0:03

Hello , dude badders , I've just been recording

0:05

with Gurren , our next guest

0:07

, and here's a bit of overview

0:10

of what to expect . So

0:12

we do talk about the situation

0:14

with UTMB and her not being able to talk

0:16

well , no longer working

0:18

as a commentator for UTMB

0:21

race itself . But before that

0:23

, we actually go into biathlon

0:26

and what it takes to be a top biathlon

0:28

athlete . We then talk about how

0:30

trail running has changed and the

0:32

impact of her DNFs in her future races

0:34

, and then we get to the meat of it , which

0:36

is really it's

0:39

hard . It's

0:41

a great episode because it speaks to

0:44

the growing pains of the sport

0:46

and the

0:48

not just how

0:51

the professional trail runners association

0:53

has been engaging with different

0:56

groups within the sport

0:58

, but also the conflict that anyone

1:00

is working in the sport has such

1:03

a passion for

1:05

the individuals , the athletes and

1:07

the races themselves , and so , with

1:10

change is always going to be negatives and

1:13

positives , and so how

1:15

do we as individuals

1:17

really communicate and engage

1:19

with something we love without

1:22

potentially being

1:24

too vocal and everything collapsing

1:26

in on us in some regards ? So tuck

1:28

in guys . Well , strap in guys . It's a really

1:31

good interview . I hope you enjoy it and

1:33

take it away , nick . Hey

2:04

D-Batters , our next guest is someone who

2:07

, as soon as the recent

2:09

story erupted , who were being messaged

2:11

left , right and center , say get Karin on , get

2:13

Karin on . To be fair , we should have had her on for the last

2:15

, every year for the last five , 10

2:17

years . You probably know her as the editor-in-chief

2:20

of FreeTrail . She's involved in everything

2:22

from ultra trail so from ultra

2:24

sign up to being a racer

2:26

herself with Adidas , terrex and

2:28

obviously her amazing commentary . So welcome

2:30

to the podcast , the wonderful Karin Malcolm

2:32

.

2:38

Yay , I'm very excited to be here . This

2:40

is a . I've got a few podcast

2:42

requests in the old inbox and I was like , oh

2:45

, these guys , this is who I need to talk to .

2:47

And sorry it's taken so long . We there's

2:50

an element of we , because

2:52

we're such an international podcast there's so

2:54

many people in America who we want to interview

2:56

, and so we actually end up not interviewing

2:59

anywhere near as many people as we want to , because

3:01

we don't want to look as if we're just talking

3:04

to American people the whole time .

3:06

Yeah , you can't be too biased . You know you've got to

3:08

really like spread , spread things out a little bit

3:10

, that's okay . Well , how was this

3:12

?

3:13

how was this last four weeks been for you

3:15

? I mean , holy shit balls , what a bomb that's

3:17

been hey .

3:19

Oh , my goodness , I finally , I think , found

3:21

the right words to describe it recently

3:23

and we're having dinner with friends . Last

3:25

night and I was like you guys , I think I

3:28

feel like I've gotten out of a bad relationship

3:30

. Like you're , I've been dating this guy

3:33

, you know , being

3:35

UTMB in the sense because I'm happily

3:37

married and my husband's a great dude , but with

3:40

UTMB oh that we get the analogy

3:42

. It's like a bad it's like a bad breakup

3:44

. You know where it's like I've been in this relationship

3:46

that's been like a little bit abusive and it's like

3:49

I've like he promises he's going to change

3:51

and like he's got all these good ideas

3:54

of like how he wants to like be better

3:56

, but , like you know , there's nothing's

3:58

happening there and it's like I'm out and like there's

4:00

a bit of liberation around it . I

4:02

think people keep asking me like are you okay ? And

4:04

I'm like yeah , no , like I think I've

4:06

come out on the good side of things and

4:08

so it feels like I'm

4:10

out of a bad relationship and you

4:13

know conversations are going to continue with

4:15

, with UTMB and the entity

4:17

that they are , but it feels really good that I

4:19

don't have to spend every waking minute

4:21

thinking about them or

4:23

trying to figure out how to navigate

4:25

X , Y or Z situation . So

4:27

I feel like I've gotten

4:29

off kind of easy in that regard .

4:32

Now we're going to come back to this because

4:34

I'd love to talk more about you , but just

4:36

in terms of how you feel at the moment , is

4:39

what would you say the balance between , I

4:41

guess , anger , confusion , disappointment

4:44

there's so many emotions you could have

4:46

right now .

4:48

Yeah , I'd say I'm frustrated , and it's one

4:50

of those things where it's like , you

4:52

know , some things were left unclear

4:54

, some things were left unsaid , and

4:58

so I think it's mostly frustration

5:00

, like trying not to waste

5:02

too much too much anger , too much

5:04

sadness on on it

5:06

. But I think it's mostly just I'm frustrated . I'm frustrated

5:09

with , like , what could be and like how

5:11

. You know a race that I've , you

5:13

know , I've , I've loved historically in

5:15

the past . I've made the , the trip to Chalmonee

5:17

more times than I can count , but

5:20

you know it's . I've

5:22

held out hope , I think , for a long time , right , like okay

5:25

, they're gonna , they're gonna figure it out , they're gonna do what's

5:27

best for everyone . And it just really

5:29

doesn't seem to be the case right now . And

5:31

so for me , I find that frustrating . And it's

5:33

not frustration because I

5:35

want to be on the mic and I can't be . It's frustration

5:38

because I see how it could be really good

5:40

and I want

5:42

them to hit the mark and they're not , and so it's more like

5:44

maybe it maybe it's disappointment , you know , and parents are

5:46

like I'm not mad at you , I'm disappointed in you

5:48

, like I think that that's kind of the

5:50

the right vibe maybe for how I'm feeling

5:53

about it .

5:54

Yeah , and I know what you mean about disappointing , because

5:56

I think the crazy thing

5:58

in , in how I see it , is

6:00

that it's not as if they're

6:03

gaining a huge amount by

6:05

not doing the obvious things that would

6:07

be good for the community , for the elite athletes

6:09

, for the environmental impact . All

6:12

these things are very achievable and

6:14

while it might potentially

6:16

slightly reduce some

6:19

of their bottom line , not

6:21

very much . Not very much versus

6:23

the fallout of these . That's the crazy

6:25

thing . It just seems such an obvious . There's

6:28

just so many own goals that don't

6:30

need to be done . Sorry , own touchdowns

6:33

, what would it be ? It's oh , no , is there

6:35

? Is there an ? Do you get own goals

6:37

in baseball ? Oh , I don't

6:39

know . What would the analogy be ?

6:41

I have no idea , but I personally

6:43

get the own goal analogy . So the other

6:45

Americans are just going to have to catch up

6:47

a little bit there . But yeah , no , totally , it's like the

6:49

putting their foot in their mouth , the kind

6:51

of like shooting themselves in the foot . Whatever

6:54

the analogy is , yeah , it's like the . They're

6:56

so close to things being right but they

6:58

keep choosing like the wrong course of action

7:00

.

7:02

Well , let's rewind . Let's rewind to happier

7:04

times , the good times when we were free

7:06

, without this , this absolute

7:09

monolith crushing everything

7:11

. How did you , when did your love

7:13

for trail Best start ?

7:16

Yeah , I , I started racing

7:18

on the trail back in like 2015

7:22

, 2014, . But I grew up

7:24

in the Midwest in the US , to kind of center the country

7:26

, a little tiny town

7:28

called Hayward , wisconsin , where we

7:30

joke that it's like the silent sport capital

7:33

of the world . So it's like cross

7:35

country skiing , mountain biking

7:37

, kayaking , like these kind of peaceful

7:40

nature sports are like the the

7:42

big sports there grew up in a really

7:44

athletic family so I grew up skiing

7:47

, running , playing soccer etc . Went

7:50

to college to ski , actually

7:52

left college to compete for the US biathlon

7:54

team , so skiing in a circle with the firearm

7:57

and when I was

7:59

walking away from that or stepping away from that

8:01

sport . I was

8:03

back in Montana where I'd been going to university

8:05

and I realized that trail

8:07

racing was basically what we did all

8:10

summer for Nordic skiing rate . It's just like

8:12

go running the mountains for three

8:14

, four , five , six hours and like bring

8:16

snacks . And so I like had this kind of

8:19

immediate , like love for , for

8:21

trail running . In that sense like grew up running cross country

8:23

, loving cross country . The part of soccer I was good

8:25

at was like the 90 minutes are running , a lot

8:27

less the like actual , actual soccer

8:30

bit of it . And so for me

8:32

running has always kind of been there . But it wasn't

8:34

until , you know , moving back to Montana

8:37

and stepping away from like this winter sport that I'd

8:39

been competing in for a decade , to

8:41

really appreciate kind of having a

8:43

trail racing season

8:46

and jumped into sky running because we have

8:48

the rut in Montana as

8:50

a big , big running race in the fall

8:52

, which I adore and I love

8:54

the mics who put it on , and

8:57

so my first trail racing experience

8:59

was really like jumping into races like the rut and

9:01

Flagstaff sky peaks and the Crystal

9:04

Mountain Sky Marathon . And

9:07

then my dad was like you know , I think you'd be

9:09

a lot better if you ran further , like I think

9:11

you'd be like even better at this sport if you just

9:13

like ran for a longer period of time and

9:16

so kind of made him say that . I

9:18

think I'm stubborn . I think I'm very

9:20

stubborn because I'm good at soccer .

9:21

You wanted you out of the house for longer , did he ?

9:23

Yeah , he's like , can you actually just be gone ? You know , maybe

9:25

six , 10 , 12 hours . But

9:28

yeah , I don't . I don't know what exactly

9:30

it was , but I think it

9:32

was mostly like hey , like you're really good at just kind of

9:34

keeping your head down and like continuing to like

9:36

motor forward , and so I

9:39

, like my love of trail running

9:41

, became ultra running very fast and

9:43

did my first ultra in

9:46

2016, . I ran the Gorge

9:48

100K , 62

9:50

miles , for my 26th birthday , because

9:53

the race lined up perfectly and it's like been

9:55

kind of love ever since . You know , dabbling

9:57

in all sorts of races all over the world . But

10:00

yeah , I was . I was in it for the snacks is like

10:02

the like , the like the . The short story was

10:05

I was in it for the snacks and getting to go run

10:07

in the mountains for hours on end .

10:08

Well , I'm going to remind you to buy a thumb , because

10:10

we've never had a biathlete on

10:13

the show before . We've had

10:15

one person talk about shooting guns , but that was

10:17

in Iraq , which is very different .

10:19

Very different .

10:20

I've heard about how isn't

10:22

heart rate meant to be pivotal

10:25

to shooting accuracy or

10:27

something like that . Like there's certain

10:29

strategies when you do biathlon to try

10:31

and ensure that you're coming in relaxed

10:33

when you try and shoot .

10:35

So we joke in the US that biathlon is popular

10:38

every four years when you see it on TV during

10:40

the Olympics . But

10:42

yeah , so you're out skiing and you're skiing pretty

10:44

darn hard Like you used to be able

10:46

to be a good skier or a good shooter and

10:48

you could get by Like you could out ski bad

10:51

shooting , you could shoot really well and

10:53

that would save you some time in

10:55

comparison to other athletes , and really you have

10:57

to be pretty exceptional at both at this

11:00

point to excel on the World Cup

11:02

or at the highest level of the sport . But

11:04

yeah , there's this idea that you're going out

11:06

and you're skiing for one and a half

11:08

to three kilometers , pretty darn hard , and

11:11

you come into the shooting range and you have to be

11:13

calm very quickly , and

11:15

so there aren't really necessarily tricks

11:17

, but it's about just being cognizant of how

11:19

you come into the range and when

11:21

you're going to start your kind of shooting routine

11:23

where you're switching from being a skieracer to

11:26

being a marksman . And

11:28

every venue is a little bit different . There are some at higher

11:30

elevation where you have to start thinking

11:32

about that earlier . Their prone

11:35

to laying down versus standing can

11:37

be a bit different for people . People can come in hotter

11:39

generally to prone shooting than they can

11:41

standing shooting . If you come in overworked and

11:44

can't settle for standing , it's generally

11:46

a disaster and

11:48

you're more tired because it's normally the secondary shooting

11:50

stage .

11:52

But you have a choice , or there's one of each , is there

11:54

?

11:54

It's what ? Yeah , so in the it's always

11:56

, it's always 50 50 . So

11:59

the shortest races have two shooting stages , so one

12:01

prone , one standing and the longest shot

12:03

. That would be much better Like that would be crazy . But

12:07

at the same time the target

12:09

sizes change . So when you're shooting in prone

12:11

, they're about we

12:13

call them silver dollars I can't remember the centimeter

12:16

is , but they're they're , they're fairly small . And

12:18

then when you're shooting standing , they're more like a CD , so

12:21

a little bit larger of a target . So you couldn't

12:23

really do an every other shoot type of thing . But

12:26

it's . It's a super cool sport because it combines

12:28

like being incredibly athletic and

12:30

incredibly like aerobically and anaerobically fit

12:32

with being able to be very calm

12:34

and very focused and very regimented

12:37

. You know , half of

12:39

, not half of , but a lot of biathlon training

12:41

is like we call it dry firing , where

12:43

you're not even shooting live rounds , you're just going

12:45

through the mechanics of shooting a single

12:47

shot over and over and over again , or

12:50

holding in a position for a long period of

12:52

time so that when you are in a race scenario

12:54

you're not thinking about it anymore . It's literally

12:57

like the idea is that you're hopefully

12:59

so good that you don't have to think about it . You

13:02

come in and it's like muscle memory . You're

13:04

just like on the range , you're shooting and you

13:06

know you're . You're back off that shooting mat again and

13:08

generally like no more than 20

13:10

seconds .

13:11

So it's a lot to get done . Visualization . A

13:14

lot of visualization .

13:15

Yeah , people definitely spend a lot of time kind of working

13:17

on how they're going to ski a certain course

13:19

and then how they're going to come into the range and what that's going to

13:21

feel like and any adjustments

13:23

they might have to make , particularly like head to head stuff . Not

13:26

all the races are head to head , because some are individual

13:29

start , but the head to head races

13:31

that becomes a really big deal . And I actually

13:33

shoot left handed , so I shoot facing

13:35

. If we're standing and you're shooting right handed and

13:37

I'm shooting left handed , based on what side I'm on

13:39

, I'm facing you and so I'm

13:41

used to facing other shooters on the range

13:44

. But a lot of right handed shooters are

13:46

used to like having the person's back in

13:48

front of them . And when I pull up on the range

13:50

next to you , I face you instead , and

13:53

so I feel like I had to have I had

13:55

to get really good really fast the mental aspect

13:57

of it , because I saw that every single time I

13:59

shot and it really throw off a lot

14:01

of right handed shooters when this left handed person pulls

14:03

up alongside you . So there is

14:06

visualization , there is this mental component and

14:08

I think it's also the like understanding

14:11

that you can't control things or force things

14:13

and you really just have to like fall back

14:15

on skill , fall back on knowledge

14:17

and be ready to roll with it , because you could come

14:19

into the range and the wind could be blowing sideways

14:21

and like tough shit , like

14:23

that's . You can't control that . So I

14:25

think there's a lot of like kind of good life lessons

14:27

to take that are at least that I've taken forward

14:30

from it .

14:31

And if there are any rules against wearing kind of elaborate

14:33

face paint , because if someone came in and

14:35

suddenly looked across and you're

14:38

dressed there as the clown

14:40

from it or something similar

14:42

, you know that's surely going to be off putting

14:44

.

14:45

You know that would be kind of crazy . We don't

14:47

see a lot of that . There are a lot of people

14:49

. So we you don't want to close

14:51

. Generally you don't want to close one of your eyes because

14:54

you're looking through an open site . It's not a scope , it's

14:56

an open site and when you close an

14:58

eye you generally like distort

15:00

the image that you're looking at . So

15:02

you'll see on a lot of rifles during

15:05

biathlon that they have like an eye cover

15:07

essentially . So it looks like

15:09

a little eye shield and what it is . It allows

15:11

you to keep your non shooting eye open

15:14

, but it's just looking directly into like a black

15:16

, a black surface . So it's ostensibly

15:18

closed without like messing with any musculature

15:20

. But a lot of people have like crazy

15:22

prints or , like you'll see , like tiger

15:25

eyes or lion eyes or

15:27

like a hawk face or something . So there's some like

15:29

people's rifles can get pretty elaborate

15:31

with like different paint and that kind of stuff . But

15:33

no , no one's , no one has rolled up in like

15:35

a clown mask or something

15:38

. But the eye mask on

15:40

the biathlon rifle itself can be a little

15:42

bit elaborate sometimes .

15:45

So , returning to trial , then , in

15:47

terms of you've mentioned the rats already

15:49

like what would you say have been your biggest results

15:52

or your worst results in

15:55

trial running ?

15:57

Oh , there's probably been a lot of worst results . I've

15:59

definitely survived a lot of races

16:01

that did not go quite to plan . I

16:03

just ran an ultra chill Cape Town a couple of weeks

16:06

ago and had a hard day

16:08

out there spent , I think

16:10

it was . I thought I could run like 13 hours and I ran

16:12

15 and a half hours . So I was out there for

16:14

a little longer than

16:16

anticipated , but is that ?

16:18

is that the heat ?

16:19

Oh , I just think I flew in kind of last minute for

16:21

the race . I got in Wednesday night from

16:24

the US to Cape Town and raced

16:26

Saturday morning and just was just off

16:28

. It was definitely warm . I

16:30

kind of like horrible conditions historically

16:32

, like I've run Western states twice

16:35

, et cetera . I think my worst performances or

16:37

races where I like ultimately haven't made it to

16:39

the finish line and some of that's like out of your control

16:41

and some of that's making the hard choice

16:43

out there In 2019 at UTMB , I had I

16:46

don't know if I had food poisoning or if I there was

16:48

a stomach bug going around , because Chaminie

16:50

is like a cruise ship during UTMB

16:52

week . It's just like viruses and bugs from all over

16:54

the world descending on one little mountain town and

16:57

I vomited from like

16:59

20 K in until where I ultimately

17:02

dropped out at like a hundred and a

17:05

hundred and twenty , a hundred and thirty K

17:07

in or something I vomited for like almost a hundred

17:09

K before .

17:10

I finally was like you know what that's ? A decent amount of

17:12

vomit .

17:12

I've only had Coca-Cola for like the last

17:15

17 hours . Like I'm kind

17:17

of over this . So I think those

17:19

races are hard because it's like you go into

17:21

races where you feel like you're ready to have a great

17:23

performance and something is just a little bit

17:25

off your body , you're sick , etc

17:27

. But some of the races

17:29

I'm the most proud of are probably

17:31

, you know , just showing up to challenging

17:34

, challenging events . I've

17:36

been top 10 twice at Western States

17:38

, finishing in kind of the back part of the women's top

17:41

10 two times in a row and it felt

17:43

good to kind of be in a race where

17:45

I don't think of myself as a super

17:47

fast runner but I think of myself as , like a super

17:50

smart and super stubborn runner

17:52

and a person who can like deal with the elements

17:54

really well . So I felt I

17:56

felt really good being able to like kind

17:59

of like hang on in a very good field

18:01

, to like finish , finish in the

18:03

top 10 there in a race that I don't necessarily

18:06

think suits my strengths . But

18:08

yeah , it's , trail running is crazy . Like

18:10

you can have , you can finish

18:12

really far back and like consider

18:15

it one of your best races ever and you can win

18:17

a race and be like I messed up a

18:19

lot out there , or I had a little bit of luck on

18:21

my side today , and

18:23

it's just like you don't know what's

18:25

going to happen . And I think that's the beauty of ultra

18:28

running too , is that you go in and you kind

18:30

of roll the dice every single time .

18:33

And those races where you have pulled

18:35

out . There are some people that

18:37

subscribe to finish

18:40

no matter what , and every day

18:42

at DNF almost weakens you because

18:44

it gives you more permission to quit

18:47

the next time . Do you think that's true in your

18:49

case , or do you think that that is actually true

18:51

? Or do you think actually making the right decisions

18:53

is more empowering

18:55

and actually allows you to fight

18:57

another day , and distinguishes between

19:00

when you're feeling tired and when

19:02

you're feeling injured , or you

19:04

shouldn't be there .

19:05

Yeah , I'm not a death before DNF

19:07

kind of person . I

19:09

just think that , like there are times where

19:11

it's okay to pull the plug , like only drinking Coca

19:14

Cola . For a hundred miles I could have UTMB

19:16

. That was disappointing because I could have walked it in and I

19:18

could have finished well under the cutoffs and

19:21

I just would have been a hard day . But I wasn't . I

19:23

didn't go into that race mentally thinking

19:25

I'm going to finish this . Unless I've

19:28

hurt myself , unless I have physically caused

19:30

damage , I'm going to finish this

19:32

at all cost because it gives me X , y or Z

19:34

thing . I have done races like

19:36

that . Cape Town felt like that in a big way recently

19:38

, where I was like you know what , I'm not having a good day , but there's

19:41

no reason for me to stop . I'm not

19:43

hurting myself , I'm you

19:45

know , I want to finish the loop , I'm

19:47

not losing anything by finishing it , et cetera

19:49

. I think it's worth kind

19:52

of toughing that out , but I've definitely had

19:54

. I dropped out of TDS last

19:56

year and I dropped out of Madeira this year due

19:59

to I broke my pelvis in 2021

20:02

, just like

20:04

several stress fractures , essentially .

20:08

And .

20:09

I it's called not having great

20:12

mobility and picking up running

20:14

as a young adult

20:16

and never fixing any of those issues and

20:19

just praying that it's going to be okay

20:21

and ignoring it . And

20:24

so I I don't . I mean , I ran the Tahoe Rim

20:26

Trail FKT in 2020 , which is 171

20:29

miles , and then

20:31

it was probably three

20:33

or four months later that I had these stress fractures , and

20:35

so it's like was it that that did it

20:37

? We don't really know , but essentially

20:39

it was like a lot of biomechanical load

20:42

on some like kind of weak points and

20:44

ended up with three stress fractures in my pelvis

20:46

and so I dropped out . I've dropped out of a

20:48

couple of races since then , but it's generally been

20:50

to like protect my health , to say , you know what

20:53

, like something's off , I

20:55

you know , by stopping . Now I'm going to be

20:57

out for a couple of weeks , versus being out for months

20:59

or a year . This

21:01

spring at Madeira , I rolled my

21:04

foot really badly , and Madeira

21:06

, the goal was to like get a big Verdi race

21:08

in , but my big A goal was a hundred

21:10

mile race actually not that far from where I'm sitting

21:12

here in Washington state in July and

21:15

I was like you know what ? I'm not hurt yet , but

21:17

if I run 20 more miles downhill on this

21:19

bad foot , I'm like worried that

21:21

I'll miss the race that I really

21:23

want to get on the start line for this year . And

21:25

so I think that there are races

21:27

that I could have finished with

21:29

the right mental goals in place

21:32

and there are races that I'm happy

21:34

I dropped out of because

21:36

it was the right decision , either because

21:38

it wasn't the A race or I

21:41

was being protective of injury , et cetera

21:43

. So it's like there's no , there's not a right or

21:45

wrong answer . I think generally people know like

21:47

I think you know like

21:49

I regretted dropping out of UTMB in 2019

21:51

. I have zero regret about

21:54

dropping out of Madeira this April . So I

21:56

think it's like you know , you know within

21:58

the day or within a couple of days

22:00

if you made the right call or not . And

22:02

I think that's like generally pretty hyper individual

22:05

. But I'm yeah , I'm not a not

22:07

not a death before DNF person and I don't

22:09

think it's made it easier or harder to drop out of

22:11

races Like Cape

22:14

Town was hard and I was like , nope , I'm good as

22:16

long as I'm not hurt , like we're just going to keep

22:18

working the problems even though I don't feel awesome

22:20

.

22:21

They're actually ugly . Arguably , the regret

22:24

of dropping out of UTMB might mean that you're

22:26

more likely to push through the next

22:28

one Totally If you've done it . Yeah

22:32

, interesting . So when

22:34

did you start moving more towards the media

22:36

side of trial then ?

22:38

Yeah , I think

22:40

I got invited in to do some

22:42

live commentary at UTMB

22:45

in 2018 after

22:47

I finished on . I finished fourth

22:49

at TDS that year and

22:51

one of the commentators from Washington State

22:53

he saw that I was from Bellingham , washington , and

22:55

he was like we should bring her in . And that was

22:57

probably . I joked that that was like their worst idea

22:59

ever , because they brought me in and I just like didn't leave

23:02

and so I helped out in 2019

23:04

with OCC again and

23:07

then pandemic happened in

23:09

heading into 2021 . I was invited

23:12

to be part of

23:14

the first ever commentary team for Western States

23:16

and being and

23:18

I think that was just because I had done a little bit of commentary

23:20

at UTMB by accident and

23:23

then that became like a full fledged

23:25

commentary career , so

23:27

to speak . I'm not making big money on it

23:29

by any means , but I think it was

23:31

one of those like proof of concept situations

23:34

where they wanted a male and a female

23:36

commentator . Like my name came up really

23:38

quickly and it's

23:40

been kind of like history

23:42

ever since . It helped

23:44

in 2021 that I wasn't running . I was dealing

23:47

with the stress fracture that took me out for

23:49

the entire season , so I had some

23:51

extra time on my hands as well

23:53

, and then the long running joke

23:56

in our household is that my husband

23:58

was tired of hearing me talk about running

24:00

and wanted me to find some other

24:02

people to talk to about running

24:04

, and so podcasting has come out of that

24:06

and working live race commentary

24:09

has come out of that , and I think my brain

24:11

, just like naturally , is

24:13

really good at remembering kind of asinine details

24:16

about strangers . Instead of like

24:18

the periodic table or like practical information

24:20

, like tax information or anything

24:22

that I like probably should remember , I

24:25

can tell you you know who ran what

24:27

last year at Western States type of thing , which is

24:29

, I don't know , probably a bad

24:31

secret talent .

24:33

Well , the first one you did , going

24:36

into it . How did you approach it ? Because

24:39

now , as you say , it has changed

24:41

a lot . There are far more races who are doing

24:43

live commentary , but also

24:45

not just live commentary . There is more

24:48

opportunity to actually look at stats

24:50

to see who's doing what

24:52

in races , to actually see people running

24:54

in their styles . But going in , even

24:56

even three years ago , the amount

24:59

of information available was dramatically

25:01

different . But how did ? How did

25:03

you prep for your first commentary

25:05

?

25:07

Yeah , I mean , the stuff I did in 2018

25:09

and 2019 were zero prep

25:11

. Those were like accidental commentary

25:13

for 2021 . I

25:16

think I was honestly way more nervous

25:18

to do a bunch of pre-race interviews that

25:21

week because I wasn't really podcasting a

25:23

whole lot yet . And we

25:25

those one on one , or Dylan

25:27

and I sitting down with someone and doing a 20 minute

25:29

interview , like just asking like the one question

25:32

and wanting the one question to land well , that

25:34

created way more stress for me than

25:36

being like okay , you're going to talk on

25:39

air for 20 hours . Like that seemed

25:41

like an okay , an okay

25:43

challenge . But

25:45

I'm a I would say I'm a high consumer

25:47

of ultra running media

25:51

in general , like I . I

25:53

mean , they're my peers too , which is probably helpful , like

25:56

I'm 33 . Most

25:58

of the people I'm talking about are my friends

26:00

, my teammates , people I've been watching

26:03

come up in the sport , people I've admired in the

26:05

sport for years . I

26:07

feel like I know them personally , which means

26:09

I feel like the background research I have to do

26:11

is doesn't feel

26:13

like research . It's just like , oh , I'm checking in on my

26:15

friend who I want to like , oh , had that race

26:17

go for them , etc . So there is

26:19

like a little bit of cursory research , particularly

26:22

for athletes I'm less familiar with , like athletes coming

26:24

in internationally to Western

26:26

States , for example . I want to make sure that I

26:28

sort of know how to say their name and

26:30

I'm more familiar with results they've done . Or

26:33

I reach out to someone

26:35

that knows them just to see , like , how training

26:37

has gone , etc . But for the most part

26:39

I feel like once again it's

26:41

like I'm a high consumer of running media

26:43

and , for whatever reason , my

26:46

brain holds on to every single piece

26:48

of it . Like you won't see me with like a bunch of notes doing

26:51

live commentary historically . Like I'm

26:53

not sitting there with Google Docs open

26:55

or or anything like that . Like I've got split

26:57

docs because I want to know if we're on on or

26:59

off course record paces . But

27:03

other outside of that , it's like , for

27:06

whatever reason , my brain just holds on to everything

27:08

it's ever heard about anyone running and

27:10

I can generally recall it pretty quickly , which

27:12

is again a bad

27:14

secret talent I do .

27:17

Well , I mean it's , I think

27:19

it's been ready to apply yourself . I'm sure if

27:21

you were interested with those

27:23

, those tax documents , you might , might

27:26

learn those just as well . And

27:28

so , in terms of your relationship

27:31

then with UTMB

27:33

is an organization . Well

27:37

, there's , there's two things really . There's there's

27:39

one , the observing things that you wish were different

27:41

, and but that's very different to actually feeling

27:43

comfortable talking about it and

27:46

comfortable talking

27:48

about it on on

27:50

air . But when , when did when

27:54

did that evolve ?

27:57

Yeah , I mean I think I intersect the

27:59

organization at a lot of different levels

28:01

. To like , I'm a member

28:03

of the Pro Trail Running Association Board as

28:06

well . So I'm in a lot of like background

28:08

conversations with big entities

28:11

, big race series outside of

28:13

UTMB , to Golden Trail World Series , skyrunning

28:15

World Series , the World Trail majors , now

28:17

with Western States

28:19

etc . Kind of working for the athletes

28:21

and working for the community . The

28:24

stuff that we've done on air is

28:27

, you know , I think , pretty authentic

28:29

and genuine to who we are as people

28:31

. We're talking about what we're seeing in front of us . At the

28:33

same time , like you know , we're balancing

28:36

this line of generally speaking , when

28:38

we're on contract to do live commentary

28:40

for a race weekend . We're not

28:42

really unbiased journalists . We're

28:44

working for the organization , so

28:46

we try to , we try to reflect that in our commentary

28:49

. Right , you're not going to hear us say disparaging

28:52

things on air If something bad

28:55

has happened . On course , you know we're getting

28:57

kind of the background information

28:59

and saying , hey , we want you guys to , you guys need

29:01

to address this , you guys cannot address

29:03

this , etc . Because they want . You know anyone

29:06

wants to control the flow of media coming in and out of races

29:10

as they're , as they're happening , which I think

29:12

is fair to the organization . If they are

29:14

, they want us to speak accurately about a

29:17

situation that might be unfolding , for like for someone's

29:19

safety , for example , or if there's been a medical emergency

29:21

. On course they

29:23

. The expectation is that we're not going to speculate about

29:25

it , that we're going to provide facts when we have them

29:27

, because I think speculation

29:29

is where things kind of get , can get off the rails

29:31

a little bit . But when it comes to like being

29:34

, you know , being able to talk about

29:37

certain things on air , like equity , for example

29:39

, and making sure we're covering both fields equally

29:41

, I think a lot of that actually comes from

29:43

the fact that we're not we're not broadcasting

29:46

on TV , right ? It's not like there's this disconnect

29:48

between me and the audience . You're not watching , you're not tuning

29:50

into ESPN or or

29:52

Euro Sport to watch a

29:55

by UTMB race or Western States , for example

29:57

. You're watching it on YouTube , which means

29:59

there's like this direct interaction with the

30:01

audience . Ie , they're

30:03

in the chat , right , and that chat is live

30:05

and it is sometimes great and it is

30:08

sometimes awful . And

30:10

you know the names often you know their names

30:12

, you know who they are . They're cheering for their friends

30:14

, they're cheering for their family members , they're

30:17

cheering for significant others or teammates

30:19

, etc . Or you know , you've seen them in

30:21

the live chat over and over again . So

30:23

you , you know , you interacted with them in a race

30:25

a couple of weeks ago and you're going to interact with

30:27

them again in a couple of weeks . So it's this very

30:30

interesting community viewing

30:32

opportunity that a lot of major sports

30:34

don't experience , at

30:37

least not on the primary streaming

30:39

source right . Other big events . They might be this

30:42

this might be happening in discord channels

30:44

or on other other watching

30:46

platforms , but the main platform

30:48

doesn't have that feature and

30:50

I think because of that , when we're

30:52

in the booth , we are also accountable

30:55

to what's happening in the chat , and

30:57

some of it's ignoring it , some of it's flooding

30:59

it . If there's , if there's trolls in the chat , you'll

31:01

definitely be here . You will definitely hear me say

31:03

on air hey , let us know where you're

31:06

watching from , let us know who you're cheering on

31:08

, because that will pump 300

31:10

comments into the live chat that completely

31:12

like floods out the trolls , because all

31:14

of a sudden we'll have 300 comments saying I'm

31:16

watching from Thailand , I'm cheering for

31:18

number 432 , or I'm watching from

31:21

you know , hello from Denmark . All that

31:23

kind of stuff Like that is . That's

31:25

really cool that we have that , that control

31:28

. But that also means that they're like hey , like what's

31:30

happening in the women's race ? Or hey , what's happening

31:32

X , y or Z , like we see

31:34

that and we're beholden to that

31:36

in a way . The customer is not only

31:38

always right , but they're always present in

31:41

the situation , and so I think it becomes

31:43

our job in studio to say hey

31:45

, like we are , we are camera . You know , our camera

31:47

is waiting at this aid station and as soon

31:50

as , you know , engvild Casperson

31:52

gets there , we're gonna like , we're gonna show it live

31:54

. Like right now , our camera is

31:56

ahead with such and such person , but

31:58

they are waiting to intercept the women at

32:01

this at this point in time , et cetera

32:03

, and some of that's like we know what the filming schedule

32:05

is , and that

32:07

has definitely evolved too to us . Sometimes

32:09

We've done live commentary gigs where we

32:11

can actually see all of the camera angles from

32:14

the studio , in which we don't just see

32:16

the live feed . We see , you know

32:18

the three drones and the eight

32:20

camera runners , et cetera , and we'll be like you

32:23

know , dylan and I have been on air being like show

32:25

us camera 42 , or show you know , show us camera

32:27

seven or drone one , et cetera . You'll

32:29

hear that at Broken Arrow , for example , we've oftentimes

32:31

been able to see all the cameras from

32:33

our end and if we don't have a back end communication

32:36

to the production team , you'll

32:38

hear us just call out camera numbers , like on air

32:41

, because we're like oh , that's actually

32:43

, we're looking for Mika and Mika is

32:45

there right now , type of thing . When

32:47

it comes to bigger productions like UTMB

32:51

or Western States , the production

32:53

team is generally just outside the doors of

32:55

where we're sitting . So that might mean that myself

32:57

or Martin or Keith are muting ourselves and running

32:59

into the other room to get the answer from

33:02

the production team to say and you'll hear

33:04

us on air be like , hey , okay , so

33:06

we are waiting for our women at this

33:08

location or waiting for our men at this location . Let

33:10

me go get you an ETA when we're going to pick them

33:12

up next . And one of us is literally running out

33:14

of the booth into the production room

33:16

to ask that question because

33:18

we want that answer right now , type of thing . So

33:20

it's , it becomes

33:22

us kind of calling it out on air because

33:25

we're signaling to the production team

33:27

like , hey , this is a question that's coming up

33:29

. Or it's us being , like , quelling

33:32

the needs of our audience

33:34

via the live chat and it's way

33:36

easier just to say it on air , to

33:38

say , hey , we're going to get you such and such , you

33:40

know shot as soon as it happens , type

33:43

of thing . Or you know , we're going to go replay

33:45

this thing that we missed because we had

33:47

to go to commercial , because this is otherwise a free

33:49

viewing experience , etc . So

33:52

it's , it's I

33:54

think it's protective of the production a little bit

33:56

, but hopefully also quells the quells

33:59

, the fears , or quells the angst in the

34:01

chat , as opposed to , like I'm not trying

34:03

to like light them up , I'm not trying to , like you

34:05

know , create a riot in the chat . It's more

34:07

like a we're on the same team and as soon

34:10

as this happens , you know we're going to bring it to you , type

34:12

of thing . So it's more of a hopefully like a comfort

34:14

than a let's , you know

34:16

, rah , rah , rah , get stuff super fired up .

34:19

Because I think one of the challenges is

34:21

especially that

34:23

when what I've found

34:25

, when things go wrong , it tends to be

34:28

filming the women . I don't know what

34:30

. I know what . I do know why . It's because

34:32

the first cameras are

34:35

going through with more space , they

34:37

have the first test of the connections . It's

34:39

when you're then trying to ensure

34:41

that camera runners are in different positions , that

34:44

they're not crowded out by people , and so

34:46

, even if , even if all

34:49

the right intent in the world , you

34:51

don't end up with an equal offering

34:54

.

34:54

Yeah , or you miss the woman

34:56

because you know they're wearing a baseball cap

34:58

and you didn't see their ponytail . Or , like you

35:00

, it's a different woman than you expected to be in the lead

35:02

and they're not wearing X , y or Z traditional

35:05

uniform .

35:05

It's raining , they've taken their jacket off

35:08

, or yeah , totally Like

35:10

it's .

35:10

It's kind of a cluster and it's . I know that . You

35:12

know one thing that Golden Trail I think is done really

35:15

right in some of that case is is completely

35:17

separate the two races out so

35:19

that you have a dedicated day , therefore a dedicating

35:21

viewing experience to the women and a dedicated day

35:23

and dedicated viewing experience to the men . Cross-country

35:26

mountain biking does the same thing , et cetera

35:28

, kind of in their Olympic format . And

35:31

I think that that is that

35:33

is complicated in trail and ultra running

35:35

, particularly as you get into the longer races , and

35:38

sometimes we allocate enough resources

35:41

to both races and sometimes we don't . Sometimes

35:43

the answer of why we didn't see X , y

35:45

or Z runner at this location was because our

35:47

camera runners are tired , and I get it

35:49

. They're putting in mega weekends

35:52

to bring everything for us . But then

35:54

my , my ask is like , well , why didn't we hire

35:56

one more person ? Or why didn't we hire

35:58

two more people ? Like , why , like , really

36:00

making sure that we're allocating resources the

36:03

best we can ? We've done that with live commentators

36:06

that are kind of more on

36:08

course correspondence in the U ? S at a couple of races

36:10

where the first time we did it , we

36:12

realized that you know if you were going to have Leah

36:14

Yingling , for example , at this aid station , if you

36:16

were having her bumped to another aid station and she's the

36:18

only one out there you're going to

36:20

miss something because she's got to get to the next

36:23

aid station in time for the next man to come through

36:25

there or to make sure she doesn't miss the men coming

36:27

through their type of thing . And so Aeroviper

36:29

, which I think has done a really good job in pioneering

36:31

a bunch of this in the ultra

36:34

endurance but lower budget at times

36:36

, more like passion

36:38

projects , making you know we're going to buy four star

36:40

links of our own to make this happen , type of thing . What

36:43

they pull off is amazing . But one of the things they've added

36:45

is a secondary on course correspondence . So

36:48

then they're not having one person needing

36:50

to bump ahead so they don't miss someone

36:52

. It's like Leah's following the

36:55

women and Zach is following the men

36:57

and we're going to have a dedicated course correspondent . Or

36:59

they are leapfrogging each other to

37:01

aid stations so they're going to , you know , one will start

37:03

covering as soon as they get there and when

37:05

the next correspondent comes there they get

37:07

to bump ahead and we've got someone on the ground to not

37:10

miss anything in

37:12

races . Those races are generally like we don't

37:14

have the cell service to offer

37:16

continuous runner coverage , ie

37:18

we're not using e-bikes or , potentially , runners

37:21

with go pros etc . Or

37:23

even drones in some of these areas due to

37:25

permitting

37:28

, due to cell connectivity etc . So

37:30

you're more reliant on static cameras in some of

37:32

these races and therefore we're using core

37:34

correspondence to bump the aid stations , which

37:38

is a big deal . In races like the UTMB races

37:40

, where you are reliant on a better data

37:42

network

37:44

and you can have like e-bikes

37:47

or runners , like camera

37:49

runners with the runners , I think you need to allocate two

37:51

complete teams and like

37:54

very clearly allocate two complete teams . So

37:57

it's not like oh well , they've got to go back up the hill to

38:00

pick up the woman and it's like okay

38:02

, why don't we just have a secondary team that's picking up the

38:04

women there ? Why is it this one guy's job to get

38:06

back up there to cover the women and we're going to miss maybe

38:09

two kilometers of them running down this road

38:11

because our camera bikers didn't get up there in time

38:13

, type of thing Like in my mind those are

38:15

easy fixes that shouldn't be problems

38:17

to begin with .

38:18

Although actually with good coordination they

38:21

don't have to go back . They just wait

38:23

and carry on and someone else films

38:25

. They just film different sections .

38:27

Totally . Yeah , you

38:29

can leave .

38:30

Prague for sure , Because with Golden Trial the visual

38:34

output is the product in many

38:36

ways , Whereas UTMB

38:39

obviously it's all about it's

38:41

far more about ticket sales , because it's a mass

38:43

participation spot . So

38:45

how do you think they see

38:48

the visual output

38:50

? Because

38:52

why do you think the men

38:54

, the men's and the women's has been

38:57

substantially different .

38:59

Yeah , and it's interesting . So I'm actually working with a

39:01

professor in the UK and I would

39:03

say I'm working with them in the sense that I'm a connection

39:05

point . They've done 99%

39:08

of the work , but we've run an audit on

39:10

this past year's OCCCCC

39:13

and UTMB , kind of by the

39:15

minute . And then we're also looking at some quality control

39:17

stuff , like if you're just looking

39:20

at M1 through M3 and F1

39:22

through F3 , or if you're just looking at

39:24

, or if you're including the top 10 , or

39:26

if you're including key sections where

39:28

people were missed , ie Grancle Ferre

39:31

or in the Chormyre aid station , etc . So

39:33

we've run an audit on it and it's almost done and

39:35

we'll be publishing those findings as we

39:37

get it . Who's the heeding ?

39:38

that with Hadabin just .

39:39

Oh , I'll have to pull up their name , carl . But

39:43

it's really cool Like they watch everything on two times

39:45

speed to make it happen and

39:48

, you know , like God

39:51

bless them because it's like not probably

39:53

not the most exciting thing to do to watch , I

39:55

don't know , 30 hours at two times speed but

39:59

some interesting like stuff coming up there where it's like

40:01

some things got better , some

40:03

things got worse . If you include certain sections

40:05

versus other sections it gets really bad type of

40:07

thing . I don't know

40:09

, there's no necessarily

40:12

like in a participant mass participation sport

40:14

. I don't know if the juice

40:16

is always worth the squeeze to put out a live

40:19

broadcast sometimes . And it's so

40:21

novel still that , like any broadcast

40:23

, is a good broadcast type of sensation

40:25

. Right , because it's not . It's

40:29

still so novel . It's like if we have a stream , it's

40:31

amazing type of thing . But

40:34

I think that's slowly changing . I think a

40:37

lot of it is still a

40:39

group of concept like IE . If we can pull

40:41

this off , do we have a marketable product

40:43

? Is this another revenue stream for us ? Can we ? Are

40:46

we selling ads for it ? Is the ads

40:48

covering the cost of the broadcast

40:50

or is it covering more than the cost of the broadcast

40:52

? Is this something that we can

40:54

sell to a larger distributor

40:57

for more dollars to come in , etc

40:59

. I think it's probably

41:02

what's your instinct ? telling you

41:04

on that .

41:07

Of like if it's profitable or

41:09

what the goal is just if it's profitable now , but

41:11

because , say , with GoldenTrial

41:14

, I know the intent

41:16

is to keep on growing it and at some point to

41:18

have lots

41:23

of channels around the world , paying a lot of money to

41:25

be part of it . To stream it yeah

41:27

, yeah , and

41:29

you can see that , you can visualize

41:31

that happening . It's a two-hour product

41:34

and it is something that's

41:36

it's commercial friendly .

41:37

It's TV friendly

41:40

. I think the marathon du Mont Blanc is probably

41:42

one of the few that doesn't

41:44

quite fit , or maybe series and all even gets a

41:46

little bit long , but for the most part , if

41:49

you're in that , 90-minute to two-hour block

41:51

, all of a sudden you

41:54

can make a really good product . Or if you're working

41:56

with an hour block , can you or

42:00

a 90-minute block , can you do 30

42:02

minutes of really good kind

42:05

of quick post-production recap

42:07

to get people up to speed really quickly so you're

42:09

not missing those early attacks . But

42:13

this is akin to the iron manization of the

42:15

sport . It's the Olympicization of the

42:17

sport . The

42:20

TV readiness of a sport also

42:23

indicates could it be an Olympic

42:25

sport in a lot of ways and can we make it in

42:27

a format that is palatable

42:29

, that is televisable etc . Which I think

42:31

has a lot of pros but

42:34

potentially could have cons ? I know Cross-City Mountain

42:36

Biking had a lot of growing pains

42:38

in becoming an Olympic formatted

42:40

sport . They do a looped course . It's

42:42

very televisable , it's 90 minutes from

42:46

start to finish . Basically that

42:49

is very viewer-friendly but

42:56

is a slow movement away from one big looped courses

42:58

that we used to see in Cross-City Mountain

43:00

Biking . The

43:03

shorter distance trail racing probably has more

43:05

of that , not going to lose its culture

43:07

, not going to lose its flavor by making

43:09

it televisable . But I do think longer

43:12

ultras have a bigger hurdle there . As

43:14

far as the

43:18

, it's a niche sport , it's a participation

43:20

, sport and you're asking people to watch a live

43:22

broadcast for 20 hours . I

43:25

think that narrows the functionality

43:31

of it in a big way . Is it

43:33

still awesome ? Yes , do I still spend

43:35

a lot of hours on it ? Yes , are

43:38

there a lot of people who will keep it on from

43:40

start to finish at a race like Western States or UTMB

43:43

Sure , like they do , which is

43:45

bonkers ? They

43:47

put it on their phones . They can go for their

43:49

run around the block and continue to listen to it

43:51

. They're not even watching it , they're just listening

43:54

to it . Sometimes even but

43:57

I don't know that that is without

44:00

really good recap

44:02

. Higher-paced

44:05

, quicker , more interesting

44:08

short-form

44:10

media . I don't think

44:13

that . It's like . I can't

44:15

imagine a mass audience

44:18

sitting down for 20 hours of UTMB

44:20

coverage .

44:21

Yeah , true , but if you think back

44:23

to , one of the issues

44:26

partly at the moment , is that

44:28

Courtney's so good and

44:30

she's won everything . She's

44:32

won it easily , whereas , say you

44:34

look at the men's race at UTMB

44:36

last year and

44:39

the year before , there were lots of different

44:41

attacks , there were overtakes , there were

44:43

quite a lot of points , which doesn't

44:47

always happen . Actually , if

44:50

you're telling the story of that race

44:52

is interesting and

44:54

understanding the different backgrounds

44:56

of the people and even

44:58

their approaches coming into it and seeing

45:01

some people like Zach

45:03

Miller suddenly doing well and Tom Evans going

45:05

out hard and Kylian

45:07

coming back , all

45:10

these narratives were there

45:12

and the last two years have been .

45:13

I'd argue . Sport always gets a little boring

45:16

when there's

45:19

a guaranteed winner . That was the Nino

45:21

years of professional men's cross-country

45:24

mountain biking . I was like oh , nino's gonna win again

45:26

, great . Or oh , julian Epsilon's gonna win again

45:28

so exciting

45:30

. Remy almost has that a little bit where you're like oh

45:32

cool , remy's gonna win again . You

45:34

want the battle and I think that . That's

45:36

why doing commentary

45:38

for Broken Arrow is so much fun , because it is

45:41

this short , fast

45:43

attacks . Or constant OCC

45:46

during UTMB

45:48

man , that race is

45:50

really exciting because it's never

45:52

really a blowout . People are like

45:55

there's crazy attacks being thrown

45:57

late in the race . All of

45:59

a sudden there's someone different in the lead

46:01

at Le Fleger or whatever it is . I

46:04

think that that can be possible in

46:07

the long races . We've seen it at Western States , We've seen

46:09

it at UTMB . But it also means that

46:11

the spread becomes more and more

46:13

and more . If all of a sudden someone is out front

46:15

by two hours , you're

46:18

going back to figure out what's going on behind it

46:21

. From a live broadcast standpoint you can totally cover

46:23

it . It can be very interesting . You've

46:26

got a couple of good , engaging commentators on

46:28

your table and all of a sudden

46:30

, yeah , you can keep people engaged

46:33

for a very long time . But I do

46:35

think that the longer the race , the

46:38

harder it is to be

46:40

. The production is less about the

46:44

performances and more about how you're

46:46

talking about the

46:48

characters and you kind

46:50

of go into podcast mode a little bit .

46:52

You're like oh , let's talk about nutrition

46:55

.

46:55

Let's talk about using polls or not using polls . Let's talk

46:57

about what's in their pack . Let's

46:59

talk about what happens

47:01

in X , y or Z , weather conditions , etc . It

47:04

becomes less about the blow-by-blow

47:06

of people making moves and

47:08

more about the complete

47:11

holistic , ultra-running experience

47:13

, which isn't a bad thing at all . It's just very

47:15

different than being a play-by-play

47:17

for 90 minutes .

47:19

Yeah , absolutely . And

47:21

I think the challenge is if it becomes a

47:23

regular , even talking

47:26

on Goldchall for two hours , there's

47:29

only so many times you want to talk about nutrition

47:31

when that's what you're having to rely on

47:33

as the entertainment , because , sure , it's

47:35

fine for the first two times you do it , but

47:37

someone tuning for the fourth episode doesn't

47:39

want to be hearing about nutrition again

47:42

and like , oh , I don't care how many carbs

47:44

that you eat an hour

47:46

yeah .

47:47

Yeah , and at the same time , it's like if you have

47:49

novel audience coming in every time , there are

47:51

some like introductory

47:53

concepts or topics that

47:55

you want to cover because you want to explain the format

47:57

of the race or the format of the series , or the

48:00

X , y or Z person needs this many points

48:02

and this is why they need this many points . Like

48:04

there are going to be those things that come up over

48:06

and over again just because you

48:08

can't , while most of your audience isn't

48:11

going to be new , there will always be new

48:13

people tuning in and you don't want them to be

48:15

lost either . And so that's kind of

48:17

like the balancing act you have of like keeping

48:19

people who are very

48:22

knowledgeable engaged while also keeping

48:24

people who are brand new to the sport or

48:26

brand new to the I don't know how they found you on YouTube

48:28

type of thing . You want them to

48:30

also be like oh okay , I can kind of figure out

48:32

what's going on here and I'm not lost by any means

48:34

.

48:35

With the professional showrunners association

48:38

. How ? Because

48:41

when that first came out I saw

48:43

who was involved in first . I was like , oh

48:45

wow , this is a big

48:47

deal and but

48:50

there was an element of there's

48:53

. There's an element of it being almost

48:55

sad that it has to exist

48:57

is great that it does , but

48:59

also and

49:02

inevitability about the fact

49:04

there's three , four

49:07

, five different organizations

49:09

who are , you know , fighting for dominance

49:11

, who really want athletes

49:14

to be dedicated

49:16

to their series , which is

49:18

causing these conflicts , which all

49:21

the all the will in the world is

49:23

very hard to get organizations to

49:26

actually change

49:30

, to adapt , to allow for

49:32

other organizations to also have space

49:34

as such . But how have you

49:36

found the ? What

49:39

do you think the impact it's had with

49:41

the association and what kind of conversations

49:44

and has there been feedback like it has

49:47

it been has

49:49

given you faith in how the sport

49:51

will develop and the

49:54

organizations will interplay

49:56

with each other , or do you think it's

49:59

it's going down a path that

50:01

it's going to be difficult until there

50:03

are fewer big players ?

50:06

Yeah , there's definitely this like power dynamic

50:08

in play right now . I do think that , broadly

50:11

speaking , it's been really good because it's

50:13

given the athletes kind

50:15

of a unified voice to have conversations

50:18

with these entities . You know , before

50:20

it'd be like , you know , just one off athletes

50:22

trying to maybe talk to someone , or a sponsor

50:25

talking to someone . Like now it's like we're

50:27

hosting a meeting with every single

50:29

race entity , right , and

50:31

it's like we're talking about , you know , their

50:33

equity , their plans for equity , their plans

50:36

for environmental causes , their

50:38

plans for you

50:40

know what kind of assistance they're

50:42

giving to the athletes . Like , what is the value they're

50:44

bringing to the athletes ? What are the expectations of

50:47

the athletes who are taking part in a series ? It

50:49

kind of gives the athletes

50:52

more . It gives

50:54

the athletes a seat at the table that they've never had before

50:56

, right . Like maybe it's like the race structure

50:58

just happens to like an athlete and we'll listen to them

51:00

, type of thing . But this gives , when

51:03

it becomes the default , to be like , oh , we need to talk

51:05

to the PTA about the 2024 race

51:07

calendar that gives the athletes

51:09

a seat at the table . And sometimes it's just like being

51:11

like yep , like we're happy with where things are going

51:14

, like we will pass on this information to

51:16

our athletes , etc . And

51:18

sometimes it's like oh , like , actually , have you

51:20

considered doing it this way ? Or

51:23

have you considered adding this resource ? Or

51:25

have you considered , you know , like , actually

51:27

, when you have this ask , this is what it means

51:29

for the athletes , type of thing . And it's been , I think

51:31

, largely very positive

51:33

.

51:35

At least from the athlete side . What

51:37

would you say the main things you're having to feed

51:39

back , or are the more

51:41

common requests of changes

51:44

?

51:44

Yeah , I think the big thing is like us trying to talk

51:47

to them about scheduling in general just to be like , hey

51:49

, like this is where conflict , this is where we're

51:51

feeling conflict , this is where we're feeling

51:53

there's room for athletes to take part in more

51:55

than one series . This is where we

51:58

want to see you grow and allow us to grow

52:00

as well . A lot of our talks

52:02

have been about anti doping In

52:04

the sport . We've moved away , thankfully , from like

52:07

the quartz system to more

52:09

mainstream anti doping , both from

52:11

like the ITA , which is International Testing Agency

52:13

in Switzerland , to

52:16

now we've got countries that

52:18

are actually bringing athletes into

52:20

the Adams program . Both Spain and

52:22

France have kind of adopted , have decided

52:24

that trail runners are legit enough

52:26

athletes to be part of the Adams program , so they're

52:28

bringing on athletes for out of competition testing

52:30

in those countries . But

52:33

we're seeing that within race organizations as well

52:35

, of trying to

52:37

find common ground within an

52:40

organization so that one off race directors

52:42

aren't completely footing the bill for something where

52:45

they might be paying for anti doping to take place

52:47

in competition at their event but then at the finals

52:50

there's no anti doping , for example . Like

52:52

just trying to try to make things equitable

52:54

for the races that are part of these series if the

52:56

races aren't all owned by the same

52:58

entity has been a big one . A

53:00

lot of it's been about support

53:03

of the athletes as far as like is

53:05

there a certain amount of commitment from

53:07

the athletes and if they commit x

53:09

, y or z , you know they're going to do three races

53:11

in your series and it's going to be . You

53:13

know this , this and this , like what does that mean

53:15

for for bibs , for accommodations

53:18

, for helping the sponsored athletes , for the

53:20

not sponsored athletes has been a big thing too . Like , many

53:22

of us have great support from our sponsors

53:24

for travel , for race entries , etc

53:27

. But there are a lot of athletes that don't have very

53:29

good support where they're paying out of their pockets

53:31

, they're taking on credit card debt . They particularly

53:34

athletes from , not

53:36

from Western Europe or from the US

53:38

, you know , south American athletes , african

53:40

athletes , asian athletes

53:43

are generally aren't

53:45

on some of the more traditional

53:47

contracts that we're seeing out of Western Europe

53:49

and out of the US , and so be just making

53:51

race directors aware or race series

53:53

aware that actually , like some of these athletes

53:56

, if you gave them the opportunity to opt out

53:58

of this support , they're spot you know if they say

54:00

, hey , if your sponsor can take on x , y or

54:02

z thing , we can actually allocate this money to

54:04

an upcoming athlete who doesn't have

54:06

that support , or an athlete coming out of South

54:08

America who doesn't have a sponsorship

54:10

or has a sponsorship but doesn't have . You know it's

54:12

, they're getting gear , they're not getting travel

54:14

assistance , etc . It's been

54:16

, I think , some of that stuff which all kind of falls under

54:18

the like DI equity

54:21

paradigm a little bit

54:23

. And then it's been about surveying athletes , kind

54:25

of after a season two , to be like

54:27

Well , what are the athletes actually care about ? And

54:29

then we've been able to kind of turn around and provide that information

54:31

to race organizations like the Skyrunning World

54:34

Series and the Golden Trail World Series

54:36

, as far as , like , we asked the athletes and you

54:38

know 200 of them responded

54:40

and this is the things that they cared

54:42

about and these are the things that they didn't care about . To

54:45

be like where , where are our time

54:47

and money and energy ? Being

54:49

like where those resources actually going to ? I

54:52

think has been really paramount . We've

54:54

also just been on a lot of like inside conversations

54:56

with race entities about pregnancy deferrals

54:59

and environmental initiatives

55:01

and you

55:04

know kind of more of the DI inclusivity

55:06

stuff . It's been . I feel like a lot

55:08

of stuff is like closed doors , critical

55:11

conversations , and

55:13

they should really be more public , but those

55:15

have largely been kind of the pillars

55:18

that we're working with race

55:20

organizations on , and then internally we're

55:22

doing things like helping athletes with contracts and

55:24

contract literacy , kind

55:26

of understanding how

55:28

and when to approach brands . It's kind of like a

55:31

lot of educational stuff for the athletes

55:33

as far as like how can we support them in their careers

55:35

and give them the resources where

55:37

they might not have it Because , you know , maybe they don't have a

55:39

manager Most of us don't have a manager

55:41

type of thing . How can we provide

55:44

them with resources to make

55:46

the best decisions for them and for their

55:48

careers ? Both brand new athletes to the sport

55:50

and athletes that have been in the sport for a decade Turns

55:52

out all actually need very similar resources

55:54

.

55:55

I mean , I think the biggest thing they need

55:57

is understanding their value , because it's

56:01

one thing to understand a contract and to

56:03

negotiate or to be able to ask

56:07

for certain things , but if you're asking

56:09

for £100 and your real value

56:11

is £5,000 , that's the

56:13

biggest problem and that's the

56:15

issue of people coming in don't know that .

56:17

Yeah , and with NDAs , right , there's a limited

56:20

ability to communicate about some of

56:22

this stuff and so actually having kind of like a

56:24

centralized group of lawyers who can both

56:26

like see through the legal jargon but

56:28

also can say , you know , like

56:31

we know , what your results are . We've

56:33

seen other contracts . I can't tell you what those other contracts

56:35

are valued at , but I can tell you that this is a bad deal

56:37

or this is actually very

56:39

like on par for what the market is

56:41

offering right now , like just having someone else

56:43

see the number and be like I'd ask

56:46

for this or can you see

56:48

if they ? Maybe they won't budge on this number , but maybe

56:50

they'll budge on this other number . Maybe they'll give you more

56:52

money for healthcare , you

56:54

know , for massage , physio , strength , etc

56:57

. Or maybe they'll give you a

56:59

bigger travel budget , right , versus your retainer

57:02

, versus your bonus structure . There's

57:04

lots of different pots that money is allocated into

57:06

, some very sure and some very kind of up in

57:08

the air . But having someone to talk

57:10

, to talk to about that who has seen , you

57:13

know , most of the other current contracts in the

57:15

industry helps both new athletes and old

57:17

athletes understand , like if they're getting

57:19

a fair shake or if , like they

57:22

, they need to ask for a little bit more than

57:24

what they're currently being offered .

57:26

And would you say there are some brands that are squeezing

57:28

the juice a lot more than others , and some

57:30

that are just giving away the pie .

57:33

I think , from what I've from

57:36

the conversations I've had with athletes

57:38

this year , I think that generally

57:41

speaking , there's a good upward trend

57:43

as far as like what people

57:46

who are on contracts are getting paid . I think

57:48

the industry has had an ambassador problem

57:50

for a long time where we

57:52

call people professionals

57:54

but they're really , they're really a brand ambassador

57:56

, and so that's allowed

57:58

people to work for free for a very long

58:00

time . So that is slowly changing

58:03

. And then I think the other part too is just understanding what

58:05

your expectations are for a brand . Ie

58:08

. There are some brands that might not be like fun

58:10

to work with . Maybe they pay really well , and

58:13

that's that's a choice you have to make . Like , are you

58:15

okay ? Like being kind of solo

58:17

and getting paid well and

58:19

maybe not having your needs met in other

58:21

ways ? Is that worth

58:24

more than a company

58:26

who's , you know , got a bunch of financial

58:28

assets that aside to cover X , y and Z

58:30

thing , and they , you know

58:33

, sometimes the offers are not

58:35

completely financial , sometimes their support

58:37

in other ways , be it social

58:39

media , be it brand building , be it

58:42

community support , etc

58:44

. I think athletes kind of need to know what they

58:46

, what they want from their

58:49

contract , from that brand relationship , because

58:51

I'll hear complaints

58:53

from athletes about X , y or Z brand

58:55

and I'm like you should have known that going in like

58:58

they , this X , y or Z brand is not known

59:00

for caring about X , y or

59:02

Z thing . Like you , like

59:04

anyone could have told you that , like your expectations

59:07

were not aligned when you came into that project , when

59:09

you came into that partnership , and

59:12

that's just like every . It's like people have different

59:14

personalities , brands of different personalities to

59:16

, and I think that instead of gatekeeping

59:18

that information , the PTA allows us to kind

59:20

of share that information amongst our

59:23

members and or up and coming members

59:25

. People might , who might not be on contracts yet . Like

59:27

it allows for information sharing and gatekeeping

59:29

of that information .

59:31

Any , any brands you'd like to to

59:33

paint at all the row under the any

59:35

personalities or just

59:37

personalities or .

59:39

Oh yeah , just broadly right , there's going to be

59:41

brands that are more kind of team oriented

59:44

and that , like you either want that or you don't want

59:46

that , and you might think you want it , and then you

59:48

get into it and you're like , oh , this is actually like a

59:50

bigger ask than I thought , or whatever

59:52

, or which I don't think is a bad thing . So

59:55

brands that you know might say

59:57

, say one thing and do something completely

59:59

different , or yeah

1:00:02

, I don't know , there's their brand

1:00:04

, bad brands out there at the moment . you say

1:00:06

their brands where you have to be in the good boys club

1:00:09

for sure . It's like maybe they're , probably they've got

1:00:11

a bunch of athletes on contract but if you're not in

1:00:13

the good boys club , you

1:00:15

, like you may or may not exist

1:00:17

, type of thing . And I've definitely

1:00:19

heard from athletes who who had a great

1:00:21

performance and suddenly realized that

1:00:24

they were now in the good boys club and it was very

1:00:26

different than their experience . You know , 72

1:00:29

hours before that type of thing . So I think it's

1:00:31

like , yeah there's , you got

1:00:33

to know what you're getting into and that changes

1:00:35

with brand , that changes with changes with , like

1:00:37

, marketing directors . Even you

1:00:39

know you get someone else that comes in and takes over

1:00:41

as global marketing director or your team marketing

1:00:43

manager . That

1:00:46

has a lot of sway , right . Like I

1:00:48

joked , for a long time I was on like a very my very

1:00:50

first contract ever was with Solomon , but it was with the

1:00:52

North American Solomon

1:00:54

contract , which was like a I got a little

1:00:56

bit of money but it's basically ambassador . And

1:00:59

there are a bunch of us that joked that Solomon

1:01:01

didn't sponsor us . Mike Ambrose sponsored

1:01:03

us and Mike Ambrose for those who who

1:01:06

know Mike , he's been in the industry for a long time

1:01:08

worked for Solomon both in the US and in Europe

1:01:10

, now works for normal . He

1:01:13

sent me one of his own headlamps for

1:01:15

TDS in 2018 because I like

1:01:18

was like , oh my god , I need a second headlamp . I didn't know

1:01:20

that , like he mailed me the

1:01:22

traveling rain pants , like Courtney DeWalter , to use

1:01:24

for something , and then I was going to use them for TDS

1:01:26

and I was going to send someone else and then

1:01:28

he literally also like Mailed me

1:01:30

one of his personal headlamps because I needed

1:01:32

a second one . So there are people like that in the sport to

1:01:35

or like maybe your contract isn't

1:01:37

great , maybe you're , you

1:01:39

know , like you're undervalued or I

1:01:41

don't know . You're just like you're brand new to the sport and your contract is

1:01:43

very small . But the person that's responsible for

1:01:45

your contract Even if they wanted to

1:01:47

pay you more and they can't type of thing like the way

1:01:49

they take care of you also can

1:01:51

go a long way for an athlete and so it

1:01:54

was saying we're saying Mike sucked up so

1:01:56

much of the budget that he felt guilty enough

1:01:58

.

1:01:58

They had to just show .

1:02:00

I think he had no control over

1:02:02

that he was nice

1:02:04

enough that he wrote in a

1:02:06

box of cookies to my contract to I

1:02:09

adore Mike Ambrose but yeah

1:02:11

, no , like he , he like financially

1:02:13

couldn't do a lot for us . Like his budget was like

1:02:15

super shoestring but Like

1:02:19

you get on the phone with him and he'd be like okay

1:02:21

, like how can I help ? Like how can I help make this thing

1:02:23

work ? Or like how can I like help

1:02:25

, like what can I send you to like make

1:02:28

this easier type of thing . So it was like the

1:02:30

brand might have shoestring him but

1:02:32

like he went above and beyond for the

1:02:35

athletes he was responsible for , which

1:02:38

is you know , like I think Courtney

1:02:40

had been signed maybe the year before that as

1:02:43

like a brand new kind of like kind of just come out of

1:02:45

the scene at a bracey , had

1:02:48

been signed . I think when I was signed , like we were like this like little rag tag

1:02:50

group in North American trail

1:02:52

runners and Mike , yeah , on a shoestring

1:02:54

budget , made us all feel very like cared

1:02:57

for and that that's like that value is not

1:02:59

. You're not going to get that value

1:03:01

from other brands potentially . I'm

1:03:03

happy that I'm on a better contract , just like in general

1:03:05

at this point , but like I also

1:03:07

have a great manager , like our marketing

1:03:09

manager with the D . This is amazing and Rob takes

1:03:12

. Rob is family and that will

1:03:14

be different . If I , if I left and went somewhere

1:03:16

else like I'd be trading that For

1:03:18

something else and you said there really be credit

1:03:21

you'd really think critically about what

1:03:24

you actually want out of those

1:03:26

contracts as pros , because sometimes

1:03:29

you're roped in for not very much and it

1:03:31

can be . I don't know . People are like you're a professional athlete , that

1:03:33

must be so fun and some days it's really fun and some days

1:03:35

it's not not that fun .

1:03:38

Yeah , and you know we , we've been saying to athletes quite

1:03:40

a few times in the past if , if you've been sponsored

1:03:42

or ambassadors , and the actual

1:03:45

added stress of having to deliver

1:03:47

extras sometimes isn't worth

1:03:49

the payoffs of having a little

1:03:51

bit of extra kit . And so then , in

1:03:53

terms of and in terms of your

1:03:56

kind of relationship with , with

1:03:58

commentary , with UTMB , then where

1:04:00

do you what , where do you see

1:04:02

the fallouts happening ? What , what , what

1:04:05

do you think led to this composition ? Is

1:04:07

it your work with the professional Chairman

1:04:10

of the Association ? Has it been

1:04:12

a few comments on air

1:04:14

? Has it been ? What

1:04:16

do you put it down to ?

1:04:18

I think it's probably very multi factorial

1:04:21

. I think that and you

1:04:23

know I've I'm waiting to have another conversation

1:04:25

with them . They asked talk

1:04:27

to me a week ago and I responded right away

1:04:30

saying yes , and then it's been crickets ever

1:04:32

since . So who knows what's going on over at

1:04:34

UTMB HQ . But it

1:04:37

was I don't think it was a comment

1:04:39

on air . I don't think one comments on air . I

1:04:41

don't think it was one comment not on air

1:04:43

type of thing . It was Kind of a misalignment

1:04:46

of what their expectations were for me and what my

1:04:48

expectations were for my job In

1:04:51

a recent conversation . It was you

1:04:53

know well , you're a spokesperson for UTMB

1:04:55

and and therefore we

1:04:57

don't want you to be critical of the organization

1:05:00

I was like well , hold on , like I am not

1:05:02

a spokesperson for UTMB , I am , I'm

1:05:04

a paid commentator and I am

1:05:07

on a you know , basically

1:05:09

a handshake contract that says

1:05:11

I will work . You know these five events

1:05:13

this year and these are the dates for

1:05:15

them . This is the agreed upon

1:05:18

like daily rate for those events Done

1:05:21

type of thing . And I think

1:05:23

that I've been very diplomatic in

1:05:25

how I've largely been

1:05:28

critical of them , both on air and off air , in

1:05:32

so much as to say is like when I'm on air with them it's

1:05:34

like , yeah , I'm , I'm working for the

1:05:36

event , I am working for Trans Volcania

1:05:38

or Val d'Oran or whatever

1:05:40

it is and my job is to Do

1:05:42

justice to that event and to the competitors

1:05:45

were watching on the screen and to make

1:05:47

sure that they all feel . You know , I joke that

1:05:49

I do it for the moms . I get text messages from

1:05:51

many mothers of runners

1:05:53

who are racing , you know , thanking , thanking

1:05:56

us to be like . You know it's really great to see you know so and

1:05:58

so finish . But when I'm not

1:06:00

, when I'm not being paid

1:06:03

for that work , my allegiances

1:06:05

to the community and my allegiances to the professional

1:06:07

trail runners and my allegiances to the

1:06:09

athletes that I coach , my allegiance

1:06:12

isn't to the entity . I'm

1:06:14

not a spokesperson . I'm not a paid spokesperson

1:06:16

. If they want to pay me to be a spokesperson , that is

1:06:18

another , another story . But

1:06:21

it's not what I'm paid for . I'm paid to do live

1:06:24

commentary for X number of events

1:06:26

on X number of days and I

1:06:28

personally think that me being critical of them

1:06:30

, both privately in these ptr a meetings

1:06:32

with them , and publicly at

1:06:35

times saying like hey , like you need to

1:06:37

reevaluate your relationship or how you're doing

1:06:39

business here , there , etc . I

1:06:41

think has largely been very diplomatic

1:06:43

. I don't think I've

1:06:45

gone around hashtagging anything fbtnb

1:06:48

at this point , but I do

1:06:50

think that that was where the

1:06:52

issue was for them was that I was publicly

1:06:54

critical of the organization and that didn't align

1:06:57

with how they thought I should be

1:06:59

speaking about them . I

1:07:02

will say that in my mind me

1:07:05

agreeing to work with them while

1:07:08

being critical of them , for a lot

1:07:10

of people brought credibility to UTMB

1:07:12

because it was like well , maybe

1:07:14

, like , maybe there's hope here , like current is still

1:07:16

working for them , maybe there's hope here , maybe

1:07:19

she knows something we don't know , maybe there is

1:07:21

good still in this

1:07:23

. In this event and I don't think they

1:07:25

saw it that way I

1:07:28

don't think they were happy with the

1:07:30

audit that we're running on the live broadcast

1:07:32

. I don't think that

1:07:35

surely I mean which

1:07:37

benefits them , benefits the race

1:07:39

, benefits .

1:07:40

I was instantly thinking that'd be great

1:07:42

to do , about going to , like Greg would love

1:07:44

to have , that he'd love to know the area

1:07:46

. Are we doing a ?

1:07:48

good job , right like yeah , no , and

1:07:50

it's good for me to like , as a commentator , I

1:07:52

want to make sure that we're doing a good job , and

1:07:54

so I think that it's kind of I think

1:07:56

it's short-sighted is my impression of it

1:07:58

that it's short-sighted , that it

1:08:00

?

1:08:00

was defensive , isn't it ?

1:08:02

Yes , and it's like you know . I think

1:08:04

other people have been very critical

1:08:06

of them , but they could kind of brush

1:08:09

them off as fringe , like the

1:08:11

green trail runners , for example . I think

1:08:13

that they could say they're kind of a fringe group

1:08:15

, we're just going to ignore them and they'll go away . I

1:08:18

think me being a public figure and

1:08:20

being someone affiliated with them and any

1:08:22

into any degree was

1:08:24

something that they couldn't just like brush aside

1:08:27

to a certain degree and

1:08:29

decided that , like me , just not working for

1:08:31

them was going to be the best way forward . I

1:08:34

think it had the opposite response

1:08:37

to what we thought was going to happen . I also

1:08:39

don't think that they thought I was going to tell anyone , and I don't

1:08:42

know why they would think that if they're telling me that

1:08:44

I'm not allowed to , they're unhappy that I

1:08:46

am publicly criticizing them and that

1:08:48

I am speaking out about decisions

1:08:50

they're making . I can't believe

1:08:52

that they didn't think I was going to say anything and

1:08:55

so now they're upset that I said anything and it's just like

1:08:58

I

1:09:00

I'm not on contract for that . I'm

1:09:02

not . I don't have an NDA with you . I don't

1:09:04

have any sort of a confidentially clause with you . I

1:09:06

literally have like an email with

1:09:08

a greed number of events with an agreed

1:09:11

daily pay rate . Like I'm not , I'm

1:09:13

not in anyone's pocket . Like I'm the

1:09:15

voice for my community and the voice for our

1:09:17

sport and I am

1:09:19

like that is who I am beholden to , that that's

1:09:22

who I owe stuff to . I don't owe UTMB

1:09:24

anything in that regard . So I think

1:09:27

it was very rash

1:09:29

and has backfired

1:09:31

and I would not want to be the UTMB

1:09:33

PR person because their job just cannot

1:09:36

be fun right now .

1:09:37

Yeah , yeah , right .

1:09:38

Like I'm still being tagged on things on Instagram

1:09:40

. Like their job cannot be fun right now .

1:09:43

And this was especially the timing

1:09:45

of it with Gary Robbins as well . It seemed

1:09:47

to be in a one . One

1:09:51

error is almost

1:09:53

not forgivable , but at least

1:09:55

you can . You can say that

1:09:58

hopefully they'll learn from this . It's maybe not

1:10:00

indicative of the organization . To

1:10:03

back to back you're like , oh boy , wow .

1:10:05

Yeah , you could be like this isn't malicious , this is

1:10:07

just like you know them not reading the room

1:10:09

or being tone deaf , etc . I

1:10:12

think when it's like this continual thing that

1:10:14

becomes an issue . I think the stuff with Gary probably

1:10:17

is largely more in relationship to , like Iron

1:10:19

Man's involvement in the North American by

1:10:21

UTMB series and like a disconnect between

1:10:24

them and the trail running community

1:10:26

and a disconnect between Iron

1:10:28

man North America and the European , like

1:10:30

European UTMB , like I think there's some

1:10:32

disconnects there that need to be recognized

1:10:35

, and so I think the way that I think about the brand is that they're very consiled and that's probably

1:10:37

where a lot of that issue came from . Versus me being let

1:10:39

go by . Utmb is directly related

1:10:41

to a few individuals

1:10:43

in the French office and so it's like a

1:10:46

bad double whammy from two very

1:10:48

different sides of the brand and I just it's

1:10:50

yeah , I again

1:10:53

would not want to be their PR person .

1:10:56

So these conversations that they've said they want to have

1:10:58

, if they turn

1:11:00

around and said , look , we've had a think , do

1:11:03

you want to come back ?

1:11:06

What would I do ?

1:11:07

Yeah .

1:11:09

Yeah , oh , like we're so sorry , like my bad , like he wasn't

1:11:11

. He actually didn't have the power to do that to you type of

1:11:13

thing . They could do that

1:11:15

.

1:11:16

That was a draft email sent by accident .

1:11:19

We didn't mean to trick

1:11:21

you into having a conversation that you thought was going to be about

1:11:23

Doyantinon , and it was not about Doyantinon

1:11:25

. No , I

1:11:27

, what I've I've had some conversations

1:11:29

with people , both like on and off the record about this

1:11:32

, and I

1:11:34

, you know , they asked , you know , was this is this definite

1:11:36

, is this indefinite ? Like , is the door closed forever

1:11:38

? Like what did they say , type of thing

1:11:40

, and I was like , you know , they said the door is closed for now , but

1:11:44

I don't know what that means , because

1:11:47

I'm not going to change , like

1:11:49

I have nothing to apologize for , I

1:11:51

have nothing I haven't , I have said nothing

1:11:54

that I want to retract , so

1:11:56

to speak . And I feel like , in my mind

1:11:58

, it's it's them who has to change

1:12:01

. It's their , their

1:12:03

policies that have to change . It's the

1:12:05

way they handle business that has to change

1:12:07

, it's the way they interact with the community that

1:12:09

has to change . It's it's

1:12:11

all those things . And so it's like , yeah

1:12:14

, we can move forward , but it's not me who actually

1:12:16

has to do the moving forward , it's it's them . And

1:12:19

so in my mind it feels pretty definite

1:12:21

, because I don't

1:12:24

see them making

1:12:26

those changes . So

1:12:29

I don't think they're going to come back and be like , oh , oopsies

1:12:31

, we

1:12:33

gave him , we gave him permission to have that meeting with you and that

1:12:35

wasn't a good idea . I

1:12:38

don't think that that's going to happen , but

1:12:42

I think there will be more private conversations

1:12:44

with them at some

1:12:46

point in time , assuming they respond to my email

1:12:48

and

1:12:51

I just , yeah , I can't . I can't see

1:12:53

them just saying like , oh , we're sorry , like that

1:12:55

was , that was a mistake on our end . I

1:12:58

don't think that that's genuine , nor do I

1:13:00

think that actually fixes the problem

1:13:02

here . The problem that I was feeling because I the

1:13:05

stress that I have had has been , was

1:13:07

all pre this meeting with them . Like

1:13:09

I've been feeling the stress for a long time of being

1:13:11

a professional athlete , being a coach , being

1:13:14

the editor-in-chief at free trail

1:13:16

, being on the board of the PTA , trying

1:13:20

to be diplomatic in these podcast interviews

1:13:22

and these conversations I'm having with race directors

1:13:24

in the sport , my relationships with

1:13:26

private race directors in the sport . You know , like Gary

1:13:28

is one of my role models , like I've known Gary

1:13:31

since I started trail running . Jim

1:13:33

Beal Curry is one of my role models , like

1:13:35

he is hugely influential in

1:13:37

my life and it's like

1:13:39

I felt

1:13:41

this dissonance and this , this

1:13:43

tug of like feeling

1:13:46

like I was trying to be on all

1:13:48

sides at the same time

1:13:50

and I don't think it needs to be this big us versus

1:13:53

them , you're either against us or you're

1:13:55

with us Like I think that is nonsense

1:13:57

and that was part of the conversation with them too . Is that I'm against

1:14:00

them and I was like well , I'm not against

1:14:02

you , I just have some opinions about how

1:14:04

you should be behaving , and

1:14:08

I think that I

1:14:10

think that that is part of the issue , and so all my stress

1:14:12

pre that meeting with them was really about

1:14:14

just like feeling like

1:14:16

I couldn't do

1:14:19

right for the

1:14:21

people that I'm really supposed to be supporting

1:14:23

and protecting and so , in a way , you can be

1:14:26

my life a lot easier because now I can

1:14:28

just support the people who I think are

1:14:30

for our community and working

1:14:32

to make the sport as good

1:14:34

as possible .

1:14:37

And if you have like a magic wand

1:14:39

, like what would be the changes if

1:14:42

you say , if they said look , we've

1:14:44

realized you're , all

1:14:46

of your views are valid . What changes do you want us

1:14:48

to make ? What

1:14:51

would the big ones be ?

1:14:52

Oh man , it's a business talk , right ? It's like

1:14:54

in my mind . I think what they've probably been most upset

1:14:57

about is that I've said

1:14:59

that they're like , that they're monopolizing

1:15:01

the sport , and that I've

1:15:03

called it the iron manization of the sport

1:15:05

, because we've seen iron man do this historically

1:15:08

right . Like , oh , we want to do , we want

1:15:10

to buy challenge penticton . Well

1:15:12

, challenge penticton doesn't want to sell to us , so we're going

1:15:14

to create , we're going to create Iron man Whistler , which

1:15:16

happens to compete directly with it , etc .

1:15:18

Like they've , iron man has a history

1:15:20

of kind of eating

1:15:25

its young , so to speak of like , of

1:15:27

cannibalizing a sport to

1:15:29

like have full control over it , which

1:15:31

in some ways is probably not

1:15:33

as bad in Iron man , because they did

1:15:36

create , you know . Iron man

1:15:38

and they , you know it was it was

1:15:40

their concept and where's UTMB

1:15:42

is an upstart really compared

1:15:44

to a ?

1:15:45

lot of races . You can't cannibalize trail

1:15:47

running . That's not

1:15:49

. I mean we . It's not . That's

1:15:52

the antithesis of trail running , right ? Trail running is

1:15:54

a bunch of people who are non conformists

1:15:56

who want to go run around in the woods with snacks

1:15:58

and their friends and try to do really hard things

1:16:00

. Like that's very non conformist . And

1:16:03

then you have this , the Iron Manization

1:16:06

effect of the sport via

1:16:08

UTMB , the UTMB World Series , where

1:16:10

you form

1:16:12

sole control over the entity

1:16:14

. And you're right , there are other races

1:16:16

that are going on . Why can't

1:16:18

you go and do X , y or Z local race

1:16:21

instead ? Or as well , as

1:16:23

has been their argument ? You can do both

1:16:25

is their argument . But I think if you

1:16:27

want everyone in the sport to want to

1:16:29

apply to the UTMB lottery , to

1:16:32

get into the lottery right now , you need about 11

1:16:34

stones . To try to get

1:16:36

an actual spot in one of the UTMB races

1:16:39

you need 11 stones . Races are

1:16:41

worth one to three stones and stones

1:16:43

are good for two years . So you need to

1:16:45

be doing two to three by UTMB

1:16:47

races a year to have a shot

1:16:49

in the lottery . Like the pros have it pretty easy

1:16:51

. We have to go to a race with the qualify we're

1:16:53

in . We're not doing two to three by

1:16:55

UTMB races a year just

1:16:57

to have a chance in the lottery , and

1:17:00

in my mind that creates a system

1:17:02

of haves and have nots . That

1:17:04

creates a financial

1:17:07

barrier , because if that's what you're doing

1:17:09

, you don't have the PTO

1:17:11

like the paytime off , you don't have the the

1:17:14

budget or the physical bandwidth

1:17:16

to also do the cool local

1:17:18

race down the street from you or the cool race

1:17:20

a couple hours away from you that

1:17:22

you know a local , a quote unquote local race

1:17:24

director puts on . And so in my mind

1:17:26

, that's probably why UTMB is really upset with me is

1:17:29

that I have I have said that I

1:17:31

have made that my position stance of saying

1:17:33

that , like I think it was a mistake

1:17:35

to create a self-encompassing

1:17:39

world series in which to go to the finals

1:17:41

you have to do not just

1:17:43

one by UTMB race , but you really have

1:17:45

to do many a year , that

1:17:48

that feels like you will automatically

1:17:51

create a financial barrier and

1:17:53

or geographic barrier , which will

1:17:55

become financial as well , and

1:17:58

which people really can't do . That

1:18:00

part of the sport and you're gonna like people

1:18:02

are they're gonna be completely in the sport or in

1:18:05

the in the UTMB version of the sport

1:18:07

, or they're gonna be on the other side

1:18:09

of that , and I think that that was a mistake

1:18:11

on their end . I think the old system where

1:18:13

you could collect points from doing local races

1:18:16

and you needed x wires , the amount

1:18:18

of points to UTMB versus CCC

1:18:20

, etc was a better

1:18:22

system was a more was not a perfect

1:18:24

system , but was a more equitable

1:18:27

system for the lottery , and

1:18:30

I don't know that

1:18:32

they will ever be able to go back to that , and

1:18:34

I think that that will eventually create

1:18:36

two different trail running

1:18:38

ecosystems one in which you

1:18:41

are within the UTMB system largely

1:18:43

, or one where you do other races

1:18:45

, and I don't know

1:18:47

what that will mean for the elites , I don't know . I don't

1:18:50

know what that will mean for the general participation of

1:18:52

folks in the sport , but I do think that that's what

1:18:54

will happen and I don't think that UTMB can fix

1:18:56

that without completely going back on what

1:18:59

they've created over the past two

1:19:02

years of having a . I think it's 41

1:19:04

races now . But yeah

1:19:06

, it's just . I think that's a big issue

1:19:08

, that's probably my biggest issue and I don't

1:19:10

think it can be fixed , unfortunately , which

1:19:12

just makes me not want to give them my money

1:19:14

and makes me want to support

1:19:17

, wants me , makes me want to run Squamish 50

1:19:19

and run rabbit run 100

1:19:21

and Translaconia , and you

1:19:23

know the slate , the slate ultra

1:19:26

that Mike Jones is going to put on

1:19:28

like it , makes me want to support those folks . Go

1:19:32

to have Alina , that kind of stuff versus

1:19:34

you know , go do a race created

1:19:36

solely to be part of the UTMB World Series .

1:19:39

And do you think , because when I look down

1:19:41

your post , Instagram naturally flags

1:19:44

to the viewer the names

1:19:46

that it knows are commented

1:19:49

who are going to have the biggest

1:19:51

impact on the viewer either people they know

1:19:53

, or followers , or , and it

1:19:56

was very , very notable

1:19:58

, just the level of people who were supporting

1:20:00

you on the post . But do you think

1:20:02

the wider community , these

1:20:05

3000 people signing up

1:20:07

to a random UTMB race in a place

1:20:09

I never heard of do you think they're

1:20:11

feeling this lack of

1:20:13

connection with the , the elites

1:20:15

and with the old heart of

1:20:17

trail running ?

1:20:19

I think people who are newer to the sport won't

1:20:21

know or won't like , really

1:20:23

won't really feel that . I think

1:20:25

people who have been around the sport for a while have seen

1:20:28

and felt that change at these bigger races

1:20:30

. I think particularly the

1:20:32

North American audience and the European audience

1:20:34

is a little bit different because you're used to bigger production

1:20:36

races where there's several

1:20:39

thousand runners in the race in a trail race we

1:20:41

just don't have that in the US because

1:20:44

of permitting issues . So

1:20:46

most of our races at the big

1:20:48

end are probably 1000 runners type

1:20:50

of thing . But you know , western States

1:20:52

is 369 runners High

1:20:55

Lonesome I think is slowly moving up to about 250

1:20:58

runners . I just interviewed a race director

1:21:00

earlier today where , like their big race , they

1:21:03

have a limit of 475 runners for 50K . It's like

1:21:06

we don't . Our races are just a lot smaller due to that , and

1:21:08

so you can feel the difference , if you're like , if you go over to European

1:21:10

race in general , and then you can feel a difference in , like

1:21:14

, the more recent additions of those races

1:21:16

as well , as it's been kind of this like amplified growth

1:21:20

, so I think

1:21:22

that it's going to be . There are people , though , who have reached

1:21:24

out to me or my husband or friends of mine who

1:21:26

maybe they were going to do CCC this year , or maybe

1:21:28

they were going to put in for the lottery , and they're just , they're

1:21:30

not going to anymore , and people who are going

1:21:32

to you know , they've already signed up and put the

1:21:34

money down on canyons and they're going to

1:21:37

run canyons but they really they're not going to go sign up for something

1:21:40

else later in the year , type

1:21:42

of thing . So I think that it's a

1:21:44

. I think UTMB is at a crossroads and at a tipping point

1:21:46

and and at a tipping point and hopefully

1:21:49

they can make some better moves . But

1:21:52

I think if they continue to make

1:21:54

moves that they have in the last couple of weeks and couple

1:21:56

of months , that is going to be harder and harder

1:21:58

and they're going to alienate certain communities .

1:22:02

But I'm just curious to see what that looks like . Do you think western

1:22:04

states can be decoupled

1:22:07

?

1:22:08

I don't think it's going to decouple anytime soon

1:22:10

. I'm sure their contract goes through at least

1:22:13

this year , if not another year , because

1:22:16

that's one that's a title sponsor contract

1:22:18

with Hoka , for example , and then it's also a partnership

1:22:20

with the UTMB World Series , which

1:22:22

is probably at least a three year relationship

1:22:25

. They're not a buy UTMB race like many

1:22:27

other races or like other other races

1:22:29

in the series . That is a buy UTMB race . They

1:22:31

are technically independent . Hence the reason I'll be

1:22:33

doing commentary for western states . We

1:22:35

run that commentary team and live

1:22:38

broadcast production in-house , completely with

1:22:40

Billy Yang being the person in charge of it . But

1:22:44

, that being said , I think that

1:22:46

they have historically

1:22:49

viewed that relationship as positive and I think that

1:22:51

that has felt very strained

1:22:54

as of late . And

1:22:57

a lot

1:22:59

of that relationship goes back to the

1:23:02

Pilates , and Katrina and

1:23:04

Michelle have a really

1:23:06

strong relationship with the Western States board

1:23:08

, and I have nothing against the Pilates . I think

1:23:10

that the Pilates are really interesting individuals

1:23:13

. I think that the

1:23:15

business end of the sport feels very different

1:23:17

and disconnected from that , and so I think

1:23:19

that they're trying to figure

1:23:23

out how to throw the needle between their personal

1:23:25

relationship with people like the Pilates and

1:23:27

the race and the community and

1:23:30

I think western states has largely

1:23:32

felt like they can be positively influential

1:23:34

on UTMB as kind of

1:23:36

this sister organization , the

1:23:38

sister race , and

1:23:41

I'm curious to see how that changes

1:23:44

and shifts over the course of

1:23:46

the coming months and

1:23:48

a year and what that might look like heading

1:23:50

into 2025 . But there will be no immediate

1:23:52

change for 2024 . And that's

1:23:54

how business works . It's really hard to decouple contracts

1:23:58

, particularly when contracts

1:24:00

have monetary value and you're a non-profit and

1:24:02

it's like you have margins and very thin

1:24:04

margins to make things work .

1:24:07

Yeah , interesting . Well , we've

1:24:09

. I'm conscious of time because we do have some

1:24:11

. I knew it was going to go

1:24:14

longer than the usual hour , but I'll

1:24:17

just quickly look at it . Do you have any time for questions

1:24:19

at all ?

1:24:21

Yeah , we can do some

1:24:23

rapidifier stuff .

1:24:25

So let's have a look . We've had one from UltraSophie

1:24:28

. Oh , I know UltraSophie

1:24:31

. Yeah , she's . Thanked you for

1:24:33

your coverage of UTMB last

1:24:36

year . You're commitment to 50-50 . What

1:24:38

do you think needs to change in order for

1:24:40

the for them to actually deliver 50-50

1:24:43

next year ?

1:24:45

Well , I think they need to accept our audit when we

1:24:47

give it to them and I think they need to

1:24:49

allocate appropriate resources

1:24:52

and I think that needs to be both in

1:24:54

the people on the ground , ie the cameras

1:24:56

allocated . But then I think they really that needs

1:24:59

to be reflected in how we consciously

1:25:02

discuss the plan going

1:25:04

into the race with the commentary teams , because

1:25:06

there were some really big but easy

1:25:08

misses last year , like overnight in Cormier

1:25:10

could have been phenomenal and they , accidentally

1:25:13

, they didn't have really they didn't have a plan

1:25:15

for it essentially in my in

1:25:17

my eyes , because some of this is definitely

1:25:20

unplanned , where they interviewed the

1:25:22

crew for the top three men

1:25:25

and then didn't talk to any of the women's crew

1:25:27

. They they largely didn't like

1:25:29

we didn't actually get to see the women come through there

1:25:31

. So there's some really big

1:25:33

misses that were very obvious and I think

1:25:35

they need maybe

1:25:37

even a dedicated , like truly dedicated

1:25:40

production person just to the women's race

1:25:42

who can be the person pinging the commentary

1:25:44

teams , pinging the on

1:25:47

the ground teams , etc . Just to almost

1:25:49

be like constant reminders of like hey , like

1:25:51

this thing's really important , you need to make sure that we're

1:25:53

coming back around to it . But like , again , keith

1:25:55

Byrne and I were the only commentator commentary

1:25:58

team that stayed on through the top 10 women in

1:26:00

UTMB . Our entire

1:26:02

production team left , it was just Keith and I

1:26:04

and luckily nothing crashed while we were

1:26:06

on air . But all

1:26:08

other commentary teams left after the top five women

1:26:10

and Keith and I stayed

1:26:13

because we had covered the top 10 men and we weren't going to

1:26:15

not cover the top 10 women , and so Keith

1:26:17

and I popped champagne in the studio by ourselves

1:26:19

and stayed on , stayed on air

1:26:21

until we got them all home . And it was Lucy . Bartholomew

1:26:24

was in 10th . It was great , like it was really , really

1:26:26

cool . What legends you know so

1:26:28

it's like , and that wasn't us going

1:26:30

above and beyond , that was us doing like the bare minimum

1:26:32

for the women and I think that that that

1:26:34

needs to change , like the minimum

1:26:36

expectations need to be elevated .

1:26:39

And does it feel like they are ?

1:26:42

I feel like , like

1:26:44

people getting hearing the message . I

1:26:46

don't know and I'm a little bit scared that I

1:26:48

was the squeaky wheel and I'm a little bit worried

1:26:50

, if I'm not there to be the constant squeaky

1:26:53

wheel , that that there could be some issues there

1:26:55

. But at least with the other PTA I can still

1:26:57

be very squeaky and so I'm hopeful that

1:26:59

we can have

1:27:01

some accountability there .

1:27:03

And the hope is as well . You know the way GoldenTrader

1:27:05

doing things so dramatically different

1:27:07

that actually it raises the standard for everyone

1:27:10

. So I've got a quick

1:27:12

question Last one from Ellen

1:27:15

. Wow , ellen's trying

1:27:18

to quickly read her message , yeah

1:27:26

Well , her question was just about how do you take

1:27:29

, what do you make of the Darcy UTMB

1:27:32

sponsorship ?

1:27:34

Well , there are some really great minutes from

1:27:37

a behind the scenes conversation between the environmental

1:27:40

working group of the PTA and UTMB and the green

1:27:42

runners and I think that some of it was

1:27:45

heard and some of it wasn't heard . I think

1:27:47

that we're going to see more sponsorship

1:27:49

from quote unquote non

1:27:51

endemic sponsors , ie people who are outside of the traditional trail

1:27:56

and ultra running community . We've

1:27:58

asked both UTMB

1:28:00

and Dotsa to be more thoughtful with

1:28:02

what

1:28:05

exactly like the ad

1:28:07

material is , what exactly that partnership

1:28:10

looks like , etc . To be on track

1:28:13

with specific environmental initiatives

1:28:15

that UTMB is supposed to be holding holding true to . I

1:28:19

think that that was a very interesting move , but I have to imagine

1:28:21

it was a financially advantageous move and

1:28:23

that is something that people

1:28:25

have to always weigh

1:28:27

, and they've been quoted

1:28:31

as saying , well , they're also making

1:28:33

these affordable EVs etc . But that wasn't the initial ad

1:28:37

. Marketing material wasn't about electric

1:28:40

vehicles , it was about adventure

1:28:42

vehicles . But

1:28:45

I think that there's also this idea that we have to be perfect advocates in the

1:28:47

environmental space and the

1:28:50

in the quality space , etc

1:28:52

. I've talked to a lot of environmental advocacy

1:28:56

folks about this , where sometimes you don't want to

1:28:58

say anything or look at any of these relationships

1:29:02

because you can be critical of it . But do you drive a gas

1:29:04

car ? I guess it's kind of like the thing there . It's like you can be

1:29:07

critical of it , but what are you doing in your personal

1:29:11

life ? We're also driving gas vehicles and not always

1:29:13

bringing our real vehicles

1:29:16

and not always bringing our recyclable cups

1:29:18

, and probably living

1:29:20

inefficient homes that don't

1:29:22

have solar or whatever

1:29:25

, etc . I wouldn't

1:29:27

have been the move that I made for UTMB , but

1:29:30

I think that there's

1:29:32

this notion that it's

1:29:35

also the race organization that is asking

1:29:38

athletes to fly all over the world , and

1:29:40

many of us are flying all over the world to do this sport

1:29:42

and I think that a lot of us , both from

1:29:44

the big it's a very wandering answer

1:29:46

. I think that for both the big

1:29:49

organizations like UTMB and the individual

1:29:51

runners , both professionally and

1:29:53

community-based , need

1:29:56

to just evaluate what they think

1:29:58

their responsibility is to the planet and

1:30:01

all of us try to act better

1:30:03

and act accordingly and then also call your

1:30:06

people in local and regional

1:30:09

and statewide and countrywide government

1:30:11

to put stricter

1:30:14

penalties on big oil and big

1:30:16

gas , and that's a big deal I

1:30:18

think people forget to do that kind of stuff of

1:30:20

. We blame a lot of the

1:30:22

biggest polluters in the world

1:30:24

and a lot of the biggest carbon producers in the world

1:30:26

have convinced us that

1:30:28

it's all our fault and

1:30:31

that we are the biggest problem , and

1:30:33

really it's these big entities and big companies

1:30:35

that are most the problem . And again , this is like

1:30:37

the craziest , most wandering answer

1:30:39

to this , but I think what I'm

1:30:41

trying to say is that it's not simple . Was

1:30:43

it a good move ? Probably not . Is it a simple

1:30:45

answer ? Definitely not , and

1:30:47

I think , both as individuals

1:30:49

and entities , we have to be more thoughtful

1:30:52

of how we're interacting with

1:30:54

carbon and the

1:30:56

world more broadly .

1:30:58

Yeah , absolutely Well , if

1:31:00

people want to . There's so many ways in

1:31:02

which people can follow you . But what are the big things

1:31:05

you're pushing right now , or what are the best ways people

1:31:07

can continue hearing your views

1:31:09

?

1:31:10

Totally . You can hear me

1:31:12

rant very regularly and

1:31:14

hopefully as coherently as

1:31:17

I did here over on the Trail Society

1:31:19

podcast that I host with Keely

1:31:21

Heninger and Hilary Allen . We put

1:31:24

that out every other week . We're affiliated with

1:31:26

FreeTrail so you can find us via the FreeTrail website

1:31:29

. And then I'm on social media I

1:31:31

think on everything at just at

1:31:33

my name at Corinne Malcolm , where

1:31:36

you can find mostly photos of my dog but

1:31:38

also hot takes on the Trail

1:31:40

and Ultra community etc . And

1:31:42

then I think those are the big

1:31:45

ones . Yeah , social media at Corinne Malcolm

1:31:47

and then the Trail Society podcast

1:31:49

is generally where I do most

1:31:51

of my ranting , so I encourage people

1:31:53

to go give that a listen as well .

1:31:55

Amazing . Well , thank you so much for coming on the podcast

1:31:57

. Good luck with your email

1:32:00

responses over the next few weeks and

1:32:03

I can't wait for Western States

1:32:05

next year , but hopefully there'll be plenty more commentating

1:32:08

opportunities before then .

1:32:09

Yeah , hopefully I'll see you at some short

1:32:11

trail race this year too .

1:32:13

Do it . That's so much for fun . They're

1:32:15

great and they're more equitable . Cheers

1:32:20

, corinne . Thanks , so much , cheers , thank you

1:32:22

so there

1:32:30

you go , do badders . That is the

1:32:32

well . Really interesting

1:32:35

to get her view on what

1:32:38

happened with her relationship with UTMB

1:32:41

and also how UTMB

1:32:43

has changed over these years . And

1:32:45

inevitably , with any

1:32:47

organization becoming so big and

1:32:49

suck up so many people into

1:32:52

trail running , it's going to make mistakes

1:32:54

and there will be issues . And I

1:32:57

mean it's been incredible to see just how many

1:32:59

people do have been running trail

1:33:02

races , ultra trail , these last

1:33:04

two years , primarily down to

1:33:06

UTMB . But question

1:33:09

mark is it now too

1:33:11

big , too all-encompassing

1:33:13

, and will it be responsible with

1:33:15

the power it now has ? But

1:33:18

if you've liked this episode , other episodes that

1:33:20

would be good to listen to that are along similar

1:33:22

themes . We spoke to her by Brian

1:33:25

Metzler , the founder of trail running

1:33:27

, a few weeks ago where we talked

1:33:29

a little bit about growing pains within the

1:33:31

sport . If you wanted to just listen

1:33:34

to episodes about UTMB itself , we interviewed

1:33:37

Pap Kapé , winner of UTMB , probably about

1:33:39

two years ago really good episode where he was talking

1:33:42

about phoning up people during the race to

1:33:45

give a motivation Western States

1:33:47

. We've talked about a few times with Jim Wormsley

1:33:49

an amazing interview actually

1:33:51

, where he talks about how he got into

1:33:54

trail running and actually it was through quite

1:33:56

a dark place which we went into

1:33:58

and how

1:34:00

trail running really gave him the light

1:34:02

of a point in his life where he's

1:34:04

working on a nuclear

1:34:08

base and was

1:34:10

kind of being singled

1:34:13

out by the person

1:34:15

in charge and

1:34:17

just going through a torrid time Another

1:34:19

great episode to listen to . And

1:34:22

we also spoke to Damian Hall about

1:34:24

when he came forth at UTMB and

1:34:26

how he managed to do that . Perfecting

1:34:28

really what he saw is

1:34:30

probably the best result he'd be able to get at

1:34:32

a race like that . I

1:34:34

can't remember which episode that is , because we've spoken

1:34:36

to Damo maybe three times down because he's

1:34:38

such a great person to have on the podcast

1:34:41

. But if you've got any suggestions for future

1:34:43

guests , then do message me at David at badboyruncom

1:34:45

or directly

1:34:48

on the Instagram , and

1:34:51

if you can review us on Spotify

1:34:53

or wherever you're listening to this , it really helps with our

1:34:55

credibility and get good guests in the

1:34:57

future . So back to you next

1:34:59

time . Bye

1:35:26

.