Speaking of stupid moves, here’s another one:

Some asshole sitting at his desk the south of Germany, (yes, that’s where I’m from, that’s why I get to call him an asshole) spends years pouring over GPS files and data to come to the conclusion that Reinhold Meisner (and many other mountaineers) didn’t actually reach the summits of the 8,000 meter peaks they climbed. So far so good. These climbers climbed before modern equipment and under crazy conditions, this could happen. But The Guinness Book of World Records picks up this and just attempts to change history on the fly.

Jack Stern for Outside has the full story:

Now, 38 years later, Messner has been stripped of his historic accolade. On September 26, the Guinness Book of World Records announced that it no longer recognized Messner as the first to climb all 14 8000ers. The company had followed the advice of German mountaineering consultant Eberhard Jurgalski, who has used GPS data and photographic records to argue that many mountaineers—including Messner—stopped short of reaching the actual highest points on some of these peaks. Jurgalski has been the leading chronicler of 8,000ers since he began work on the subject in 1981, but has never climbed any of the peaks himself. In 2022, his revised list discounted a number of mountaineers’ ascents, including Messner’s, and sent shockwaves through the high-altitude climbing community.

Many of the biggest voices in mountaineering, including Ed Viesturs have responded:

I truly believe that Reinhold Messner was the first person to climb all 14 8000ers and should still be recognized as having done so. He lead the way, not only in style, but also physically and psychologically, by climbing without supplemental oxygen. Other climbers, such as me, were able to follow in his footsteps by his inspiration. The original list of the 14 8000 meter peak climbers, as I always knew it, is still what I look to as truthful. I believe that Messner and the others did their utmost to climb these peaks to the true summits, to the best of thier abilities, given the conditions when they were there. I don’t think any of these climbers meant to be dishonest. Climbing mountains is a personal journey, and should not be about being on a list or setting records.

This is not some weird gatekeeping of the patriarchy and Jurgalski some kind of hero of the modern ‘woke movement’. This is a pea counter trying to get his 15 minutes of fame. And it’s bullshit and I’m glad everyone recognizes it. Everyone, except the Guinness Book of World Records, apparently.

This is such a fucked up story and I can’t even comprehend what and how and why this happened:

A police investigation has been launched into the felling of one of the most photographed trees in the UK, the Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland, which was found cut down on Thursday morning.

They’ve made an initial arrest, but I won’t like to that article until we learn more.

Just look at these pictures and weep.

Amanda Furrer for Runner’s World:

Altra has released its first non-zero-drop model. Though the AltraFWD Experience is spec’d at just 4mm—that’s little more than the width of two stacked nickels—it marks a significant shift for the company.

I mean… yeah. This inevitable move is what we’ve all been waiting for for years, right?

“This is something that I’ve heard for almost 12 years since launching the brand: ‘Oh, I think it’s a really cool concept. I just can’t do zero drop.’ We’ve heard that forever,” said Brian Beckstead, who co-founded Altra with Golden Harper. “We’ve taken our time, we’ve done our research. I feel like we’ve really nailed it.”

Marketing translation: “Please try our shoes again, we’ve almost disappeared into obscurity.”

“You’re never going to see a Torin 4mm,” Beckstead said. “We’re very dedicated to keeping the AltraFWD Experience as its own silo.”

Marketing translation: “If this takes off, all bets are off, just wait.”

Albert Jorquera for Runedia (and translated into English with the Safari autotranslate tool):

The UTMB group announced today, Wednesday, that the Transvulcania ceases to be part of the UTMB World Series and, therefore, to carry the nickname ‘by UTMB’. Both parties signed a concession in 2022 for two years, extendable for two more, according to which UTMB Iberia managed a good part of the race and it became part of the world circuit. At the time, the decision of the previous government team of the Cabildo de La Palma (which has changed in June 2023) had the opposition of certain popular sectors of the island, while UTMB also had to adapt part of its policy in Spain, that of prioritizing the creation of events themselves, instead of managing concessions. 

This is obviously huge blockbuster news. After months of relentless growth and acquisition we see the first race drop out of the World Series, and a well-known race with big history, that is. One of their achilles heels for UTMB/Ironman (and something I mentioned in my conversation with UTMB CEO Frederic Lenard) is that this ‘corporate expansion’ sits on very thin footing when land owners/permit agencies/volunteers can just stop showing up and stop giving in to this relentless growth.

I wonder how many of these contracts that have been written by UTMB to ‘purchase and takeover’ these races essentially hold a ‘withdrawal option’ where the race organizer can pull back, drop the ‘by UTMB’ marketing and continue their event. Of course, what UTMB sells beyond prestige (stones, index, access to race in Chamonix) can’t be replicated and there is a chance for a big drop in participation, but if the race was successful before (by whatever ways measured) it’s might be possible to continue in that fashion on its own.

The media and (influencers with opinions) will have a feast with this news, cheering on the stumble of the giant, but I actually think this shows how precarious the position is UTMB is in. A lot of their marketing flex is skin-deep, many of these partnerships can cease at a moments notice, and this ‘giant tentacle of a World Series’ is more fluid and races will join and drop out in the coming years. This might just be a really good thing for our sport overall.

The Electric Cable Car UTMB World Series Events Calendar is updated to reflect this news.

Charles E. Ramirez for The Detroit News:

Pittsburgh-based Dick’s Sporting Goods said it is closing most Moosejaw stores but will continue to sell outdoor sporting equipment through its Moosejaw.com website. The three brick-and-mortar Moosejaw stores that will remain open are located in Birmingham in Oakland County, Salt Lake City and Bentonville, Arkansas, the company said.

…

The move comes about seven months after DICK’S announced it was acquiring Moosejaw from Walmart.

Walmart bought Moosejaw in 2017 for $51 million.

The story is always the same: Big corp buys smaller corp, closes it down. Online store continues to operate while SEO is still valid for a couple more years while shipping will be consolidated from one warehouse. It’s a shame really, outdoor gear is trendy and the industry is growing right now and these ‘giants of industry’ can’t figure out how to operate local retail stores.

Is happening again this weekend. I reported on this new ‘trail experience’ last year already, but I wanted to share it one more time not just because the photos of the event shared on Instagram look amazing but also because most of the marketing is done in the native French and thus it flies a bit under the radar to us based in the US. The event created and hosted by Carline and François D’Haene feels like a perfect antidote to the craziness of the big mountain UTMB festivities in Chamonix a couple weeks prior and just a couple valleys over.

Jake Stern for Outside:

On September 20, Chris Warner scraped the ceiling of the Earth for the fifth time this season, summiting Manaslu (26,781 feet), the eighth highest mountain in the world. The 58-year-old is now the second American to summit all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, after renowned mountaineer Ed Viesturs completed the list in 2005.

With all the talk about the overcrowding in the Himalayas I am sort of surprised that Chris is only the second American to have climbed all 8,000 meter peaks.

Miles Klee reporting for RollingStone:

A Team of researchers have crunched the numbers to explain why you don’t see people hawking ugly cartoon apes on the internet as much anymore: NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, once vaunted as a revolution in crypto and digital art, are largely worthless.

Oooof… what do you reckon how much did Outside lose on their “Outside.io – The Creator Marketplace“?

Also: Big surprise!

Today UTMB announced a new event in South America: Quito Trail in Ecuador. Based on the press release this seems to be a newly created event, not an event taken over by the Ironman/UTMB Group. Quito Trail is the first UTMB event for the country of Ecuador and the fourth event in Latin America. UTMB promotes this event to be hosted in or close to a UNESCO world heritage site which makes me curious if this is one of their strategies in finding locations for races or if this is just marketing filler language.

Another thing to note is that very few of the newly added or created events on the calendar are offering the full 100 mile option. Many events longest distance is around 100K.

The ECC UTMB Events Calendar is updated to reflect this new addition to the 2024 calendar. To be honest when I set out publish this calendar I had no idea how many changes and constant updates I would have to make. It’s kind of fun to watch the calendar grow and evolve and keep close tabs on when and how new events are being announced. When you scroll down on the calendar page you can see the full change log with details of what was added/changed and when.

Two interesting developments on the UTMB race calendar for 2024:

• Mount Yun the newly announced UTMB race in China received a 2023 race date with just a few days before the actual event. The UTMB website initially listed a 2024 date but all of a sudden a 2023 date appeared: Oct 20-23, which is already next month… so it seems the races had been advertised and the event had been operational, but the partnership with UTMB wasn’t 100% a sure thing for 2023 and they were about to pull it together last minute.
• Transvulcania, the popular race with a long history pre-UTMB on the islands of La Palma off the coast of Spain is one of the few events where still no date for 2024 is announced. The other events are: Amazean Jungle in Thailand, Ultra-Trail Ninghai in China and Restonica Trail in France. I don’t know much about these other races but Transvulcania clearly has a long history and the 2024 date should’ve been announced by now. But what has happened instead is that the race has now completely disappeared of the UTMB map and calendar. I still have the event listed on the ECC UTMB calendar because the domain is still active but I am very curious if this is just a ‘glitch’ on the website of if there’s something else going on.

Updated: New feature length film dropped on Youtube this weekend:

Courtney Dauwalter, Mathieu Blanchard, Emelie Forsberg, Jonathan Albon, Toni Mccann, Allie Mcclaughin Follow these 6 athletes from their training ground at home until the finish line of the first UTMB World Series Finals in Chamonix. Live on Saturday 16th at 2pm.

Their media team is on fire.

A couple thoughts on the film:

• They picked a great variety of athletes. Yes, they are all top runners and they could’ve picked one or two mid-packers to really expand the story line, but I thought overall it was engaging and fun.
• I wish they would’ve translated Mathieu Blanchard’s section into English (just with subtitles would’ve been fine). The rest of the film is English and it did Mathieu’s segment a disservice not being able to understand what he said.
• I very much appreciated the variety of brands featured. Over the last few months I’ve grown a bit weary with HOKA being a bit too close to UTMB almost giving the impression they are taking over everything UTMB related.

iRunFar posts a in-depth video summary (pivot to video!) of the Apple Watch Ultra and comes to the same conclusion as what I’ve been thinking too: The watch is surprisingly great for shorter weekday runs, when the possible notification from a family member can be easily be responded to right on the watch, but the overall system and different way of thinking about how an activity is tracked and recorded doesn’t instill the same confidence then using a dedicated sports watch.

And of course, the battery still doesn’t last long enough for full ‘ultra races’. But, maybe that’s just ‘range anxiety‘.

Here are all the important dates you need to keep in mind if you want to race one of the UTMB races in Chamonix, France this coming summer:

The UTMB Mont-Blanc Finals will be from August 26th to September 1st 2024.

• Registration for OCC, CCC, UTMB will take place in two stages that will include a pre-registration phase followed by a lottery draw.
• Registration for TDS, MCC, ETC, YCC, PTL will open in December on a first-come, first-served basis.

Below are all the dates to write in your calendar and set yourself a reminder for.

If you want to run OCC, CCC, UTMB:

• 30 November 2023: Charity Bibs registration opens
• 14 December 2023 – 11 January 2024: Pre-registration window
• 16 January 2024: UTMB, CCC and OCC lottery draw
• 29 January 2024: Final date for runners to confirm registration for lottery winners

Following the 29th there will be a second lottery round if runners don’t confirm their registration.

If you want to run TDS, MCC, ETC, YCC:

• 14 December 2023: Registration opens.

Registration stays open until capacity is reached on each of the races.

If you want to run PTL:

• 14 December 2023 – 11 January 2024: Registration window for PTL
• 16 January 2024: PTL team selections are announced

Remember: To run one of the Finals races (OCC, CCC, UTMB) you need to have collected at least one stone in the past 24 month and have a valid index. Need more info? Right this way.

Hardrock 100 launches new podcast:

Hardtalk is a platform where we can tell the stories about Hardrockers, volunteers, the Silverton community and the History of Hardrock! Please join us as we bring on a variety of guests to discuss their time at Hardrock, or their involvement with Hardrock.

Smart idea.

Singletrack – Episode 285:

Katharina Hartmuth is the incredible 2nd place finisher of the 2023 UTMB women’s race and runs for Hoka. She’s joining me on Singletrack from beautiful Zürich, Switzerland where the German is studying earth sciences with emphasis on atmospheric and climate science at ETH Zürich. We talk about the importance of balancing the pro athlete life with the real world and her approach to training as a self-coached athlete. She sees joy as the key to her success and hopes that our trail running community will always stay as welcoming and accessible as it is today.

LINKS

• Katharina Hartmuth on Instagram
• Katharina Hartmuth on Strava
• Katharina Hartmuth on UTMB
• Cover photo by Peignée Verticale

As the 2023 season is slowly winding down UTMB is beginning to backfill and confirm dates for their 2024 season. Here are the newly announced dates for the coming year:

• Ultra-Trail Australia, Australia – May 16-19
• KAT100, Austria – August 1-3
• Mount Yun, China – September 28-29

I updated the ECC UTMB World Series events calendar with the new dates.

SheRaces confirms on Instagram new updates to UTMB’s policies and procedures focusing on their commitments for women.

Starting in 2024 for all of their global races UTMB will provide the following:

• Female only toilets (and more of them, with easier access)
• Period products on races 50km+
• Female changing rooms where there is a drop bag
• Inclusive, less intimidating language to promote races
• More female representation on media coverage and presentations
• Showcasing stories of both elite and regular women racing
• Adjusting the performance index so female elite athletes are compared fairly with men (our money is on @courtneydauwalter being top overall!!)

Can’t wait to see how they adjust the performance index. This will be a crucial piece in creating better visibility for women at the top.

If you’re slowly thinking about planning our your 2024 race calendar and are planning the slow climb to the Western States starting line you should take a peak at the qualifying races you want to consider running to get your name into the lottery.

From CNN:

The company’s research shows “about 30 million consumers today are not reaching for enhanced water at all,” according to Michael Del Pozzo, president of Gatorade. “Most cases, it’s because it’s not a brand that they know and trust.”

Yeah, that’s it… if it’ll be a brand they trust, folks totally would buy into the bullshit that is ‘enhanced water’.

Dr. Leana Wen, a George Washington University public health professor and CNN medical analyst, said that “there are many claims about the supposed health benefits of electrolyte-infused and alkaline water, but very little scientific evidence.”

Or maybe that’s the reason why people don’t buy this overpriced bullshit?

Part of the marketing challenge ahead of its launch is building and marketing the brand with “credibility so people understand ‘Why would i potentially pay more than it would for a base water?

But nothing a corporate marketing executive can’t solve. Throw millions in advertising dollars at this by flat out lying about the benefits for a few years, ‘enhance it’ with a few celebrity endorsements and make billions in the process. Rinse, repeat and move on to the next fad.

Singletrack – Episode 284:

Samuel Hartman lives and trains in his very flat Ohio but fulfilled his dream to finally race TDS this past week. As a race director himself he shares his observations on being part of the world’s largest trail race spectacle. We talk about vacationing in Europe and conquering the ‘more difficult’ UTMB race. After having followed UTMB from afar all last week his report directly from the ground is exactly what was need to keep the fire burning. 

LINKS

• Samuel Hartman on Instagram
• TINAR Race Series on Instagram
• TINAR Race Series
• The Rise of the Ultra Runners: A Journey to the Edge of Human Endurance by Adharanand Finn