By Mathias Eichler
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A few more thoughts on this mega media event for the trail running world down in Arizona. I experienced it again just from afar, but nonetheless I wanted to put some (final?) thoughts down for this year, on this genre-expanding production.
Unquestionable what Jamil Coury, Steve Aderholt and their team at Aravapia/Mountain Outpost have built here is a fantastic product. An ultra endurance event, built from the ground up with a livestream as the focal point allowing the athletes to not just conquer the trail, but also take advantage of the public platform and present their story to the world. If you choose to run Cocodona you’re not wanting to be invisible and alone in the mountains, you want to be part of this spectacle – and be a bit of a spectacle yourself.
That word ‘Super Bowl” has been floating around for years to describe the “biggest and most important event in trail”. My argument qualifying the term has always been that the Super Bowl isn’t even the biggest sporting event in the world, just for the US, and therefore shouldn’t be used to describe the biggest event in trail – globally. That of course, still is, and will be for a long time UTMB. Westerns States fits the Super Bowl moniker well = America’s biggest and most important trail race. Bestowing that crown on Cocodona mere days after the event and still in the emotional afterglow feels premature. We have to wait for the verdict on this until after this year’s WSER. Clearly they aren’t sitting still over there and we can expect a leveling up coming from the team in Auburn as well. Let’s hope by then the Cocodona moment hasn’t faded too far back in memory to allow us a better comparison and judgement. (Personally it won’t help that I’ll actually be in California for the race for the first time this year – talk about getting influenced in an unfair fashion.)
While the race and it’s insane distance requires elites-level performances from anyone attempting it, the event has not YET attracted the deep field of elites (full-time, brand supported athletes) we have seen regularly at WSER and UTMB and even Hardrock over the past several years. All the pieces are set and it seems just a matter of time, but there are two things that are holding back the elites from toeing the line at Cocodona: Brands are being too slow to adopt Cocodona in their bonus structure – this will very much change after this year, I project. And further the fact that racing 250 miles is a unique skill requiring athletes to focus a lot of their year preparing for it. Currently the 100M distances is still the pinnacle of racing for elites. Maybe these issues will converge and solve themselves if a new level of elite will emerge – one focused exclusively on these super long ultras, leaving the 100M as the “middle distance”. But I caution this narrative as our sport is too small still, and the endless bifurcation brings lots of challenges with it – at the professional level of our sport that is. Looking at it purely from a creative storytelling point of view it’s great that trail keeps inventing new formats that capture the imagination of endurance athletes.
Over the years Aravaipa build up insurmountable lead by having smartly invested into their live-streaming equipment and the know-how required to run it well. No on can compete with it – in the US. No one has the tools to build a similar event experience. All race directors in North America who are wanting a livestream for their event are contracting Mountain Outpost – an Aravaipa company.
The comparison that comes to mind here is the way Amazon used its head start as the leading online shopping platform to build out AWS. Under the AWS brand Amazon sells B2B server products that have been used by all tech companies large and small in various ways. Even Amazon’s fiercest competitions are using AWS products essentially paying Amazon to compete against them. That’s the Aravaipa/Mountain Outpost combo right here. And yes, we don’t talk about competition in the trail space unless it’s the big bad UTMB wolf, but let’s face it, if you want to build an event with a similar offering to what Aravaipa is doing you’re either contracting them or starting from scratch, very small, with huge investments in tech and know-how. Good luck and godspeed to you.
Case in point: Ethan Newberry, aka the Ginger Runner started Tiger Claw in Seattle in 2019. Clearly someone with considerable online clout he created the event with a unique racing concept and branding around it. Tiger Claw livestream though this event happened this past weekend with barely a blip on the radar of the collective trail world.
The mainstream media loves superlatives. A sub 14hr WSER won’t register with Good Morning America – well, unless Rachel runs it. But a woman taking the overall win at a 250 mile race is perfect cat nip for the MSM. Not saying this disparagingly, but this year was catching lightning in a bottle. Not sure this can be replicated year after year. Not sure this is even necessary for the events future success. But what is different from Cocodona’s MSM success is that (as crazy as it sounds) it is more approachable and attainable than Barkley Marathons which has had similar MSM breakthrough moments. Although with Barkley the stories that are being told are veering closer to the line of “this is unfathomably crazy” where Cocodona’s headlines are more accepting and leaning a bit more to “this is so cool”.
Another bifurcation I often pointed out is the “trail running as adventure sport, vs “trail running as logical extension of the cross country college sport pipeline”. Cocodona feels very much in the aforementioned camp = putting on a bib to have an adventure vs. the endless optimizing of shoes, nutrition, pace, coaching styles and other elements that feel foreign and quite boring to me. If the hype around Cocodona brings us back to a bit more adventure and bit less hyper optimizing I am all here for it.
How do you run a 250 mile race without a huge support team using multiple cars, meeting you at every aid station and caring for your every need? It’s possible, but the stories we see coming out of Cocodona are those of a runner bringing their entire team to the party in the Arizona desert. Is that sustainable? That’s a question for another year. But what I am wondering if this production is attainable for anyone coming from far. Are these logistical realities the next challenges for elites with their teams? Or are they a bridge too far and the reason why Cocodona has (so far) failed to attract international top elites to the race?
How will this evolve? Not sure, maybe once the CTS kiddie pools arrive Aravaipa will begin to put some rules around this circus. But for now if you want to run Cocodona IT SEEMS LIKE you need a caravan of support to carry you to Flagstaff.
Several folks on the ground have pointed out – and at occasion bemoaned – the media frenzy, both from official drones in the air to influencers bringing their entire media team – on top of their actual support team. This is the event for it. Created out of the influencer culture hype Cocodona invites exactly the people who love to capture and tell their story – live from the trail in real time straight to Instagram. If you run Cocodona and complain about it you’re at the wrong party. Or maybe need to slow way down to the back of the field.
Finally just a personal note, and not a judgement on the larger event itself: It’s meant to answer all the folks who’ve been asking me – since I’ve been so incessantly following Cocodona this year – if I’d be interested in running Cocodona myself one year, and I must disappoint everyone. The world of 200+ mile events isn’t exciting at all to me as an athlete. I find them fascinating from a cultural point of view and from a business angle – so it’s a perfect event to cover here on Electric Cable Car. But me personally toeing the line one year? I’d rather not.
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