By Mathias Eichler
The Skyrunner World Series is back in the USA!
Join us at Beast of Big Creek and race Mount Ellinor with us.
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.
Cape {town} Etc reports*:
In a shocking incident that has sent chills through the running, hiking, and cycling communities, a runner was reportedly stabbed by three male suspects in the Deadman’s Tree area, close to Tafelberg Road on Wednesday morning.
There have been several of these incidents in recent memories, famously in 2023 when Tom Evans was mugged during a training run, which led him to abandon his plans to race Ultra-Trail Cape Town.
I want to point out a couple of things here:
*I initially was going to link to the article in Canadian Running which was the link first shared with me by a friend of mine, but the headline in that article is completely wrong: “Runner stabbed on UTMB Cape Town course raises alarm in trail community” And further:
Table Mountain is one of the signature sections of Ultra-Trail Cape Town (UTCT), part of the UTMB race series.
Hello Hayden, West, writer for Canadian Running, two minutes of research could’ve told you that this is incorrect. UTCT is part of the World Trail Majors. The UTMB World Series does have an event in South Africa, but it’s the Mountain Ultra Trail further up the coast in George along the Garden Route. While I get that adding UTMB to the headline makes the article sound more juicy – and might get more clicks – it’s also false.
New hydration vest from NNormal – cause everyone’s gotta do a vest now, which I don’t necessarily mind – diversity and competition breeds innovation – so one hopes.
And this one promises to be innovative. Modular by design – allowing you to attach more capacity in the back for longer days. So, rather than having to buy two vests, one for shorter outings where one carries most of their essentials just in the front, and a larger ones for bigger adventures requiring additional gear and nutrition in the back – NNormal’s Modular Trail Vest promises to do it all. So far, so good.
But the question I have from looking at it – and I haven’t had a chance to test it out myself – is this: If the same attachment system is used to add more storage or the quiver for poles doesn’t this sort of defeating the main use case on where folks would use such a vest? I would use my poles especially on longer outings where I’d need the additional storage. On shorter ones I rarely take my poles. So here’s a vest that allows you to go either (A) light, (B) light with poles, or (C) heavier with the additional pack, but then you can’t attach the pole quiver. So now I’m stuck still needing to buy a bigger vest for UTMB type race days. Seems like a bummer.
Update: I received some information from reader Federico who found a YouTube video back from TRE of last year where the vest was originally announced. There the rep showing the product suggests that the vest allows for both the added storage and the quiver to be attached at the same time. But the video doesn’t show this in action. So I will leave my comment up until I get confirmation on how this is supposed to work/what this looks like.
I was going to add this just as a postscript to my post about Tudor announcing their partnership with UTMB and I realized it deserved its own entry. Mile & Stone should be commended – and I am doing it here and now – for coving the trail running scene from the NOT North American side. Their newsletter – and it was clutch to publish it in English to attract a global audience – flies into the face of the notion that all important trail media comes from and the US and with a American bias. There’s no other newsletter that has the lock on brand and business announcements like Mile & Stone. Their newsletter for me (published every two weeks I believe) is a must-read and always offers a great mix of athlete interviews paired with “the business side of the sport”. It’s probably also telling that a French publication would focus on the business side of the sport indicating that Europe is still the place where the business of trail is happening.
Speaking of watches. Hardrock just announced their renewed partnership with Suunto, which makes me realize that over the past few years Suunto hasn’t just shipped really great products but also seems to have finally found their footing in the marketing space. Back in dark days of Suunto (remember the Strava sync fiasco… and all the other issues?) Coros as a newcomer seemed to be running away with the game, sponsoring all the athletes and showing up as race sponsors. Coros might still have Kilian but Suunto is back and now sponsoring the UTMB World Series, Western States and Hardrock.
A sponsorship of Beast of Big Creek is still missing, but who’s counting.
What I hinted at in my report from TrailCon coverage turned out correct: Tudor is officially partnering with the UTMB World Series. From the official announcement:
The HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc, one of the most iconic trail race in the world, is possibly also the most attractive race on the calendar, and racing there isn’t easy. It’s a 106-mile race around the Mont Blanc massif that serves as the capstone of the UTMB World Series circuit. A race that is an exercise in both beauty and pain, but most importantly—daringness. And that’s exactly why TUDOR is now an official partner of the UTMB World Series.
Here was my take:
Given that she was in town alongside the UTMB crew – which could’ve been a happy coincidence – I would wager that Tudor is planning a marketing push in the lead up to the UTMB Finals in Chamonix.
This announcement goes event one step further – it includes the full World Series and not just the Finals in Chamonix. Tudor’s all in, I say.
First reported by Mile & Stone in their newsletter.
If that’s your thing you can now pick your top runners for Rock Candy’s upcoming ‘Beast of Big Creek‘ Skyrace.
Thanks Travis for including the race.
Bonus: Whoever wins the draw Rock Candy will give a free entry to next year’s race!
The race is iconic and the swag is impressive. My friend ran Western States this year and got ‘loaded’ up with sponsors swag. Already during the check-in he walked out with so much stuff… I wondered if he even still needed to run the race.
Here’s the full list for the 2026 edition of what runners walk away from running, and finishing Western States – aside from the priceless memories, of course.
The brands having the honor to sponsor this historic event clearly are excited to step up to add real value and not just tchotchkes you leave in the hotel room before heading to the airport.
Side note: Linking here to the sponsor page, because why not. They deserve it.
A few interesting new pieces for your gear collection, HydraPak now sells a ‘scoop and funnel‘ system. This will end the early morning frustration spilling powder into tiny flask holes! HydraPak also added a variety of other ‘containers‘ (almost like mini drybags) that allow you to carry pre-portioned food and pre-mixed gels in reusable containers.
This is all very smart.
Staff report from the Grand Junction’s Daily Sentinel:
The Gold Mountain Fire burning northeast of Ouray has been measured at 26,405 acres as of Sunday morning, according to an update from the incident management team.
The fire is at 0% containment.
The Ouray 100 race just announced its cancellation for 2026 (Race days were 17-19 July):
After careful consideration, internal discussion, and consultation with local agencies, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the 2026 Ouray 100.
We know how much you have invested in this race. Months of training, travel plans and costs, time away from families, and the excitement of running in these mountains. So please know this decision was not made lightly.
Canceling a race people were looking forward to, have trained for, and paid entry fee (and travel) is never an easy decision, but with such a large fire in the area there’s really no other option. What RD wants to be responsible for possibly having to evacuate runners and volunteers from remote trails, and possibly having to rely on local emergency services for help with this.
Hardrock 100 (Race days are 10 -12 July) is currently monitoring the situation closely (update directly from their homepage):
Hardrock is actively and closely monitoring the smoke and wildfire situation in South-West Colorado and the surrounding states.
…
This is a dynamic situation so please keep an eye on our social media and website for any run updates that may occur. Hardrock always prioritizes our runners, volunteers, spectators and local communities.
Silverton, and the rest of the Hardrock course are currently not directly affected, but smoke is in the area and some trail work parties ahead of the run had to be cancelled.
Leadville 100 (Races are mid August, includes bike and run events), the other big Colorado 100 M race happening this summer is dealing with its own fire (update also taken from its homepage):
We are closely monitoring the Willow Fire and working with local officials. The situation is actively evolving, and we will share any updates as soon as we have more information.
High Lonesome 100 (Race Days are 17-18 July) hasn’t made any public announcement yet.
Last year I had to cancel my biggest and most important event due to a nearby fire. Financially my business took a huge hit. For everyone involved this sucks tremendously. The increase in these large fires is a result of rising temperatures on our planet due to climate change. We’ve been talking a lot about the continued growth in our sport – this is its achilles heel. I don’t have a solution, but UltraSignup did add events cancelation protection to their platform a few months ago, which should help with alleviating the pain for runners who are possibly losing out on their entry fees.
Sign up and never miss a story.
Electric Cable Car is a owned by Einmaleins and part of trail. run. film. Productions. ©2026. All Rights Reserved.
