‘We Are Human”

Doug Mayer, from Run the Alps summarizing for Trailrunner Magazine the UTMB developments of the past year:

In short, what a year it has been for UTMB.

Reminds me of that 30 Rock meme: “Lemon, it’s Wednesday”.

I was having coffee with Doug as he and Brian Metzler were discussing the final nuances of this piece as it was making its way through the editing process and reading it now a few hours later I think the article does a fair job summarizing the issues that have been bubbling up this past year.

What’s remarkable when one thinks about all these issues is that UTMB addressed them all. Like, all of them. Concerns that were brought to this organization from international runners, some of them speaking with their own national biases and understanding of what trail running should be all about, were addressed by this organization. Maybe some of them were addressed not in the perfect way some had hoped for, but it clearly signaled that UTMB was listening. And further it shows that UTMB does not only have the ambition to be THE World Series, but also has the follow through to be more than a French regional player with an trail running event accidentally in a beautiful place, but they are custodians of a truly global series of trail races.

Spending some time in Chamonix this week I am blown away by the magnitude of the efforts being put in to make this town the global epicenter of trail running. Am I showing my bias? Maybe a little, I love the food here!

Doug quotes Catherine Poletti in the article in response to the criticisms that UTMB wasn’t fast enough to respond:

My hope is that the trail running community understands that we are human…

Human you may be, but there also must be some magic here… cause what you’ve built here is truly astonishing. The initial vision might’ve been simple: “to organize a race running around that big, beautiful mountain outside your town”. But UTMB didn’t stop there and have created a global phenomenon and beautiful sporting event I can barely comprehend. Tomorrow I will wake up early, jump on a bus to Orsières, Switzerland and will run back to Chamonix hoping to gain just a bit more first hand insight on how all these beautiful pieces are coming together to create a memorable moment for runners resulting in the UTMB World Series Finals.