Liam’s ‘2025 Trail and Ultra Time Capsule’

Mr. AidstationFireball blogs:

Collecting a number of items I’d like to remember this year in trail and ultratrail running by, and putting them into a time capsule…

Good list of things to remember the year 2025 by. If I’d add one thing it would be that Border Patrol Patch photo that was briefly posted on Instagram (and shortly after removed) during the “Go One More” Last Person Standing event put on by Bare Performance Nutrition supplement company on founder’s Nick Bare’s ranch in Texas. Why would I add this? Because of the sentence I just posted above and how weird this sentence is. Trail and ultra running is changing, fast. We used to have the “American version” and the “European version”, but there’s a new version emerging that is gaining fast mass appeal, works well for the media coverage, is easy to organize an event around, and is so very different than anything we’ve seen before that it feels like to comes completely out of left field. (Or rather right field, considering that above mentioned border patrol patch.) There’s a side of me that wants to completely ignore the backyard ultra genre of our sport, but on another level I think this might be the perfect format for the Olympics. I am torn, but I want to remember that this side of the sport is drawing in numbers, gaining attention fast and creates fascinating storylines. If I like them or not.