TransRockies Posts their Final Press Release on Facebook

The team putting on the popular stage race announces that 2025 will be their Final year for this event. (This was actually announced already back in October, but I had missed it back then, probably because it was posted on Facebook.)

After over 17 years of breathtaking landscapes and unforgettable experiences, Ortholite TransRockies Run has announced that 2025 will be the final year for its iconic trail running event.
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The decision to make 2025 the final year did not come lightly, but rising event expenses and increased difficulty in securing permitting were major factors. 

Other events in their portfolio will continue.

While I don’t deny that rising costs and challenges in obtaining permits are making it harder and harder to operate very involved or even complicated events like a multi-day stage race, the other thing that sticks out the me here is the only place I could find this press announcement was on Facebook. The more I am seeing how this new year is evolving the more I am convinced that this will be a watershed moment for the trail running community which has for the better part of the past decade relied heavily on (free) social media marketing to promote their events, their athletes and their brands. That press release was never posted on the TransRockies website, the last entry on their ‘news’ section was from 2022. And of course, announcing the end of a race doesn’t have to be front and center on a marketing website when one still wants to sell entries for this year, but this shows to me that this organization, like so many others, have been successfully using JUST social media to communicate and market their events. Again, no diss on them, I am just using them as an example of what I’m seeing unfold all over the internet and industry. This obviously goes far beyond running events or trail running in general. The German paper Die Zeit posted an article today titled (translated): ‘Social Media is dead‘. With the imminent TikTok ban in the US and Zuckerberg’s escapades on Rogan people are getting increasingly disillusioned with social media and consider it to be nothing but a complete net negative for our world. And with a second Trump administration kicking off in a couple of days this sentiment will only increase.

So, again, this communication realignment will be the biggest challenge¹ for the trail running community for this year and beyond.

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1 – Well, maybe the biggest challenge will be navigating another Trump presidency in a world where America descends fully into an oligarchy, or “broligarchy” as I read somewhere the other day, but that is even more elemental and I don’t even know where to begin with all this. How long until Aravaipa announces a trail race in Greenland?