By Mathias Eichler
Little Backyard Adventure
March 15, 2025 - Many twisted loops, one stunning forest - a 3, 6, 12 HR endurance trail running event in the heart of the city.
Little Backyard Adventure
March 15, 2025 - Many twisted loops, one stunning forest - a 3, 6, 12 HR endurance trail running event in the heart of the city.
The year 2024 is slowly winding down and it’s the perfect moment for some celebration, reflection, perspective, and probably a bit of snark. Grab a comfy chair, a warm beverage, sit back and enjoy: It’s time for Electric Cable Car’s ‘RE:RUN – The Year in Review’. Over the next few weeks I’ll take a look back at some of the biggest stories that shaped our sport. Together we’ll be revisiting the ECC archives and I’ll share the highlights with some commentary. The year 2024 certainly wasn’t a boring one but was filled with lots of excitement, some missteps, historic results, and stories that kept us talking for weeks. So let’s get to it. This ain’t an award show!
Amidst the usual running awards announcements which crowned the best runners of the previous year (and I will not mention here as I am trying to cover the events from the current year), the year 2024 started off with a bunch of fun and exciting announcements, as one would hope for:
So, all signs were pointing up, right? This year seemed off to a good start with lots of organizations increasing their commitments to our sport. But amidst all this another storm was brewing: When we had hoped that the turn of the year might’ve left the UTMB controversy behind, in comes Martin Cox from VO2max Coaching spilling the tea on some behind the scenes emails authored by Zach Miller and Kilian Jornet lobbying other athletes to skip UMTB events and together go and run some other race. What ensued was a lengthy “he said, she said” controversy that eventually brought the PTRA and UTMB to the table. Some closed door meetings were made public by no other than Camille Herron (more on her later!) and several public statements and apologies had to happen. Welcome to 2024, baby, where we were reminded quickly that while our sport is growing, some juvenile growing pains persist. And while the UTMB lottery draw had happened and many folks (including me) were scrambling to book their lodging in increasingly overcrowded Chamonix, the negative stories just wouldn’t leave UTMB. A certain amount of fatigue was setting in. People were wanting to move on, either by vowing to actively choose non-UTMB events (and still clinging on to hope that that magical race in Chilliwack would appear), or just biting the bullet and jumping on the UTMB World Series train. But in the early parts of the year many of the pro runners stayed silent for fear of online harassment and didn’t pre-announce their race calendar on Instagram as they had done in past years.
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.
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.
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 innocenceback 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:
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 initiativeaimed 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.
In March of 2024 we finally are heading back out onto the trails. Events are happening around the world and the mood is upbeat. The Trail Running Film Festival Global Tour 2024 kicks off and with my race management company Rock Candy Running I host the Little Backyard Adventure races again. For the first time we try some live-tracking and posting on Electric Cable Car. And I learn that this shit is hard especially when you’re also the race director and got a million of other things to do.
March is of course, sometimes, often, maybe, who knows, the month for the Barkley Marathons. The event that barely sees any finishers, but, because people are glued to the cryptic messages from official voice of the race Keith Dunn on Twitter/X the hype around this event is unprecedented. The event this year experiences favorable weather, an unprecedented 5 finishers, and most importantly for the first time a woman, and no other than the incredibly Jasmin Paris finishes the race with less than 2 min to spare. Jasmin’s achievement I would consider the greatest race performance in all of 2024. And while we don’t have a livestream for this event the photos that made it around the world of Jasmin’s finish instantly became iconic.
While everyone was waiting for the start of Barkley to be announced we did get a momentary distraction by one of the biggest and most unique marketing events ever conducted in trail running. The Lululemon Further event has everyone talking, for days. The images and storylines that are being shared on social media during the event are having a huge impact. ‘Further’ feels new, and fresh, and over the top. Sadly it was just a marketing event after all, the products aren’t available in their online store anymore and the website created for it is completely offline – it doesn’t even reroute to their main corporate site. What a waste of what clearly was one the biggest and most important marketing campaigns of 2024.
For TDS, registration opened in December, and as March comes around the race is still not sold out. With the Finals in Chamonix being oversold year after year, this seems strange. Does this have anything to do with the general weariness of the running public about all things UTMB? When the starting list is first posted iRunFar takes a look and highlights the top runners. Jim Walmsely is initially listed but then disappears of that list. Oh, the drama continues.
Outdoor Podcasting is also going into overdrive with seemingly everyone starting their own show. Or a second one for that matter. Aaron Lutze and Dylan Bowman take their personal conversations about the outdoor industry and their business ideas, and record a show around it: Second Nature is born. This podcast has found its way into my feed of top podcasts I listen to regularly. Sometimes I yell at the trees when listening, mostly I agree with the two of them. If you’re interested in the intersection between the outdoors and business, this is a good show for you.
Adidas finally brings their trail super shoe to the market. First announced and teased to much hype during UTMB week in Chamonix in August of 2023 the Agravic Speed Ultra is available for purchase on their website, where they immediately get lost in the deluge of other products. I understand why Adidas wants to sell all of their products through one webshop, but man, this is one convoluted shopping experience not doing the product any justice. What a bummer.
It’s April and brands want to have a word.
The big news is that HOKA becomes UTMB World Series title sponsor. Dacia is getting demoted in the process, much to the joy of the Green Runners. HOKA’s title sponsorship brings the announcement that Jim (what race are we gonna run next year?)Walmsley is going back to Chamonix. This sponsorship also extends to the Majors and it increases and solidifies prize money for the Majors and Finals. These are all big developments that don’t just mean that checks in backrooms are written but that pro athletes are being rewarded for their performance – something the PTRA has been championing for awhile. This extends doping protocols to the UTMB Majors and Finals events. In the same turn (although not officially related) Western States is also implementing an updated doping policy which now extend to their Golden Ticket races, which are also sponsored by Hoka. From afar, no one is saying this out loud, it looks like Hoka’s increasing their sponsorship presence and footing the bills for price money and in turn requiring and or enabling doping controls. This all makes sense: want money for performing well, you should probably want it in a clean sport.
Dacia stays on as premier sponsor getting some love in the Chamonix mobility program and the Eurosport series UTMB launches later in the year.
Headphones maker Shokz also comes on as premier sponsor of the UTMB World Series. – What’s funny about that is that Suunto signed on a UTMB sponsor just the month prior and while Suunto is known for their GPS watches they had just released a couple pairs of headphones that essentially worked and looked very similar to the bone-conducting headphones Shokz had made famous.
For the Boston Marathon rabbit releases their first foray into the footwear space with the Dream Chaser. Clothing makers taking the leap into making shoes is a huge challenge and while often seen as a logical next step (Lululemon did it, Satisfy is about to do it) doing it right is not easy. I don’t know a single person beyond the “shoetuber” who were paid to review the shoes who has spoken highly of these products.
Speaking of shoemakers, Merrell launches a marketing campaign in form of an open letter to the IOC asking them to consider adding trail running to the Olympics. This call to action comes ahead of the Paris Olympics in the summer, but these types of decisions take years, if not decades and the ‘trail running lobby’ (which doesn’t actually exist) missed their boat, not just for Paris, but even for LA in 2028. (And Los Angeles would have some incredible mountains just outside their city limits.) So Brisbane is the next logical venue… that’s in 2032. That’s eight years from now when we could possibly see trail running as an Olympic sport. Who the heck knows what trail running as a sport will look like then?
Alright, for the month of April I really buried the lede. The company that is all over the news and social stream and would end up staying there for weeks (and really wished it wasn’t there at all) is Spring Energy. A Reddit post first scoops and claims that the printed nutrition facts on the much loved Awesome Sauce product by natural foods nutrition maker Spring are all wrong. This leads to much outcry – did I say Awesome Sauce was popular? Yes, even I used it for most races in recent years. Several high profile athletes got into the crossfires and much “ink is being spilled” discovering the truth. My favorite comments are the folks lamenting (and calling for class-action lawsuits) that the DNF in their last race was due to the mislabeling of Spring’s products. Independent lab testing is being conducted, product gets pulled from the shelves and folks are wondering if Spring can survive this. As of this writing Awesome Sauce had gotten retooled and is back on the market and on most virtual shelves. Other products in their lineup still exist and are still for sale. The show must go on. And speaking of show, there’s a whole sideshow developing, in many ways even overshadowing all this, and includes a popular coach doing everything in his power to become “main character of the day”. But this takes us into May.
In May, I ran a race, finally. And it was my first ever road marathon: the Capital City Marathon in my hometown Olympia. Here’s what I wrote afterwards:
But overall, compared to probably any other trail race I’ve ever run this race was easy.
This one might’ve been easy but what is certainly not easy is Cocodona. And that is what everyone’s talking about in May. On Singletrack I chatted with the cutoff chasing friend of mine Ben Mead who ran, and finished this beast of a race and while I am still deeply impressed by Ben’s and anyone’s achievement running this super long power-hiking adventures even after this interview I am not sold that this is something I ever want to sign up for. Cocodona can’t really be mentioned without Aravaipa’s Mountain Outpost live-streaming efforts. This event, more than any other on the annual trail running calendar lives off of the livestream. And naturally, folks have thoughts on what this new media brings to our sport.
As I mentioned above (in April’s write up) the ’Spring Saga’ spilled from one month into the next and even in May it doesn’t find its conclusion. In fact there were so many articles I posted I can’t even summarize it all here. But I promised a side show and it arrived in Jason Koop turning to Instagram and taking it upon himself to bully coaches Megan and David Roche (competitors of his in the coaching world). Somehow this saga turn the entire conversation from talking about product trust and integrity and made it about human decency and weird white male behavior. Not sure what the intentions here were, but if I was coached by Koop I’d run. But then again, the “end justifies all means” is one of America’s most favorite mantras, and the results his racers achieve leave little doubt that behind the macho appearance is probably a good coach. But that’s like saying Musk shooting rockets into space somehow excuses his otherwise subhuman behavior.
In eyebrow-raising footwear news, Altra drops a not-zero-drop shoe. Got that? The shoe maker that made us believe you should wear shoes like walking barefoot is now adding a gentle drop to some of their shoes… as if some podiatrists rang the alarm bells.
Tailwind Nutrition makes their previously limited seasonal release Dauwaltermelon a permanent flavor. Aside from it being delicious and it immediately coming one of their most popular flavors this product is also a partnership with their sponsored athlete: Courtney Dauwalter. I don’t have any insight into how this partnership breaks down, but it is, in our sport, still a fairly rare occurrence, that athletes have their name and likeness so closely tied to a product. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Salomon releases a small capsule with Courtney ahead of UTMB week in August and just before the holidays Suunto released a “Courtney watch” – the Suunto Race S titanium with a special “Courtney watch band”. Clearly brand Courtney is a hot commodity.
And another interesting pattern is emerging this year: races and especially UTMB events are running out of water at the aid stations. Is this amateur hour?
This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review.
This was June 2024 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.
June is Western States Month. And what started as a single race increasingly includes the Broken Arrow Skryrace as these two race organizations are fusing their events together (Jim Walmsley loves racing the Broken Arrow VK ahead of Western States – what a fun double. This year there’s ‘The Taste of Trailcon’ that gives us a hint at the glue that brings these two events closer together = more activities in Olympic Valley. What will be interesting to watch is how Hoka, which re-upped their sponsorship if Western States and Salomon which is all-in on Broken Arrow will play the handoff midweek, probably sometime on a Freetrail podium.
And while in the US, on that fabled last weekend of June everyone celebrates Statesmas and 375 lucky ones get to run it, in the Alps a combined over 18,000 runners compete at the Lavaredo Ultra Trail in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, at Marathon Mont-Blanc in Chamonix, France, and at Kaiserkrone Trail in Scheffau, Austria.
This year I sit on the couch during that weekend and I’m taking in all the media and reporting on all the events. I write:
No sporting event solves political problems or cures small-mindedness over night. But what sporting events offer us is a shared experience in a peaceful gathering. These moments can give us hope. They create a break in our daily worrying and struggle. Yes, I may ask a lot, maybe too much of these events. After all they are still managed by corrupt leaders and corporation use them to sport wash their image while destroying the planet. But dammit, we, as people, living on that fucked up planet need a fucking break. We need a breather. You know when you for yourself decide that you had a long week/month/season and all you want to do is watch some shitty TV and eat a pint of ice cream? Or when you know you shouldn’t spend frivolously but you had a rough day and then you buy yourself a new book? When you give yourself a break, a little treat? That’s what these events feel like. We, as people of this earth, as fans, as societies, as communities, we get a little break. These sporting events are our little treat.
In 2025 I’ll be in Cortina d’Ampezzo racing Lavaredo – finally, my dream race!
June is also Electric Cable Car’s birthday month and for the second anniversary I announce the following:
ECC started off as a companion to Singletrack, my podcast. I’m working on reversing the order of priorities. There are SO. MANY. PODCASTS out there. There are very few blogs. Singletrack will remain, but the frequency, and focus will change bit.
Since this statement everyone started their newsletter/blog and is writing now. This is great and I get to link to their content – keep it up everyone!
And fine, I’ll mention Spring one more time… this month, all the big races are dropping them as nutrition supplier and sponsor, Spring finally makes an official announcement and they relaunch the re-tooled Awesome Sauce. Is anyone still using it? Is it still awesome?
The Women’s Trail Running Fund launches their quite brilliant campaign ‘Here for the Women’s Race’ with a simple shirt and a powerful message. All the cool kids in Olympic Valley and later in the summer in Chamonix are wearing the shirt. When I report on it I quote:
The shirt is currently only available in Olympic Valley, but an online ordering system is being setup.
Well, I’m here to share the new website and online shop is now live. And we picked up a shirt in Chamonix during UTMB week.
It’s full on summer now and before the attention of the trail world descends onto the tiny town of Silverton high up in Colorado on Singletrack I chat with Hannes Namberger and Rosanna Buchauer after their respective wins at Lavaredo late June. Both are German and have been on the podcast before, both run for Dynafit, and both use this event as their tune up race before UTMB. I mention these two amazing athletes because I feel they, and others like them often get lost in the list of “best athletes of the year”. Our sport is still somewhat young and our sport reporting even younger. And while any global sport has a hard time truly capturing athletes, and their achievements from all corners of the world. Currently, if you don’t speak English as your primary language and if you don’t show up on the US centric racing circuit you somewhat don’t exist. This is not a complaint. This is what it is and I don’t know how or even it’s solvable. In trail running we still – and thank god for that – have so much diversity in races, locations, and athletes from all over the world, that it’s impossible for anyone reporting on it to fully have a grasp on all the happenings.
The reason why I’m bringing up this topic right now is not just because at the end of June Western States sucks all the air out of the room and other races happening the same weekend barely make the headlines1, but also in July we’re heading to Silverton to follow a tiny race, in a tiny town on really big mountains that has incredibly outsized media attention and mind share in the global trail community.
This year I am heading to Colorado to experience it all for myself. I’ll be emceeing the Trail Running Film Festival, in Ouray as part of Camp Hardrock, where we’ll be premiering Salomon’s new film ‘A Team Sport’ which shares the story of Courtney Dauwalter’s incredible 2023. After the film I get to interview the filmmakers Alexis Berg, Julien Raison and Oliver Denton. Massive highlight for myself. After the screening I stay a few more days in town to experience Hardrock, connect with some incredible people and try to document a run around these massive mountains. Zach Miller’s appendix takes up most of the media attention, but Ludovic Pommeret’s win (and course record (taking the crown from no other than Kilian Jornet), at age 49 makes this performance one of the most inspiring of the year. (And yes, I just mentioned ‘biases in reporting’ above. Of course, getting up at 3:30am, stumbling onto the dusty roads of tiny Silverton in the middle of the night and watching Ludo’s headlamp emerge in the distance is an experience I will never forget.)
For Hardrock fans do not miss on the Singletrack episode with Dale Garland, long time run director and heart and soul of this event.
Alright, enough about Hardrock, there is other stuff going on in the world this month. For one, Jamil Coury purchases American’s only print magazine focused on ultra and trail running “Ultrarunning Magazine”. He also gets the fantastic domain ultrarunning.com with it. This media property has a long history in the sport, is much beloved, and is also way overdue for a brand refresh to match today’s time and media landscape. This development prompts me to name Jamil the ‘most powerful person in trail running’, which writing this today in December still holds up, I feel. Case in point: Jamil’s Media Outpost is operating the livestream for Hardrock and Jamil himself is out there running the race. Jamil also gets picked in the two big American lotteries for 2025 – Western States and Hardrock. Busy guy.
It’s August and as the summer is slowly coming to a close all the important races are happening. Rock Candy Running’s Beast of Big Creek Skyrace kicks off the month that climaxes at the annual UTMB week in the Alps. Beast keeps me busy on the mountain directing a race and away from my computer, heck, the Beast finish line doesn’t even have cell reception. Then the world, and for the first time myself, descend onto Chamonix for THAT Big dance around Mont Blanc. But before we dive into the details of UTMB 2024 a couple other things were noteworthy.
Now, let’s go to Chamonix together. I had been thinking for many months leading up to this – essentially since I had been picked in the lottery to race OCC – that I was taking on a fascinating and brain splitting endeavor: 1. This is foremost a family vacation. 2. I am racing the race of my life and cannot fuck this one up – like I did at Monte Rose a couple years before. 3. With a media pass for Electric Cable Car I need and want to report on everything. In the end I focused on my family, and on my race and let the media coverage take a back seat. I really wanted to report on more stuff, but instead of holing myself up into a hotel room for the entire week to feverishly blog and podcast I spend every moment out on the town, meeting people, seeing everything, experiencing it all and eating lots of cheese. It was the right decision and I am not the only one who struggled with trying to find the right balance between being media and athlete/fan. Dylan Bowman shared his conundrum on the Second Nature podcast. So how does one report on this UTMB week that has grown into massive scale and increasingly is becoming too big to touch? Doug Mayer kicks off the week with an assessment of the state of things and as the main show unfolds, the sideshow during the week is a small section added to the official UTMB media kit describing ‘ambush marketing’ – what it entails and how a brand, that’s not an official sponsor, partakes – or rather not – in the festivities in and around Chamonix. But, in the end it’s the performances on the trails we remember and above all of them the non-elite, non-sponsored Hoka employee Vincent Bouillard who figures out the puzzle on a hot year where lots and lots of pros are DNF’ing and he arrives under the famous blue arch in incredible fast 19:54:23. There’s so much to say about our sport where a non-sponsored athlete can still win the biggest race of the year. The media didn’t know how to report on it and is still under-valuing this achievement in my opinions as I doubt Vincent’s run this year will top anyone’s performance of the year lists. This is not the last word on the UTMB Finals as the reporting continues in September.
More to come in the next few days… stay tuned!
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