By Mathias Eichler
Join us all month long for the Trail Running Film Festival Online Watch Party and Annual Fundraiser.
Start watching today.
Join us all month long for the Trail Running Film Festival Online Watch Party and Annual Fundraiser.
Start watching today.
This website is three years old this week and as it has become tradition around here, it is time for some reflection, a performance assessment of sort, and a progress update if you will.
First of all, writing for Electric Cable Car is still super fun and rewarding for me. I love finding the important bits of news, the nuances, and the moments that define our sport and create our culture. The vision for this site hasn’t changed. As the sport grows, the media around it grows. And with that the trends and developments are easier to spot, voices become louder and more opinionated, and in turn I get busier. And so does this site.
Since the inception of Electric Cable Car I’ve hit the publish button over 1,500 times on this blogging platform and I’ve written over 286,000 words – that’s the equivalent of about a book per year. All this work has generated over 50,000 page views and 30,000 unique visitors. Yes those are total numbers, and yes that isn’t much in regular web traffic terms – and certainly not much if I am trying to get industry advertising dollars. But these are still my numbers and they are growing year over year. And given the amount of time I am dedicating to this site I am happy with them.
For the sake of this anniversary post I enjoy counting the numbers and words but the meaning of words and how they change in our perception is what really fascinates me.
The word podcast used to mean an audio show and that one listens to on an iPod – remember those? – and listed in the Apple Podcast directory. This all has changed. Most folks who still listen to podcasts do so in Spotify – the preferred audio player for most. And increasingly even more people equate the word podcast with YouTube video show hosted by (still mostly male) talking heads. Maybe this is where I show my age, or maybe it’s because I love audio shows I can listen to while out on a run, but I just can’t get into the whole podcasting as video show. I don’t consume them, and no, I will not put my show on YouTube. I know, I know, I miss a ton of traffic and “engagement” with my “content” but so be it.
In the pre-Substack-era there were two types of electronic newsletters: marketing stuff and individuals who sharedg regularly their thoughts to their fans. Then Mailchimp bought a few of the smaller free services and began charging exorbitant about amounts of money for their email delivery service and that gave Substack the opening. By forgoing the business marketing angle – the one that gave Mailchimp the justification to charge that much for their service and by taking on an insane amount VC cash Substack was able to be free and thus folks frustrated with the algorithm of Instagram and the CEO on ketamine of Twitter needed a place to go. Substack was that place. Mostly because it was free and also because folks increasingly used Instagram to publish full blog posts and the Substack newsletter option was the ideal escape. Now folks have a website that’s also a newsletter, or a newsletter that’s also a website. Either way, someone posts and the follower gets notified via email. All this tech has existed for a long time. To be fair it did require some coding skills, or a monthly subscription, so I’m not dinging anyone choosing Substack for their newsletter, or website, but it ain’t what it used to be.
The original endurance events had an element of geographic relevance to them. Badwater, Hardrock, Kullamanen, UTMB, and of course Western States. These events are iconic not just for the achievements of the athletes but the landscape runners traverse. There’s an element of ‘terroir’ – a sense of place. We just heard reports of how special Snowdonia really is and many of the Word Trail Majors aim to highlight the uniqueness of the place they are held in. A 100 miler in California is different to one in the Alps. You sign up for a race to experience a place. But the current rise of Backyard Ultras lift the endurance element from the place it’s held and focuses exclusively on the athletic performance. One can hold a Backyard Ultra on their personal ranch somewhere in Texas, and if a storm wouldn’t have put a stop to the event we wouldn’t have any geographic relevance to the place it was held at all. Backyard Ultras are a genius idea, and in some aspect this lack of terroir make them perfectly suitable to be a possible Olympic discipline. And one that would really highlight the endurance part of our sport so much more than increasingly shorter and shorter trail races on looped courses the way Golden Trails envisions trail running’s offering to the IOC. But for folks like me, who entered the sport for the adventure and exploration in beautiful places Backyard Ultras offer nothing. Yes, they would allow me to challenge myself in some aspect, but one I never considered to be the reason on why I’m in the sport. Is that bad? No, of course not. It attracts a different athlete, with different priorities. The sport grows and that will create new opportunities, new niches and this creates some bifurcation. Trail running isn’t like soccer or other team sports where there really is only one major set of rules of the game. Trail running in and of itself is a subset of running and that big tent of a sport offers so many variations from 100 meter dashes to long trail, multi-day fast packing adventures. Backyard Ultras is just loopiest adventure of all of them.
Much has been said already about the competition between the classical professional athlete and the media influencer. But I wonder where the actual different really is. In the most abstract sense an athlete is considered a professional when they are paid to perform. So, if you get paid to train in the hopes to get a first place at UTMB or if you get paid because you have a large following on social media and know how to share the story of your average 50K race placing somewhere in the middle, for me I see very little difference. Is one personal story more aspirational than the other? Is ones achievement more valuable than the other? I can see the reason for enviousness and it might be hard to swallow if brands put their money towards athletes that promise them a better ROI based on their social media following, but that’s a problem the brands and athletes need to solve by themselves. Elite athletes are born competitors and now have a new type of athlete to compete with, the game might just not be won during the actual race.
Not just our sport is growing, but the media covering our sport is as as well. And for now, and this is a welcome sight. Our media is growing in width more so than in heights. What I mean is that while Freetrail directs most of the conversations with their business moves and Aravaipa is the only livestream provider there are plenty of other voices, opinions and views that are being heard, or at the very least spoken out. This is good for our sport. Consolidation, while inevitable is way too premature. Let trail running grow. And with it, the media covering it. Yes “more content” isn’t always the solution, but more voices and players are definitely welcome. (As long as they don’t steal other media outfits’ names.)
Last year I mentioned several attempts in covering trail races live. In my opinion this has all generated a mixed results so far. I recently restarted the ECC LIVE page for Cocodona250 this year and while I feel that there’s untapped potentional I have not hit my stride with it. There’s more exploring and experimentation to be done. We shall see where this goes. I mean, I certainly would give this another try for one of the most covered trail events, the Western States Endurance Runs, but this year during that weekend I’ll be in Italy in the Dolomites chasing my long dream of running among the mountains I had visited many times as a kid at the Lavaredo Ultra Trail. I suppose this live tracker thing will have to wait a bit longer.
Let’s kick off and welcome year 4 of Electric Cable Car, thank’s for being here.
In case you’re interested, here are my articles from the launch, and the first and second anniversary of Electric Cable Car:
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