The Cost of Being Seen
Analog #16 looks at trail running’s mainstream moments, and the cost of wanting more people to find the thing we love.
Analog Issue #16 | A weekly editor’s notebook from Borderlands.
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.
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
Agreed. Sedona gets more crowded with every season. Social media has people FOMO.
The trails might be getting a bit more crowded but there's so much side/slack/backcountry to explore, and so many directions for our feet to take us, that we're still a bit off from not finding solitude. There definitely is that tension, and no one right answer. It's hard not to feel protective of the places and experiences that mean so much to us!