We only have one Earth with Clare Gallagher and Mike Foote⎮KoopCast Episode 9

what's going on trail runners welcome to this episode of the KoopCast i'm your host Jason Koop as the name implies and on this episode i don't know why i started out like this and on this episode of the KoopCast i'm gonna break out of my mold a little bit normally i bring on you know a lot of coaching and training relevant topics but i wanted to bring together two people that are extremely passionate uh environmentalists and trail advocates and also good friends of mine mike foot and claire gallagher who really their reputation kind of precedes themselves so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna get into exactly who they are but they've been very outspoken in the community about how we all need to take action as trail runners and essentially essentially just do more uh there for those of you guys that remember there was a really inflammatory uh article uh several months ago in outside magazine that labeled trail runners as lazy parasites and despite the inflammatory language a lot of it's true hate to tell it you guys but a lot of that is true we are kind of riding on the coattails of a lot of other groups and the privilege that we all have of running on the trails uh in our local area um is really something that has been built by by other organizations and so we cover a lot of ground in this uh particular podcast we

start out with who's going to run for office is it going to be claire or is it going to be mike i'd vote for both of them i'd contribute to both their campaigns i'd go walk for them uh we talk about a new organization that is up and coming called pow trail which is uh kind of underneath the pow brand that protect our winners brand and uh what that organization could mean for trail runners we talk about the impact of going to going to races flying around the world all three of us we fly around the world we fly to different areas of the u.s and there's an impact to that and there's an impact for the races themselves and what should we do as trail runners to help mitigate that impact and what should what should race organizers do to help mitigate the impact that their particular race race uh actually has so we cover a lot of areas i uh this episode in an effort of full disclosure it starts out a little slow but once we get going you guys there's a lot of juicy stuff in there i guarantee you you will not be disappointed so give it a listen hopefully it opens your eyes on the things that on the actions that you can take to become a better steward of the environment and just be a better person overall so here we go claire gallagher mike foot it's the KoopCast it's really interesting so to update coop uh a public service commission officer is a c is up for grabs in missoula in 2020 and that's what foot's really interested in like personally running for uh run for office that was actually going to be one of my questions is which one of you is going

to run for a public office first so we could skip we could skip to that part of the dialogue yeah well uh claire should definitely run for office uh i personally am really excited to i'm a really really reluctant uh advocate i really wish that we didn't have to talk about these issues that i wish that we could all just kind of go on with our lives but i keep getting uh pulled back into uh into it and at this point i'm really excited to just pull on the biggest lever i can which is within the trail running community to engage and uh you know help folks get excited about issues that matter a lot to us whether it's public lands or climate change or social issues even within our community and as of now i think just being an athlete and a race director and um just somebody who doesn't mind having conversations with friends uh publicly on podcasts i think that this is probably the the space that i'm happy to exist in but i definitely think claire should uh run for office is that a challenge to claire i claire i guess i just don't yeah i think everyone should run for office i know eric sensiman is running for office uh and flagstaff possibly for for mayor mayor um yeah that's actually a real

position not that any of the other elected officials aren't real but mayor you have to like make really critical decisions yeah i think he and i don't want to put words into his mouth but i talked to him last week and i think he's at least running for city council and and we were talking it really does actually go hand in hand like a part-time position like city council with um being a professional runner professional athlete um but yeah mayor would be incredible eric's a really smart guy um and i'm excited that this is becoming more of a topic in our community i mean there's eight million trail runners in the u.s over eight million right and i'm sure i mean out of that there already are people who are in public office um but the more i think the more the better i give you guys five years that's my uh that's my prediction five five years um claire claire and jason what do you think is the best position to hold to affect change i love that question do you think it's in public office do you think it's as an executive director of an organization do you think it is as an activist advocate just spouting your beliefs on social media do you think it's as a writer do you think it's as a podcaster i mean this is yeah environmental lawyer right if if ultimately you just if you ultimately want to affect change what's the best avenue for you that's such a good question because it gets

back to the point of how do you how should people get involved so i want to hear claire's perspective on that first because you wear a lot of those different hats i actually know that i'm thinking about i wear a little a few of those different hats i have my opinions on it but i don't hear claire's first well i think when it comes down to the actual most change um i believe people in positions of public office have the most direct power um which is why i feel so strongly about engaging in democracy voting uh so then there's like that second tier of activism and engaging people to put the right people in positions of power or at least the best people you know the smartest and people who have our interests at heart um you know who care about clean air and wild places and equity so mike how would you answer that question i'm really good at asking questions answering them uh you know to be determined i i've you know uh claire and i recently spent some time together down in moab at protect our winners athlete summit which uh protect our winners is an organization that is really focused on moving the needle uh on the climate change discussion at a national level and international level and they they really want to engage the outdoor recreation

community to turn their passion into purpose in that space and uh we talked a lot about it and i i've recently come around to kind of claire's stance which is uh you know in order to to truly make significant change uh a lot of this stuff needs to be enacted at a policy level at a national level and that that either means running for office or or yeah working hard to elect people who uh who might share those beliefs that you do and and are willing to champion the causes that you care about uh and i think there's there's no just that's not just one direct path i think it's important to engage locally be involved in organizations that um their reach stays quite local but also um stay informed and stay active at a national level as well i mean there's so and and there's only so much capacity or time in the day but i think it's really important to try try hard to uh maybe maybe test out a few of those avenues but ultimately yeah um i think claire's spot on and that it's important to affect policy because that's the the foundation for which our you know for better for worse our society uh moves on yeah it's a tough proposition for anybody to look at it though because in order even even in small cities small counties in order to to to become an elected official there are a lot of bureaucratic

hoops that you can jump through and so whenever i've actually had friends like ask me about this recently like how can i make a change i always steer them towards do whatever suits your strengths the most and so if that means bless you claire if that means you know volunteering on the board of a 501c um great go ahead and do that if that means running for an elected position great that go ahead and do that if that means putting a tool in your hands and helping to build trails and things like that kind whatever whatever whatever whatever leads to the most amount of activity is kind of where i steer them towards i agree with you guys that the elected positions are the ones with the quote-unquote most power and if that eventually leads to that which being on the board of a 501c or being a volunteer being you know part of some sort of advocacy group oftentimes leads into somebody running for an elected position and so if that's a conduit to that great but i don't know i've always tried to steer towards people that are just or i've always tried to steer people towards things that are like the most accessible to them and if they can easily kind of look at and go okay that kind of that really makes sense that speaks to me yeah or for someone to say okay this speaks to me well my mom i will do it my mom did the same thing so my mom was on the dallas city council for eight years and uh so big huge city right and those those election cycles are not easy at all and she started on on on appointed and volunteer boards for years before she tried

before she decided to uh to to take that leap and it was kind of the same progression where she got involved in little areas and then she became you know basically a domain expert in public transportation and and through that that expertise that she was able to gather on an appointed board and this is when dallas was very first ramping up their whole public uh transportation infrastructure so she really got to see the like building it from the ground up and putting policies in place from the ground up all the way from the funding to where the routes are going to go to how do we hire all these people the you know how how are we going to pay for it all that kind of stuff and so the because of that it kind of like dip her toe into the policy waters and learn how the like the sausage gets made in the whole behind the scenes policy part of it which is usually when most people take an elected position that's usually the biggest shock that they get is the sausage making part of policy like they can read all the documents and things like that but how it gets made how it gets put into the calendar committee how it gets you know put forward for a vote like that's what takes everybody aback when they first if they don't have any experience when they first kind of get in a public office and so i think a lot of times those more accessible routes are it's it's a it's easier for people to kind of chew to to kind of bite off but b like gives them a little bit of experience to that they can kind of lean on if they ever do decide to take that leap yeah that all makes sense and i think the value in this conversation is

showcasing the importance of of that side of advocacy which is elected office and supporting those who are running for elected office right like volunteering for a campaign or something which traditionally from my understanding the trail running community has had no connection with right you know like how do you do your trail stewardship it's it's via trail work or volunteering at a race and and and so i think what mike and i feel and and exposing trail runners to an org like pow um it's showing there's this whole other side of advocacy that is just as important as you know wielding uh what do you call them pickmatic yeah that's my favorite trail building tool pickmatic yeah pickmatic pickmatic okay you see it's a pick on one side oh of course on the other side okay so it's called a pickmatic and a pelaski pelaski pelaski's got a better i like that i like the name better and the utilities a little bit it depends on what type type of trail you're being that's more of a heavy duty trail tool like creating a trail yeah correct that's something from nothing like a firefighting tool exactly yeah it's a firefighter okay but so the point you know it's awesome because did would you have envisioned coop like 10 years ago that trail runners would be talking about offices like public offices and the need for policies that that support our love of trail

running not to the extent where it is now and i think a lot of what's fueling that is is honestly like the climate crisis is like this north star that a lot of people in the outdoor industry and trail runners in particular can kind of look towards and it gets them fired up enough to take all of these other actions that sometimes they're directly related to climate change and sometimes they're indirectly related to climate change but because it's such a it's it's such a hot button and polarizing topic in our society right now which i think part of that is a good thing it's sad that we're in this state but i think the the fact that it has become this you know bright shining thing that people can can talk about and rally towards um i i personally like the fact that that that trail runners can kind of get behind those things i know mike this is something that you have you know you've written about and i share some of these i share some of these same sentiments around the trail running community and kind of the need to not to put words in your mouth but just to play a bigger part a bigger role in the community itself and i wonder if you can kind of elaborate on some of those thoughts that you have right now and just for a reader or listeners context you're talking about his article in trail runner yeah it's 2017 right mike yeah no free lunch you guys should all read it yeah thank you glare hype girl oh man so so much to dive into there yeah i mean oh gosh yeah so the premise of that article was

essentially that trail runners have kind of come into existence and popularity in recent years and trail running has and and there's just been this incredible growth to the sport uh yet we're standing on the shoulders of conservation giants that have paved the way and dug the trail literally before us and and and worked hard to conserve and protect the public lands where we recreate and where we trail run um specifically the hunting and angling uh community and then the amount of trail work done by say the mountain biking community is significantly more than the trail running community at this point and and and honestly the reason is not because one group is better than the other it's because all those groups prior to trail runners had to face adversity had to face a hurdle to jump over red tape to to figure out um barriers in the way which you know reactively forced them into organizing and finding tactics and strategies to championing to championing to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work to work

You hit the nail on the head. Climate change is the apex issue right now. Perhaps it is the issue that will codify or bring together our community in such a way that we're going to work hard to protect the places we love and get engaged in a little bit deeper way. Well, I think the fact that we're starting to see a lot more races in particular here domestically be affected by the effects of climate change. Trail runners are starting to like look around and go, oh, shit. Like not only is this race getting affected, like last year, right? The North Face race was canceled. This year got really close to being canceled and who knows what's going to happen next week. Right. I mean, it's all it's all very much in flux.

But not only are the individual races getting affected, but also you have areas that could be affected where the recreation that we previously knew those areas to have might be gone for forever. And Mike, to your point, you're absolutely right. The anglers have had to face that. And I'm a fellow angler myself. I kind of know that here in Colorado. The mountain bikers have for sure had to face that both at a local level, at a regional level and a national level with areas getting closed down for policy reasons or environmental reasons or whatever. The motor bikers have had to face that right. ATV riders and motorized bikes have definitely had to face that. And they're a great user group.

We shut them down in Colorado Springs several years ago simply because of the impact that they're having on the trails. And our trail system was definitely impacted by the fact that they couldn't play ball anymore. And since then, we've brought them back. So that's been good. But the fact that trail runners are now looking at this proposition where some of the trails that we've kind of grown to like know and love, they're completely suspect to the impacts of climate change right now that they might be gone in a few years. I mean, you can easily look at some of the ecosystems right now and go, holy shit, this like I might not be able to come out here in the next year. Totally. Just to take some examples. Sean O'Brien was canceled last year due to this one of the Southern California fires. 96% of Santa Monica State Park State Park singed completely. As an example, where's the Gorge 100K?

You know, the Columbia River Gorge fire. Is that the name of it? Yeah. You know, devastated that region. I mean, everyone I'm sure listening can think of a fire or a race that's been canceled due to some extreme weather event. You know, you have the flooding in the Midwest that Casey documented very well. You know, that's there are links to climate change and in our ability to run every day and just live the lifestyles we value so much. And all the benefits we get from running are at risk. But do you guys think, Mike, I want your opinion on this first, but do you guys think that trail runners out of the user groups are more of a bystander on this issue? Or do you think that that's starting to change? What do you mean by bystander?

And compared to other user groups or? Yeah, exactly. I mean, just to bring up a point that you mentioned earlier, there are other groups out there that have certainly taken more both policy and environmental types of advocacy positions before trail runners have. And there's no real organizing body that we have like EMBA, right, is the first example that kind of comes to mind. And I just wanted your opinion on or do you do you feel that either trail runners need to take a more kind of aggressive stance on all of these issues? And if so, you know, what can they really do about it? Kind of going back to our point earlier. Yeah, I mean, in.

Like relative to other groups, I believe that trail runners are more of bystanders. I was probably one of the few trail runners that read the outdoor magazine or sorry, outside magazine article about how trail runners are lazy parasites. And though I felt like it was a bit aggressive, I pretty much agreed with the article. It was essentially very similar to the one I wrote two years ago, but much meaner. And therefore, it was not constructive. Incited a little bit more outrage as it was probably designed to do. It was a very effective tool in that regard. It essentially said the same things like trail runners need to become more organized and step up to the plate a little bit more. And I don't think it's anyone.

It's interesting. I don't know if it's anybody's fault. I keep going back to, well, we don't have the same history some of these other sports have, and we don't have many of the same hurdles that we have to overcome. And I don't know if I'm right or wrong on this, but I do feel like trail running is quite an individual sport, and we all just want to have our solitude and do our own thing. And sometimes I love that there's not some huge governing body for trail running. But at the same time, the downside is we are much less organized. And it's, in my mind, the sleeping giant of millions of people who love what they do and love the places where they recreate and don't necessarily or haven't been leveraged to have a large voice in order to either protect these places or affect change or affect policy or become engaged at either a community level in their local area or at a large level, like on the national stage.

So I very much think that there's incredible, incredible potential within the trail running community to be woken up from being that sleeping giant. Yeah, I would agree with you and also paint it in a slightly different light. I personally think trail runners are doing a lot currently, and we all know plenty of examples. And I think locally, take any trail running hub across the nation. There probably is a run club. They probably do charity events. They probably do trail work, right? Think of any trail running hub in the country.

It's just exactly what you said, Mike. We aren't organized nationally to connect and showcase to the other places. Like, hey, we're hustling here. What are you guys doing? What's your election cycle look like? And that's where I think something like Pow Trail is going to be effective and encouraging, especially with the most important election of our lives coming up in 2020. There's something good about healthy competitiveness between trail groups. Like, I think we need to bring that back if that ever did exist or invite it to our community of, like, which communities are hustling the hardest to protect the things we love.

Can you give a little more background on Pow Trail? Yeah. So for listeners who have never heard of Pow, it stands for Protect Our Winters. And you don't have to like winter to like this organization. I personally hate winter. It was started by a snowboarder who realized the outdoor sports industry wasn't doing enough on climate change because he was seeing, his name is Jeremy Jones, climate change at an alarming rate in the early 2000s across the world as glaciers are receding. And it now has expanded to all user groups outside. So specifically, Pow Trail is addressing the climate crisis through essentially getting people to vote because that's how we're going to solve this crisis, we think, in key swing districts.

So they've done a lot of outside research on which districts in the U.S. have large outdoor communities, including trail runners. But that also could be a very easy swing flip based on essentially voting for a climate champion or what we currently have in office. And so those are where we're going to focus on. And it's not to say if you don't live in a key swing district, you can't be involved. We need everyone to get out the vote. And where are those districts right now? Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. North Carolina, two in North Carolina, Maine, two in Maine, all of the entire state of New Hampshire, which is just two districts, two in Michigan, the western slope of Colorado.

So third district, which includes Leadville 100 and Hard Rock for those, you know, thinking. Yeah, there are huge outdoor user groups. And then essentially Reno area of Nevada, which has a huge outdoor population. And as runners, we're sort of including the Tahoe races as a part of that district. And so many people from Reno go to Tahoe races. So we're looking to show up in those districts. And there's many, many more. And you probably know if your district isn't one of those, but it's close. And that's where we're like, let's step up. Let's hustle. Let's get people pledging to vote throughout this next year. Research shows if you pledge to vote, you're very likely to vote.

There's some psychology behind that. So it's almost it's close to 100 percent conversion rate. If you get someone to write their name down. Yeah, I pledge to vote. You're likely going to vote. And we're not telling people who to vote for. I mean, I trust trail runners that they're smart enough to do their research. So in a way, it's pretty simple. Get trail runners to vote. Yeah. That's what you're getting at. Yeah. But that's a far cry from an actual endemic advocacy group. Like what I mean by an endemic advocacy group, an advocacy group that is solely focused on furthering the values and the trail running community as a whole. Right. Right. And so I'm kind of wondering, like, what? Well, you're shaking your head.

Like, what's what's the difference? Well, I think it's I think there's a lot of issues and an advocacy group could focus on. And as we've said, climax is the apex issue. So this is what we found to be the most effective. And to give listeners some background, foot and I, along with Luke Nelson, Dakota Jones, Tony Kaprychka and Joe Grant and Stephanie Violet have been working on this issue for the past two years and we thought about starting our own 501c3 and we realized, well, Powell's already doing this. They have all the overhead covered. Let's get trail runners under this umbrella because it's like it's a powerhouse of lobbying and, you know, it's already there.

You can take advantage of their infrastructure. Yeah. Yeah. Their know-how that they already have. Yeah. So, so yes, we have a lot of work to do to brand specifically to trail runners, but, um, like Powell trail, it's there, it's for us. It's, and, and we feel strongly about it and we hope everyone joins. Especially in those key districts. Yeah. Go ahead, Mike. And yeah, I would argue that there's, I think that, uh, Jason, you made a really good point that it is, uh, there's a lot of room still for growth to have an endemic organization that really, uh, is gonna work hard to address issues that trail runners care about. Uh, currently protect our winners is does have the infrastructure.

It's an incredible group of incredibly smart people doing incredible work. Uh, so there was an attraction there for, for our small group of trail runners to get involved and, and, uh, get on board with them and, and climate change is such an issue. However, because it's an apex issue, uh, the benefits are a lot of the issues that trail runners care about kind of fall under the umbrella of climate change. So, uh, you know, we put out a survey that, uh, the folks at Iron Farr, uh, thankfully they, they sent it out and we got a lot of responses of what do trail runners care about and the top two, not surprisingly, that rose to the surface were public lands and climate change. And, you know, I think public lands, uh, whether it's conservation or protection of certain areas, uh, very much contributes towards, uh, a healthier climate.

And so, uh, luckily, I don't know if luckily is the right word, but, uh, you know, a lot of the issues that trail runners care about actually can be addressed through protect our winners and, and pow trail. And I think that it's up to us, uh, you know, as a community to decide what that looks like and, and pow trails in its infancy. Uh, and that means that people can have a real voice in what it looks like in the coming years and how we as a community come together to address the various issues that are either the apex issue of climate change or the issues that fall under it. Um, I think it can be really galvanizing. I think that, um, this is a scary time, but it's also such an opportunity, uh, for this community to come together and say, Hey, what do we care about?

And how are we going to address it? And, uh, pow trail isn't claiming to be everything, but, uh, you know, anybody that wants to be involved can be involved and can have a say in the direction that we had from this point forward. So I've always been impressed with you too. Cause you guys are plugged in, right? Like, you know, the issues really well, you're articulate, you're very well spoken, you care. And, and I mean, that comes through in any interview that I've ever listened to YouTube be a part of, or any article that you've ever, that you've ever written. The counterbalance to that is, is like, not everybody's like that. Not everybody gives a shit. And there's a lot of people. And I would argue there's, there's more people that just kind of look at all these issues and go, meh, then there are like you that are, that, that, that are, that are there like you two that are taking active stances on this and really trying to push the issue forward. What do you say to the bystanders? What do you say like to the passengers in this, in this whole community at large that are just looking at these issues and not doing anything about them or just not caring? Claire?

Well, I've, I've written this before. I, and I don't know if my opinions changed, but I would say to those people, are you willing to run on a treadmill for the, for the rest of your life? Because climate change is such that we're, we're risking not being able to run outside. You know, I don't care where you live, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Washington, Maine, California, like there are issues, there are impacts of climate change hitting us right now. And the biggest I think we'll see is, is the extreme heat waves. And that's, there's research that's been done specifically on running as a activity that the increase in heat and the constant days of really high temperatures in summers is going to negatively impact our running lifestyles. And so to someone who's like, meh, I mean, tell me how you feel when that hits, you know, it's in our lifetime. And what would you say to your kids who can't run outside every day of the year because of the impacts that are coming and have already come? Um, you know, it's as, as Mike has said, there's no free lunch.

Like we have to do something and whether it could be as simple as literally just voting, because I think a lot of those people might not be voting. Our national voting average is under 50%. You know, we need to make, we need to make sure all 8 million trail runners are voting. Mike? Mike? Mike?

as well as you can within your community about why you love a place. And maybe they'll meet you where you are and understand, oh, wow, yeah, this is incredibly special and we're so fortunate. And you've got to start there. And over time, people will become more engaged, whether it's going to a potluck as part of your running club and meeting somebody who cares a little bit more about the political side of these issues or actually the conservation issues around the public spaces where you recreate and is a little bit more involved. And then maybe they'll follow your actions that way. And it's unfortunate that it's going to take a lot of time because we don't have a ton of time. But I think that we need to share our stories and celebrate the places that we love and really communicate clearly and concisely about why we love them and how that foundation of a love for a place is what fuels our action to protect it and to affect change in a positive way. I think we could summarize that by, Mike, that's what is going to make you a poor politician. You want to bring everybody together and hug everybody and love everybody.

Oh, no. I think the opposite. I know, but I'm telling you reality. This is what you think. Claire, which is, this is an effective political strategy. We might disagree with it, but it's an effective political strategy. Claire's bringing the fear monger. Your earth is going to be scorched in five years and you're going to have to run on a treadmill and it's going to be hot. That's ultimately. Well, Mike, I mean, he lives in Montana. You know, the demographics are different. Where are potlucks most effective? Yeah, exactly. This is why I'll be like the executive director of a poorly funded nonprofit and Claire's going to be a U.S. senator. Exactly. Well, and this, I think, articulates the breadth of the problem and the breadth of the challenge.

Like there is no silver bullet how you get people to care. But I do echo what Mike says, especially in a community like trail running that is soft in many ways. And I mean that in actually a polite way. Like we were nice. Right. We care. Yeah. There's like very few jerks in trail running. Like the stereotypes hold true. Like trail runners are usually pretty smart and really nice and kind of do their own thing. And, you know, so bringing those types of people, our people together and having productive, constructive conversations is, that's totally the starting point. And lots of orgs are already doing it. You know, one has arisen in the last year just out of the same need we're talking about in Ventura called Runners for Public Lands, which is a running specific org. And I think they're going to end up being more local, but it sort of has the same idea of what we're talking about, a group that's, is this endemic to runners needs. But it doesn't quite have the power and just resources that Pow Trail has right now.

So all of those organizations though, I mean, even you talk to Pow, right? Started by a snowboarder. He just wanted to like, he wanted to snowboard. Yeah. Right. Same thing with EMBA. Right. We just want to protect the local trail. So a lot of, a lot of those organizations, they've, they have very humble and small roots. Totally. And it just takes time, you know, it takes time. I mean, that's why it's perfect for ultra running. Right. If anything, we, we, we are beacons of patience and persistence and stubbornness. Right. And so if anybody is, if any group is like built to survive a political bureaucratic process, you would think it would be ultra runners. Right. It's what's so confusing. It's like, yeah, there's a lot of hurdles in public office or lots of things, um, of the challenges we're talking about, but trail run, like who's more stubborn and like detail oriented than trail runners, which is, which echoes like we have so much potential. There are so many people willing to put hours. Yeah. And 8 million people is a lot. That's a big user group. That's so many people. It's, it's our, it's the biggest. Um, I think technically like when you look at outdoor industry association stats, um, I think like camping is included as one and that might be bigger, but in terms of activity, trail running is literally the, the biggest. Yeah. Camping always feel those like a catch all.

Yeah. Right. Cause a lot of trail runners might associate as trail as campers. Um, you know, so yeah, it's the biggest user group, active user group. And to, to go back to that, you know, the shifting of culture and how to engage a community. I mean, some specific things we're talking about right now are, um, activating at events. You know, I think that, uh, we have no centralized governing body, but we do have places where our tribe comes together and those are races most often. And so, um, really working hard to get races on board with, uh, either allowing a power presence or partnering with protect our winners about, uh, sharing certain information with their, with their participants. Um, I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

There's, uh, you know, obviously having conversations like this on podcasts that are endemic to our compete community are, are great. Like I was really excited about coming on, uh, to chat with both of you because I knew we were going to be talking about issues I cared about and not necessarily be talking about me or anything I've done recently. And I'm more excited to be talking about this than pretty much anything. And so it's great. And I, I really, uh, thank you for the opportunity and taking the initiative with it, Jason. Um, so yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot of actually very specific tools we're already looking at. And if there's anybody listening to this podcast, that's like, Oh wow. Like I, I want to be more involved. You know, uh, I don't know if you can put this in the show notes, Jason, but ways to either get ahold of Claire or I, or, um, or I'll speak for myself, get ahold of me. I don't know what Claire wants, but, uh, and then, you know, uh, I think there's this ways that, uh, you know, we're right now we're a very small group, but they're like we said, there's 8 million of us smart people often engaged in other aspects of their lives. And, and we're all about learning from our, you know, crowdsourcing from our community to make this, um, to help us out.

But trail running is actually in a perfect position to do this because it is a little bit of a smaller group. Like you look at a lot of, I'll just take it another, another sport that I know really well, which is road running. That community is so big that sometimes it's hard to, it's like trying to steer the Titanic, right? It's just a hard, it's just a hard, uh, it's just a hard group to make an impact on. Do you guys know how many cups are used in a major marathon? Do you even want to know this Claire? Is your head going to explode? I don't know. Tell me. Okay. I looked, I looked this up. I remember looking this up a couple of years ago for an article that I wrote in the Chicago marathon alone, 1 million disposable paper cups are used just in that one single marathon for the 50,000 people that participate in that one marathon, 50,000 people, 1 million cups. But I think outside of that, the grossness that that presents, right? A million paper cups being thrown onto the side of the road by one user group over a six hour period. Aside from that, that if, if you just extract, if you just extrapolate that to the total amount of impact that runners have, marathon runners have, and trail runners to a lesser extent have on everything, the travel to the race, the waste, all of the carbon emissions that go on when they're, you know, going to and from the race venues and things like that, it's actually kind of extraordinary for a single event to actually even think about.

And trail running being the fact that it's just smaller, right? You get a couple hundred people that go to any one trail running event. It's relatively easy for the event organized, the event organizers to kind of take hold of the situation. So, you know what, this is going to be a no waste event. And we see that at a few events around the country. And you see a lot of, and it would be relatively easy for a race director to say, you know what, we're going to completely offset our carbon footprint because it's reasonable to do so. Right. It's actually pretty cheap. Yeah. And so anyway, I think that if there are any race directors out there that are listening to this and thinking about something like that, run the math, call Claire up. She'll run the math for you. It's really not that difficult of a proposition to completely offset all of the impact that your race has with a few simple actions.

I completely agree. And this is really exciting for trail running and we've seen it in so many little pockets where people have pushed races to go coupless or push races to quote go green in the many ways that could mean. And it's, I think should be the, I think it should be the baseline. Um, there's no excuse. Western States went coupless. The biggest races in the country. I can, I mean, technically UTMB, which has around 8,000 participants. Um, 10,000 if yes. Okay. Okay. 10,000. Um, has, has gone cupless. I, and I've, you know, sometimes there'll be cups and like emergency situations. Um, but on the whole, like it's, it's the, it's the intent that matters. And you see that at Western States, you know, I encourage people to really pressure race directors. Um, especially big ones like Leadville, where you have a lot of first time trail runners and say, Hey, this is our community. This is what we value. We have, we all have reusable plastic cups. There's no reason we should be encouraging like just uneconomical behavior.

Well, that's why other events can't get away with it because it's so ingrained in the culture. Right. Right. Like when, uh, I think it was the London marathon for the last two years, the seaweed. Yeah. I've given away these like seaweed, uh, uh, water pods. Mike, have you seen these? No, it basically looks like, yeah, they're awesome. It basically looks like an oversized tide dish pod and for, for tide laundry pod, not a dish pod and oversized tide laundry pod. It's got kind of like a greenish tint to it and it's made out of seaweed, but the runner just takes it up, squirts it in their mouth. They've been, they've been got their fluid and then the seaweed obviously, you know, it's biodegradable and can be thrown on the side of the road or whatever. Or they just swallow it. Or they just swallow it. Right. And so, but it's hard to implement those changes because the runners flip out. A lot of times the runners look at that and they're like, Oh wait, I haven't practiced that. And I haven't practiced that in training or it's weird. I don't know kind of how to pick it out of the volunteer's hand. Why can't you just give me a green paper cup? And it's, it's an inconvenience. People don't want to be inconvenienced in that moment. And, but we need that culture needs to shift. Exactly. And I guess my point is, is there's a, there's a really cool opportunity within the trail running community because it's really not that big. I mean, we're talking like 150,000 people here in the U S right. That do this stuff, do the races, that do the races. Those stats come out in ultra running every year. And I'm, I'm always amazed at how small it is. Like we think it's this huge community. Yeah. You know, there's only 150,000 idiots out there that want to do these things. Yeah. That's a great point. It's the equivalent of three

of the major marathon. Exactly. Road marathon. Exactly. But from a, but from a cultural perspective and how to ingrain people's behavior, the races behavior, the participants behavior and things like that, it's actually manageable. Like that's not that big of a audience to look at and go, Hey, you know, we can all collectively influence a lot of people and create change across the, across the entire sport and things like this is me getting on my soapbox a little bit. Things like that, in my opinion, bleed outside of the endemic sport themselves, other sports and other, uh, and, and other organizations that are even outside of endurance sports. We'll look at that and say, Oh, look at what trail and ultra running is doing. This now can become a blueprint for us.

And I think that's the, that's the bigger part that we need to keep in mind when we're facilitating these changes is yeah, they are selfish for us. We want to run. We don't want to be scorched by the earth and we want to continue to, to enjoy our trails, but we can also set precedent and example for other industries to look at and to take a blueprint from. Yeah, I, I absolutely agree. How do you feel putting your race director hat on Mike? Yeah, there you go. That's a good question. I was just, I was just about to go there because I feel like if I don't say something, um, because I do organize one of the largest trail races in the country, um, has had 3,050 people signed up this year. So, uh, we last year decided to go coupless and also just take a much bigger look at the, the waist footprint we have and, um, made, made a lot of huge changes. And we went from 12,000 cups being thrown away in 2018 to zero being thrown away in 2019.

Um, we didn't buy any cups. There was no emergency cups. There was nothing sitting around for people to use. Uh, and, and to the point where we have, we had reusable cups in the base area because we wanted people to have access to water at any time. And we did the dishes each night. You know, we, we did dishes in a commercial dishwasher to have those reusable cups ready the next day. And we used compostable, uh, materials for everything else. And I think we went from dozens of trash bags full of junk in 2018 to two or three in 2019 for a 3000 person race. And essentially that's just, that's just the materials that come from buying bulk goods at say Costco or something. And some of those, whether it's a potato chip bag or something like that, you know, and we're, we're constantly looking at ways to improve it. And I think the carbon footprint thing is really interesting. I'm, I'm only recently digging into that more and realizing that carbon offsets though, they may be imperfect.

It are definitely something we're looking into and investing in. And, and you're absolutely right. It's not incredibly expensive. And I think that, um, it's up to races like the rut or very well-known races like Western States or hard rock or Leadville to lead the way. And I mean, there's all these other races looking up to those events. And, uh, I think it's really important if you're in that position of privilege as an event to do everything you can to, um, you know, promote and champion sustainability, because it's, it's actually the best long-term investment we can make for our own good. It's selfish. Yeah. And I think it's important to realize that it's a, it's actually good for your long-term bottom line to make it sustainable because we all want this to be something that our kids do and our grandkids do. And that we want to see this community thrive for decades to come.

Mike, you just kind of preemptively answered a question that I was going to ask, but I'm going to ask it anyway. So the race director community is really fractured, right? There are some outfits like air Viper running who, you know, host 40 events a year or something like that. But then, but that I would say that's less common than kind of what you experienced where you have a race director and they might, they might manage one race. They might manage two or three races. And out of the thousands of tens of thousands of races that there are every single year, it's just a lot of people that are kind of, kind of undergoing the same processes and procedures. So what would you say out there to the race directors that look at that, look at that proposition? Hey, I'm going to eliminate our waste. Hey, I'm going to eliminate the, you know, the, the, the cups that everybody are throwing away. They look at that and say, ah, it's too complicated. It's too expensive.

I don't want to inconvenience the runners. It's too much of a hassle. It increases my workload by blah. And I'm not making any money off of this anyway. Like, what would you say to those race directors? Oh, I just want to give them a toolkit. I want to say, Hey, check out this link to see this like very clear, concise toolkit for steps to take, to make your race more sustainable. And by the way, it's great marketing. And it turns out our community really wants to support events like this. And often, even if they've never once asked you to do it, if you make these changes, they will then celebrate it. And, and they will identify with you and your organization in a deeper way. And long-term it's, it's, it's, it's good for your bottom line. Um, I, I really, it's funny as we're talking, I'm like the other half of my brain is like, okay, so how do we start putting together this toolkit for everybody? And, and, and, and open sourcing it. Like, I don't feel like I have all this.

I mean, by no means, like, I think it's important to know that we're all imperfect in this whole process. And, um, that's something we talk about a lot. Like if you're a race director or a runner or anybody just in your community, you're like, well, I travel a lot, so I can't talk about climate or, um, I'm not really engaged at the local level and trail building. So who am I to say, we need to stand up for our public lands. Like the reality is we know that everybody's imperfect. And if we want to be devil's advocate to the bitter end, like, you know, what's the point there? Like we could all just be like, talk ourselves into circles and do absolutely nothing. But I would argue that by taking action and engaging the overwhelm fades away, the outrage fades away, and you actually become more connected to your place. You become more connected to your community.

You as a race director, you know, see success in your events. I mean, again, I think it's all really selfish. Like, I think that this is the path to take to, uh, you know, becoming, I don't know. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's definitely like, it's worth the struggle. You know, it's, you're in the arena, all, all the platitudes. And I firmly believe it. Um, But here's, here's where something you mentioned putting together a toolkit, right? Here's where something like an organizing body would take the lead on. Yeah. Well, actually I'll chime in. Yeah. So Luke Nelson is making one right now. Oh, sweet. Under pow trail. Um, Luke, like Mike is just a responsible race director and he took over a race called scout mountain ultras in Pocatello, Idaho that used to have, I don't know, multiple like garbage trucks worth of trash, you know, pretty standard. Unfortunately for a hundred mile race, that's not that responsible. And he overhauled it completely, um, got composting, recycle and trash bins, did everything color coordinated, made it really easy. I mean, this took work at the beginning, but he now has this blueprint of how to, to clean up your, your trash stream and your waste stream. Um, and he had two bags of trash this past year. Wow. With hundreds of runners, including a hundred mile race.

Is that toolkit publicly available? It's literally being made as we speak. Yeah. Okay. So, which is, I'm so glad you asked because this is exactly like, you know, I feel like the community is itching for these things. And so we're making them and they're not going to be perfect, right? Like this, we're not like the, the ideas of perfect. So we want feedback as these things become public. There's also a volunteer toolkit that, um, that I'm probably going to give out to people this week who have personally reached out to me saying, Hey, how can I get involved with the pow trail? The volunteer toolkit includes things like how to write an op-ed for your local newspaper, how to volunteer, um, getting people to pledge to vote at a thing like a race, um, how to change your personal impacts. Um, but you know, things like that, which we, we want circulating as much as possible. We want feedback. We want people to help edit.

Wow. That's really cool. So this, uh, we're, we're recording this November 11th. This will probably come out in the middle, mid part of December. So maybe it'll actually be released by the time this episode comes out. And if it is, there you go. Give Luke the deadline. Luke, sorry, buddy. You have four weeks to pull this off. Claire's going to text you right now. Uh, but if it's, if it's, if it's up and running, send me the link I'll put in the show notes. Absolutely. I think that's beautiful. Yeah. Um, I want to pivot to something that we've talked about, I think three times so far, but we haven't really addressed it. And that's the impact that each one of us has individually with our travel. All, all three of us travel a shit ton. Claire's probably the most, like, I don't know, you and I might be able to kind of flip a coin and not to say that's worse or better than the other, but I know that, that we've all wrestled with that because you get on a plane, you look out the, you know, you look out the window and you see those big jet engines out there and you know that they're just going to pump out a lot of CO2. And I am a very reluctant traveler and Claire's on the other end of the mic, like nodding the same thing. I think Mike's probably nodding as, uh, as well on the line.

And I'm wondering what steps you guys personally take to, to, to kind of right that wrong and what you encourage other people to do. Yeah, I'll dive in. Um, in 2017, I raced in Europe or I went to Europe five times. Uh, you can do the math. That's, uh, definitely negates me being plant-based and driving a Prius and riding my bike as much as possible. Um, it, and in that year I realized I need to change my tune. Um, and last year, uh, yeah, I didn't race once in Europe. Um, and I did that for many reasons, but I have, even though my job is largely on the road, been able to significantly reduce my travel by, by combining events, by saying no to races that are really far by asking, you know, say like a gig or something. Um, what's the purpose here? Um, and I look to people like climate scientists or, um, there's a handful, Naomi Orzeski is one of them. She, she combines all of her speaking events, um, based on whether they're going to have a big enough impact or not. So like, it's possible, you know, you can change your footprint. And so that's personal, but I'm going to go back to say we are all imperfect. And if anyone thinks they can't take a part in the climate

advocacy role because they travel, like get rid of that idea immediately because we are all parts of a system we didn't help create. The reality is the fossil fuel industry created this system. Um, if we could all fly on, you know, zero emission planes, I'm sure we all would be. Yeah, true. But has our government subsidized that technology to be researched? Has our government subsidized renewable energy so that zero emission vehicles are the norm? Has our government stopped subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, which we are all complicit in because we have no other option? No, that's not individual's fault. It's not your fault, Coop and Mike and me that we fly. I'm sorry.

It's just not. But I appreciate, I appreciate the fact that you actually saying no and a basis to, to traveling and a basis for that saying no is, is I don't, I just don't want to pollute the air and this, this trip isn't worth it. Right. Yeah. That's the cost benefit that you're weighing, right? You're weighing the benefit that you and the public could get by traveling out to someplace versus the cost of that to the environment. And whenever that scale tips out a favor, you're like, man, I'm out. Yeah. That's fucking cool. Claire. Like I'm, I'm telling you just like personally, that's really cool. Thanks. I really appreciate that. I've raced a lot less this year and I actually think it's been better. Yeah. And I've explored way more of my home state and states neighboring Colorado because of it. And it's been really enriching to sort of draw a line in the sand. And again, I'm not perfect. I still went to Europe this year for an event. It was for air pollution in Chamonix.

But, um, yeah, it's tough. Yeah. Cause you do, you do have times where you travel and you're like, well, you know, this is going to do a lot of good for whatever reason, right? I'm going to speak at this. I'm going to be a public figure here. I've got to go meet and coordinate these with these other people here. And maybe that greater good is worth that admission offset. Who knows? I mean, and just look at the average consultant in the U S they travel, you know, Monday through Thursday every week. So I, you know, the fact that we have to look at all of the context of, of air travel, you know, the biggest expense in air travel is corporate air travel. Right. So. Well, just ask the people that are up in Washington, right. Making policy, like even the environmental advocates there, they wrestle with that. It's part of the job. Yeah. They wrestle with that Monday through Thursday grind. It's tough for them. Yeah. Mike, your turn. Yeah, no, I, I, I'm similar.

You know, I think that I try and live and examine life and think about ways that I can, I can be better and more efficient with my use of resources. And when I'm home, I, I, I try and bike everywhere. I went to the gym this morning. It was 17 degrees out. The roads were icy. It was howling winds. And I was positive. I was going to crash on my bike, but I still bike to the gym, but I, I'm about to travel to California for an event. I'm about to travel to the middle East for an event. Um, and so it's, it's, it's interesting. I, uh, I think that I work hard to not travel all the time, but yeah, I mean, I, I do it for, uh, things that I'm really dedicated to trail running at a competitive level and, uh, things that, you know, fall under the umbrella of my quote unquote job.

Uh, and, and it's tricky. And, you know, I, I live in Western Montana and we have a lot of coal, uh, production to the East of us. And, uh, it, it gets shipped right through my neighborhood on a daily basis to the, to the West coast. And I look at like something like coal and I'm like, wow, that is something that has helped us to reach one of the most rich societies in the, in the history of the world. And it has created so much energy for our booming economy and for, for our society to just evolve in so many ways. And in a weird way, I'm grateful for that. And then I also realized that like, it is now on the wrong side of history and it needs to not be something that we any longer, uh, really depend on. And so I, like, I just don't see our, our society using less energy. So as much as I try and make daily improvements in my own life to use less energy, I think that the reality is that we just need to find a better source of energy and, and Claire hit, you know, Claire nailed it. Like if, if planes didn't emit carbon dioxide, it would be really darn nice because we're all using them for trying to, you know, do our jobs or better the planet or, or anything. I mean, I, I want to be able to travel late in my life and hopefully I'll do it human powered because frankly, that's the most fun in my mind so far. But, uh, I, I, I do think that it's just a shift of

energy and how we, how we get energy as a, as a society. And, uh, yeah, we're, we're not there, but that's why we're, we're trying to do all this good work to, to shift that. And so that's a little bit more nuanced of an answer. I mean, I, I don't know, I'm trying to buy food locally. Uh, we, we keep our house kind of cold, you know, we do all the things that, that like we walk around and like, you know, I'm in Long John's and like a puppy right now. And it's like, you know, you're trying to do all these things and you're like, Oh, by the way, I'm flying to Oman in the late weeks. And, and you're like, ah, okay. Like, I, I'm not sure if I'm making any headway here. So how do we, how do we like affect policy that's going to like foundationally change how we use energy?

Uh, which that was really long winded. Yeah. Well, Mike, that brings us back to what, why we think Pile Trail is effective, you know, because that's at least right now, the best avenue for trail runners to put some effort into the systematic change part of this equation, right? We're all, we're all imperfect. Um, and we need to change the system. Well, one thing I can appreciate about both of you guys is you put your money where your mouth is, you put your actions where your mouths are, right? I mean, you guys live, you guys quite literally live and breathe the things that you are extremely, extremely passionate about that. And we don't, we can't say that about everybody. You know, there is a lot of lip service out there. And even in the trail running community, we like to think we're angels, but there's a lot of lip service that, that, uh, that, that kind of goes around, especially when it revolves around this issue.

Um, I want to kind of put a pin in here, but before we go, you know, we've talked about a lot of big picture things, you know, advocacy and policy things at the national level, flying on planes and whatnot. But I want each of you to take a minute and think about what, what you wish the one thing every single trail runner would do today after they finished listening to this podcast that would make an impact on you. You can even broaden it out after out of the environment, but what one thing can they do after listening to this podcast that would make a positive difference in the community? Claire, I think you should go to your computer, your phone, look up, protect our winners and sign up for the newsletters. And while you're at it, pledge to vote. Um, I feel strongly that we need to educate ourselves on the biggest issues and a newsletter that's geared towards outdoors people. So it's not a nature conservancy or Sierra club type of verbiage. Uh, it's, it's geared toward people who like to be outside, um, and explains actual policy, like what's going on the national and the really important state level problems, um, or solutions with climate change. Um, cause that's the start. If, if you want to pledge to vote for 2020, start educating yourself now. And then as the year goes on, get 10 of your

closest friends and families. We're talking like your homies. If you can't get your homies to do this, then, then that's where our problem starts. And I started doing that more in my life. Like, okay, what are my, am I telling my best friends what I'm telling people on social media? Like that's where it really matters where Mike alluded to this, these one-on-one conversations with our siblings, with our parents, with our trail sisters. That's where I think we're going to have change. Mike. That was great, Claire. Thank you. Uh, man, I feel like I'm so hippy dippy in my answers, but we all, we all recognize that you just love everybody. Mike, big hugs. I, you know, the funny thing is I agree with everything Claire just said. I want to be very clear about that, but I don't want to echo or I echo it. But additionally, I just think that to get that fire in your belly, go for your favorite run in your favorite place and think about what you would do if you didn't have that and think about what you're willing to do to protect that. And then whatever feels most right. When you think about what you're willing to do, do that thing.

God, that's so awesome. I love you guys's perspective. All right. Mike, Mike, where can people find you? Uh, just swing by my house anytime in Missoula. I'm going to put a Google maps link to your address in the show notes. I'm, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm online minimally, but, uh, you can find me on Instagram. It's the one platform that I use and it's Mike foot MT as in Montana. Sweet. Claire. Yeah. Ditto. Come by Claire's house in Boulder. Where Coop is right now. Um, yeah, you can find me on and we'll put them in the show notes on social media. I just wanted you to, to spell your Twitter handle. That's the only reason for me asking this. Oh my gosh. My Twitter handle is a super obnoxious. It's at puppies on mountains. MTS.

Yay. Why? Yay. I think you should sign off with that puppies on mountains. Puppies on mountains. Yay. Let's save the earth. All right, you guys go find Claire, go find Mike, but more importantly, you guys take some action. We only got one earth. Let's not screw it up. Thank you two for being with, being here with me today. Thank you so much. Thanks. It's been an awesome conversation. Yeah. We'll do it again. Sometimes. Appreciate it. All right. Yeah. All right. What'd you think trail runners thinking about your actions a little bit differently? You thinking about the carbon footprint that you have with your trail running activities? I always appreciate Mike and Claire. They've got a really interesting perspective on things and they definitely back up that perspective with their actions as we told them the podcast.

I do hope that one of the things that you guys take away from this is that action can come in a lot of different forms and whether that's running for office or picking up a shovel or just simply reducing the amount of carbon emissions that you personally put into the air. We all play a critically important part in this, in the environment that we trail run in. And as is evident by some of the fires that we've seen recently in California and Colorado and other areas, it's ours to protect. You know, we have to take a lot of responsibility and what we can do to protect the environment and to really protect the trails that we, that we play on and that we have come to love. I would go and check out pow trail. They've got a number of great resources on their website. They just added a carbon footprint calculator where he, where you can go on there and you can calculate your own individual carbon footprint. And in addition to that, I hope by the time this podcast launches that Luke Nelson will have his race director toolkit.

So for all you race directors out there that want to reduce the environmental impact that your race has, go ahead and check that out. It sounds like just a fantastic resource. Thanks again to Claire and Mike, and thank you to the listeners. You guys can help the show out a lot. Just go ahead and give it a rating on iTunes or subscribe to it on your favorite podcasting platform. And as always, you guys, we will see you out on the trails. Bye.