The State of Ultrarunning with Amy Clark, Editor of Ultrarunning Magazine | Koopcast Episode 52

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i'm your host coach Jason Koop and on this episode of the podcast i have the editor of ultra running magazine amy clark i wanted to bring amy on the podcast today to discuss the state of ultra running as we know it right here right now as well as do a little bit of prognostication on what the future might hold in 2021 and beyond i don't need to tell you listeners that this year has been a weird one we're trying to navigate a completely bizarre racing the likes of which none of us have ever seen there are a lot of fkts going along and some of these things have been really good and really inspiring for the community and some of them are merely stop gaps we talk about all of this and more throughout the course of this conversation and i've always been very appreciative of amy and and the ultra running magazine staff in their way to curate content that is relevant to the entire scope of ultra runners both beginners and the most experienced of veterans alike they all admire and appreciate the work that ultra running magazine does so thank you from the bottom of our hearts in advance of this podcast amy let's get right into it let's not wait another second

here's my conversation with the editor of ultra running magazine amy clark i keep getting the sense that a lot at least in the running community and trail running community which you and i are kind of an intimate part of that we're that we're kind of short changing exactly how long all of these things that we're having to put up with or going to last and you know i keep i keep seeing these i keep seeing these like things on twitter and instagram it's like oh well 2020 would just end i'm like you guys 2020 is going to end and this is good we're still going to have to live in some version of our current reality past 2021 totally totally i know i think we all kind of started this whole thing not knowing nobody knew how long it was going to last and we all kept okay you know this month is you know we're past this month and then and then all of a sudden the big races started getting canceled you know like western states and hard rock and um and before that you know lake sonoma i mean all the big races and then and then it was starting to feel like this okay reality was kind of setting in at that point um and us as a magazine you know we kind of we're like well what are we going to do for for race reports because there's nothing coming in and so we kind of buckled down and um and then sure enough i think in june um we got a few race reports

in um and that's they're just been kind of trickling ever since so i i get the i get the sense that like magazines like like you and then i run far who they they kind of operate like a digital magazine you've been kind of like rolling your content or your content strategy i guess is a better way to put it in like eight week increments like for the next eight weeks this is what it's going to look like and then you get to some other further point in time eight weeks after that this is what it's going to look like and normally i mean you know how to plan out an editorial calendar like you're looking 12 months sometimes even longer in advance of what to actually do is it am i interpreting that correctly yeah yeah you know it um for production on our end let's see we've got i'm trying to think here we've got a deadline for columnists on the 10th of each month and we send out that issue with all those all those columns to print um roughly uh a month later ish so we're about a month behind so maybe you know five or six weeks um for now you know i feel really lucky because when we were in that kind of phase of no race reports we had people popping up and saying hey i'll write you know a call or i'll write something for you let me know people were wanting to contribute and um kind of antsy to do something and talk about you know the sport and i think that

our content slowly going back to normal but yet we i mean you know talking about racing is still that elusive kind of what's gonna happen so we can talk about racing but um you know it's it's and it's happening as we speak but it's um it's not normal yet so normally what a magazine is doing is they're taking a huge volume of content race reports race results feedback from the listeners articles that are written by contributors and things like that and they're trying and they're passing it through a filter so to speak i mean in any month you have hundreds of races to report on but you're only providing say only like it's bad but you only can provide race reports or detailed race reports or stories articles and things like that on a very few of those has that kind of like turned the table a little bit where you're like searching for the far corners of the u.s in the world to find to find interesting content well yeah you know for us we're again we're a really small team and as an editor um i'm kind of the one that's going out and looking for all the you know somebody send us a race report on this race and and while you know i feel like a lot of race reports come from the corners and you know of the country um it's it's still it's almost it almost hasn't changed because you know um

we're we're often sourcing race reports sometimes sometimes they come directly to us it's just a matter of of uh i guess timing um depending on the month and so right now like for instance i've gotten a few race reports from people from some you know really small little races across the across the country and you know i'm still trying to determine whether or not um we're gonna need race reports from like you know bigger races like i am tough right it just happened i wouldn't say that's even a bigger race but um just it's it's a monthly struggle for me because it's it's um it's never consistent i'll just say that well i i feel your pain because i i obviously produce a monthly column for ultra running magazine but i also produce a weekly column for cts and also content through this through this podcast and i will fully admit that i have been on the content struggle bus for like the last six months it has not been easy because the things that you can the things that you can communicate whether you're writing about them or delivering in whatever other format are just becoming fewer and fewer and fewer to try to choose from because the sphere of what's going on is becoming less and less and less but yet i mean i've looked at like your last few um well your last few magazines and kind of preparation uh for this podcast you still put out stuff that's relevant and that's not easy

right yeah no i've been really lucky um i've had some really amazing writers uh you know just pop on and say hey let me do a story about you know courtney or let me do a story about you know what's happening right now and i'm like go for it like you know what just take it take it and run with it because yeah we need the content and that's what i want right now is is what's going on in the sport so um i've been super lucky i have great great writers normally how tight of a filter would that be because i'm imagining that you get solicited for people that want to write for you all like all the time like how does that process internally work for ultra writing magazine um we're a real tight crew so as you know being a columnist we have our kind of our our group of columnists but then i have like a small group of writers that i typically go to when i need a story um and then i'll get um you know random submissions and some are great and some just don't you know make the cut so it's um it's just an ongoing process and when i have a great group of writers to go to um i fall back to them for these you know big features so when you get those random submissions i assume it's like a fully baked article you know kind of like already written or at least or at least or at least a semi-baked proposal i've done i've done both of those so that's why i can laugh at it um how does it this is just more

me being curious in the content space than anything else how does it pass through amy's filter like how do you look at it and go yeah this is something that's like i want to put in the magazine versus and we're gonna we're gonna take a pass at this um that's a good question i'm trying to give you less work by the way so people who are listening that are thinking about this will at least have some direction to go off of oh it's so hard it's it's a complete uh we have only we only have 72 pages to work with so that's the length of our magazine and that includes advertising and depending on the number of ads we have per issue and that fluctuates greatly um we only have so much room and so um i will you know kind of take my columns and then decide whether or not we need a you know feature and then see what i have coming up or you know uh some you know some writers like i want to write about this and it's somebody that i know can do a good job i'll say go for it um so it's just month to month it's it's always just kind of a little shuffling game i i have a filter but it's it's i can't explain it it's just an instinct so that's okay that's okay let's let's pivot away from content that's more satiating my own intellectual curiosity on it because i like to know how the how the sausage gets made so to speak and but what i really want to talk about with you is kind of the state of the

sport because there are i would say there are a few people in trail and ultra running that really have their finger on the pulse of what's going on that's a hard thing to do because it's a very frac it's a very fractured community there's a lot of small pockets here and there and it's hard to have a scope of what's going on in the central part of the u.s what's going on the east coast what's going on the west coast what's going on with elites what's going on with everyday runners and things like that that's not an easy thing to to like alchemize for for even me i try to keep track of this stuff and you're one of those uh people and ultra running magazine as a whole your whole team there i think does a really good job of curating what's going on in the community and then presenting it in a magazine format so if you were to try to summarize like where like where we are right here right now in kind of the middle of this pandemic we're maybe slowly transitioning out of it or maybe getting worse who knows like what like what do you have any like opening thoughts on like what like what the state of the community is right now sure um yeah so what from what i've seen and what i continue to see evolve when it comes to um what people are doing right now given that it's the beginning of fall and there are no i mean there there have been some races um i i'm going to start from the summer because

what i saw this summer was incredible um i saw people going after these huge you know fkts or just adventure runs that were um basically in lieu of an in place of uh big races and um a lot of people were doing it it was just it was just you know if i can't race i'm going to go do this um and i think that that is still continuing however i do feel like i've been seeing a lot more races pop up and when i say races i mean small you know races with all the restrictions as far as safety goes um because they're happening and you know i i it's cool to see because it's like people getting that sense of you know granted they're there i was just thinking about this this morning but there are the travel restrictions and so you're seeing these pockets of um like you said little little races where people can't really travel to the far off you know races across the country but they can still write race in their own backyard and seeing people return from those races and just being happy that they're able to get out there with other people do you think that some of that i mean what you're describing is kind of like a deviation from our standard um our standard view of an event or a goal to work towards people are going to these virtual race formats people are gravatory gravitating towards fkts or

just doing routes that they know and trying to set a like a best time on it and there's a lot of different flavors and iterations of that that are outside the traditional everybody's going to show up at the exact same time and start and run the exact same course and have the exact same aid stations and finish at the exact same point in time we're all going to rack and stack our times across that which is a race right that's what we would call that people are deviating away from that format out of necessity right now right they want an outlet do you do you view that how do you view that in terms of like what does the future of it look like is it good is it bad is it going to can going to kind of continue to stick around three years from now do you have a sense of it uh no honest answer what what's cool so what's cool to me is that i'm seeing people going after these fkts but it's like back to back to back on the same fkt so it's almost like a race right but it's like it's like you know the wonderland trail you you had right dylan bowman and then you had tyler green um caitlin gerbin like you had all the all the all these big names just within a week of each other i mean it was just it was incredible to watch the time just drop on that trail and um so there's that example but then and i think that'll continue i don't think that that's gonna um i think that'll people just go for it people you know it's been it's been so um what i think buzz i just emailed buzz uh

burrell and i think he told me there's five times the amount of fkts this year that there you know has been in the past and so um or five times the attempts i guess um and so i think we're going to continue to see that i don't think that's going anywhere i think it's just going to keep rolling um as far as racing goes and the the typical race format um i think it's gonna at least for the bigger races more competitive races um it looks to me like most race directors are are leaning towards the wave format so you're gonna see uh i think javelina just announced they're gonna do waves for um like over three days they're gonna you know release people from the start line so it's it's gonna be interesting to say the least because i don't think people are going to be able to put enough people on a start line to uh race directors aren't gonna be able to put enough people on a start line to qualify as kind of a typical start for a long time well everybody's in the race in the proper race uh organizations everybody's just trying to figure it out right they're they're all just trying to contrive and i use that in a affectionate way i use that word contrive in an affectionate way because they're trying to pull it off but they're trying to contrive the situation so that they can meet certain restrictions and the athletes can still have a good experience and be

safe and you know all these other things but what's kind of been fascinating to me which you touched on on the on the first part of that dialogue was this explosion of fkts and like self-made adventures and like you i don't know what's gonna happen with that three or five years from now but i think it's cool i think it's a neat thing that has at least started to take root like i said out of necessity and you know i it could be a good thing going forward it could not it could last it could not who knows like that's the prediction business but it because of the novelty of it like you said this fkt kept going down and down and down you wouldn't see that on a race you'd have to wait a whole year for a course record to get broken and normally those don't happen but once every five years so here you have something similar that can literally happen in dylan and dylan and tyler's case and i was you know working with dylan at the time so i've got a front row view to this you can literally have it have it happen within days or maybe even hours in a certain in a certain situation i know it's absolutely incredible and i think that the novelty of it as well as the athletic accomplishment is inspiring to people and if you can get we need all the hype we can get right now because there's no hype coming from the races if that can help supplement or complement it i think it's a good thing at least in real time but i don't know what to think about it for the future i know i agree and it's funny because i sit behind my phone and look at strava and this summer i was

just i was just blown away by all these adventure runs and then you know you're seeing the fkt on this and the fkt on that and um and it's it's inspiring and i i don't think that that's gonna stop i think that people see how exciting it is to watch just from you know your phone and look at um these accomplishments and i i really do i think it's just going to continue so um whether or not you know it's a mix of these plus races when they get back to normal um we'll see but yeah i think it's it's a trend that's it's starting to take hold for sure in the sport it's okay so so much so i'm going to kind of put you on the spot a little bit because i didn't ask you to prepare anything related to this topic but ultra running magazine within their ultra run of the year and their performance of the year rankings you guys have intentionally left out fastest known time attempts and i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you if you're going to incorporate those later but before that i think to set the context for it what like why why have you taken that or why is ultra running magazine kind of taken that stance to leave that out of the voting process or the evaluation process so we don't do the voting but buzz does buzz braille does the he does the fkt of the year and so we've been letting him do that and that's because that's his baby that's his that's his territory

um and so he sends out you know his ballots and voters vote on that and then we publish it in the ultra run of the year issue every for the past couple years i guess i don't know how many issues we've done it and i know in the last two that i've done the last few years we've published it but um and we're going to continue to do that with buzz even though there's not going to be a turn of the year issue this year so that was going to be my next question so you kind of skipped to it but i guess what i was trying to get at is is specific to the ultra runner of the year part of the voting criteria is not or an exclusionary part of the voting criteria is fkts so if somebody goes and sets a billion gazillion million fkts by a thousand percent there's no way and doesn't have any other standardized performances i guess is the way we could traditional race performances they couldn't even be considered for ultra runner of the year because you guys kind of treat that as a separate category but what i'm hearing from you is like you're going to accept you're going to keep that separation of church and state going yep yep no i uh i kind of let john uh manager he's he's the one that kind of comes up with the ballot and does all of the you know numbers he has a whole system of rankings and i i've seen it before i've seen it before i don't want to i don't want to touch voting for you and i've had this dialogue in a few different formats i don't want to touch

like being part of that voting panel with a nine-foot pole but i do still like talking and having some banter around it i think it's fun i think it's good for the sport but what you're saying like right here right now and you might have made this statement publicly that i'm just not aware of is that there will be no ultra runner of the year there will be no performance of the year for 2020 first time i i confirmed it with john this week so um yeah we're doing something else in in uh instead and the crazy thing is is this might be the same case next year we don't know i know i know i know it's a sad it's a sad thing because um it's you know it's so hard to see these big races and then see these amazing performances just kind of die down for a couple years and so i don't want to see that um my hope is that you know we'll return with a vengeance and in whatever form that is um but for now you know we just don't know and i i can't as we've known i you can't nobody can predict it so it's just a matter of time what have you been particularly inspired by when you're scrolling through your strava feed or you're like curating the content for ultra running magazine over the last six months you know uh a couple in particular i can say there's a there's a there's a group here and i'm in bend um oregon and there's a group here who went out and did well it wasn't a group it was a few

guys who went out and did like 200 miles in local um on local trails here and you know i i just i looked at that and i was i was just blown away because they just did it you know no aid stations i don't even know if their wives went and supported them it was it was incredible and to see that kind of thing happen just you know just as you're popping through your strava feed you just stop and you go wow people are actually out there running 200 miles um that was incredible for me to see um we've also had a lot of of like max king went out and just did an fkt a week over here in the local mountains so i mean this stuff is happening every week and that that was what my summer felt like on strava and i was doing nothing so i actually asked our coaches a few weeks ago to send me some examples of their just everyday athletes that were doing this kind of stuff it was either a personal challenge or they're trying to set some they say this with all due respect like obscure fkt in their area or only no time in their area that they could kind of like you know plant their flag in or whatever i was blown away at just our little coaching groups response to that which i had no idea i was like well i didn't have no idea i had very little idea of what was actually going on and i brought a few of them on to to do a podcast with it i'm going to release kind of later in the year but i'm of the same mind view it's cool there's a whole heck of a lot of them and it's super inspiring and we don't even

have the entire context of what's going on because it's hot it's not like anybody's aggregating all of them you know that and i think that that's what kind of makes it neat all at the same time right it's just these little accomplishments not little but massive in some other ways that they're just kind of out there and people are are getting it done just for their own personal you know drive it's it's awesome to see i uh i i went on a 5 a.m run with the local um ultra runner here he leads a group at 5 a.m every morning from the running store and he had just set an fkt around the three sisters which is a local um mountain trifecta i guess you would say they have a middle south and north and sister and um you know he was up at 4 a.m the next day just kind of hanging out i'm like how you feeling he's like i'm a little sore today but you know how is that how is that normal that's that's just crazy to me so anyway he did great cool and gail i have to give a shout out because he's he's a pretty impressive runner so well i think the creative because we're like a lot of athletes and a lot of runners have been forced into this um have been forced in the situation where they have to be creative to come up with something that's inspiring to them i think that is i think that's a that's a that's illuminating in the fact that they can do stuff that is above and beyond harder gnarlier than they would normally do

within the constraints of a race because of the race it's set for you right you know the distance the race director sets the course you know what time you have to start and all those other things when you're coming up with it yourself and you're forced to be creative you sometimes you think you know what i can do that i can do 200 miles self-supported you know at the expense of my marriage probably which wouldn't be a good thing but but the creativity i've been particularly impressed with the creativity that a lot of athletes have had in trying to find things that inspire them to do you know awesome results and have awesome events yeah the creativity has been in it's so impressive um you know i've seen uh loops around neighborhoods which is which is always to me the most impressive just because the monotony of it all but um you know it it is it's it's and i think that as a runner we all kind of as runners we all kind of know that um we have to be inspired or else it just doesn't work you know the motivation isn't there so um whatever inspires you you know i i think just to get it done it's awesome well and that's one of the cool things about ultra running is the playground is kind of infinite right you're not limited to the roads or this type of train or that type of train or even being in the same place at the same time right we've seen with a lot of the virtual backyard ultras where you know they can get thousand hundreds i don't know how big their field no their field was in the thousands thousands of people yeah of people together at the same place at the same time doing the same thing in treadmill road block or whatever but that that sense of

community i thought was really cool with those those events in particular for sure yeah no it's amazing how technology can has changed enough to where we can do that did you did you follow that very closely the virtual backyard ultras um i was on i think a few for a few minutes but i didn't uh we i mean we had an article in the magazine about it so i got a good race report from laz so yeah well what were your takeaways from that format um you know i uh i was just i think mostly inspired by by the number of people yeah the participation was incredible and i understood that i mean i get it people want something and so there was participation numbers there was a following on line that was amazing yeah but you know we were in that mindset of we have to stay at home so everybody was in front of their computer so that was incredible but then when it comes down to like the last two runners who were in completely opposite sides of the world right that to me was just amazing so um i thought it was cool i i don't know if it'll you know happen again but it was cool for the time who knows who knows so what so speaking of like i said i'm trying not to get too much in the prediction business but i do think there are like lessons learned because we've been forced into this situation that has just we've had to think about things differently and organize things differently and as i mentioned earlier be creative what do you hope lasts what do you hope continues that you've

seen where you look at it and go wow this is awesome i hope i can continue to see this year after year i think we kind of touched on it before i really want to see these fkts continue i really do um it's inspiring for not just me but i think i'm the average ultra runner um i think it you know you look at these fkts you're like i want to go try that trail i want to i want to get there i want to go do that i want to you know that's where i want to go um i hope it continues i hope that the elites and the the people that are out there doing these things continue to um you know set a precedence for people like me and all the other mid back of the packers um that i want to go out there and do it because i think if they keep doing it we're going to eventually follow right or we're already out there doing it and there's just more of us that are going to follow um and you know to be honest i think that i want to see the community continue to rally around these these running events that have been so weird and wackadoodle um because i enjoy seeing the virtual community because we can't get together as a community so i want to continue to see that um i think it's been the virtual events for that reason alone have been amazing and i love to see just how our community can come together and not you know and

just be together but virtually and because we can't do it in person so well the support for each other i think is a value that that kind of permeates all of trail and ultra running and you see that at aid stations you see that with training groups you see that online you see that in people's like social media feeds where people will actually rally uh to each other the listeners to this podcast will will kind of remember very early in the very early on in the pandemic i got jameel curry of aravipa running uh on the show to kind of discuss the the state of racing essentially and almost the state of his business which he was very transparent about and i was very appreciative of that but what a lot of listeners probably won't realize i don't think you you realize either is i actually reached out to a number of race directors to kind of have them like collectively come on uh come on the show and some of them not not jameel because jameel's a fighter you know you know his personality he's a he's a doer but some of them were so overwhelmed with the process that or with the prospect that their business was going to evaporate like literally evaporate from one day to the next that they were just throwing in the towel they were like screw this i'm you know we're i don't even have the will to continue right i mean it's like the proverbial you know dnf or refuse to continue at one of uh laz's events um but the fortunate thing with that is is finally i could get some of those people

offline and i said listen just try the community will support you just try it's not going to be traditional you're gonna have to guess and you're gonna have to you know throw out a little bit of a leap of faith that people are going to react to something and very fortunately they did and kind of like turned around and it was a product of them fighting and putting their dukes up for it and being creative but also to your point earlier is that the community came out and overtly supported them even though they knew that it wasn't going to be the same type of experience and all these other things like i think that's really meaningful yeah i agree i uh you know in the beginning i saw a lot of people just at least you know saying hey i'm going to take part in this virtual event and even if it's not something that i personally you know really am excited about or inspired by i just want to help out the rds i just want to make sure that you know i'm signed up for all these races this year let's just contribute to to the cause and and keep them going because i don't want to see it go away you know 100 so i want to get your your perspective on another related topic and this is really unfortunate part of the pandemic is races are going to go away i think that's inevitable that's that's that's already happened in some cases where they just can't continue to you know have another year of losses or they just don't want to put up with what the future looks like trying to put on a virtual race or whatever combinations of events the demand is still there ultra running still growing we've seen

that for the last few years it's reasonable to expect that it's going to continue to grow and so that void is going to going to be filled in some form or fashion it's going to be filled by people starting up new races but it's also going to be filled by larger non-endemic at least non-endemic to trail running organizations coming in and starting up races and we've seen that with spartan here in the u.s and we've seen it with iron man uh abroad in oceana and that with that with the big bad corporations like coming in and stomping on like smaller people's grounds comes with it it's it's a charged topic because of the culture that already exists in in in trail and ultra running but it is inevitable because we're already starting to see it and i want to get like your perspective on it because of you have a perspective of the landscape of the small the medium the large companies what do you think that that is going to ultimately mean for the average trail runner that's kind of like going out and trying to find a race to do you know i have been thinking about this and it's um when you compare say marathons to because once you know people started marathoning it was you know you had the you had the bigger ones like boston and new york and um and you know these are funded by big corporations um when you look at the ultra scene and this is what you know this is what i see now even you've got

these small races they can't get any bigger right because they're only a couple hundred people they can't get any bigger um they're put on by people who are passionate about the sport and want to keep it going i honestly feel like and this is just coming from a gut feeling that there's going to be enough smaller racers to smaller rds and smaller races um sorry smaller not smaller rds smaller racers yeah exactly there you go smaller races that are put on by rds there we go smaller races put on by rds who um that you know are just gonna continue to flourish because their expenses aren't that high um and they're gonna just continue to help ultra runners feel that sense of community and i so so it's hard for me to say that these big corporations are going to come in and sweep sweep all the big races under their wings and you know create this big corporate corporate you know ultra scene i just don't see that happening um you know i could be wrong but i i feel like from what i've seen in the past 10 years um it's just there's going to be some growth because yes there are more people participating and this whole thing has made everybody really appreciate you know being together at an ultra um so it'll be it'll be it'll be a process i think and um

while we do see some of these races go away i think we're going to see just as many pop up again yeah i i agree with you and at the end of the day the consumer wins right if the consumer wants that stuff they'll it'll survive if they don't want it they won't i mean that's what i've kind of viewed and i get a lot of feedback on this because i've written about it in a few different formats i just come back to the the consumer is going to be able to tell the tale and the consumer being the trail running community as it exists right now and as it continues to exist in future years if they like a product a service a coach a race that thing will survive if they don't it won't it's pretty pretty simple economics in my now people will make mistakes along the way certainly we've seen that with lifetime fitness at leadville and other in other in other examples but at the end of the day the consumer is going to have the ultimate choice right and i honestly i feel like we put ourselves out there on that trail or road for hours and we you know we train for it it's not something we take lightly we're not going to risk you know a huge blow up or you know we're not going to risk not finishing just to run a race it's it's more than that right 100 so so i asked you earlier what you were inspired by that you hope continues you know for forever these fkts and these inspirational types of things that athletes are doing what do you hope goes away right here right now like if you could have amy's way and wave a magic wand and just put an end to something that is going on right now what would it be well honestly so i like i said the virtual races i i don't want them

to go away because i think that they are very important right now um but i think that they will go away once races start popping back up because there's not going to be a need for them anymore um i do want them to stick around until that does happen but i think that honestly i'm tired of of the well i can't make it go away social media has been it's been a great thing some forms of it some platforms of it have been great um i'm just tired of the politics and the shaming and the negativity i just want it to all go away right now so if you had your world you would wave the magic wand and just put away all of the like bipartisan politics polarized way of thinking on social and it's the negativity that bothers me the most because i'm so used to the to the ultra community being positive and supportive and you know encouraging and and to have this whole side of things creeping really kind of hurt like it kind of took me it kind of shocked me for a few weeks it was really hard to deal with and um i'm not used to that so i want it to just go away well here's here's where i bought so i i agree with the increase in negativity part of it here's what i've actually struggled with within the ultra running community i i firmly believe that adversity does not test your character it reveals it as the cliche goes and if that is true and we're we see people's character being revealed during this pandemic and

that character is attacking other people and all of this negativity and the shaming and things like that that's actually kind of scary because i like that i like the ultra running community right i don't want the curtain to get peeled back in that type of way right and i and i can't say that i'm seeing it from the ultra running community in particular it's just that i think people in general um whether it's people seeing us the ultra running community do crazy things um and you know giving us a little bit of backlash for it um it's it's definitely uh i'm not you know pointing any fingers at anybody in the ultra running community it's just in general i think that the negativity on social media has been hard to handle and it creeps into the ultra running community but um i can't say that it's you know anybody in particular it's it's just a vibe that i don't i'm not used to dealing with and it's hard especially being on social media to try and keep track of what's going on in the ultra running world right because you can't just shut it off right you're not in a position where you can just say delete twitter delete facebook delete instagram like you like it's part of your it's part of the fabric of your job right i had a columnist actually um email me this week and say you know we're going to go off social media it's it's um a couple and they write for us and they said we're going off social media so you know our column might change a little bit um because they do try and find people over social media to interview and and it's unfortunately i was like you know i said i

totally and completely support you i understand the decision but it's something that you know not all of us can do wow that's that's incredible i think that's an incredible story there i i take it you haven't ever thought about that though no i i mean i've gone off social media for a breather for a couple weeks but that's all i can do so so related to this amy i mean one of the things that ultra running magazine i think has always done a very good job of is representing the community you you guys look at kind of all walks of the community the elite athletes the not so elite athletes front of the pack back of the pack people that are new to the sport people that are experienced within the sport and that's not that's kind of not an easy task and i've always viewed the magazine itself as i mentioned as kind of a representative of the community whenever there's been something that's been like a charged topic that has come up in the recent one with the black lives matter movement and we've had it kind of earlier with uh gender representation in sport how did how does ultra running magazine kind of like walk through strategically how to present those issues within within their magazine context for the good of the community right um so with the you know we've had our share of backlash with starting with the gender representation um and to be honest with you it's one of those things where you know i've been in the editor position for two years now and um it's it's been interesting for me

because i'm not the type to have a knee-jerk reaction when someone says hey why didn't you put this person in your issue and why didn't you have why'd you have five men and three women um it's it's not it's for me i have always tried to maintain a um not only a positive representation of the sport but also um continue to evolve with the sport so as we grow i like to see our magazine grow as well so i take all of that feedback and then i plan for the future and um as you will see we are going to continue to you know move with the time but it it takes a lot of work and when we're you know a small team we always have to put our heads together and say okay what's going to be our next step what's next year going to look like was there a little bit of like looking in the mirror when particularly some of the black lives matter stuff came down because i know a lot of publications were like oh wow like we really need to do a better job at that is that am i i'm kind of getting that sense from from you just from here for sure yeah no i mean you know we all we all have to have a conversation about that it's the conversations were happening all over the place and that's that was part of uh you know what was happening in the world it was just we have to have that conversation because look at the sport

you know i know that western states is doing the same thing they're they're bored um carl our publisher is on the board and i know that they're talking about the same thing it's like we we need to uh keep our minds open as to what this sport looks like and what it's going to evolve into and so to do that we have to you know represent everybody so well and not only what it what it currently looks like but also what you want to look like right that's what i've always and i've been on record many times with a lot of the high profile race directors i've had you know craig and tim on on my podcast from the western states board to talk about this type of thing and that's one of the points of emphasis that i've always given to race directors or i've always been public about is that you not only have to represent the values and the demographics and the culture of what currently exists but what you want to exist however far in the future especially when you're a leader that's what being a leader means right you're out in front right exactly and that's certainly we are and we've always that's kind of our tagline is is the voice of the sport and we want to maintain the intimate culture that we have in the sport and represent that in the magazine but also be you know looking ahead into what the future of the sport looks like you know we can't just sit back and you know do the same thing every issue we've got to look at who's running and and you know where

they're running and um who wants to run like i i the the last issue we had cory waltering on um who was just on your podcast and you know cory i think is a great uh example of somebody who wants to encourage not only you know people like him to run on trails but also kids and we've got to look at that right and it's good for everybody i mean we i always feel a little bit self-serving when i say things like that because yeah when the sport grows i make a living in the sports of course it's like good for me but i keep coming back to it's good as a human to do like if you're it trail and ultra running yes it's good for me personally 100 when sport grows i i will raise my hand and say yeah that that helps me out personally but i do think that it's a good sport for humanity for people to get involved with because you see all these people's lives that can be affected in a positive way from having that type of experience that we can create in ultra running right right i um i'll give an example it's it's it's always been it's always been a passion of mine but to see the the kids that i so i'm a volunteer i run the running club i did run the running club at my kids school it's no longer you know this year um and we lost most of it last we lost most the season last year but um just to see kids running it doesn't matter you know who it is

young old short tall you know i mean it's just to see that energy it's um it just feels good as a human to get them out there and to see that happiness that it creates um you don't want that for everybody you know 100 so what so give us a preview of what from now this podcast is going to come out like the early part part of october from now until the end of 2020 i keep i keep acting like there's going to be some like line of demarcation at the end of 2020 there's not let's like let's dismiss that notion right now um but what is let's just extend it to january just to make it more arbitrary for ultra running magazine peel the curtain back a little bit like what can the readers expect from ultra running magazine to come out in the next few months okay so the next few months um we are continuing to cover races so um there's a number of races going on right even right now um so we'll continue to do um a number of of race reports as well as the regular content um and you know and then winter comes and so we're all kind of in hibernation mode looking ahead to lotteries which you know western states lottery won't happen this year it's weird it's weird i know it is it's weird um and so that'll be a little odd but i have a feeling that um as the months continue and you know we go into

it'll be our 40th anniversary this coming year 2021 so we'll be we'll be celebrating that in a special way um and then you'll see new columnists um we're gonna bring on some new people um and then we'll just kind of roll with what's going on in the sport i really do feel like this this is gonna this is the start of what we're gonna see for at least half of 2021 which is you know people are masking up at the start you're gonna see lots of pictures of that you're gonna see lots of aid stations that have volunteers that are you know socially distant have hand sanitizer everywhere um and you're gonna see smaller races so it's um the magazine itself is going to cover that and we're going to continue like things are normal what okay so two questions kind of related to that you already you already mentioned that you're not going to do an ultra run of the year and you're not going to do performance of the year that stereotypical episode episode that's stereotypical that stereotypical publication release that uh everybody looks forward to it's the highlight of my year just because it's entertaining i'm sure it's the highlight of a lot of listeners here are you are you going to try to like replace or augment that with something similarly inspirational well i'm just gonna have to wait on pins and needles i don't think it's gonna be it's not a secret really but we have been in the works with an anniversary issue so um we have our set plan editorial wise to create an issue that looks back at the at the

history of the sport all the way back to when we started in 1981 um and so that'll be a big um kind of our supplement for uh ultra run of the year issue please tell me that there's lots of pictures of gordy and king clover that's all i want more pictures of 1980s gordy i'm sorry i'm sorry i don't know if we can pull those out and we'll see photos are probably going to be the hardest because we're going to have to go back into the old issues and uh really trying to capture what what what was in those so it'll be exciting though guaranteed okay so related question and you've been at this for a couple years but you've also been involved for more years than that like looking forward can you give the listeners some general themes in terms of like what changes content wise ultra running magazine is going to make in the years coming up like what things have you found like really resonate with people and what things might get left on the cutting room floor um i think to answer your question the magazine is again is it's going to continue to um highlight what these amazing athletes are doing and so you know what we try to do is span the the the oldest to the youngest to the most elite to the back of the packers and so you're going to continue to see a variety of that coverage but also a more kind of you know honed honed downs you know into really amazing

stories because i can't tell you how many amazing stories are out there and i continue to try and get those stories in the magazine as much as possible but it's almost impossible to um to cover everything there's so many of them that's the thing there's so many of them right there's so many of them you know we have some really amazing writers that can find these stories um but again we you know i don't know if you know that our average reader is you know 40 plus so we've got veterans in the sport who are reading the magazine but we also want to appeal to the younger crowd as well um so that you know the the new younger ultra runners have inspiration from people like courtney and maggie and casey and i'm listing all these women off no that's cool it is more more of it it's you know i want to see more of these women um in the sport so yeah well that's another that's another podcast topic that we could take another two hours with which you know i've supported i've supported for years and you know that but i mean it's it mean i think the general theme is is you're trying to keep up with times is kind of what i'm coming up with right you're trying to keep up with the demographic times the spread of athletes the performances the inspiration it's a constant game of having of having to up your game to meet the needs of the reader true and you know while maintaining that inclusivity and the

you know community feel because that's how i feel our magazine continues to thrive it's it's just that we take the sport and put it into print version that's that's our goal and that is not an easy task amy um well i i'm gonna let you go right now uh thank you for coming on the podcast today right before your kids go to school they're probably right behind that door that i'm looking at the in the background like chopping at the bit um but from the bottom of my heart and i think i speak for a lot of trail and ultra runners out there we're just incredibly appreciative of what ultra running magazine puts out i would i was about to say every month but it has been every month due to the pandemic on on a regular basis let's just put that let's just put that out there we're incredibly appreciative of that content because you do do a good job cultivating the fabric of the community and being a representative and an advocate for not just not just the elites not just the average not just the beginner char runners but all trail runners out there and that's no easy task and it doesn't go unnoticed awesome well thanks cute for having me on and i appreciate the accolades but honestly it's i've got a great team and i've got amazing people working for me and we're just going to continue to try to keep that going as much as possible so thank you well thank you to the team as well awesome and there you have it much thanks to amy for doing a little bit of prognostication on the future i know those are always tough things to pin down but i appreciate her candor and the thought that she's

put into all those comments and also the works that she does with her staff there at ultra running magazine you guys are a real treasure and i think that we should thank you each and every time we run into you on the trails thanks to all the listeners appreciate the heck out of each and every one of you if you have any feedback go ahead and give this podcast a rating or a review on apple podcast or you can just hit me up on social media as always we will see you out on the trails you