Heya and welcome back to Five Things Running!
After the race last Sunday I did what sensible people do: I rested for a few days and went running again on Thursday, only to experience some weird new pain that I haven’t head before and that still hasn’t got anyway. I assume sleep and stretching will help. So I only did three shorter runs last week, which was totally fine for my body.
I did a nice Sunday run at a nature reserve on the outskirts of Hamburg that features a weird sand dune in the middle of just some meadows.
How was your running? Let me know! Are you sliding into an off-season mode where you focus on Christmas cookies, or will you continue to run no matter what festivities are happening?
Here’s this week’s Five Things Running!
Despite the influx of sponsorship money and high-profile activations, Nike’s path to dominating trail running is far less straightforward than it looks. Trail running is not a category that responds cleanly to scale; it’s a sport built on subculture, community, and credibility. The moment a brand moves too fast, the community tends to push back. You saw this with UTMB’s Ironman announcement, a technically strong commercial move that created backlash precisely because it felt imposed, commercial and degrading to the spirit of the sport. Nike risks a similar cultural rejection in a sport that has an allergy to heavy-handed commercialism.
Trail running is in this interesting space right now where it is not a total nerdshow anymore, but still nowhere near mainstream. It’s growing nicely and I like it that more and more people are running in nature than in urban areas, but with the focus on mountains and ultras, trail running is only appealing to a smaller demographic. That makes it hard for companies like Nike and Adidas to be really present in this sport.
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The whole run took me 11 hours 20 minutes, and almost nine hours of that were on the second half. It looked like Mars up there—colorless rock, sulphur burning in the air, and nothing alive. Every breath you’re breathing in sulfurous air and feeling sick. Underfoot it was all loose rock. Even with poles, every step felt unstable, as though the ground was trying to push me off. I was unintentionally slipping into strange minute-long micro-sleeps. The guides had to keep waking me up and giving me cocaleaf tea for energy.
I am not convinced that I would want to repeat that. Yet it is still fascinating what people can achieve.
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It makes sense then that I can no longer breathe, move, stand, or see with any kind of alacrity, that it’s even becoming difficult to separate one thing from another. It’s not just my eyes, but all of my organs that are now on strike. They’re holding my nuance hostage, reversing my individuating process until I give them what they need.
I hold out, though, which is why rocks blend into soil, soil bleeds into the grass, grass decays into sheep, and everything congeals into soup, the thought of which makes me even more hungry.
Angry too. Hangry? I’m hangry because I could’ve had actual soup with the woman on the Contovello street corner; or pizza, candy, and Coke to the tune of “99 Luftballoons” with those kids in the Obelisco piano room; or fruits, vegetables, and prosciutto crudo with the man at the Bognoli osmize. I was roaming through a land of plenty, but it wasn’t enough for me (see Figure 3).
I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that people are running so long and up and down so many mountains. This is an amazing writeup.
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This was my second trip to Texas for TRE, and you’ll understand that I’m not product-focused in terms of simply listing the latest press releases and photos of forthcoming shoes and apparel. Other people already do that just fine.
I like to think about how new products either reflect a changing desire from the consumer or how new technology can change how runners interact with the world of running. That’s run culture. That’s what I write about.
A huge part of that is the people, and while I didn’t see any single huge standout piece of innovation at the expo, there is still much to be excited about.
The Running Event sounds like so much fun and FOMO.
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AS A RUNNER, I’m always trying to convince my friends to join me on a jog. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard “I would, except, you know—my knees,” or “you’re so lucky your knees can handle that.” For some, running is synonymous with knee problems. And it’s understandable—a lot of people do experience sharp twinges or a relentless aching when they first start pushing mileage. But this myth often stops people from running before they even start.
If I had a dollar for every time somebody explains to me that he can’t run because of his knees, I’d be a rich man. Also, my knees were hurting so badly when I played basketball in high school, but now they are fine. So much for anecdotal evidence…
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If you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here:
Now, go running!
— Nico
🏃🏻♂️
