Leah Yingling on the Wasatch, and a rabbit apparel round-up

By 2020 Leah Yingling had spent several seasons collecting podiums across the Mountain West — the Grand Traverse, The North Face endurance series, Bear 100, Squaw Peak, Telluride Mountain Run — and had also done the thing that says more about someone’s relationship with the sport than any result: she put on her own event, a free, unofficial 40-mile traverse across a serious stretch of Wasatch terrain, which promptly became popular.

Four sisters, one cross country team

The origin story is unusually competitive. Yingling grew up in Pennsylvania as one of four girls, all of whom ended up on the same high school cross country roster at the same time. Whatever that does to a household, it produced a runner with an unusually high tolerance for discomfort and no particular interest in discussing it.

The episode moves through college, a difficult period she has spoken about publicly, training, diet, and — at length — what the Wasatch running community meant to her once she got to Utah. That last part is the heart of it. Trail running in Salt Lake is unusually social for a sport that is mostly done alone, and she is clear that the community came first and the results followed.

The fatass

The 40-miler she organised is a good illustration of how the sport still worked in 2020 at the level below the sponsored circuit: no entry fee, no permits, no timing, a route, a date, and whoever turns up. Events like it are where most of the actual culture lives, and they are almost entirely undocumented.

Gear segment: rabbit apparel

The episode’s back half is a women’s apparel review covering a set of pieces from rabbit — three tops (a lightweight tank, a second tank cut differently, and a trail-specific top) and three shorts at different lengths, from a 2.5-inch through to a longer mountain short. The assessment is the useful kind: how each sits under a vest, whether the waistbands roll, and which ones survive being worn on consecutive days without washing, which is the real test.

Products in that segment were supplied free of charge for review. No payment was made for coverage.