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.
This article is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review.
This was July 2024 in our world of trail running and mountain culture.
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.
This post is part of Electric Cable Car’s RE:RUN 2024 – The Year in Review. I’ll be dropping the August edition in the coming days. To catch up on all of them visit RE:RUN.
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