Fueled by AI vibe-coding, another phenomenon this year’s Cocodona has surfaced is the arrival of the ‘text-based live ticker’ for trail races promising minute by minute updates. Josh Rosenthal from Borderlands teased a beta of his interpretation of this. As he puts it is:

This prototype was built almost entirely with modern AI tooling.

LoC is functional right now. It is not race-ready.

LoC stands for ‘Live on Course’ and promises:

People positioned throughout the course submit short field reports in real time about athlete condition, tactical shifts, weather, crew behavior, atmosphere, emotional moments, and developing race situations.

The system is designed around human moderation, verification, editorial judgment, and routing before information reaches commentators or viewers.

In the beginning of trail race media it was iRunFar that began covering trail race via posts shared on Twitter. For a long time this was the only way the fans at home could stay somewhat up to date with what was happening live on the course. This labor of love that iRunFar poured themselves into got crushed by the demise of Twitter and the incoming promise of better coverage via YouTube livestreams and Instagram reels. Twitter is still cooked and won’t be coming back as a tool to share information and gather a community, the Instagram algorithm has become unusable, and yet the livestreams haven’t proven to provide the access to information as superfans had hoped for. The livestreams capture the community and share the vibe, but often the actual race updates are getting lots amidst the casual banter about what shoes the runners wear and what food someone might eats at the next aid station.

For Cocodona this year several folks vibe-coded dashboards promising updates in ticker form, all running into the same issue: to provide updates you gotta actually be awake, online and locked in to collect and share the information – not an easy task.

Back ins 2024 after Cocodona and for the second anniversary of Electric Cable Car I wrote:

I’ll be in Silverton for Hardrock 100 this year. First time for me and I’m stoked. How will I cover the event for Electric Cable Car? Stay tuned! But it won’t be the usual “here are a bunch of interviews with athletes” format. I’m working on a new and unique angle – hope you’ll enjoy what I’m cooking up.

The Hardrock media coverage will be a test case for what I am trying to do for Chamonix during UTMB week. I’ll be there and I am working on a strategy for this week that’s informed by what experiences I gain covering Hardrock while also acknowledging that I won’t be arriving in the Alps with a team of people and a truck full of gear. Heck, I still gotta run OCC too, right?

The results of this test: it’s fucking hard. If you’re on the ground at an event it’s just so incredibly challenging to find time to pull yourself away to posts updates. If you’re remote you’re relying on other accounts to drop that info, and everything you do will be second hand. Then last year for Cocodona I made another attempt. I tried myself on providing this service and launched ECC Live, a ticker, leaderboard and human-curated collection of updates from the race. The only AI code on the page was the race clock I added. I’ve learned some valuable lessons, retooled it for the WMTRC in the fall of 2025 and tried this again for Cocodona this year.

The updated results: It’s still fucking hard, it’s still a human problem foremost, to gather the information and share it in a timely fashion – AI can’t help with that (yet).

Trail doesn’t have an ESPN, or Kicker (German soccer website), or whatever your favorite sports app is you visit to get your real time updates of your favorite team/athlete/sport.

• The YouTube livestreams are fun, but unsuitable for information sharing.
• The Instagram algorithm is dead for timely information.
• The live trackers are too spotty and unreliable to be the only source of truth.
• The race directors are too busy organizing an actual event to update their race websites during race weekend with links and information to results.

But, what all these live tickers that springing up tell me is that there’s something ‘there’. Someone is going to crack this, and at some point in the very near future. What a fun time to be in trail media.

This year’s Salomon Golden Trail World Series has gotten a lot of ‘sighs’ and question marks before it even kicked off. Now we’re two races down – from a total of eight (including the Finals) – and folks just sort of feel ‘ho hum’ about it all. Yes, the races changed – but even Zegama – which is Zegama after all! wasn’t the barn burner one would’ve expected (even with Kilian on the starting line).

• Is the lineup of elite runners this year not inspiring folks to follow the Series?
• Is the lack of US race location turning folks off from caring about the series all together?
• Is the strategic decision to move the livestream behind a paywall resulting in a drop in engagement?

A few thoughts on this:

• Race viewership and engagement dramatically increases with good storylines around who’s racing. This can’t be discounted. And is something that’s somewhat out of the hands of the events organizers. Only somewhat though, cause if you’re not creating a compelling product to watch than maybe you’re also not attracting a field of athletes worth following. But athletes do get injured and drop from a race last minute and some storylines you can’t predict or manufacture beforehand – as hard as you might want to.
• Maybe the numbers aren’t as bad as I think they are, it’s just my US media bubble makes me not see the full picture.
• I can see why GTWS would want to partner with a broadcaster rather than just put all their races on YouTube. YouTube isn’t your partner, they are just a platform offering you distribution in exchange for you following their rules – which is not a bad thing, but a partner they are not. My guess is that GTWS is looking for a partner that can help them take the product GTWS to a new level of professionalism in how it is presented to the audience. Having their races shown on the same channel as more established sports can be considered a positive for potential sponsors and brands encouraging their athletes to compete at GTWS races as well as of course the athletes themselves.

The last point I want to make here is the obvious comparison between the huge hit Cocodona was and the sort of tepid response to the kickoff to the GTWS so far. Many have argued (Greg Vollet being one of them) that trail needs a television friendly model – tighter course, shorter races. Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe, what the Cocodona phenomena is showing us is that watching really long trail races is actually what works in this new paradigm of esports and video game livestreams. Sometimes ultra distance race livestreams do feel like watching paint dry, but there seems to be something ‘there’ that is connecting with people more so than a trail race that is short and feels professionally manufactured to fit into a traditional sport broadcast? For one: a 2 hour livestream is over before I get back from my weekend run, but a multi-day race I can dip in and out through the day as my schedule allows and it can feel like connecting with friends over a shared experience rather than just listening to pro commentators bark results at you.

Where there is a clear comparison is that in both instances – GTWS and Cocodona – the actual livestream/broadcast product is part of a bigger play. For Salomon, owner of the Golden Trail World Series – and their national series’, these races series are a marketing play. In the instance of Cocodona, Aravaipa owns the race and the streaming provider Mountain Outpost, which is also contracted to provide live-streaming capabilities for WSER and Hardrock livestreams and 30+ other races just this year alone. In both cases the livestream itself might not have to ‘pay for itself’ and become sustainable. They are seen as tools to grow the sport and grow the brands and businesses behind it, even if the investment into equipment, man-power and other expenses aren’t directly recouped.

Mountain Outpost takes their (well-deserved) victory lap:

1.4 million views.
 43,000 peak live viewers. 
130,000 live chat messages.
 126 hours on mic.
 2,100+ miles on the road.



I wonder what the gas prices are in Arizona.

To give these numbers a comparison, here’s what UTMB shared after their Finals in 2025:

In 2025, L’Équipe Group raised the bar with unprecedented coverage. For the first time, from Thursday 28 to Saturday 30 August, nearly 20 hours of live action were broadcast free-to-air on la chaîne L’Équipe.

This extensive coverage attracted more than 5.7 million cumulative viewers for the three UTMB World Series Finals (OCC, CCC^®, UTMB^®), with a peak audience of 633,000 as the men’s race leaders completed the UTMB on Saturday afternoon (ranked 4th among national channels and 1st on TNT). This new record underlines the growing public appetite for a sport that continues to expand (4.1 million viewers in 2024).

In parallel, more than 46 hours of live content (UTMB^® Live production by UTMB Group teams) was streamed via L’Équipe Live, the TV section of L’Équipe website and app.

Note: This is copied from the UTMB press email. I took out their bolding and added my own.

If we see this type of growth and demand for the sport I wonder how this will develop throughout the rest of this year and beyond. Western States has a stellar field of athletes – which should take the viewership for this broadcast – also managed by Mountain Outpost – to new heights. UTMB hasn’t been making big splashes as it comes to innovations for their Final. I wonder if they have something up their sleeve for this year.

A side note:  Zac Marion, director and producer of the Mountain Outpost livestreams was just on Freetrail to share a behind-the-scenes look of what it takes to pull off the monumental effort of the Cocodona Livestream – what an incredible project.

Announced via Instagram:

ASICS Trail presents the Base Camp in Chamonix.

The new dedicated place for our athletes to reach their performance peak.

The brands, and athletes “buy in” to Chamonix and UTMB is getting more and more elaborate. What in previous year’s might’ve started in early August with a prolonged ‘basecamp and final training block’ in the Chamonix area is now turning into an all summer long investment and focus.

It will be interesting to see if this investment bears fruit.

As a side note: I am posting this on Memorial Day here in the US which is the long weekend where historically the Western States Training Camp is happening. Traditionally the event has been the community gathering and preparation for WSER just a month out. One thing that has made Training Camp special has always been the ‘rubbing of shoulders’ with elite athletes that show up to train along with the community on the course, with aid stations support and shuttle service. This year it’s been reported that the elite athletes increasingly have been opting for their own training – distraction free and not showing up at the official Training Camp.

Picking up here a personal report from Anna Simonsson-Søndenå on Instagram after hearing and seeing several mentions on my feed about this race:

Multiple-incident accident at the Transylvania 100 mountain marathon competition. Mountain rescue teams were required to intervene in 15 cases, three of which were more serious. All injured persons have been stabilized. The presence of a bear was also reported on a hiking section, but the animal was driven away before it could attack anyone.

This is never a great look for a race organization. If one person gets in trouble it’s an accident, if many people need to get rescued on the same stretch of the trail it feels negligent by the race organizers. In a situation like this you either postpone the race, properly mark and secure the course with ropes and S&R on site to help people traverse the questionable sections, or warn runners up front of what is to expected on race day. As trail running is going in popularity the last option is increasingly a challenging proposition as runners don’t read race manuals or think they can skip the mandatory gear. Just look at the behavior of some of the elite runners at UTMB these past couple of years for examples of this.

Alex, German YouTuber takes on the “business side” of the UTMB World Series in one of those ‘outrage porn/explainer videos’. These shows all are manufactured to get the “outrageous point” across in the first 3 min, then cut to an ad – so the host can make money off the outrage – just to end with a wimpy “well, things are nuanced and both sides of the story are reasonable and worth considering”.

But the reason why I am linking to it here is because he’s another voice just so casually dropping the whole “Whistler kerfuffle” as a done deal and he mentions this, boldly and wrongly as if UTMB pushed Gary out of a business opportunity. Not sure why this is so pervasive in Germany especially, but it’s something I need to investigate further. Of course it fits the narrative of “big business doing bad things to little guys”, and wrong information travels further and stick longer than the truth, especially on the internet. And maybe the further one is removed from the actual story – geographically speaking in this scenario- the harder it is to get to the actual story, aka the truth, and maybe one doesn’t even care to get to the full story as it wouldn’t fit their preconceived narrative?

Well, as a fellow German I am kind of embarrassed by this odd trend, to be honest.

Grace Cook went to the Satisfy x adidas activation and has some thoughts on the explosive aftermath:

Runners turned into high school mean girls this week, unleashing a Burn Book of public criticism against Satisfy, the small but very influential French running brand. The trigger? Its collaboration with Adidas, which was unveiled at a private launch party in the Sonoran desert in Arizona last weekend. I was one of the very few to attend.

It’s a really great post summarizing her experience in the Arizona desert and putting the event into the context of how fashion and sports brands launch new products, build hype and activate the public to buy their stuff.

The one quibble I have with it is her analogy of the ‘bullying mean girls’ is that Satisfy isn’t the poor beleaguered wallflower. They are a luxury company whose CEO keeps getting into cat fights online. A VC funded brand built on trying to be ‘cool’ while charging $300 for a cotton t-shirt with holes. “Oh, who will stand up for the little guy” isn’t the rallying cry that will resonate with a brand that’s build on an air of exclusivity and “too cool for school” attitude. Yes, they aren’t Nike, but they are also partnering with adidas on this collab. Over the past few years Satisfy has to be the darling of the running world. Business experts extolled their strategy of going ‘upmarket’, and influencers in both the fashion and running world loved to show off their affluence and edginess by wearing their gear. Now the brand is experiencing a bit of headwind and mockery, I’d say a good punk rocker should feel right at home with this.

Sabrina Little for iRunFar ponders the ethics around doping for non-professional runners:

This is another reason why we should maintain consistent moral norms across non-professional and professional racing: Professional runners do not just materialize from thin air. They are introduced to the sport and mentored through the running community at large. If that community has a cavalier attitude toward drugs, or is broadly complicit in illicit supplementation, this makes compunctions around drugs less acute at all levels of the sport.

This article is in response to the ‘Cam vs. Sage‘ saga that’s been swirling around the social media channels and has resulted in a official complaint with USADA.

For me the issue with doping is that this is one of these subjects that does have an effect on the community. If you’re just a solo runner, outdoorsman, and bow hunter, and you like to put things into your body, be my guest, I couldn’t care less. But as an influencer who’s build an empire inspiring others to ‘keep hammering’ or what ever you do, you’re not just a random amateur. You’ve build and you’re representing a community and that is part of your business strategy. Be transparent and don’t be like the ‘Liver King‘. But, and this is not “gatekeep-y”, once you start participating officially sanctioned events, and you bring all the attention of your social media community with you, you do need to submit yourself to the ‘rules of the game’ that exists. And that doesn’t matter if these rules are basic trail etiquette, mandatory gear, or doping regulations. Carving out exceptions is what erodes community and creates division and that is something worth standing up to.

Josh Rosenthal makes the case for the importance of the local 50K on his Borderlands blog:

Trail running needs race directors whose ambition is to put on a race for 80 people because they love the sport enough to do it. That kind of ambition is becoming harder to sustain financially and culturally.

Large organizations should not just market trail running. They should help preserve the local races that make trail running durable in the first place.

If the local race disappears, the entire ecosystem upstream weakens with it.

This so far is true and most likely anyone will be in agreement. But, what has changed?

Sub-100 person ultras are commercially difficult. Most are not meaningful businesses. They are love letters to trail running held together by volunteers, exhausted race directors, and thin margins.

I’d wager these races have always been economically challenging. Maybe there just used to be enough weirdos (I am saying this lovingly, I am one of them!) that are doing this for the love of it. I don’t experience the pressure from the running community to compete or chase the professionalism of the big events. I am putting that pressure on myself. I watch the big races evolve, grow, and constantly add new “features” like livestreams, prize purses and fancy nonstop race day coverage and I want that for my races too. Does the community expects this? Some folks might, but not all runners sign up for the spectacle. They sign up for the personal challenge. Yes, at some point they might want to run one of the big races and are training for it, but they sign up to run on trails and gotta start somewhat. That, until Aravaipa and UTMB own all the events (they won’t), will still be at the event closest to home, on trails within a reasonable travel distance.

I will turn this into an invitation and call for participation. The events RDs put on every weekend all over the map are an incredible creative playgrounds for folks with ideas to come out and “enhance the experience”. This is not just a call to volunteer and ‘help out’ where needed. Races will always need volunteers and they are the live-blood of the events. But these events also thrive when folks come with their idea, their hobbies, and passions and want to help build the trail community. Got ideas, want to build something, interested in starting an outdoor business? Come to a trail race and connect with the people who are doing this every weekend. It’s worth it.

And you know what else? I wager partnering with a locally run event will allow you to let your creativity shine more than trying establish an official partnership with one of the corporate events requiring credentials and complicated contracts.

Last weekend Zegama kicked off the Golden Trail World Series, for 2026 (and yes, I am slacking and didn’t post results… apparently I can’t do it all). And with it GTWS launched their new ‘Team Ranking‘. Did anyone talk about how it went? I can’t find GTWS posting about it. Is it working? Looking at the results it seems that several of the big brands that were hyped pre-race didn’t place. Only Asics and of course Salomon are on the current results table. The rest is filled with – what seems to me – local teams, not the global brands. Not here to rip it apart, just wondering how this will develop. I think the idea could fun, but after one event it seems to be off to a slow start and not the conversation piece Salomon might’ve hoped it would become.

Mandie Holmes for Ultrarunning Magazine (owned by team behind Cocodona):

If you entered the Cocodona 250 lottery, you already know what the entry fee looks like.

For everyone else, here it is:

Entry and fees will go up to $2,238 for 2027.

Mandie’s post isn’t meant to highlight the cost beyond the entry fee but rather the additional costs it takes to run this race including flights, gear, and accommodation for your crew.

Among the runners I talked to, total race week costs ranged from under $2,000 to well over $6,000.

Our sport is not one for folks pinching the pennies. I bet the numbers to fly to Europe and book a hotel in Chamonix have gotten even crazier than when I did it a few years ago.

Mountain guide Simon Kearns sets a new FKT from Paradise to the Summit of Mount Rainier and back. What a stellar day (few hours) out. RMI Expeditions celebrating his achievement:

On May 9th, RMI guide Simon Kearns ran from the Paradise parking lot to the summit of Mount Rainier and back in 3 hours, 43 minutes, and 52 seconds, shattering the previous unsupported on-foot record by more than 30 minutes.

13 years of dreaming. Two failed attempts. One very good day.

FKT entry. Strava file. Instagram. Seattle Times.

Who orchestrates a very public marketing activation which was meant to evoke strong emotions and then sit in the social media comments to explain and defend themselves?

I continue to be puzzled by the actions of the folks behind Satisfy. If you want to be bold and let your freak flag fly… or bang a giant gong in the suburban desert, be my guest. But then why are you personally all over social media trying to defend and explain yourself? If you want to make art, make art. If you want to sell products, sell them and prove the naysayers with your success. But don’t try to be edgy and then act thirsty when folks misunderstand you.

But maybe that’s part of the performance act. When Satisfy dreamed up the by now infamous “Circle Pit^TM” they knew (must have known, please tell me they knew) that it would create a strong reaction online. By now they know that Satisfy isn’t just universally admired and adored anymore. By now they must know that Satisfy is increasingly the butt of a joke.

I wonder if they are now just feeding the beast? Purposely trolling back to create hype. (I personally couldn’t handle the time arguing and defending myself, but some might thrive on this.) How much of their activation in the desert hyping their collab with adidas was framed so that the meme accounts would pick it up and drive the message further than they could’ve done themselves? I am not here to condone this. I am not trying to write a LinkedIn marketing genius post extolling the attention economy at all costs. I am just wondering out loud here. It’s day 4? of nonstop hot takes and think pieces and questions and comments online. Usually when something like this happens it’s serious, political, big. But this was just a wee marketing activation by a fashion brand cosplaying as athletic brand. No one got hurt, no one got harmed in the making of it, no one needs to get cancelled. This IS all fun and games – so far.

I didn’t want to wade into that “circle pit’ conversion that the entirety of the running world had been circling around these past few days, but I thought two posts were worth sharing.

Chris Z writes on ‘Das Letter Z‘:

I am writing this because this disturbing brand theatre in the desert moved something personal in me.

Chris doesn’t write his article about the business and marketing angle, or how this stunt affects running culture, he talks about punk and hardcore subculture here, which I ,as an outsider to this, appreciate.

Chris also shares an article I had bookmarked a couple of days ago by Katherine Douglas at ‘Running Wylder‘ who wrote about the feeling the images evoked as well as the overall impact of it all:

The lack of diversity and the blatant toxic bro culture are so exclusive and so specific to a certain type of runner I’m honestly embarrassed to have thigh tattoos.
…
A good collab (and subsequently a good launch event) should get people talking, initiate (+ fuel) the buzz around the upcoming products and raise the mutual brand equity of both parties involved. Sadidas got ppl talking but for the wrong reasons. One could argue the brand equity of both was lowered and instead of reaching new customers, they turned them off.

To me Satisfy feels like a brand that’s run out of ideas.

Carlos Ultrarun for Asociación Española de Trail (auto-translated):

At a time when Trail Running is experiencing an unstoppable expansion, initiatives like this festival help reinforce the cultural identity of a sport that goes far beyond competition. Cinema thus becomes a perfect tool to transmit values such as companionship, resilience, respect for the natural environment and the ability of sport to transform lives.

The public’s response was very positive in this first edition, making it clear that there was a real interest in an event of these characteristics in Spain. Attendees were able to share experiences, learn about new audiovisual projects and enjoy a different day, where Trail Running was also understood as a form of artistic and emotional expression.

Thanks to our incredible hosts We Run Astur for bringing TRFF to Spain. More of this.

Jessy Carveth for Marathon Handbook did the lord’s (lady’s?) work of compiling the whole online drama:

At the time of writing, Hanes has not been charged with a rules violation. His Eugene result stands. His age-group win stands. His 2011 blog post is still up. His Instagram comments to Canaday are still public. He has gone on his own podcast and confirmed, in his own words, that he used a banned peptide.

Canaday is not claiming Hanes used BPC-157 at Eugene specifically. He is saying the public admission of using a banned substance during the same competition window is enough to refer to USADA, and that placing in the age group at a USATF championship while doing so breaks the rules athletes sign up to follow.

That is where this sits for now. The Eugene result is on the books. Hanes is back home in Oregon. Canaday’s tip is with USADA. Whatever happens next will happen on the agency’s timeline, not the podcast’s.

Worth a read if you want to catch up with the various events on the timeline without the emotions and comments on social media. Not sure where I stand on all this, but I thought it’s worth sharing as there are a lot of conversation floating around about what “community and culture” really is and who’s the arbiter of it all.

Staying on the “Beast Coast” for this one. Cole Townsend on ‘Running Supply’ shares an email exchange with Ben Cooke, President of Marathon Sports and some thoughts on their brand new rebranding:

The new Marathon Sports is modern, sharp, and geometric. It doesn’t have the warmth of a slab serif typeface or their clip art image of Bannister breaking the tape.
…
This ambitious play comes with some risk. Stores like Fleet Feet and Marathon Sports are trusted by a huge community of runners, walkers, and hikers. It’s a familiar place to shop with all the brands they expect.

Aside from the fact that I’m very interested in design, and to that a bit more in a little bit, one of the reasons I am bringing this up here is this part of the interview with Ben:

In trail, we bought races, amplifying them with real prize money—championship status, and deep prize money to support aspiring athletes and keep them in the east. [New] field trip experiences to get people opened to trail, an adult camp in the Berkshires. Additionally we are building a trail mecca store in North Conway to honor the sport. We almost feel an obligation to do these things. If not us, who else will?

Marathon Sports bought SIX03 the company behind Kismet Cliff Run – now part of the USA Skyrunner National Series. Which coincidentally also has the tagline “Beast of the East”. So we will be seeing alot more from them in trail in the coming years.

Switching over to the official blog post and announcement by Marathon Sports on their rebranding efforts:

We wanted an identity that respects that history, but also looks and feels ready for contemporary run culture. That is a delicate balance. We selected Upstatement, local design agency, to guide this process. Their editorial mindset, blending disruptive design and storytelling, captured Marathon Sports’ identity and pushed us further than what felt familiar.” – Ben Cooke, president of Marathon Sports.

Logo and brand refreshes are hard and I am not one to do the usual internet pile on here of yelling at how the old one was better and the new design is automatically shit, but this sentence below has my skin crawl:

Upstatement must have drawn over a hundred running figures, a million variations of the letter M, and everything between the sky and the ground, including a hedgehog and banana peels.

I really really hope this is meant as a figure of speech. A casual way for a not-a-designer explaining the process of how one goes about redesigning a brand with 50 year history. Because man, you definitely don’t start with the drawings, you start with the emotion, the feeling, the idea and vision of what you want to convey.

Look closer and you’ll also see a runner breaking the tape, arms raised in that split-second mix of exhaustion, relief, and disbelief. It’s the moment every runner understands whether you’re winning a race or just winning a personal battle on that day.
These two symbols; the four dots and the upraised arms are universal among all forms of running. They are road, trail, track and treadmill and they are the essence of our sport.

A smart designer can explain any shape into anything. This above feels a little bit like a stretch to me. The new logo is a modern and abstract *M*, and that’s just fine.

Ben Mazur writes on his blog ‘Rocksylvania Dispatch’:

UTMB’s arrival in Pennsylvania is not just the addition of another race; it is the collision of two very different versions of trail running.

Jeff Calvert adds on his blog ‘The Rush of it All‘:

In the end, it was less about UTMB (I guess I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt) and more about supporting the local runners who are organizing and directing the race. I know and trust them — they have deep roots here, they care about this race and all it represents. And in this case, the race is a collaboration, not a hostile takeover.

Ben concludes:

None of this is to suggest that UTMB’s arrival is inherently detrimental or that it should be resisted outright. It is, however, to say that the situation deserves a level of attention and thoughtfulness that goes beyond surface-level reactions. There is opportunity here, but there is also risk. The challenge, as always, will be navigating both at the same time without losing sight of what made this community worth investing in to begin with.

Both were vocal in the Whistler aftermath, boycotting UTMB and pulling several race from the region they were involved with from the UTMB Index calendar. Now both are back supporting and rooting (albeit hesitantly) for UTMB to succeed and do this right. Will be interesting to see what their postmortem will be after this weekend.

Tiffany Montgomery for Shop Eat Surf X Outdoor:

REI union workers and allies are launching a nationwide boycott of the co-op’s Anniversary Sale that starts Friday, escalating a four-year contract dispute that remains unresolved at all 11 unionized stores.
…
REI has roughly 200 stores nationwide. The 11 unionized locations represent a small fraction of that total, but the boycott’s consumer component, with 70,000 co-op members allegedly pledged to participate, extends its potential reach well beyond those individual stores.

My understanding is that REI’s business structure – that of a co-op – makes it unsuitable for an IPO or private equity takeover. Which is usually one of the key reasons why a business of this size – that’s not already publicly traded – would be anti-union. I don’t have an MBA but I would just love to see the spreadsheets laying out why a co-op that’s supposed to be “for the people” has to be anti-union. Why not just go full in on union support and continue your tradition of being different? Every American business is just always “anti-union” by defaults citing all the reasons of why it hurts the bottom line. But public sentiment has shifted so much in this country that it might just be a good PR play to actually be the ONE business that’s pro-union?

But what do I know? Happy Anniversary sale. The La Sportiva Prodigio Pros, my favorite trail running shoes, are 25% off… but don’t be a scab!

Episode 346 with Coree Woltering:

Coree Woltering joins Singletrack this week to chat about his approach to running trails, and racing short and long distances. This year his goals include Western States, Beast of Big Creek, and Fat Dog 120. We discuss his role as Merrell US trail team manager and the upcoming relaunch of the Skyrunner World Series to the US, the US National Series, and Merrell’s plan as title sponsor of these series. See you at Beast in August!

Links

• Coree Woltering on Instagram
• Coree Woltering on Strava