✳️The Value of Being Different

On difference as a cultural defence against commercialisation and UTMB

Hey pals,

The UTMB run up has begun. Prepare for a barrage of articles and podcasts on the week long runapallooza. For the first time in three years i won’t be there - I’m moving house - so no round-up from me this year. If any writer, or person with sardonic humour and an eye for detail, is going and wants to cover the sport from a Trailmix perspective, let me know, reply to this email!

Today we’re looking at how trail running’s independence has become a commodity in itself, but also defence against standardisation, even with the growth of UTMB.

Hope you have a wonderful week,

Matt

Turns out suggesting trail running should invest in radio isn’t as crazy as I thought. Even Tim Tollefsen has been talking about it. After an email exchange with Josh Rosenthal at Borderlands, he’s considering first testing his livestreaming tech on radio broadcast’s. Watch this space. Or read my short pitch for livestreaming audio instead of video during races!

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When Doug Mayer writes about UTMB, you sit down and read. Doug’s article this week in TrailRunner demonstrates his usual even keel and ability to dance between criticism and applause in the same sentence.

Ultimately, the article covers the quietening of criticism of UTMB and the work the UTMB team have done to combat their policy and image issues, asking a reasonable question about whether the UTMB World Series is moving trail running in the right direction. Its concerns are familiar ones: the growing commercial influence of UTMB, the increasing importance of qualification systems and Running Stones, the expansion of the series, and the possibility that a sport historically built around independent races and communities could become increasingly shaped by one organisation’s model. Those concerns deserve attention, particularly because UTMB is no longer simply one race in Chamonix. It has become a global competitive structure, connecting races around the world to a common pathway towards its Finals. The ambition is considerable, and so is the influence that comes with it.

In full transparency I’d argue that UTMB has made great leaps with its policy changes and is doing well at taking onboard its critiques. Overall the volume of critcism has pretty much evaporated from the mainstream and independent trail media outlets. Wider criticism of UTMB remains, as Doug’s piece points out, but to me they give too much weight to the idea that the sport is heading towards a monoculture*. UTMB may be enormously influential, but trail running is still an extraordinarily fragmented sport. There are thousands of races, hundreds of organisers, innumerable local communities and a growing number of brands with very different personalities.

In fact, I think there is something more interesting happening in trail running. The sport has made individuality commercially valuable. Trail running’s commercial development has been unusual because its appeal has never rested entirely on performance, It is also about identity. A race can be attractive because of where it takes place, how it feels, who organises it and what kind of people it attracts. A brand can sell a shoe, but it can also sell a philosophy. One brand might represent mountain heritage, another environmentalism, another irreverence, another technical performance, another a deliberately independent or anti-establishment aesthetic. The product or race becomes a way of saying something about the person using them.

That creates an unusual commercial incentive. In many sports, becoming closer to the core consumer is the ultimate goal. In trail running, becoming too mainstream can actually undermine some of your appeal. If every race looks the same, every athlete dresses the same and every brand speaks the same language, the things that made the sport distinctive begin to disappear. Difference itself has become part of the product.

You can see this in the way runners move through the sport. Someone might aspire to run UTMB while also being fascinated by a tiny local 50K. They might buy shoes from a Nike and a vest from Raide. They might spend months training for a major international race and then spend a weekend doing a self-supported route with friends. These aren’t necessarily competing identities. They coexist remarkably comfortably.

That makes the relationship between corporate and grassroots trail running more complicated than the usual argument suggests. The two can coexist because they fulfil different needs. The big organisations can provide infrastructure, professionalisation, media, sponsorship and international visibility. Smaller races and independent brands provide personality, experimentation and a sense of discovery. The existence of one does not necessarily require the disappearance of the other.

Where I think the real pressure lies is in the middle. The smallest races can survive precisely because they don’t need to behave like businesses at scale. The biggest organisations have the resources to professionalise and expand. But the ambitious regional race sits between the two. It wants to grow from 500 runners to 2,000. It needs better timing, marketing, media, sponsorship and staff. It wants international athletes and international recognition. Yet its attraction may depend on the fact that it still feels distinctive and local.

That is a difficult balance to make. The more successful it becomes, the more it may need to resemble the large organisations it originally differentiated itself from. And perhaps that is the more important question raised by UTMB’s expansion. Not whether one organisation will own trail running (it won’t, let’s move on from that refrain) but whether the average race experience will gradually converge on the same model. A monoculture doesn’t require a monopoly to form, It can emerge when everyone starts copying what appears to be working.

This is where trail runnings tendency towards uniqueness becomes a counterweight to commerciality. Trail runners actively seek out difference (thats why they’re running off-road in the first place). They want the obscure race, the unusual route, the independent brand and the event with a personality. In that sense, the culture itself has a quasi-defence against homogenisation. The more successful trail running becomes, the more valuable those alternatives might become.

There is an irony here. Trail running has commercialised individuality to such an extent that independence has itself become a marketable quality (and something new brands always lean way too hard on to the extent they become awkward).

Perhaps the future of trail running therefore isn’t a choice between corporate and grassroots. It is a messy ecosystem in which both need each other. The global races give the sport visibility and aspiration; the independent races keep it interesting. The big brands provide scale; the smaller ones prevent everything from becoming generic.

*(side note: the number of conversations in trail that are “off the record” for fear of brand or UTMB repercussions is a real limiter on diversity of voices in our sport, but i digress)

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Bits & Pieces

• Independence only thrives when it is supported. We always do a great job as a culture to support people who are putting things out there to further our sport and community. One event that deserves our support is Runculture held by Simon and Julie at Like The Wind, held in London on the 4-5th September. The line-up is insane and shows the depth of influence and gratitude many have for the work LTW has done for running as a whole. Sign up for tickets here, many people have already spoken to me about it so I’m sure it’ll be selling out pretty soon.

• Speaking of UTMB, they have a new event in Hiroshima, Japan, their second in the country and 68th worldwide.

• A lot was made in the trade press about Hoka going into Sports Direct, despite many not realising that most shoe brands sell mono-colour versions of their core models there already. I’d also argue it ignores that distribution is only as effective as what you do with it - price, promotion, placement - and that SportsDirect isn’t your bargain basement of old. The news did jar with the controlled distribution narrative that Hoka have always espoused, but it’s more a reflection of the changing face of running retail and the evolution of Hoka from a smaller brand to a mature one.