RE:RUN 2024 – February

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

Still in the midst of winter, things are getting heated in our little world. Just when UTMB and the PTRA seem to have made peace with each other, in comes Camille Herron (and we can now assume that it might actually have been her husband Conor Holt) and shares publicly on Twitter screenshots and out-of-context details of a private, closed-door meeting between UTMB and PTRA. After Electric Cable Car posts about these tweets, I receive a request via DM from one of Camille’s social media accounts to take down these posts and to not mention Camille’s name. When I refuse I get blocked like so many others before me who have called out Camille in the past. Foreshadowing!

All of this ongoing kerfuffle leads to the point that notable trail figures are starting to be fed up and are finally publicly calling for peace; or at least are asking to let folks do their thing without the constant bickering, name calling and warmongering – this is just trail running after all.

• Zoë Rom writes about fan service, one of her last posts for Trail Runner Magazine.
• The race director for Kullamannen, Per Sjögren offers some perspective. As do the RDs of Run Rabbit Run on their official Instagram account. Run Rabbit Run is a race that’s not even officially affiliated with UTMB.
• But no other sums it up best than the great Anton Krupicka in an interview with Nick Triolo (This is also one of the last articles Nick writes for Trail Runner magazine):

It’s all manufactured controversy. This is all just made up. So many people just want to have the magical experience of circumnavigating the mountain and doing it with others, because there’s this strong communal feeling when you’re doing it. And all the other shit? No one actually cares.

Anton has since run and placed second at Grindstone with the goal of getting back to the UTMB Finals in Chamonix.

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The trail world sees its first high profile doping case with 2023 OCC winner Stian Angermund testing positive and getting banned from competition. Like with many other high profile cases like this, there’s plenty of controversy going around with it. Several pro runners jump to Angermund’s defense and are publicly rooting for him in the IG comments, while Marcel Höche takes a different approach. Angermund responds claiming his innocence and eventually UTMB is forced to respond as well. As of this writing the case is still not resolved, Angermund was still claiming his innocence back in June.

Coast Mountain Trail Running pulls the plug on the much-hyped Chilliwack race for 2024 (and there won’t be on in 2025 either). Permits are hard to obtain, especially for brand new events and it seems especially if the event had been announced out of jealous rage.

The full entry list for Western States is posted and I had some fun had with digging into the numbers.

On the business end of things we begin to hear more and more about the chilling headwinds the outdoor industry is facing after several years of pandemic fueled growth. But, nonetheless several promising announcements are being made:

• Decker, parent brand of Hoka announces an “upmarket sneaker brand”.(Although I am not sure that one ever shipped.)
• Lululemon announces their foray into footwear.
• Näak re-ups their UTMB World Series sponsorship.
• Suunto is joining the World Series as partner. That one I’m personally very excited about. Later on in the year Suunto will be announcing a special watch band I have a very hard time not buying.

We end on a positive note, meant to challenge and inspire. On a recent run I chatted with friend of Electric Cable Car and frequent guest on Singletrack Alex Bond about the need for trail runners to pickup the slack and start helping with trail maintenance, and trail building, and trail advocacy. This conversation was initially was prompted by Runner’s for Public Land’s call to action about the upcoming budget shortfalls at the US National Forest Service and the possible consequences leading from that budget crisis. Tim Tollefson, newest board member of RPL joined me on the latest episode of Singletrack to talk more in-depth about all this – you should give it a listen and then find your nearest volunteer opportunity to get your hands into some dirt. But, why I am adding this paragraph to the end of February’s RE:RUN 2024 edition is that this year, during the month of February, the Kilian Jornet Foundation launched an initiative aimed exactly at this perceived shortcoming by trail runners: trail maintenance and restoration. So, clearly, high profile athletes and spokespeople are speaking about this issue and doing something about it. Yet somehow this still isn’t enough to inspire enough folks to get out and dig. Maybe we do need to revisit my idea that we should lobby Strava to add a ‘trail work’ activity to their app so folks can show off, I mean share and inspire others, when doing trail work and logging it as their workout.

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