Breaking down ‘States of Elevation’

Drew Hartman takes a look at Kilian Jornet and Nnormal’s massive human-powered mountain running/bike riding project:

It’s clear that these aspirational challenges to put their product and athletes to the test are part of NNORMAL’S DNA and it’s likely that they will continue. However, as Kilian continues his career, it’s unclear the role he can and will play in them.

Some really fun data and observations in this article. I’ve been wondering many of the same things these past few weeks. In my point of view Kilian has two big challenges:

• He’s too great of an athlete that ‘normal feats that have been completed by others before him and would therefore comparable’ aren’t really a challenge for him. This makes understanding what he’s achieving a bit of a challenge.
• Nnormal is betting on the fact that Kilian is being universally loved for no one to mind that his athletic feat is ALSO a giant marketing effort. This so far is no problem, but at some point the community could turn against this sort of “content marketing”.