headwinds.

François-Xavier Laffin does not mince words:

We cannot continue to see our mountain disintegrate, melt, change, the seracs and glaciers collapse, and remain with our arms crossed. You have to be responsible. Especially since our valley is constrained, it does not have the capacity to accommodate a hundred thousand people.

I am very curious how this UTMB week compares with, for example, a skiing World Cup coming to the Mont-Blanc valley, for example. The organizational machines are essentially the same. I wonder how this affects the locals in the winter, compared to a summer event like UTMB.

It also will be interesting to see how these changes will be seen by the larger trail running community, and media. (For example the red light headlamps were just seen as a money grab by UTMB). And what effect this might have on how trail running continues its growth trajectory going forward. I am sure many of the valleys in the Alps which are seeing these massive events arrive are looking to Chamonix on how to manage them.

The Hardrock 100 Endurance Run happened this past weekend. Ludo won for a third straight time. Courtney kissed the rock in first place for a fourth time. Both set new course records. Incredible achievements by the both of them. Their main competitors either DNF’ed or were no real threat for their entire run. This happens in trail races with small entry fields. And maybe this year felt like when a team becomes a dynasty or driver, or rider, or player wins too many times in a row. Things start to feel a bit stale. Some folks have expressed this feeling. Hardrock felt a bit boring this year. This questions is something that Dale and his team will have to wrestle with. Are they gonna tell Ludo he can’t come back next year? Make it far for other runners? But this is not what I want to comment on. What I wanted to comment on is the – some fairly dramatic – DNFs, and the runners who finished but we heard later that maybe they pushed themselves over the edge. Again, I’m not here to tell anyone what they should do with their bodies.

The point I wanted to make is one that Hardrock has been trying to make since its inception and that it’s a RUN and not a RACE.

Especially, since Hardrock is so shortly after Western States, which while also billing itself as a ‘run’ increasingly has become a very serious race. Folks are coming of a high that is Western States weekend. There the top of the field really raced and competed. The atmosphere felt professional and elevated in many ways Hardrock feels like the very antidote to all this hubbub. But rather than billing Hardrock as “less than”, the way I thought about this event is that it’s really a mountaineering challenge, more so than a race run. Yes, there are no crampons or ropes but when looking at the folks who failed, or put themselves into serious danger I get the comparison to what it feels like following Mount Everest climbers. Yes, Hardrock might feel like a far cry from that, but when I put this event into the category of a mountaineering challenge the whole endeavor shines in a different light. I wonder if the media should cover the event differently. Get away from the comparisons to Western States, from the matchups and potential storylines that still make it very much sound like a competitive race, but rather embrace the unique mountain challenge that Hardrock offers instead. Hardrock 100 – a mountaineering challenge in the San Juans. Now I’m interested.

Cascade Crest 100, PNW’s most iconic 100 mile race and a Hardrock and Western States qualifier, is another event affected by wildfires this year:

The Three Queens Fire near Mineral Creek closed the back half of the course. Out of an abundance of caution, we’re switching to an out-and-back from Easton.

Good luck to all the runners toeing the line this weekend.

Much has been already said about this episode of Freetrail where Dylan’s brother Jason interviews Dylan, post race, post DNF, post heartbreak. Most of things that have been said I will echo here, but a couple things I want to highlight specifically:

The actual physical reality of Dbo’s body shutdown that almost mimicked his ‘heatstroke experience’ from his training run in New Mexico. The reason why I bring this up is because in our sport we don’t really talk about these traumatic experiences we put our body through and the longterm effects they might have on our system. We heal then we begin our training , and we think we’re back to normal. But maybe there’s more lingering in our system than we might think. I related to this as I am looking at my own history of experiences at ultra races and how my body’s reaction has changed over time. This could also be very much a mental thing, that our sensors are heightened and we want to avoid getting ourselves into a similar situation therefore we call it sooner than we might’ve in the past. We often talk about wanting to live on the edge to find our limit and hope to expand it. But if you really hit a wall and it hurt then maybe you tell yourself that next time you won’t go that deep.

The second point of their conversation I very much relate to is the aspect of responsibility. Dylan bemoans that he’s not the same athlete anymore than he used to be, but he only considers the physical aspect of the athlete, the training, the fitness. Given the fact that Dylan has not so many other pieces on his plate that are priorities for him and he’s responsible for how could he be the same athlete as when he was younger and had to carry less? Again, not here to pass judgement, but as I get older I find myself asking these questions when I’m out on a long dark night. I am not doing this just for myself, and the outcome is tight to lots of other realities. I weigh these things, and I do make decisions on various priorities. I know that this part of the reason of why I am a bad athlete – the other reason is that I am so damn slow, haha. But, I don’t have that single-minded killer instinct. But I relate to that struggle of weighing priorities in the moment and not putting myself first, even when I maybe should, and even when people maybe hope I would, I fold, call it quits because I think this is better considering the other priorities.

I think anyone who’s a trail runner and who loves to listen to stories and interviews that are inspiring and which share teachable moments should put this episode into their queue. It is all that and more.

Mark Griffith shot this year’s Western States on film, actual expensive celluloid. Also worth reading is his behind-the-scenes blog post on how it all came together.

Absolute stunning photos.

Local Western States finisher Jan Vleck writing in Ultrarunning Magazine about his running project RAN-RAD:

RAN-RAD follows a simple pattern: the “day” or “night” start and finish times are defined by the local sunset and sunrise. But that simple proposition allows for mind-boggling variation. 

I ran RAN a few years ago on a route cooked up by Jan that I still think was one of his most creative and fun one.

A couple weeks back, after the quite excellent Broken Arrow livestream, and leading into the genre-defining Western States broadcast, I wandered around TrailCon in search for some answers and some insight into this whole live-streaming business. How is this still relatively new thing in our sport, which already has become a standard to be demanded for, affecting our growing trail running events landscape? And who’s actually footing the bill? I set off asking lots of questions, meeting some folks I hoped would know this stuff, and I got some answers. There are still a lot of loose threads here. This is, as they say, a developing story.

Of course, I am not just wearing my ECC hat here, Rock Candy’s Beast of Big Creek is just a couple of weeks away and I’ve been sitting on this damn livestream challenge, and the multitude of question around it for months now. How do you pull off a livestream for a trail event? As North American’s only stop on the Skyrunner World Series circuit, Beast would surely deserve to have one, right? But where should the damn money for it come from? And further: Are livestreams for short distance races deep in the woods without cell coverage even worth producing?

During TrailCon happy hour one evening I chatted with a couple friends of mine who volunteers on the Mountain Outpost team. They mentioned that there was more to this Broken Arrow stream than meets the eye. This juicy nugget of information took me on a fact-finding mission that occupied my time at TrailCon – I do love a good mystery. How did this all one come together and who are the players behind it all?

This mission I was on led me to chat with some folks (on and off the record) to learn some insights in how the Golden Trail World Series is produced. Broken Arrow used to be a Golden Trail Series stop, after all. I am told Greg Vollet was in attendance for the weekend, so were folks from Warner Bros Discovery. They apparently weren’t too happy that Broken Arrow had a livestream – Quebec Mega Trail the Golden Trail Series fall back event after BA signed on with ACG did not have a livestream this past weekend. A French broadcasting team was in town producing the livestream for Broken Arrow, including eBikers and the full shindig. And of course folks from UTMB were present for the entirety of the Broken Arrow – TrailCon – Western States timeframe. I also chatted with folks from Nike/ACG – who were pleased as punch to hear that the livestream for Broken Arrow, which was announced pretty last minute seemed like a success. They promised me an interview at some point in the future. We shall see what comes from it.

I reached out to my contacts at UTMB wanting to learn about their approach to livestreams for their World Series events. I ended up chatting – without a recording device – with Antoine Aubour, the marketing, communication & media director, who later that week earned his silver buckle at his Western States debut in an impressive time of 22:09:59.

Before we get into everything I learned in my conversations – and again, some of it will be very fragmented and colored by my general feeling around livestreams – I wanted to take a moment to chat about what livestreams are and have become for our sport.

There’s a history in our sport that connects these long and seemingly mad adventure runs in wild places with an almost poetic and creative element of story telling. Outdoor sports have always relied on a heroic or tragic, sometimes both, retelling of ones adventure and experience. Trail running as a newer sport rose in prominence in the age of podcasts, YouTube videos and Instagram stories. Folks used to not hear about some crazy race results until someone shared the story on a podcast. Things were different then.

My personal history with race directing goes back to the very simple joy I felt running my first trail races. Inspired by these experiences I began to pay attention to the details and the way all the pieces were put together to produce a successful trail race. In the same way I taught myself web coding by looking at the source code of early HMTL-driven websites in the early 2000s, I became a race director by being a good observer who liked to design and manage events for the community. But, I vividly remembered a time when website source code became too complex, Flash (rest in peace), Javascript and other complex server technology now runs most websites and one can’t just easily make sense of the various elements that keep a website together. As an event organizer this is how livestreams feel like to me. Marking a course with some ribbons, designing a bib and registering your race on Ultrasignup are easy steps in comparison to the incredible complex – and expensive beast – that is a good livestream.

There’s the question of cost, the infrastructure investment, the diversion of volunteer labor – the ROI. And then there’s the big question of what type of event even pulls a large enough audience to a Youtube feed to make all this worth the effort. Folks tout ‘record numbers’, but what number is good enough to justify the investment?

Long, like really long events – Cocodona is the prime example here – shine on livestreams due to the outlandish nature of the endeavor. A 250 mile run is an incredible story in itself – even to folks who aren’t into trail running. Spectators are being pulled in to the phenomena because it’s mid-week (during work hours, not during the weekend where one has their own long run planned). And in some ways this experience of being able to log on and get a brief update for days at a time, at all hours of the day and night, evokes the comparison of these marathon eSport events. Watching a Twitch stream where someone builds some massive Minecraft world feels comforting and gives folks a sense of belonging in our fast paced, ever changing world. But could the Cocodona livestream be justified if Aravaipa Running wouldn’t own Mountain Outpost and this is truly an in-house production and marketing expense?

Of course, not every livestream has to be a super-ultra event. Western States and UTMB attract folks to watch because of the elite athletes on camera. Even shorter races like Zegama and Mont-Blanc Marathon have established themselves on the livestream calendar, but to me, they don’t have the same attraction. It feels like an entirely different spectator experience to sit down and watch a 2-6hr event on a Saturday, vs. a multi-day one I can click into every now and then when I need a break from work.

Back to me wandering the village at TrailCon. Ahead of my travels to Tahoe I had watched the Broken Arrow Ascent livestream and I noticed something: This was a livestream on US soil – at neither a UTMB or GTWS event – that was clearly different than anything Mountain Outpost is currently producing. For one, it was hosted on the Nike Youtube channel and not on MO’s. My understanding is though that MO is the only US-based livestream broadcasting entity. Maybe there are some events managers dabbling with steady cams, but I don’t believe anyone has been able to pull off a trail livestream experience in the US that didn’t contract MO for help. When chatting with some folks about this observation I was told that it was the UTMB team that came over, including the eBikers, the full production team. ACG had pulled out all the stops. This led me to reach out to my contacts at UTMB to learn more.

In my conversation with UTMB’s Antoine Aubour later that week I learned that UTMB itself does NOT have its own broadcasting team and did NOT produce the Broken Arrow stream. Even UTMB’s livestreams are outsourced to a couple of French companies with the know-how and the equipment.

UTMB sees livestream for our sport very much as a tool to grow it overall. The more people who hear about trail running the more folks inevitably hear about UTMB and begin their journey to collect stones in their hope to race in Chamonix one year.

A few years ago during my chat on Singletrack with UTMB CEO Frédéric Lénart he mentioned a formula conduct their business by: the cost of a bib to a runner is supposed to cover the race expenditures. The sponsorship dollars are meant to grow the organization. When I asked Antoine how UTMB looks at funding these costly livestreams he added to this perspective Frédéric mentioned, that the costs for these are supposed to come from the local tourism regions. A third leg of possible revenue if you will. This is how UTMB determines what races on their World Series get a livestream = any tourism region that is willing to foot the bill for it. The region gets coverage, beautiful area shots, mentions of towns, valleys, destinations to visit and spend money at. And depending on the size of the event and how many races an event has, this cost – according to Antoine – is in the 5 to 6 figure range. That’s in EURO, so it’s a lot of money for a livestream. But it’s also a reasonable one if you think about it. Given that most of their events have multiple distances of races and UTMB so far hasn’t just favored the most popular distance and only broadcasted that one. If a UTMB World Series event gets a livestream all the distances are usually covered. UTMB doesn’t take that cost for this production out of the bibs. They see the livestreams as a benefit to the region where the race is held and ask these stakeholders to pay for it.

This setup leads to the much bemoaned, but obvious pain point for fans which is that several Western States Golden Ticket events are currently not being served by a livestream. Antoine reiterated to me that UTMB is fully aware of this challenge and they are trying to come up with a good solution – hopefully for next year. The easiest of course would be for HOKA to just pay up. But I suppose the question of the cost is the issue here. Is UTMB putting their foot down and saying for the good of the larger runner experience that if there’s a livestream at a UTMB event all distances need to be covered? And is that ballooning the cost beyond of what HOKA is willing to pay? Antoine promised me that they very much are working on a solution for this. Hopefully this will be sorted.

In my research since, I also learned that of the two French livestream operators one of them – Outdoor Sport Live – is going to what it sounds like serious business restructuring, bordering on bankruptcy. So clearly this live-streaming business isn’t a gold mine.

You realize I brushed over the cost figures of these livestreams by suggesting that they are reasonable. Of course, when you consider the UTMB Finals week in Chamonix, all the races and their entire production, one can justify this can go into the millions of Euros. But, beyond a tourism rich region, hosting an event with thousands of runners and eyeballs, who can justify this type of expenditure as part of the events budget? Western States and Hardrock rely heavily on volunteers, which in turns balloons the in-kind contribution to an event. Who else can afford this? Currently livestreams in the US are still largely managed or solicited by the race organization. At Broken Arrow, I believe the decision was made to spend money, and really spend money, on a top notch livestream in lieu of what ACG had done at Gorge where a lot of additional dollars were spend on a campground hosting influencers. ACG footed the bill for it and in return got to host the livestream on their Youtube channel.

The livestreams are becoming a crucial branding tool for the races that do offer them. There will be a clear divide between events that can and those that can’t afford them. It’s sexy to have a livestream for your event and there’s a clear advantage if you do invest into one. In the eyes of the fan it creates instant credibility.

To the average runner it might be fun to share the link with your family, but I doubt it will be a make or break decision on what races you sign up for. For elites the livestream is a mixed bag – I am told – and some prefer high quality polished media, photos, and video which they can repeatedly use and share over a livestream that just happens in the moment.

Have these livestreams help grow the sport over the last few years, and might this overall growth in our sport be enough to justify this investment? I sure hope so. Because when I try to run the numbers on all this I get a bit worried. Our sport is young and it the basics of putting on a trail race one can grasp and make sense of it all. Offering a livestream adds a level of complexity that feels outsized to what it currently delivers. Gorge Waterfalls comes to mind as an event that had a livestream one year but couldn’t justify it since. You can call me a worrier, yes. But I am not an old guy on my porch wishing for the golden days to be back. These livestreams do deliver something to the sport. And they do share the sport with the world. Therefore I am glad they exist and I am glad there are people who invest their brains, their vision, and ultimately their money into this thing. That I am 100% here for, even if several big questions remain.

What? Why?

Iron X is an extreme ironing race. Ironists (participants) will iron in some of the most iconic Auburn, CA locations while running a half-marathon.

If you read this expecting “extreme ironing” to be some sort of euphemism for something else you are solely mistaken. It really is just that… ironing… out in the wild, done by iron(men+women)? I don’t get it. How high must you have been to come up with this idea?

Remember the days when the radios would choose and promote the song of the summer and then everyone would just sort of sing and play that song for the entire summer, on beaches, in bars, in Walkmans on the train? Yeah, I am old, this doesn’t happen anymore. Those were the good times!

What we do get this year is Tailwind Nutrition serving us delicious summer flavors in a limited edition right into your flask and ready for your long run. Earlier we got Mango Yuzu – already sold out – but delicious in its own right. Now the Colorado team is following up their summer hits with Blueberry Lemon. All the same endurance fuel goodness in the same convenient packaging, but now in summer-y blueberry and lemon flavor – for the right zing so you’ll avoid palate fatigue. Grab some stick before they are gone and jam all summer long.

Tailwind Nutrition is sponsor of the Trail Running Film Festival and our Rock Candy Running races including the upcoming Sky Runner World Series race ‘Beast of Big Creek’ where we’ll serve their breakout hit ‘Dauwaltermelon’ on course. Thank you Tailwind team for all the support throughout the year.

I’ve been looking at this Salomon ‘water fountain’ now for a few days thinking about what this supposed to be.

[Salomon Sportstyle] latest project isn’t a new trail shoe or a technical apparel collection. Instead, the French brand has teamed up with Paris-based design practice [Studio Douzedegres] to reinterpret one of the city’s most overlooked pieces of public infrastructure: the fountain.

To trail runners this portable water fountain looks very familiar. Who hasn’t run a trail race in a remote area where a ‘WaterMonster‘ greeted you to refill your flasks. This Salomon one of course is over designed, stylish and quite beautiful. Something we most likely won’t be seeing at a trail race – ever. But, so, why was this made?

First unveiled at Yardland Festival, the installation takes the form of a 3.5-metre-high luminous totem fitted with twelve taps. Designed as a travelling structure, it will accompany future Salomon activations, bringing free drinking water into spaces where sport, culture and community intersect.

To me this feels like Salomon bringing the idea of ‘practical outdoor tools’ to the urban fashion world. Gorpcore for water fountains, so to speak. I love this journey for them.

Chris Z (who I have previously linked to several times) wrote another great piece and introduces the English speaking world to the “Lauchs”:

Culture begins with the signals around the body. A biceps flex, showing up shirtless at the start of a race, an Instagram caption suggesting that running far or fast is simply a matter of trying hard enough — none of this stays neutral. It creates a small but steady pressure against softness, hesitation, fear, care and caution.

That is how toxic masculinity stops being an individual trait and becomes part of the culture.

There have been a lot of hot takes lately – on Substack especially – on how running is changing and how this might be a bad thing. It’s inevitable in many ways that folks wanting to add their 2 cents to the conversation and make their personal experience the defining line by which everything is measured. Cut Chris’s point is worth pondering. As running gets picked up by the fashion world the performative display of the outward expression becomes more important than the actual experience of running on trails somewhere in the mountains. That’s worth fighting for.