Or maybe it’s round three already, I can’t keep track of this. But yesterday, on the same day Michelino Sunseri had his initial court date (which didn’t go well I am told) the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) filed a lawsuit on behalf of nature and sports photographers and filmmakers Alexander Rienzie and Connor Burkesmith, who had planned on capturing Michelino’s attempt on camera for The North Face (and other sponsors):

Under federal law, the tourist and the reporter are doing nothing wrong. But the documentarian could face heavy fines — even jail time.

That’s why the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression today filed a lawsuit on behalf of nature and sports photographers and filmmakers Alexander Rienzie and Connor Burkesmith. FIRE’s suit aims to overturn the National Park Service’s onerous, arbitrary, and unconstitutional permit-and-fee scheme that charges Americans for the right to film in public spaces.

You can read the full lawsuit in all its legalize here. I did, it’s surprisingly readable, very informative, and yet, I still have tons more questions than answers.

Today, December 19th is the first day for runners to register for the UTMB Finals in Chamonix for 2025. The servers processing the pre-registration for the lottery for UTMB, CCC, OCC, and other events during the week completely melted down:

This year again, even more of you are eager to participate in our events, and we are deeply moved by your support. Due to this overwhelming excitement, our websites experienced technical issues during the opening of registrations today at 11 a.m.

UTMB made some adjustments, staggered the times for registration for the various events:

Pre-registrations for the UTMB World Series Finals will reopen tomorrow (20.12) at 11 a.m. (CET). We remind you that you have until January 9 to finalize your pre-registration, with equal chances whether you register on the first or the last day.

• Registrations for the TDS will reopen today at 2 p.m.
• Registrations for the MCC open at 3:00 PM. We remind you that the registration priority is 24 hours reserved for residents of the 21 municipalities organizing the HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc. Tomorrow at 3:00 PM, it will open for residents of neighboring regions: Valais, Aosta Valley, Savoie, and Haute-Savoie.
• Registrations for the ETC and YCC will reopen today at 4 p.m.

I bet these last few hours of what was supposed to be the first hours UTMB registration were quite stressful at the UTMB headquarters in Chamonix/Annecy. But this happens to the best, some even allow this to happen as a marketing strategy – hello Nintendo, Meta.

Tomorrow is another day, and then there’s another… you got until January 9th to put your running stones to good use. Pre-registering early doesn’t get you higher up in the lottery.

Post race email just went out to all participants. But I wanted to add a couple things here:

Saturnalia is a small community event, a 10K starting at a middle school track and running along the trails of Squaxin Park in Olympia. We had a total of 63 finishers this year, the third year we’ve been doing the race.

• Women: 36 (57%)
• Men: 26 (41%)
• Nonbinary: 1 (2%)

Making trail running accessible to all is a huge focus and passion of Rock Candy Running, and I think we deliver here.

PS: This year for the first time we fully utilized the gym at the school… the weather was nasty with wind gusts up to 45mph. Having a finisher arch inside felt a bit weird at first… but man, let me tell you my volunteers were happy about this setup.

Check out of photos of the event by the amazing Cayman Waughtel.

After her massive FKT on the Appalachian trail Tara Dower re-ups her contract with Altra. Abby Levene, for ‘Run Powered by Outside’ shares the news:

Tara Dower, the ultrarunning champion who broke the overall record on the Appalachian Trail this September, has re-signed with her shoe sponsor, Altra. The multi-year sponsorship will allow the 31-year-old from Virginia Beach to focus full-time on running.

Well deserved, I’d say.

Aside from the headline (Tara Dower Signs Record-Breaking Deal with Altra) that leaves more questions than answers a couple things, highlighted in this paragraph confuse me:

Like most running sponsorship contracts, Dower’s comes with a confidentiality agreement. Abetted by her agent Kelly Newlon, it’s believed Dower negotiated a contract between $100,000 and $250,000 per year. It could be up to a double-digit-fold increase from her contract this year as a first-year member of Altra’s elite athlete team, and it could be one of the biggest in ultrarunning history. 

The rest of the article reads like a press release from Altra, which is fine and understandable for such a big announcement, but if Altra wants to keep the contract details under NDA, why throw out numbers that are such a wide spread that they confuse more than tell the story they are trying to share.

If it’s indeed record-breaking can you really pin this on such shaky ground as: “could be one of the biggest in ultrarunning history”?

Not even the duration of the contract is shared in the article.

If a global corporation would hire an employee full-time for these tasks:

From product development to racing, marketing campaigns to diversifying the sport, both McLaren and Gould underscored the astronomical impact they believe Dower will bring to the brand.

What would the annual salary be?

Not trying to dump on this, clearly this is a big win for Tara. It shows that having an agent on your side is helpful, and clearly this is great news for the top athletes in our sport. I just don’t know if this framing does for Altra what they hoped it would do. Claiming a record calls for comparisons. If a record can’t be proven, it’s better not to call it one?

From the announcement by Editor-in-Chief Tiffany Montgomery:

The new site merges Shop Eat Surf and the Daily by Outdoor Retailer to provide coverage of leading brands and retailers in the outdoor, surf, snow, swim, active, and lifestyle spaces. 

What a name for a publication… I mean, this site is called ‘Electric Cable Car’, so maybe I’m not one to speak, but just shoving the word ‘outdoor’ into the existing name seems… a bit too obvious?

More on the focus of the new publication:

The stories will be a mix of free and paywalled articles, which you can access as part of our Executive Edition membership. As always, in addition to producing journalism about business strategies and trends, we’ll also profile the personalities and decision-makers at heritage and emerging brands alike.

So it’s a consolidation with a paywall play. Seems reasonable for 2024/5 – everyone’s doing it, especially in the B2B world.

What I do have to commend them for is that all the old ‘The Daily’ links still resolve and are auto-directed to the new URL. None of my links from ECC to ‘The Daily’ are breaking… good! The open web thanks you.

Announced via Instagram by previous race director Brian Morrison (yes that Brian): the Teanaway Country 100, one of the hardest 100 milers in the US (according to Brian himself) is changing ownership and is now being directed by Washington State’s foremost racing company: ‘Rainshadow Running‘.

Teanaway Country has had a short but rough life so far with severe weather, fire danger and lots of disruption in the early days of the race.

Rainshadow Running is one of the PNW ‘OG’ racing organizations, owning lots/most of the classic Washington State trail races. During the pandemic Rainshadow sold/gave up their Oregon events, including the much loved Oregon Coast and popular Gorge Waterfall races (now owned and operated jointly by Daybreak Racing and Freetrail). In 2024 they started expanding again, adding several new events and announced several new ones for 2025.

This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review.
This was June 2024 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.

June is Western States Month. And what started as a single race increasingly includes the Broken Arrow Skryrace as these two race organizations are fusing their events together (Jim Walmsley loves racing the Broken Arrow VK ahead of Western States – what a fun double. This year there’s ‘The Taste of Trailcon’ that gives us a hint at the glue that brings these two events closer together = more activities in Olympic Valley. What will be interesting to watch is how Hoka, which re-upped their sponsorship if Western States and Salomon which is all-in on Broken Arrow will play the handoff midweek, probably sometime on a Freetrail podium.

And while in the US, on that fabled last weekend of June everyone celebrates Statesmas and 375 lucky ones get to run it, in the Alps a combined over 18,000 runners compete at the Lavaredo Ultra Trail in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, at Marathon Mont-Blanc in Chamonix, France, and at Kaiserkrone Trail in Scheffau, Austria.

This year I sit on the couch during that weekend and I’m taking in all the media and reporting on all the events. I write:

No sporting event solves political problems or cures small-mindedness over night. But what sporting events offer us is a shared experience in a peaceful gathering. These moments can give us hope. They create a break in our daily worrying and struggle. Yes, I may ask a lot, maybe too much of these events. After all they are still managed by corrupt leaders and corporation use them to sport wash their image while destroying the planet. But dammit, we, as people, living on that fucked up planet need a fucking break. We need a breather. You know when you for yourself decide that you had a long week/month/season and all you want to do is watch some shitty TV and eat a pint of ice cream? Or when you know you shouldn’t spend frivolously but you had a rough day and then you buy yourself a new book? When you give yourself a break, a little treat? That’s what these events feel like. We, as people of this earth, as fans, as societies, as communities, we get a little break. These sporting events are our little treat.

In 2025 I’ll be in Cortina d’Ampezzo racing Lavaredo – finally, my dream race!

June is also Electric Cable Car’s birthday month and for the second anniversary I announce the following:

ECC started off as a companion to Singletrack, my podcast. I’m working on reversing the order of priorities. There are SO. MANY. PODCASTS out there. There are very few blogs. Singletrack will remain, but the frequency, and focus will change bit.

Since this statement everyone started their newsletter/blog and is writing now. This is great and I get to link to their content – keep it up everyone!

And fine, I’ll mention Spring one more time… this month, all the big races are dropping them as nutrition supplier and sponsor, Spring finally makes an official announcement and they relaunch the re-tooled Awesome Sauce. Is anyone still using it? Is it still awesome?

The Women’s Trail Running Fund launches their quite brilliant campaign ‘Here for the Women’s Race’ with a simple shirt and a powerful message. All the cool kids in Olympic Valley and later in the summer in Chamonix are wearing the shirt. When I report on it I quote:

The shirt is currently only available in Olympic Valley, but an online ordering system is being setup.

Well, I’m here to share the new website and online shop is now live. And we picked up a shirt in Chamonix during UTMB week.

This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the June edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE:RUN.

As you can imagine news like this excites me: The steepest cable car in the world is about to begin operation in – wherelse – Switzerland. The Schilthornbahn on Piz Gloria takes passengers from Stechelberg (near the Eiger in the Kanton Bern) to toe summit of Piz Gloria. You ask yourself now where you remember this name? Yes, you remember correctly. It’s from James Bond, of course. ‘On her Majesty’s Secret Service’ the only, and slightly odd, but equally amazing Bond with George Lazenby featured the summit restaurant and lodge prominently.

There’s a lot of masculine postering and unbecoming bravado still going around in our world today, but I’m glad that in this type of engineering we can now break records and announce superlatives without us having to immediately think of the Hindenburg or the Titanic. And this also isn’t just an announcement of a pipe dream to juice the stock of an electric carmaker, but it’s actually in operation now. Figure that.

Via Salomon news release:

We are thrilled to share that trail running legend Courtney Dauwalter has extended her partnership with Salomon for another 5 years!

There were rumors floating around that Nike might be interested in signing Courtney… but really… was that ever going to happen?

Courtney quoted in the news release:

“…I’m so thankful that what we started 7 years ago is still rolling and growing. Excited to continue this party, stay tuned for some cool stuff we’re working on together. Shortneys and beyond!”

So well deserved!

The article also mentions Courtney’s schedule for 2025:

• Cocodona 250 in May
• Lavaredo 120K in June
• UTMB® in August 

Super exciting to be toeing the line with Courtney at Lavaredo this coming June.

The Guardian handing out the Anti-Sports Personality of the Year awards 2024:

Trishul Cherns, the president of the Global Organisation of Multi-day Marathoners, told Canadian Running magazine: “In my 46 years of ultrarunning I’ve never seen anyone as talented as Camille, who is so dedicated to creating division and animosity within the ultrarunning community.”

Others included on that list are the Canadian Women’s Soccer National Team with their ‘drone spying incident’ durning the Olympics. What a way for ultra running to be hitting mainstream.

This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review.
This was May 2024 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.

In May, I ran a race, finally. And it was my first ever road marathon: the Capital City Marathon in my hometown Olympia. Here’s what I wrote afterwards:

But overall, compared to probably any other trail race I’ve ever run this race was easy.

This one might’ve been easy but what is certainly not easy is Cocodona. And that is what everyone’s talking about in May. On Singletrack I chatted with the cutoff chasing friend of mine Ben Mead who ran, and finished this beast of a race and while I am still deeply impressed by Ben’s and anyone’s achievement running this super long power-hiking adventures even after this interview I am not sold that this is something I ever want to sign up for. Cocodona can’t really be mentioned without Aravaipa’s Mountain Outpost live-streaming efforts. This event, more than any other on the annual trail running calendar lives off of the livestream. And naturally, folks have thoughts on what this new media brings to our sport.

As I mentioned above (in April’s write up) the ’Spring Saga’ spilled from one month into the next and even in May it doesn’t find its conclusion. In fact there were so many articles I posted I can’t even summarize it all here. But I promised a side show and it arrived in Jason Koop turning to Instagram and taking it upon himself to bully coaches Megan and David Roche (competitors of his in the coaching world). Somehow this saga turn the entire conversation from talking about product trust and integrity and made it about human decency and weird white male behavior. Not sure what the intentions here were, but if I was coached by Koop I’d run. But then again, the “end justifies all means” is one of America’s most favorite mantras, and the results his racers achieve leave little doubt that behind the macho appearance is probably a good coach. But that’s like saying Musk shooting rockets into space somehow excuses his otherwise subhuman behavior.

In eyebrow-raising footwear news, Altra drops a not-zero-drop shoe. Got that? The shoe maker that made us believe you should wear shoes like walking barefoot is now adding a gentle drop to some of their shoes… as if some podiatrists rang the alarm bells.

Tailwind Nutrition makes their previously limited seasonal release Dauwaltermelon a permanent flavor. Aside from it being delicious and it immediately coming one of their most popular flavors this product is also a partnership with their sponsored athlete: Courtney Dauwalter. I don’t have any insight into how this partnership breaks down, but it is, in our sport, still a fairly rare occurrence, that athletes have their name and likeness so closely tied to a product. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Salomon releases a small capsule with Courtney ahead of UTMB week in August and just before the holidays Suunto released a “Courtney watch” – the Suunto Race S titanium with a special “Courtney watch band”. Clearly brand Courtney is a hot commodity.

And another interesting pattern is emerging this year: races and especially UTMB events are running out of water at the aid stations. Is this amateur hour?

This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the June edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE:RUN.

In an official statement from Peter Dering, Founder & CEO Peak Design responds to the wild allegations that have been floating around the social media space after the health insurance CEO’s shooting this week:

Hello Everyone, You may be aware that an Everyday Backpack made by Peak Design was worn during the New York City shooting last week. Some of you have asked what our policies are around customer privacy, so I wanted to lay that out: Peak Design has not provided customer information to the police and would only do so under the order of a subpoena.
…
We take our customer privacy seriously.

Crazy to think that it was necessary for them to publish this response, but hey we live in an era where we’re “just asking questions about live-saving vaccines”. So anything is game, I suppose.

Well well, we’re getting an official announcement, not just one on social media. There’s a news article and it’s paired with a brand new website (which is built on WordPress – for you nerds!) It is a much talked about fact that the Golden Trail Series is “just” a marketing vehicle by Salomon, and as thus one shouldn’t be surprised that Salomon uses the series to well, market their product and therefore select races that are less iconic (one golden?!?!) and more fitting for their regional marketing emphasis. It’s a bummer in some ways, but that series also couldn’t really grow to infinite races, and with new events coming one, some others had to be dropped (Mont Blanc Marathon for example). Salomon also killed the national/regional series races in several regions earlier this month.

What we’re left with is four neat 2-race blocks: 1 in Asia, 1 in Europe, 1 in North America (with a new event in Mexico added rather than (Mammoth Trailfest or the Headlands race) and back to 1 more two event block in Europe. The Final has not been announced yet, like in previous years. Below is the list of races:

• 19^th April: Kobe Trail – 21.3 km/2,109m V+ – Kobe, Japan.
• 26 April: Jinshanling Great Wall Trail Race – 24.2km/1,489m V+ – Chengde City, Hebei Province, China.
• 17^th May: Il Golfo dell Isola Trail – 26km/1,400 m V+ – Noli, Italy.
• 25^th May: Zegama-Aizkorri – 42km/2,736 m V+ – Zegama, Spain.
• 22^nd June: Broken Arrow Skyrace – 21.7 km/1,433 m V+ – Olympic Valley, USA.
• 29^th June: Tepec Trail – 32km/1,800 m V+ – Huasca de Ocampo, Mexico.
• 2^nd August: Salomon Pitz Alpine Glacier Trail – 23.5km/1,700 m V+ – Mandarfen, Pitztal, Austria.
• 9^th August: Sierre-Zinal – 31km/2,200 m V+ – Sierre, Switzerland.
• From 9^th to 12^th October: Grand Final. The race details will be announced at a later date.

I mentioned that Headlands race that was just introduced last year but it’s already killed again – the website is expired. This is one of the less-talked about realities of aligning your race with one of the big series, or promoters. They come, and they go. You as race director need to see how you can support this potentially temporary influx of attention and deal with the aftermath when the circus moves on.

I appreciate Salomon’s strategy from a sustainability point of view. Pairing two events in the same region close together minimizes travel, for GTS staff and racers. But it poses regional challenges. Big prominent races want to be spread out on the calendar, not on back to back weekends. Broken Arrow and Mammoth are on opposite sides of the summer. Broken Arrow is so big now that no other race director would want to put a race on the calendar in the same region just a week prior. Especially not when partnering with a series of this caliber could mean that from one year to the next the strategy shifts and your race isn’t part of their plans anymore.

Aravaipa Running just posted an episode of Laps & Legends with Scott Traer and Callie Vinson interviewing Camille Herron. (I’m not quite sure what the difference is between that Youtube channel and the Mountain Outpost one?) This interview seems to be the first media appearance by Camille Herron since the “Wikipedia- gate”. Her X/Twitter account had just been reactivated too apparently, with a post comparing her to Joan of Arc. No link for this as I cancelled my accounts there and anyway was blocked by her. Probably symbolic too that the one social media account reactivated is that at Elon’s cesspool.

I watched the video, and I really don’t know how to feel about all this. 25 minutes of smiles and giggles and “Camille, you’re such a star”. No mention of the epic implosion that happened earlier year. Is this how media is supposed to work? Isn’t this gaslighting? No acknowledgment, or explanation, or god forbid an apology. We’ve seen this play out over and over again with powerful people in business and politics. And the media in its impotence and accessory to it all just lets it happen, over and over again.

We’ve gotten so used to it from the mainstream media, but when this behavior arrives in our little niche of a sport and culture it feels … different?

Maybe I’m wrong on all this. Maybe the role of sports media is to just focus on the athletic performance. Are we just promoters of the achievements on the trails, or track, or wherever it happens. Maybe this sport of ours should just be a judgement free zone. Focused on statistics, numbers, and winners. Maybe we should just let everyone get away with everything and hope that the concept of karma exists, so we can wipe your hands off of responsibility. And maybe we aren’t interested in building culture and lifting up humanity at all. And maybe I’m just tired, very very tired.

Today, over a month after the election in The Daily from Outdoor Retailer Kate Robertson writes:

“In my opinion, this is not a time to be quiet,” Costello said. “This is actually time to get louder and to raise our voice to make folks understand how these policies are impacting not only your companies, but jobs and consumers, sustainability practices, and research design.” 

That quote is attributed to Megan Costello, the vice president of trade and customs policy at Sorini, Samet & Associates, a Washington D.C. lobbying firm hired by the Outdoor Industry Association.

Well, no shit, Sherlock. Glad you used your voice in the lead up to the election to take a stand. Now is not the time, now is too late. Do you think for a second that Trump is going to listen to you? It’s over.

Francesco Puppi on his blog with the plea:

The mission of the Pro Trail Runners Association is to help athletes to share their opinions and be part of shaping the future of our sport and the environment where we practice, as well as the athletes physical and mental health and the fairness and sustainability of the competitions. We want to preserve the rights of athletes, especially in situations related to contracts, injuries, health and media relationships.

If you care about the spear-end of our sport and love watching the best athletes perform year after year you totally should support this cause and donate to help their efforts.

As a side note: Why does the PTRA not have corporate donors yet? I understand that the PTRA might want to stay non-biased, but I would bet that these business with their billion dollar budgets would want to support these efforts and want to see these athletes thrive? And the PTRA could use the funds. There’s been a lot of talk over the past weeks about contract negotiations and compensations for athletes. There are other ways business with the deep pockets can support the “athlete landscape” overall without just signing individuals directly. See also my previous comment about the AAC Grant for trail runners. What we don’t have yet in our sport are “elders” – individuals who have made it, are retired with cash to burn and use it to fund and secure the culture of our sport. These folks would underwrite efforts like this and give direction through their presence. We need a few more years of growth of this to happen.

From a report in Catalan News:

The recipients of this year’s Creu de Sant Jordi (Saint George’s Cross), one of Catalonia’s most prestigious honors, were announced on Tuesday.

Among the 20 individuals recognized are FC Barcelona footballer Aitana Bonmatí and renowned long-distance trail runner Kilian Jornet.

Well deserved, I would say.

Every year the American Alpine Club offers grants to climbers for various projects “outside the scope of traditional sponsorship funding”:

The AAC has a storied legacy of funding climbing, conservation, and research projects in support of our mission. Through the years, AAC grants have been responsible for encouraging thousands of climbers to dream big and push their limits; for establishing hundreds of cutting-edge new routes of remote and major peaks around the world; for improving infrastructure at climbing areas across the country; and funding scientific research expeditions that have contributed valuable information to our understanding of the worlds mountain ecosystems.

What would this look like for trail running? And for that matter, what would an American Alpine Club for trail running look like?

And the announcement is behind a paywall.

Fantastic strategy guys, keep it up!

It’s been awhile that we’ve talked about the World Trail Majors on here. This week the group announced a new addition to their roster of races with the Grampians Peaks Trail 100 Miler:

We’re delighted to announce the inclusion of the Grampians Peaks Trail 100 Miler in the 2025 circuit. This 162 km point-to-point race traverses the rugged Grampians/Gariwerd National Park, offering technical terrain, 7,700m+ of elevation gain, and views that will leave you breathless. From the welcoming local communities to the unique Australian wildlife, this event is a must for trail runners seeking adventure.

This takes the group of races to eleven around the world.