This weekend, Beast of Big Creek marks the return of the Skyrunner World Series to the United States. We’ll be testing what we’ve been building (in public) at Borderlands: Live on Course.

It’s an initial test to ensure we’re not overfit on synthetic observations from Cocodona 250.

We’re trying to answer a much more fundamental question: How do humans naturally describe what’s happening during a race and we need help from real people ein the field.

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We’ll invite volunteers [runners, crew members, spectators, photographers, volunteers, anyone already at the event] to send short qualitative observations throughout the day whenever they want using what every language they want.

» Will you be there? Sign up here.

The goal is to see how a range of observers varying in quality take in and explain whats happening. In order for this to work we can’t rely on human nodes in the field with expert insights. We’d be too limited. We want anyone on course to be able to contribute.

We’re trying to build a corpus of real race observations and learn how people describe momentum, fatigue, atmosphere, weather, tactics, emotion, and the thousands of details that make a race legible to someone who isn’t standing there.

Eventually, LoC’s job will be to transform hundreds of these small observations into meaningful race intelligence in real time for video and audio commentaries.

We’re going to learn what people notice, what they ignore, how they communicate, and what moments feel noteworthy to them.

Our success metric on this is simply 5 people in the field making observations as often as they can. It’s a low bar. Every ensuing event will require more of the humans in the field.

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Western States is the race that brings the trail running world together. Hardrock arrives two or three weeks later, with everyone’s attention already locked onto the sport. As fans, we want more of that sweet energy from Western States and so we shoehorn Hardrock into that WSER-sized hole in our hearts.

I’ve never fully bought into the Hardrock mythology.

The field isn’t the best runners in the world. It’s the best runners who got in that year. Karl Meltzer told us Hardrock could accommodate another hundred runners under its permit, yet it chooses not to. It wants to be one of trail running’s defining events, but it starts and finishes when much of the audience is asleep.

None of those opinions changed this year.

But the stories, for me, did change.

Courtney Dauwalter had a chance to answer Cocodona. Jimmy Elam was poised to bring the title to my home state, Utah. Those were the reasons I tuned in.

Ludovic Pommeret wasn’t. If I’m being honest, I wanted someone else to win.

I’m not compelled by three straight titles. Tom Brady’s predictability at the top of his game was impressive but also boring. His story became interesting years later to me, once I had enough distance to appreciate what I’d watched. Dynasties in real time are boring. I want uncertainty. I wanted Jimmy. I wanted someone to make me wonder who would reach Silverton first.

Instead, Ludovic kept pulling away.

After reading Bryce Carlson’s article, I saw it a different way.

Ludovic wasn’t simply winning another Hardrock. He was showing us what Hardrock rewards. Every race rewards fitness. Hardrock rewards something else too.

Wisdom.

We spend a lot of time talking about fitness as though it’s only physiological. VO₂ max. Lactate threshold. Recovery.

Hardrock reminds us that judgment is part of fitness too.

That’s what Ludovic gave us.

Most of us have accepted that running can remain part of our lives as we get older. We know fifty-year-olds who still run every morning. That’s no longer surprising.

The harder question is whether we can still become better runners as we age. Hardrock answered that question this year. Age doesn’t make you stronger. But it does give you another tool that youth doesn’t.

And for one weekend each July, the San Juans reward it more than any other event on the calendar.

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Read:
French Trail Running is Changing Hardrock & WSER → by Stan Van Kemmel
Ludovic Ruined One of my Best Excuses → by Bryce Carlson
Mount to Coast H1: The Rise of a Superstar → by Inky Steve

Watch
HOKA’s Unbreakable Rule → by Josh Rosenthal
Accumulated Wisdom: The New Strategy for Trail Runners → by Josh Rosenthal

Most companies enter new markets the same way... strategy sessions coupled with research, surveys, spreadsheets, and perhaps a bit of founder or executive intuition.

HOKA is telling a different story. Travis Wiseman (global head of partnerships) and Thomas Cykana (global head of lifestyle product) told me a story that I frankly like much more. They didn't wake up one morning and decide to become a lifestyle brand.

Fashion discovered HOKA first. Kiko Kostadinov put HOKA on the runway at his 2016 Central Saint Martins graduation show. The audience started wearing running shoes outside of running. HOKA simply paid attention and built around this unexpected new type of demand.

Watch the full interview →

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But they're smart. They didn't cash in on lifestyle to the detriment of their performance brand. They put a guardrail in place: no "toy shoes."

They aren't building precious lifestyle products. They're evolving their performance portfolio and collaborating with brands like UNNA and BEAMS.

Their assumption is that the average consumer doesn't fully understand the difference between a performance shoe and a lifestyle shoe. Or maybe they just don't care. The design and colorway speak to them either way.

If someone buys a collaboration, there's a good chance they'll run in it.
So every shoe still has to earn its place as a HOKA.

That's a very different philosophy than chasing a new category.

This isn't a story about the best strategic thinker in the room discovering a new opportunity. It's a story about listening to customers and following them with a clear sense of purpose.

The strongest brands don't abandon what made them successful to enter a new market. They carry those principles with them.

That's a much harder way to grow. It also might be why HOKA has succeeded where so many others haven't.

Today Borderlands moves its headquarters from Paris back to Salt Lake City.

Two years ago, I moved my family here believing a media company could be headquartered anywhere in the world and produce the same results.

I was wrong.

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For two years, my wife and I dragged our three kids through Airbnbs across Paris, Copenhagen, Ljunghusen, and Frederiksværk. We asked them to learn languages we didn’t speak and build a life that never stayed still for long.

Somewhere along the way, Paris got under my skin and into my blood.

I became obsessed with the Americans who came here looking for something they couldn’t quite name. Hemingway’s neighborhood became mine. I walked past the cafés where he and Fitzgerald escaped the cold over wine. Gertrude Stein’s apartment was a few minutes from our grocery store. John Steinbeck’s old apartment sat just beyond the Métro stop on the way to church.

At first I thought those places held some kind of magic.

Now I think they held something else.

Pressure.

Paris demands your attention. It compresses life. It makes you wrestle with your work, your identity, your ambitions, and your limitations. It’s a constant reminder that you’re somewhere extraordinary, but not because of you. You’re just another person trying to become worthy of the place.

Looking back, I don’t think I could have built this version of Borderlands anywhere else. In next week’s episodes of the podcast I’ll do a good old fashioned ‘family’ meeting and explain this in depth. It goes live the moment I take off from the Paris airport.

Every great American-in-Paris story ends the same way.

The gift of Paris isn’t living there forever.

The gift of Paris is leaving it.

You leave carrying a version of yourself that didn’t exist when you arrived.

Paris gave me vision before it gave me results.

It didn’t build Borderlands. It built the person who could.

Now it’s time to find out whether that’s true.

See you at Borderlands.cc.

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After watching nearly every minute of the 2026 Western States 100, these were the ten ideas I couldn’t shake. For the full discussion and context behind each point, listen to this week’s episode of the Borderlands Trail & Ultra Running Podcast.

Or watch:

1. Dylan Bowman Really Is the Voice of Trail Running

Whether by design or circumstance, Dylan Bowman has become the primary narrator of the sport’s biggest race. The question isn’t whether he’s good enough. Thank God he is. The question is what responsibility comes with Freetrail being so intertwined with the institution of WSER.

2. The Broadcast Knows Where Everyone Is

Technology has largely solved the “where” problem. Storytelling still has to solve the “who” problem. Commentators had issues knowing who was on screen and sometimes they had issues knowing why those on screen mattered.

3. We Don’t Care About Places. We Care About Stories.

Hans Troyer running in first was never the story. Hans Troyer emptying himself to change the race was. Places matter because they tell stories inherently. Can we put the effort into telling stories that aren’t as legible on the surface?

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4. We Interviewed the Wrong People... Or Did We?

Looking back, FreeTrail and Singletrack interviewed five of the six eventual podium finishers. The issue wasn’t who got interviewed. It was how difficult it still is to introduce tomorrow’s protagonists before they become household names.

5. Whose Job Is It to Find Tomorrow’s Stories?

Thomas Cardin arrived at Western States as a Golden Ticket winner that many English-speaking fans barely knew. Once he became relevant during the race, the broadcast needed his story immediately. Someone has to own that work.

6. Hans Troyer Was the Rabbit I’ve Been Waiting For

Hans may not have won Western States, but he changed it. His willingness to attack early forced everyone else to make decisions they otherwise might not have made. Great competitors don’t just win races. They change them.

7. The Americans Ran Western States Like They Used to Run UTMB

The American men attacked early while many of the Europeans remained patient and disciplined. Francesco Puppi ignored the script, matched the aggression, and somehow had the engine to sustain it. It was one of the most fascinating tactical races we’ve seen.

8. Western States Has Outgrown Its Broadcast

Covering the men’s and women’s races simultaneously increasingly feels impossible, not because the production is lacking, but because both races deserve full attention. That’s a sign of growth, not failure.

9. The Broadcast Should Never Become the Story

The personalities in the booth matter, but the race should always remain the protagonist. The best commentary helps viewers disappear into the action rather than reminding them who’s holding the microphone.

10. Trail Running’s Next Frontier Is Context

Billy Yang and Mountain Outpost have fundamentally raised expectations for live production. The next leap won’t come from another drone or another camera angle. It will come from helping fans understand why every moment matters.

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Play 8 Bit Trail Running and race like your Slim Tallsley.

Zach Got the Fight He Wanted

"But Zach Miller is not interesting because he is old. He is interesting because he still races like the fight is personal.

At Hardrock, when the day went bad, he still wanted to know where the guys ahead of him were. At Worlds, he still wanted Adam Peterman. Even in a workout in Bend, he joked about not wanting someone to beat him. That part is not gone. Maybe it never goes.

Full article by Bryce Carlson

At Western States, the mood is quiet and reverent no matter how loud. It’s the most sober and somber expression of what running can mean.

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In Paris, the mood couldn’t be more different. Running spills into parties, exhibitions, conversations, and clothing. The energy is playful, expressive, even excessive at times. But underneath it all is people gathering because running has become meaningful enough to build culture around.

Western States reminds us why we run.
Paris Fashion Week asks what running becomes after the finish line.

I’ve been thinking about it while crafting a documentary on Ciele’s story and history. Twelve years ago, they seemed to recognize that running wasn’t only a sport. It was becoming a cultural identity. Looking back, that feels less like good branding and more like an early glimpse of where running was headed.

A Look Ahead to Race Day

A few perspectives on the 2026 Western States 100.

Western States by Borderlands

_{human interest by Bryce Carlson}
Zach Miller Got the Ticket Now He Gets the Fight
Tara Dower Lives Between Two Worlds. WSER Tests Them Both.
Kilan Jornet’s 2026 WSER Gamble
Molly Seidel, WSER, and the Honest Kind of Starting Over

_{podcasts by Josh Rosenthal}
WSER Wants to Protect, UTMB Wants to Grow
Why WSER is America’s Most Important Race
Trail Running Loves Winners, Does it Love Competitors?

_{op-ed by Bob Crowley}
The Trail Was Always the Teacher

(nobody does it like) iRunFar

Men’s Preview
Women’s Preview
Josh’s Picks:
• Men: Hayden | Hans | Kilan
• Women: Abby | Fu-Zhao

Former ITRA President Bob Crowley’s answer is both simpler and more optimistic than most. Trail running culture doesn’t live in race organizations, private equity firms, governing bodies, or finish lines. It lives in behaviors passed from runner to runner, generation after generation.

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Or as Bob puts it:

“We did not make this culture. We were made by it.”

It’s one of the most thoughtful responses I’ve read to the current conversation around growth, preservation, and the future of trail running.

I read Bob’s op-ed and responded on our latest podcast.

→ Watch
→ Listen

FEATURED

Trail Running Culture Doesn’t Scale
Bob Crowley on why the culture of trail running exists beyond the institutions currently fighting over it.

→ Read

READ

Tara Dower Lives Between Two Worlds.
Western States Will Test Both.

Tara talks like someone who still has one foot at a thru-hiker campsite, eating candy and laughing with people named Mudbag. Not the usual elite-athlete origin story.

Then again, after she DNF’d Mammoth 200, she was back at her Airbnb within about 12 hours working on her Javelina race document. Crew, pacers, recovery, beet juice, sleep. Already building the next attempt.

_{by Bryce Carlson}

→ Read

The Speed Project Before the Mythology

Nils Arend before The Speed Project became a legend. In 2017, Nils stopped running the race so he could care for the people running it.

a photo essay by Christian Brecheis

→ Look

FROM ELSEWHERE

Somer Saw It First

When I got into running, I kept seeing her photos attached to the kind of people and brands that made the sport feel interesting to me. Brooks. Rabbit. Hoka. On. Norda. Big races. Cool athletes. Work that did not feel like stock running content. It felt like someone actually understood the sport.

_{by Bryce Carlson for Subwhatever}

→ Read

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When I met Douglas at Paris Fashion Week, I expected someone carrying the weight of a movement. Instead, I found a warm, practical entrepreneur focused on products, community, and helping people find things they’ll genuinely love.

Her women-first approach isn’t a marketing strategy. It’s a reflection of what she cares about. And perhaps that’s why it works. Running Wylder feels less like a store and more like being looked after.

By Bob Crowley
Former President, International Trail Running Association
Head Yeti, Trail Animals Running Club
June 20, 2026

The author of this piece gets a great deal right. The framing is sharp, the diagnosis of cultural dilution is real, and the conclusion — that trail running is ultimately about people — lands with precision. After forty years on the trails, I’d say: read this piece twice. Then lace up and go find out for yourself.

But I want to push the conversation further. Not because the author is wrong, but because the framing, as lucid as it is, still orbits the institutions — Western States, UTMB, private equity, field sizes — when the answer lives somewhere the institutions can’t reach.

Trail running didn’t come from races. It came from people who couldn’t sit still.

I was fortunate to be raised in this sport by people who helped build it. Not the races. The thing itself. Long before finish lines and UTMB points and streaming audiences, there were people moving through forests and over ridgelines because something in their bones demanded it. I ran alongside them for thousands of hours. What they taught me was not about pace or performance. It was about posture — how to hold yourself in relation to the mountain, the mud, the darkness, and the stranger beside you who just handed you their last gel at mile 73.

Those people didn’t talk about protecting the culture. They just lived it. Generously. Without agenda.

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That is the tradition we are actually talking about.

The debate about WSER versus UTMB is a proxy war.

It’s a useful proxy — the author is right to use it — but we should be clear about what it is. Both races are artifacts. Important ones, yes. Symbols with genuine gravitational pull. But the culture of trail running was not born at Squaw Valley in 1974, and it will not die in Chamonix. It lives in the Saturday morning group run where a veteran slows down — voluntarily, without being asked — to run the final miles with someone who is struggling. It lives in the volunteer who drives four hours to stand at a remote aid station at 3 a.m. for a stranger.

That behavior cannot be mandated by a governing body. It cannot be purchased by private equity. It cannot be replicated by expanding a race series to seven continents.

It can only be transmitted — person to person, mile by mile, the way it always has been.

So, is the culture at risk? Yes and no.

Yes, in the short term: growth always dilutes. When I became ITRA president, I asked exactly this question: will we rise to the challenge of welcoming the tremendous influx of new members and teach them our values, or will we allow those values to be diminished and eventually forgotten? That tension is permanent. It does not resolve. It must be managed, generation after generation.

No, in the long term: because trail running is not a product. It is not a brand. It is not even, precisely, a sport. It is closer to what the author implies at the very end of his piece — a set of behaviors rooted in something older and more durable than any organization. Those behaviors have survived commercialization before. They will survive it again.

The author compares infrastructure to culture, correctly noting that infrastructure scales and culture doesn’t. What he stops short of saying is this: culture does not need to scale. It needs to persist. And persistence is what trail runners are actually trained for.

The trail runner’s real currency is not a result. It is a story.

Trail running is simultaneously the most selfish and most selfless pursuit I know. You go alone into something hard. Profoundly alone, at 3 a.m., in the cold, with a headlamp and a list of things your body would prefer you not do. That’s selfish in the most elemental sense — a private reckoning. But here is what the elders taught me: the moment you finish — or don’t — that story belongs to the community. It becomes part of the shared library. The veteran at the aid station who looks you in the eye and says I’ve been here. I know what this is — that is culture operating exactly as designed.

This is why no FKT, no podium finish, no race series acquisition can touch the center of this thing. The center is a conversation between a person and a trail and, eventually, between that person and everyone else who has had the same conversation. That exchange is ancient. It is not going anywhere.

The next generation will change the practice. They will not change the premise.

This has always been true. Every generation of trail runners thinks the previous generation had it purer, harder, more authentic. Every generation is partially right and mostly wrong. The tenets — generosity, humility, persistence, community over outcome — survive every stylistic evolution because they are not stylistic. They are structural. They are why the sport works, not just culturally but practically. A trail runner who won’t help another runner is a trail runner who hasn’t yet been in enough trouble to understand that they will need help themselves.

The sport teaches this. Eventually, it teaches everyone.

A final thought.

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The author’s framing — growth versus preservation — is the right argument to be having loudly, publicly, and without deference to the institutions that have a stake in how it resolves. Keep making it.

But the outcome of that argument, whatever it is, will not determine trail running’s future. The future will be determined by the runner who finishes her first 50K and turns around at the finish line to wait for the person behind her. By the club captain who runs the last mile with the slowest member every single week. By the elder who passes the torch with no expectation of credit.

Trail running survived the Gore-Tex era, the minimalism craze, the obstacle race decade, the Instagram athlete, and a global pandemic.

It will survive private equity.

What sustains it is not fragile. It is the oldest thing we know how to do: move through the landscape, together, and tell the truth about it when we get home.

We did not make this culture. We were made by it.

Bob Crowley is the former Head Yeti of the Trail Animals Running Club, former President of the International Trail Running Association (ITRA), and a forty-year member of the trail running community in the United States.

Trail running, endurance culture, product, media, ambition, identity, and the signals that explain where the sport is going.

Contents
The Supply Chain of Culture
Trail Races | The Culture Pipeline
From the Wide(r) World of Running
From Borderlands
Our Tools and Experiments

_{Presented by Kiprun}

The Supply Chain of Culture

We spend a lot of time debating the institutions that display trail running culture while paying far less attention to the institutions that produce trail running culture.

Western States, UTMB, social media, etc ad nauseam displays it.

But none of them create it.

Culture is usually formed much earlier, at the local race where a volunteer hands you soup at midnight, where an experienced runner shows a newcomer how things work, or where someone sacrifices their own race to help another runner finish.

One of my early desert ultras found me without any food when I needed it. A woman stopped and emptied her bag for me. Gave me everything. She didn’t expect anything in return. Someone had done it for her years ago and she does it every chance she gets.

The real risk to trail running isn’t growth. It’s that the sport grows faster than its culture can reproduce itself.

Every community depends on a supply chain. Trail running’s supply chain isn’t shoes, sponsorships, or race entries. It’s values.

And unlike infrastructure, culture can’t simply be scaled. It has to be passed down.

An excerpt from a new podcast called WSER Wants to Protect, UTMB Wants to Grow.
Watch →
Listen →

Trail Races | The Culture Pipeline

Culture is learned at small, local trail races.

Big Bend 50
Badger Trail Races
Palo Dure Trail Run
Crazy Bob’s Bair Gutsman
Pony Express 100

Support local races.

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From the Wide(r) World of Running

Shoes | new to us: Circle
Freetrailgaiting
2006 Collapse at WSER
Shoes | new to us: Flowers for Society
I Choose Not to Run

From Borderlands

Podcast | WSER Wants to Protect, UTMB Wants to Grow _{by Josh Rosenthal}
Podcast | Michael Whiteside has no Offswitch _{by Josh Rosenthal}
Essay | Tara Dower Lives Between Two World, WSER Tests Them Both _{by Bryce Carlson}
Photo Essay | Nils Arend’s Last Running of TSP _{by Christian Brecheis}
Almanac | NNormal Cadi, Made for Comfort, Not Kilian

Our Tools and Experiments

Wylder (iOS + Android) - we built a mobile app for run clubs
LoC (beta) - An intelligence layer for ultra-trail races
8 Bit Trail Running - online arcade for trail runners

The Bear + Wasatch, Back to Back

Michael describes a moment every runner faces: his legs weren’t coming back. The day he'd been given was the day he was going to have.

Ultra running teaches us to solve problems. Then sometimes you’re left with something that can’t be solved. What Michael describes isn’t toughness. It’s acceptance. The ability to stop negotiating with reality and work with what’s actually in front of you.

The conversation starts with two hundred-mile races. It ends somewhere much broader than that.

Watch the Full Episode →
Listen →

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Kilian’s Western States Gamble

_{by Bryce Carlson}

The lead-up to Western States hasn’t been clean. He raced Zegama, a race he loves and has won so often he feels stitched into the place. But this year his leg stopped cooperating. He felt fine climbing. On flats and downhills, he couldn’t control it. Then it started to hurt. So he backed off, took in the crowd, thanked people, and treated a bad day at a race he loves like something other than an emergency.

Read more…

NNormal Cadi | Built for Comfort, Not for Kilian

The NNormal Cadi seems to believe that trail shoe quivers have arrived in America.

I first heard my friend Ryan Ramsby talk about it after finishing Cocodona 250. The idea is simple: we’re moving away from one shoe that does everything and toward collections of shoes that each do something specific.

For most of my running life, that wasn’t how I operated.

I’d buy one pair of trail shoes and run every mountain around Salt Lake City in them. When the soles wore down, they became road shoes. When they wore down even more, they became yard work shoes.

Read more…

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Nike ACG LDV, Nostalgia,
and the Cost of Optimization

From vintage Nike silhouettes to modern super shoes, Josh and Inky explore why some products stay with us long after better technology arrives, and whether trail running has lost a little of its willingness to be weird.
_{The idea of Sea of Sameness came from Marty at Global Sales Guys}

Watch the Full Episode →

Trail Running Arcade

Welcome to 8 Bit Trail Running. It’s an arcade filling up quickly with 8 bit games inspired by trail running lore.

Goat Rodeo 100 - DNF a 100 miler online now too.
Aid Station Podiatrist - Take care of those disgusting feet of yours.

Head to the arcade →

I’ve been trying to figure out why I obsess over Western States the way I do. This year I realized it contradicts a lot of what I’ve argued in the past.

Western States owns my imagination the way the Masters did during Tiger Woods’ prime. Or the Kentucky Derby, where most people couldn’t name a horse in the field but can imagine the hats and mint juleps.

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The common thread is place.

The Masters is inseparable from Augusta National. The audience knows every hole, every disaster, every triumph. History accumulates in the same corners of the course year after year.

The Kentucky Derby has Churchill Downs. The hats, the bourbon, the traditions only work because they’re rooted somewhere.

Western States has the course.

2026 may give us the greatest field the race has ever seen. I’d follow those athletes anywhere. But 2025 and 2026 Chianti had incredible fields too, and I lost sleep over neither.

I lose sleep over Western States because I know the course. I know where dreams end. I know where legends are made. The course is the main character, and it isn’t there to help anyone. It’s there to punish the best runners in the world and make them earn a place in its history.

Trail running, endurance culture, product, media, ambition, identity, and the strange little signals that explain where the sport is going.

Contents
On the Cost of Being Seen
When Trail Running Went Public
From the Wide(r) World of Trail
From Borderlands

On the Cost of Being Seen

Every once in a while, trail running has a moment that escapes the sport.

Rachel Entrekin just gave us one. A woman winning Cocodona outright is exactly the kind of story that makes me proud of this strange little world. It is also the kind of story that makes me wonder what happens when more people start looking our way.

I’ve been living in Paris for two years, and soon I’m heading back to the Wasatch, to the trails I love most. Caleb Olson recently said they’re already overcrowded. I don’t want to admit how much that bothers me.

Because fundamentally, I want trail running to grow. If the sport has given me so much, why wouldn’t I want more people to find it?

But I also trail run because I want to be alone. I want quiet. I want renewal. I want access to something that mass attention always threatens to change.

That’s the tension this week: the joy of seeing trail running reach the wider world, and the quiet fear that the thing we love might not survive being fully discovered.

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When Trail Running Went Public

Leadville 1994 on CBS’ Eye on Sports
Dean Karnazes on David Letterman
Rachel Entrekin on BBC
Courtney Dauwalter on Joe Rogan
Laz Lake in the Guardian
Scott Jurek on National Geographic

From the Wide(r) World of Trail

Aurélien Sanchez is attempting the Pacific Crest Trail FKT
Western States has an Agenda
Analysis on Cocodona 250 Lottery Results
Is Trail Running Dirtbag Simple? Or Corporate Complex?
A Solid Harvest of University of Colorado Buffaloes

From Borderlands

Podcast | Why Western States is America’s Most Important Race
Podcast | Trail Running Shoe Sea of Sameness
Essay | Kilian’s Western States Gamble by Bryce Carlson
Almanac | theROCKER, the Most Misunderstood Trail Shoe by Inky Steve

Our Tools and Experiments
Wylde (iOS + Android) - we built a mobile app for run clubs
LoC (beta) - An intelligence layer for ultra-trail races
Goat Rodeo 100 - An 8-Bit trail running game

Subscribe now

Sorry, desktop only. Also, if you encounter problems, let us know in the comments on this post.

The premise is simple. You are attempting to finish a 100-mile trail race while managing fuel, energy, hydration, caffeine, aid stations, bad decisions, and the slow unraveling of your own judgment.

You can choose between two runners. Both are totally random and have no connection to the outside world. Completely original.

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The game is free to play. Your email is the ticket in, mostly because Borderlands is building an independent media platform and email is still the cleanest way to stay connected without depending entirely on algorithms.

Help build the leaderboard - go play Goat Rodeo 100.

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For years, I thought the athletes were the reason I cared about Western States. This week I realized I had it backwards.

Trail running talks endlessly about who is racing. But in sports, the events that stay with us tend to be rooted in a place. Augusta. Churchill Downs. Places where history accumulates and every new performance is measured against the ones that came before.

Western States is that. I know where the race unravels. I know where legends can be made. Long before the athletes arrive, the course is already waiting.

How much of what we love about sports is actually about the competitors, and how much is about the stage they’re forced to perform on?

How much of what we love about sports is actually about the competitors, and how much is about the stage they're forced to perform on?

Watch the Full Episode →
Listen →

Molly Seidel, Western States, and the Honest Kind of Starting Over

_{by Bryce Carlson}

The point is that I like stories of reinvention, especially when they are not born out of failure. Sometimes people start over because something went wrong. Sometimes people start over because the old thing worked, and staying there just doesn’t feel like the whole story.

Read more…

[Photo Essay] The Space Between Mastery and Uncertainty.

Photographer Christian Brecheis spent time with Seidel outside Flagstaff, Arizona, documenting a rare moment in an athlete’s career.

Full photo essay…

theROCKER: the Most Misunderstood Trail Running Shoe

_{by Inky Steve}

I’m not gonna tell you all it’s the best trail shoe on the market. It’s not. The grip isn’t great. It’s not the lightest thing you’ll ever put on your foot. It’s not gonna give you 5% extra bounce or whatever the spec sheet crowd are obsessing over this season.

Read more…

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LoC by Borderlands

After Mountain Outpost’s 2026 Cocodona 250 coverage, Borderlands released an episode called Cocodona Has a Fan Problem, pointing directly at areas of the live broadcast we believed could improve.

For a while now, we’ve had an idea we believe could better serve commentators, fans, the production team, and the race itself.

This is it and it’s best enjoyed on a computer but built for all devices.

Sincerely,

Josh Rosenthal
Founder

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It made sense to conflate these two when the sport was smaller.

It makes less sense now.

The runner showing up to their first 50k and the athlete trying to win Western States may be participating in the same type of event, but they are not participating in the same experience. Everything from training to race day are completely different. Motivations, incentives, desired outcomes. All of it.

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The first athlete is often pursuing some combination of challenge, community, self-discovery, health, adventure, personal transformation.

The second is trying to beat everyone else.

That distinction sounds obvious yet trail running often struggles to make it.

As a result, the values of the participation sport frequently become the values through which we interpret the elite sport.

That creates a strange dynamic.

Trail running loves winners. The most celebrated figures in the sport are celebrated because they win. Jim Walmsley, Courtney Dauwalter, Kilian Jornet, Scott Jurek, François D’Haene. Their accomplishments sit at the center of modern trail running culture and have been leveraged into creating new entrants and motivating veterans alike.

Yet the language surrounding those athletes often emphasizes traits adjacent to competition rather than competition itself. We talk about humility, gratitude, balance, community, environmental responsibility, and personal growth.

Those qualities may all be real.

The issue is not that they are false. The issue is that they are often easier for the culture to discuss than ambition, obsession, rivalry, competitiveness, or domination.

The result is a subtle distortion.

We celebrate the outcome while spending surprisingly little time examining the mindset required to produce it.

Nobody accidentally becomes Jim, Zach, Rachel, Kilian, or Courtney.

Those careers are built through thousands of decisions made in service of a singular objective: becoming better than everyone else in the field.

That objective is not unique to trail running. It is the defining characteristic of elite sport.

As long as trail running conflates these two sports, we'll continue filtering elite athletes through a lens that was never built to understand them.

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Jonathan’s recent article on Laurel got me thinking.

What if Laurel and [LoC] were combined?

Laurel knows where athletes are. LoC knows what people are seeing.

Race coverage relies heavily on cameras to find, explain, and show the story but cameras only see a small fraction of the race.

Meanwhile, spectators, crew, volunteers, and media are constantly observing things the broadcast never captures.

An athlete looks unusually relaxed. A stop is shorter than expected. Someone suddenly looks uncomfortable.

Most of those observations disappear. LoC was built around the idea that they don’t have to.

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Now imagine combining those observations with precise location intelligence.

Not a giant race map. More like a simple Mario Kart-like race strip showing where the leaders are relative to each other and how those positions are changing.

Suddenly, observations have more context.

Fans get a better sense of what’s happening between aid stations.

Commentators get signals they otherwise wouldn’t have.

The cameras no longer have to carry the entire story themselves.

Maybe it’s a terrible idea.

Maybe the signal-to-noise ratio falls apart.

But I keep coming back to the same question:

If thousands of people already understand small pieces of the race, what happens when you connect them together?

Jonathan's article addresses a far more important use case than anything discussed here. This is simply an attempt to explore whether some of the same ideas could improve how we understand build [LoC] live trail races.

The Problem

A few weeks ago I released an episode about friction in the Cocodona 250 live coverage.

Not because the coverage was bad. Mountain Outpost proved there is real demand for long-form live ultra running coverage. Cocodona specifically brought tens of thousands of people into a 250-mile race across Arizona for multiple days.

The issue was friction.

The race regularly became difficult to follow between checkpoints. Viewers would enter the stream and struggle to understand who they were watching, what mattered, what had changed, or why a moment was important.

The audience assembled the race themselves.

The Idea

So I built a working prototype.

It’s called [LoC].

[LoC] is a live race intelligence system for ultra running built around distributed human observation.

People positioned throughout the course submit short field reports in real time about athlete condition, tactical shifts, weather, crew behavior, atmosphere, emotional moments, and developing race situations.

The system is designed around human moderation, verification, editorial judgment, and routing before information reaches commentators or viewers.

Fans get a public-facing live wire that they can dub ‘hot’ where the top 10 wires move to the hot wire.

Commentators and producers get a deeper intelligence layer designed to help them better understand what is happening between checkpoints before cameras or GPS trackers fully explain it.

Not X (Twitter)

Most people will immediately think this is just X for races.

It’s not.

X forces the audience to determine what is true, what matters, and what is noise.

LoC is designed around moderation, verification, editorial judgment, and routing before information reaches commentators or viewers.

Furniture in Coverage

One concept that came to mind while building this was “furniture.”

In another life I was a professional and mediocre musician and songwriter. Good songs have furniture. Small details that let you live inside them.

Furniture is the texture cameras often miss. Volunteers sensing someone is cracking before the splits show it. Tension building at an aid station before the leader arrives. A runner taking ice for the first time all day.

There’s an entire ecosystem in those details.

Why This Matters

The system is less about catching singular historic moments and more about sustaining meaningful coverage for 60+ straight hours without the race emotionally flattening between checkpoints.

I think ultra running’s athletes are outgrowing the current fan experience.

Better coverage keeps viewers connected longer. It slows exits. It makes races easier to enter midway through. It helps commentators become authorities on the race instead of reacting to scattered information in chats and group texts.

This model potentially allows ultra running to become more professional without removing the community layer that makes the sport unique.

About [LoC]

I modeled LoC more like a Bloomberg Terminal than a social platform.

Dense information, monotype fonts, low bandwidth, fast load times, text-first design.

Fans can follow incoming field reports and elevate the most important updates onto the hot wire.

But the system is really optimized for moderators and commentators.

The goal is simple:

MISS THE COVERAGE, MISS THE RACE.

The live broadcast should become the deepest live layer of race intelligence happening on the course.

Link + Final Notes

Explore → [LoC].

While it does have a mobile version, it is best experienced on desktop.

The product roadmap is public, along with a breakdown of how the system works and the ways I think it could fail.

We understand there could be questions about athlete dignity and athlete strategy.

I want feedback for this. Where does this work? Where does it fall apart? What makes it better? Tell me in the comments.

Disclosures

This prototype was built almost entirely with modern AI tooling.

LoC is functional right now. It is not race-ready.

I don’t know if this becomes a real company, a broadcast tool, or something else entirely. I mostly wanted to see whether the idea could exist outside criticism.

If LoC eventually proves valuable, I’ll build a sustainable business model around it. For now, I want to test whether it actually improves live race coverage.

We also understand that increased real-time visibility could eventually influence race dynamics themselves, particularly around athlete strategy and crew behavior. Part of this project is exploring where better coverage improves the sport and where visibility may need boundaries.

Trail running has never been better at generating attention. But the local races that turn spectators into trail runners are becoming harder to sustain.

Nowadays, the curiosity starts online → someone watches UTMB, Western States, or Cocodona → the algorithm serves them a beautiful piece of trail running media and something clicks.

The fan experience matters. Better storytelling and better media absolutely bring more people into the sport.

But what does it mean to be in the sport?

Right now, it means to actually run an ultra.

And those people are not running Cocodona, WSER, or UTMB as their first race.

The Conversion Layer

Google → Ultrasignup → type in the city they live in → find a local ultra with 53 runners and a race director answering emails at midnight after work.

Race day arrives.

They expect road marathon vibes. Instead they find the thing veterans of the sport will fight to preserve.

Folksiness at the starting line.
Volunteers at the aid stations who just want to see them succeed.
The guy who runs it every year and finishes last.
The winner who is an engineer or school teacher.

No Standard Operating Procedures.
No branded hospitality tent.
No performance optimization culture.

Just people building an experience because they love trail running.

The local race teaches people the ropes.
The etiquette.
What matters to the community.

Whether they embrace those values or reject them, this is where they first encounter the culture of trail running.

Participation comes before fandom in trail running.

Most people do not become trail running fans first.
They become runners first.

Then they get pulled deeper into the sport through awe, suffering, community, competition, identity, or service. Then they start following athletes, races, brands, and media.

The local race is the conversion layer of the funnel.

UTMB and Cocodona build intrigue. The local race is where someone decides to become part of the sport.

The Economics Problem

That makes local races incredibly important to the entire ecosystem, including the biggest organizations in trail running.

Aravaipa and UTMB need new runners. Every major race series depends on a somewhat predictable pipeline of people entering the sport. Most of those runners are not entering through destination races. They are entering through local races.

The problem is that local races are becoming economically fragile.

At the same time, runners increasingly compare every race against globally produced experiences consumed online. Expectations rise while the economics of small races become harder to sustain.

Western States qualification is part of this tension.

Western States demand keeps many races alive because runners need qualifiers. But qualification systems also centralize attention toward larger races and larger organizations.

Smaller races struggle unless they become attached to bigger systems.

What The Sport Needs

A healthy culture produces organizers, not just consumers.

Trail running needs race directors whose ambition is to put on a race for 80 people because they love the sport enough to do it. That kind of ambition is becoming harder to sustain financially and culturally.

Large organizations should not just market trail running. They should help preserve the local races that make trail running durable in the first place.

If the local race disappears, the entire ecosystem upstream weakens with it.

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A few weeks ago I wrote a piece called Who Decides What Trail Running Becomes?

The core idea was that runners are no longer the only force shaping the future of the sport. Brands, race organizations, media companies, and investors are increasingly influencing where trail running goes and what gets amplified along the way.

After publishing it, I flew to Stockholm to test the idea against two people actively building inside the sport:

Billy White, founder of Sörmlands 100, one of the largest independent trail races in Sweden, and Gonz Ferrero, CEO of Klättermusen, a 50-year-old heritage outdoor brand entering trail running intentionally.

The conversation became less about whether growth is good or bad and more about what happens when trail running starts optimizing for two very different things at the same time: A professional spectator sport and a grassroots dirtbag culture.

Both require very different structures, incentives, and experiences. And the bigger one side gets, the harder it becomes to preserve the feeling of the other.

The people building around trail running are not necessarily trying to turn it into something bigger, cleaner, or more commercial.

Some are trying to figure out how the sport can grow without losing the strange, human qualities that made people fall in love with it in the first place.

That became the real conversation.