RE:RUN 2024 – August

This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review. 
This was August 2024 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.

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.

• Jack Wolfskin, European outdoor mega brand that was recently purchased by an American mega general sports brand wanting a piece of that outdoor pie decided the US was not their market and they announced the end of their operation in the US. Strange move, but not surprising in the end. Very few Euro brands have figured out the US market, even though it seems a lucrative target, as competition is stiff and deeply entrenched.
• The two big mountaineering/endurance achievements worth pointing out are Crigel Maurer’s Climb and Fly of all the 4,000 meter peaks in the Alps and Kilian Jornet tackling the same objective in a different style. In 2015 the late Ueli Steck completed his 82 summit project in 62 days and there were others who’d done this objective before. Crigel and Peter von Känel complete their version from June 10 – July 30th (50 days). Then Kilian takes just 19 days to climb all 82 peaks. Just an out of this world achievement by an out of this world human being.

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.

This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the September edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE:RUN.