Trail Running Daily News | Friday, May 24

Outside: The author does have a point about how the MTB community is a lot more organized than the trail running community when it comes to maintenance and advocacy. I can’t think of any place I’ve run where a sign says “trail maintained by XYZ running group” (I’m sure they exist!), but I know of many highlighting the volunteer hours of local MTB groups. Same goes for advocacy. Cycling groups are strong with a united voice, while it’s rare to have groups of runners show up to a City Council meeting asking for more trails or looser permitting or seeking a committee focused on runners, and maybe there’s a reason for that: While runners can run anywhere, cyclists have a goal in common of opening up access on trails, providing biking lanes on streets, and asking for more accommodations when it comes to staging events. Runners don’t ask for much, and thus, don’t get energized and organized to the extent the two wheel crowd does. While I’m sure the MTB community does trail work out of the goodness of their heart, letting the powers-that-be know that your group is active in volunteering and maintaining trails also never hurts…

It bothers me tremendously to see Outside engaging in this type of clickbait and antagonism and I’ve unsubscribed from their social media for that reason. Unfortunately, you’ll also no longer see links to the mag’s other good articles and writers and you won’t find Brendan Leonard’s or Katie Arnold’s excellent columns on these pages. Outside is more than welcome to criticize MUT runners, but when done in such a hostile fashion? I simply won’t promote that.

WTA: I’ll continue to link to excellent groups like the Washington Trails Association and highlight the work they do. This is an excellent post with ideas and resources on how a trail group should/could be managed.

BJSM: Scientific study that looks into the mental health of elite Olympic Athletes. We’ve got a long drive tomorrow and I’ll get to reading all of this!

Beer: Lagunaitas goes all in with the terpenes and makes a hoppy drink infused with cannabis oil. The drink is NA, no calories, and no carbs, very similar to the Lagunitas HOP Water I’ve written about, but doesn’t have the same hop bite. In terms of the cannabis, 10 mg is very light and gives a slight relaxation but not much more. Ten bucks a bottle is a bit pricey, but as first to market, perhaps prices will come down over time as demand and other competitors increase.
Or course, there will be some people aghast at the idea of cannabis drinks, but they’ll have to justify why it’s OK (and encouraged!) to market a 14% IPA that packs 300 calories to everyone else.

IRF/AJW: Kilian’s 2010 ultra trail season was pretty awesome, and oh, what a race that was to watch live!

Canadian Running: Good article on the Outside magazine issue.

LetsRun: One of Yiannis Kouros’ crew members writes about what it was like working with the GOAT. Pretty interesting stuff!

For Dre on this particular morning, the thought of going to work all day after missing the course record by eight seconds was too painful an eventuality. This time, you could safely say that Strava made her do it.

I was a few steps behind her as she crested peak and stood on the summit, rolling green mountains surrounding her on all sides. Despite giving all I had on the final 400 meters, I couldn’t stay with her. I found her bent over, breathing hard, watching her sweat hit the dirt in front of her face. I laid my hand gently on her back.

“You got it,” I said with the slightest air of solemnity, “By almost two minutes! Sent a lot of emails this morning…”

—Fun post about the impact of Strava and goals.

NYT: Alison Felix’s story on her own pregnancy story with NIKE.

TheWalrus: How selfie culture ruins the outdoors for other people.

Industry: You’re all buying a lot of HOKAs.

Koop: Some new acronyms to help your recovery.

Kevin Beck: Excellent post about African doping and why it’s so prevalent.

Telegraph: You get frustrated by single track conga lines? Imagine that scenario at 28k feet in full alpine gear…people are dying because of the traffic jams on Everest.

Happy Friday everyone. Heading down south for a family picnic and some fun trail time with Sunny.

14 Responses to "Trail Running Daily News | Friday, May 24"

joseph t altendahl says:

May 24, 2019 at 6:49 am

The Minnesota trail running community is another great example. Groups like the Upper Midwest Trail Runners, RockSteady Running, and Superior Hiking Trail Association devote thousands of hours to trail clearing and other trail projects throughout the year.

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1. eric schranz says:
  
  May 24, 2019 at 7:03 am
  
  Rad. Thanks for sharing. I’m sure there are hundreds of groups around the country…but they’re still likely outnumbered by MTB groups.
  
  Reply
Peter says:

May 24, 2019 at 6:57 am

Not sure if it’s a pro or con argument to either side – but the MTB scene is also a lot about so called pirate trails, building trails on community land without permission. It’s an important part of the culture manyplaces.

Just google “MTB pirate trails” and see for yourself.

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mcgovski says:

May 24, 2019 at 7:42 am

I actually am on the board of Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship http://www.sierratrails.org and my whole job is to engage the running community, grow membership and get runners to the trail work days. If anyone reading this is interested, check out the website. or contact me directly.
also, the “we built it” argument is flawed because most trails are funded by grants and if those trails are on public lands the stipulations of the grants are for multi use trails (almost always). So if 1 user group does more hours on trails and they took money for multi use trails…..that doesnt quite work out as sound logic

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stewthebassman says:

May 24, 2019 at 7:52 am

Great Comment Peter!

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Candice Burt says:

May 24, 2019 at 8:46 am

Thanks for writing about the Outside Article. I agree with your thoughtful points Eric. Trail work shouldn’t be about outdoing other user groups. It’s not a competition. All users can do more. I’d love to see an article encouraging all users to do more with concrete examples of how and where. I’m going to work on one. Anyone who wants to help can send the editor of Outside a message with their (constructive) thoughts on this article. So far Outside has just retweeted the article with no word of apology. I don’t think it’s ok to call names and bash any user group. Here’s the editors email: [email protected]

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Jamie says:

May 24, 2019 at 8:52 am

mcgovski – Thanks for what you do. I hope local people take you up on that offer. … On the “we built it” point, you are right that it doesn’t work as an argument for bikers having exclusive or special rights; but it does have some merit as an argument that bikers should be respected and not sneered at as a nuisance on those trails. I’m not at all a fan of the author’s divisiveness and insulting approach, but in his facebook post with the article, the latter argument is the one he made: something like “everytime I get sneered at by a trail runner, I think ‘we built this trail, and I helped.'”

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Dan P says:

May 24, 2019 at 9:15 am

As a runner and mtber I think this is pretty simple. Mountain bikers were treated a lot like snowboarders as they started riding trails. A lot of older hikers and equestrians constantly complained that they “ruined” the trails. They were typically young and going fast. Old hikers like my dad would complain about the young kids zipping around that did not appreciate nature like him. Typical older generation reaction. The MTB community (the responsible ones anyway) saw this and began to organize and advocate for trails and stewardship. It was necessary to stop bikes from getting banned on a lot of trails. Trail runners are not really much different than hikers in terms of impact. Since trail runners are not typically blamed for destroying trails and constantly threatened to be banned there is not as much urgency to form groups telling everyone how much we give back. Sort of like oil companies and their environmental stewardship campaigns. You don’t see other industries like tech doing that as much. They don’t have to as the general public doesn’t usually associate them as an industry that is making a mess. If there is a large backlash against trail runners and access is threatened I am sure the community would evolve similarly to the mtb crowd. Mtb tends to be a little more social than trail runners IMO. That is just anecdotal.

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cdetravel says:

May 24, 2019 at 11:08 am

Perfect response to the irresponsible Outside publication! Thank you – I have done the same!

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chiara says:

May 24, 2019 at 2:07 pm

I felt the same way when I saw that article pop up in my Google News feed. San Diego has a very active trail maintenance group, and has raised quite a bit of money on top of doing trail work. It was kind of offensive and I was surprised to see Outside Magazine publishing it.

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mcgovski says:

May 24, 2019 at 5:01 pm

I agree, I think its just easy to be kind. I know first hand how fun it is to rip down single track on a MTB, and I usually just get out of the way and carry on. Every user group needs to behave or we will all lose access. no good at all.

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Andrew says:

May 24, 2019 at 5:55 pm

I think someone below includes some comments about this, but there is a HUGE difference in impact of erosion caused by mountain bikers compared to the almost nonexistent erosion created by a runner or hiker. When you factor in muddy conditions it’s almost irresponsible to ride a bike as that flat out ruins the trails and ruts it out for many months, whereas a runner’s footprint may exist for a week or so.

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Ben says:

May 26, 2019 at 7:30 pm

As a soil scientist I’ve been thinking about the issues mentioned in the Outside article for a couple days now. Could the author have used more tact? Sure. He has a lot of valid points, though. We all have an impact on our trails. Wearing wide Altras doesn’t make us immune to eroding the trails. It’s easy to be defensive and blame someone else for their degradation, but we are part of the problem. There’s a lot of talk in the culture of pushing through any condition to carry on. That may be great for competition-sometimes not so good for the resource. How many race reports talk about terrible mud for miles without considering the long term impact for all users? How many FKT attempts on trail-less areas does it take before a social trail appears? Soil forms on a timescale in 1000’s of years. What condition will your favorite trail be in a single decade? Many of our towns are growing and those users are logging more miles, regardless of mode of transportation. Let’s step up and represent our community. Dig up an old race shirt for National Trails Day. There are plenty of opportunities to volunteer and is only a week away.

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1. Chris Wristen says:
  
  May 30, 2019 at 6:09 am
  
  That’s a great post, Ben. Building on your point about soil conditions, our trail experiences (and our potential trail damage during non-dry conditions) also varies from region to region where soil types are different. I live in Massachusetts now, where the trails are largely rock-based and in most places are firm and durable even when we’ve had a lot of rain. When I lived in Kansas, which is where I got into trail-running, the trails routinely were closed for most of the spring – as they are right now since most of them are under water or incredibly soggy. The soil on many of the trails in Kansas is clay-based, so if it’s soggy then your foot or wheel sinks right in and it slides away, creating deep ruts that destroy weeks/months of volunteer work in moments.
  
  Reply

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