By Mathias Eichler
Sponsor:
The Trail Running Film Festival presented by Brooks -
Back on Tour for 2025.
The Trail Running Film Festival presented by Brooks -
Back on Tour for 2025.
The Mountain Outpost team shares some fun numbers for their livestream for the Black Canyon Races on Instagram:
At the peak 4,556 people concurrently watch the stream for the 100K. And combined between the two events the team broadcasted live for over 27hrs.
I really like this snapshot they posted. It also gives the commentators and field reporters credit, which is very cool.
A thought I had a couple of days ago: Is there any alternative to Starlink products for these type of remote high bandwidth broadcasts? My guess is no. Especially not in the realm of easily deployable and scalable products. So then, what are Western States and other races which increasingly define themselves by offering a livestream going to do when Musk continues to destroy the country? Just keep using his products?
Many people have considered Spring Energy a company dead in the water after last year’s Awesome Sauce debacle. Well, today I walked into my local REI and guess what I found stocked on the shelves next to the Cliff bars and Tailwind? Springs Energy. Awesome Sauce, Canaberry, Hill Aid, and Speednut, all available for last minute pickup, not just on the REI website, but directly in the stores. Fascinating.
This little nuggets, posted in the Mile and Stone newsletter summarizing and explaining the nosier than usual winter athlete/brand contract window:
On the teams’ side, the winter was marked by a fundamental trend, due in large part to the internationalisation of the discipline and the multiplication of different circuits around the world, namely that the major equipment manufacturers are favouring the development of an international team, rather than maintaining teams by country.
Again, we were sort of made to believe that market forces, possible trade wars, and business challenges were the result of many athletes not getting their contracts renewed, but it turns out it might have been just brands realigning their priorities and beginning to focus on international teams rather than regional or national ones. Fascinating development nonetheless.
Man I don’t care about space travel, especially not the kind sponsored by Bond Villainesque Jeff Bezos, but the accompanying photo of Katy Perry Forbes uses in the article linked here is showing Perry at one of her concerts wearing… get this: a trail running vest and arm sleeves. I have questions, so many questions. But first and foremost: who’s her stylist?
This is amazing on so many levels.
Today the team behind TrailCon, Dylan Bowman, Brendan Madigan, and Douglas Emslie announced their title sponsor for this year’s TrailCon, their industry trail running conference sandwiched between Broken Arrow and Western States. On Running will be using TrailCon as platform to launch a few new products and to get some face time with the American trail running world between Salomon’s Broken Arrow and Hoka’s Western States.
On the Freetrail podcast Dylan announces the partnership with On and few more tidbits about the upcoming event. Here are some quotes (grabbed via the transcription tool in the Apple Podcast app):
David Kilgore from ON:
We are absolutely like so jazzed first and foremost to be partnering with TrailCon and with you guys. Dude, I was there last year and just freaking blown away the whole time. Just the engagement, the type of people it curated, the engagement with athletes brands all across the board.
Doug Emslie, co-founder of TrailCon and entrepreneur in the exhibition industry having sold his prior company for a cool $1 Billion:
You know, for 10 days in Northern California to bring together the trail running community, you know, starting with Broken Arrow, then with TrailCon, and then finishing off with Western States. This will be the premier 10 days in trail running in the world and will be way ahead of what’s going on in Chamonix in August. This is going to be the place to be.
Brandon Madigan, owner of Alpenglow Sports and co-founder of Broken Arrow:
…we’ve made a plea to all of the industry to either come as an exhibitor at a very exciting vendor village that’s public facing, but also to get behind us because we are coming from a place of altruism and the desire to really support the sport that we all, you know, love and make a living in.
Dylan Bowman:
When people are there, we can take advantage of that proximity, bring the community and the industry together to forge positive some outcomes for the sport and in some way collaboratively build the future of this amazing sport together.
Here’s what I wrote when TrailCon was launched last year, which still very much feels spot on:
This couldn’t be placed at a better time and location. When Broken Arrow first launched it was clear that their ambitions were to connect their event, held just a week prior to Western States at the starting location of the race, Olympic Valley. Now, a few years later and Broken Arrow having grown into the US’s foremost, and probably largest trail race event (that’s not a 100miler!) it’s time to take this to the next level. Olympic Valley is no Chamonix, but that’s the trajectory here, clearly. Or as Doug Emslie, the co-founder who brings the conference organization experience to the table, said in the launch video on Freetrail: “the conference is meant to be the Davos for trail running”. Not sure if that is tone deaf or overly ambitious, but I don’t think Davos, aside from being a gathering in a mountain town, conjures up images of being representative of the larger community, or open to community ideas, or accessible to the community at all. Davos is anything but, it’s full of elitist billionaires planning the destruction of the planet. But, I give them that this was a reference to a gathering of importance in a mountain town.
Alright, so we’ve moved on from the comparison of Davos to Chamonix. A bit more relevant, fewer billionaires and politicians and more trail runners and mountain people, I guess. But what still puzzles me is the attempt to build community while competing and one-upping one another. I’m genuinely curious if the Polettis were ever on French media pumping their fist in the air proclaiming that they will outdo Auburn, or Silverton, or Leadville, or Olympic Valley for that matter.
From the Belgian DH News (auto-translated):
Karel Sabbe will be at the start of the UTMB Mont-Blanc at the end of August: “I want to experience this atypical atmosphere”
Has there been another athlete with the abilities to set ultra-long FKTs, succeed at Barkely and also take on an hyper-competitive event like UTMB?
The Trail Running Film Festival’s Official 2025 Selection was just announced a couple of weeks ago. Here are the six incredible films we’ll be touring the globe with:
Check out this year’s trailer, get hyped, and get your tickets for a show near you. We cannot wait to celebrate trail running with y’all.
NOT! anything that I would normally care to post here, but it’s worth pointing out that this announcement comes almost exactly one year after the much heralded Lululemon Further campaign that rocked ultra running for a few days last year in early March. Then the Camille fallout happened and at the end of the year it became clear that Lululemon was shifting strategy letting several sponsorship contracts for trail runners lapse. During that time the story we heard was “shifting priorities and tightening of belts”… the usual stuff. Now we get Vegas Spheres dressed in Lululemon colors and an ambassador contract with one of the biggest stars, and a Formula One driver who has the largest endorsement deals in the business.
I tend to give Outside a lot of grief, but this article about Reel Rock’s film editing controversy in Climbing (by Outside) by Steven Potter is just terrific journalism and writing. It details how a popular high budget climbing film was edited/altered to tell a better story and worth reading in it’s entirety:
… when Lempe and Smith’s footage appears in the climactic summit scene in Jirishanca, a climbing documentary directed and produced by longtime climbing-film legends Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer that premiered in Reel Rock 18 and is now available on Patagonia’s YouTube channel, Berg is nowhere to be seen.
Neither is his rope. Neither are his footprints.
The coincidence had been edited out of the story.
Potter continues diving into the history of climbing documentaries and wonders where the lines are drawn between capturing the story of the climb vs. telling a story that’s engaging for the audience. Climbing films are in many ways several decades ahead of the times compared to trail running ones. Especially after the commercial success of ‘Free Solo’ they have become a different entire breed with many of the top players looking to find the next blockbuster. He calls out several (most) high profile climbers and climbing filmmakers for taking lots of liberty in their story telling and shot selection, flirting with the line between documentary and fiction. His conclusion:
The story just wasn’t about that. Storytelling, both written and documentary, is a process of omission. Essentially, you’re following a thread, but you’re also trying to cast aside unnecessary details. If people want the comprehensive history, they should read the American Alpine Journal.
But who asks for that? Are we really wanting to “just be enchanted and entertained” with these type of films? Or would a real and honest story be just as engaging. And maybe the realness could actually be what the sport needs and society wants?
Posted by Dr. Lucky Tran on Threads:
Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.
An absolute incredible photo for the ages.
Related from the LA Times: ‘Trump administration backtracks on eliminating thousands of national parks employees‘. We’re back at this again, just like last time. They do stupid shit, get called out, reverse course, hurt a tons of people in the process and still claim some sort of win on Fox News. It’s just all so tiresome.
Ultra Running Magazine updates their Old School Ultras race calendar for 2025. Included are a few new additions since they launched their 2024 list last year:
Initially launched with these 10 in 2024:
The newly added races for 2025 are:
Just here with a note to give The North Face Transgrancanaria1, a race part of the World Trail Majors, a big shout out for making the livestream and live tracking easily accessible on their website. This is not easy, event websites serve many purposes and have to switch over quickly from being an information source for registered racers to coverage of the event for spectators. But especially for big events, with pro runners at the starting line and the expectation of spectators tuning in from around the world it’s great to see when there’s someone with the foresight and ability to make the switch on the homepage and link live-streaming, tracking information and other important stuff for fans to quickly connect and see who won and how their favorite runner performed. So many other events still rely on various social media sites as their main way to communicate results and updates while their homepage sits dormant during race weekend and missing all the important links to videos and tracking. Kudos to Transgrancanaria for getting this right.
And speaking of which, if you missed it, rewatch Francesco Puppi and Robertz Lemtukei’s final kilometers as Puppi comes from behind and takes the win on the final turns almost with the finish line already in sight. Start at 3H 49min to watch to get the commentators observations. Amazing moment.
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Jake Goldstein-Street for the Washington State Standard:
About half a dozen employees at each of Washington’s three national parks are believed to have been laid off as part of the Trump administration’s government-wide push to slash staff.
Mount Rainier and North Cascades national parks each saw six employees let go last week, while Olympic National Park lost five, said Bill Wade, the executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers.
The party that self-describes itself championing the blue collar worker fired the only plumber at Mount Rainier National Park. You can’t make this shit up (pun intended), these people are the dumbest and worst people in the world.
Tayte Pollmann pens a great farewell article for ATRA:
In 2025, Mario Mendoza celebrates his final year of competitive running as he prepares to transition into the next phase of his running journey.
Maybe you can see Mario one last time at OCC this coming August.
Zara, the Spanish ‘fast fashion’ label is getting into the carbon plated footwear game. Sounds ridiculous and everyone seems to think so.
Here’s the Running Shoe Guru, just one of the many articles that were posted about this over the last couple of weeks:
When Zara dropped its first-ever carbon plated running shoe last week, the running community didn’t just raise eyebrows – it collectively gasped. The Spanish fast-fashion giant, known for rapidly turning runway trends into affordable streetwear, had just stepped into one of the most technical and hotly contested spaces in performance athletics.
There’s a lot that can be said about how fashion and performance are currently colliding. But I want to offer a slightly different take, that is just that, a take. I have no insight on this, it’s pure speculation.
Zara is a Spanish fashion retailer and so is Camper, the shoe maker that is partnering with Kilian on their NNormal brand. There’s a chance that Zara is seeing what Camper is working on with Spaniard Kilian Jornet and NNormal and being inspired to also get into the shoe game on a serious level. Sometimes it’s literally regional connections that drive businesses into making certain decisions. Maybe.
Wes Plate (previous guest on Singletrack) is turning is passion for really long races into becoming a race director. On the show Wes and I talked a bit about the motivation and inspiration for this course he created. Now Wes is looking for a bit of help to get the birth of the race over the finish line, if you want to bear with me as I butcher metaphors here:
The challenge is in paying for all the tents, tables, water containers, communications equipment, coolers, course marking supplies, and on and on for stuff like that. To get set up for the initial year will cost far more than registrations will bring in.
…
It costs a lot to start a big event like this, so we’re looking to our friends, family, and other interested enthusiasts to raise these startup funds. This investment will mean future editions of this event can be paid for with registrations and sponsorships.
The Indiegogo campaign is open until the end of March, of you can spare a few bucks, help Wes get this brand new event off the ground and onto the regular calendar of 100 mile races in North America.
The Washington Trails Association setup an easy “message your congress person” form:
Email your members of Congress today to ask that they reverse this decision and ensure the United States Forest Service and National Park Service have the staffing and funding support they need to serve the people who are out experiencing our public lands.
If you want to do more than just raise money speak up and let your respective member of congress know how you feel about all this bullshit coming out of DC right now.
But also: WTF do these people we elected need constant coddling and reminders of what they are supposed to be doing for us over there?
Washington State’s Evergreen Trail Runs launched a virtual run and fundraiser for Runners for Public Lands, Trust for Public Land, National Forest Foundation as a response to Musk’s insane coup happening on DC:
We are witnessing the damage caused to public lands by cuts and layoffs to the employees and government agencies that oversee one of the nation’s treasures: it’s public lands. As prolific users of public lands, we know just how much work and money goes into maintaining trails, parking lots, bathrooms, signage, staff and more. We wanted to do something, so we are doing Run for Public Lands.
Sign up, run, log miles, and give to this incredibly valuable cause. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
Telluride Mountain Run is a trail running event that’s been going on for over 12 years. This year they might not get their permit:
The proposed massive, 2-day, Planet Bluegrass concert is in the final stages of being approved. This concert will bring 9,000 concertgoers per night to town and the Park over the same weekend TMR has traditionally used. The optimistic and unrealistic promise of a “golden egg” economic boost has lead to our race getting pushed aside and will create an incompatible atmosphere in town for our event and participants.
I don’t know much about the challenges and realities of this area. I spend a few hours there last year during Hardrock and Telluride is small, crowded, at the end of a narrow valley. Full of vacationers and locals with money to spend. The town felt abuzz when I was there and hardly anyone noticed Hardrockers running right through it. But the reason on why I wanted to share this here is that with the latest attacks by Musk on National Park and Forest employees this sort of thing might become more normal. A few days I wrote:
Musk/Trump aren’t interested in “saving money” or “streamlining bureaucracy” their end goal is to sell off the lands.
In some places this will be mining companies, or private entities wanting to build golf courses or hunting lodges. Or maybe it’s “just” recreation permits handed to the highest bidder.
Episode 328 with Scott Sowle:
Exciting announcement incoming! Rock Candy Running’s Beast of Big Creek joins the Vert Running Series for the 2025 season. Scott Sowle is on the show to share the news and give us the details. Let the racing season in the PNW begin!
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