Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running

Trail running is growing, but who gets to feel like they belong? Vivek Gowri, owner of San Francisco Running Company, believes the future of the sport depends on more people being able to see themselves in it. And he's using a running store to do something about it.

Presented by Kiprun.

Vivek works at NVIDIA and owns one of the Bay Area's most beloved running stores. We talk about why he bought a business he already loved, what Ben Dhiman's historic UTMB victory meant to him as an Indian runner, and how a women's trail race with a $25,000 prize purse reflects his ambitions for the sport. Underneath it all is a question about what we're responsible for when we love something enough to want to change it.

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If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

• 00:00 Why representation matters
• 01:39 Buying San Francisco Running Company
• 09:29 Who belongs in trail running?
• 20:02 Building a business around community
• 22:03 Rethinking women's trail racing
• 28:26 What trail running needs to change
• 33:45 What must never change

1. Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
2. Borderlands.cc

1. Ultra Running isn't Just Running

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack

Dylan Bowman has spent much of his life in trail running, first as a professional athlete and now as the founder of Freetrail, one of the sport's most influential media platforms. But what happens when the thing you love becomes the thing you're responsible for building? And how do you know whether the sacrifices have been worth it?

[Long Live the Local Ultra | Nov 1 | Salt Lake City]

Presented by Kiprun.

Josh sits down with Dylan at San Francisco Running Company for a conversation about ambition, identity, and the complicated relationship between running and the business of running. They get into the personal and financial cost of building Freetrail, the pressure of becoming a prominent voice in the sport, the strange world of trail running memes, and where professional trail running might be headed. Somewhere in all of it is a guy who's accomplished a lot and is still figuring out what success looks like.

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Thumbnail photo: Ryan Thrower

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

• 00:00 — Cold Open: Was It Worth It?
• 02:20 — Dylan's Complicated Relationship With Running
• 10:23 — The Personal and Financial Cost of Freetrail
• 15:42 — Ambition, Competition, and the Inner Critic
• 23:41 — Building Freetrail Into an Institution
• 29:56 — Influence, Responsibility, and the Future of Trail Running
• 40:48 — The Future of Professional Trail Running
• 46:35 — Backyard Ultras, Barkley, and What Defines the Sport

• Freetrail
• Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
• Josh Rosenthal on IG
• Borderlands.cc

• Ultra Running isn't Just Running

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack

Ultrarunning gives ordinary people a rare place to feel strong, capable and tested. You don’t have to be elite, or even particularly good at it, to experience that. I know because I’ve DNF’d plenty of 100 milers, and when I finally finished Zion 100, I was the last guy across the line.

Watching The Rookie with my son made me realize why that feeling matters so much. As adults, most of us lose the arenas where we get to find out what we’re made of. Maybe ultrarunning is one of the last ones we have left.

Presented by Kiprun.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

• 00:00 You Don’t Have to Be Good at Ultrarunning
• 01:03 What The Rookie Made Me Realize
• 03:46 Adults Lose the Arena
• 06:16 Stepping Back Into the Arena
• 12:26 Finishing the Zion 100
• 16:31 The Dignity of Ultrarunning
• 20:17 Long Live the Local Ultra

• Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
• Borderlands.cc

• Ultra Running isn't Just Running

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack

Anton Krupicka has spent two decades becoming something harder to define than a trail runner. This conversation is about how that happened, why he stopped caring about fitting the sport’s mold, and what it looks like to keep evolving without chasing relevance.

We talk about the injury that changed his relationship with running, the move toward scrambling and climbing, his influence on trail culture, the Leadville comeback, and why La Sportiva still makes sense for the athlete he is now. More than anything, it’s Anton on identity, aging, design, and trying to stay the peak version of yourself without pretending you’re still who you were ten years ago.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

• 00:00 Anton Krupicka on why trends don't matter
• 01:30 From trail runner to mountain man
• 03:52 When the whole landscape opened up
• 08:24 Identity, trends, and trail running culture
• 16:45 The Leadville 100 comeback
• 21:12 The peak version of yourself

• Unbreakable | Western States Film
• Anton's 2021 Leadville Race
• Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
• Borderlands.cc

• Ultra Running isn't Just Running

Presented by Kiprun.

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

• Watch on YouTube
• Read on Substack

Trail running is growing fast, but what happens to the races that don’t scale cleanly? After spending one night volunteering at the Wasatch 100 and the next day at a brand-new UTMB race, I came away wondering whether the messy, human parts of ultra running are exactly the parts we can’t afford to lose.

Pacers, old-timers, exhausted volunteers, DNFs, polished finish lines, UTMB, and the strange ways a race becomes more than a race. This isn’t an argument for grassroots over corporate. It’s about why trail running needs both, what each is uniquely good at, and what disappears when every race starts looking the same.

Presented by Kiprun.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

• 2:22 Races like Wasatch fill the human spirit.
• 6:09 I love ultrarunning pacer culture.
• 10:29 Someone else’s problem becomes mine.
• 14:55 The back of the pack is where I come alive.
• 16:52 Wasatch rewards staying.
• 22:04 You can’t manufacture heritage.
• 26:21 The fragile one is not the one I thought.

1. Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
2. Borderlands.cc

1. Ultra Running isn't Just Running

----

Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack

Ultrarunning rewards people who can keep going. Biel makes you wonder what happens when stopping no longer feels like an option, and where ambition ends and compulsion begins.

Biel is a Brazilian ultrarunner, Speed Project athlete, tattoo artist and printmaker living in Berlin. He has represented Brazil at the 24-Hour World Championships and set records from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Chamonix to Marseille. But the more interesting story is the force connecting his face tattoos, his art and the extreme experiences he says he needs to stay alive.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:27 Face Tattoos, Identity + Freedom
• 05:17 Why Ultrarunning Keeps Biel Alive
• 07:19 TSP | Chamonix-to-Marseille Record
• 10:59 24-Hour Racing x The Speed Project
• 13:07 A Perfect Fit for Biel
• 18:40 From Nightclub Cleaner to Pro Runner
• 22:48 Art + Life Beyond Running
• 27:39 Beyond Records + Limits

1. Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
2. Borderlands.cc
3. Additional photo courtesty of Tycjan Trzpioloa

1. Ultra Running isn't Just Running

Presented by Kiprun.

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack

UTMB is the center of trail running for one week every year, and somehow the people most frustrated by it keep showing up. After a week in Chamonix, I came home thinking the problem with hating UTMB is that the race keeps complicating the argument against it.

The fan experience is better than the criticism suggests, TDS might be the hardest race of the week, the women are racing with ego, and some of the most interesting parts of UTMB have almost nothing to do with racing. Ten observations from inside the chaos, including what brands keep getting wrong, what Chamonix reveals about status in trail running, and why everyone should be reading Raz Rauf.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

Presented by Kiprun.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:36 The Critics Are at UTMB
• 08:12 UTMB Doesn’t Have a Fan Problem
• 12:24 TDS Might Be the Hardest Race at UTMB
• 16:26 The DNSs Aren’t About Professionalization
• 20:38 The Women Are Racing With Ego
• 24:57 UTMB Isn’t Just About Running
• 28:20 The Ultimate UTMB Flex Is Not Needing Chamonix
• 30:34 Brands: Embrace the Chaos
• 32:21 Read Raz Rauf. Read Running Sucks.
• 35:45 Limiting Brand Activations Made UTMB Better - The Chamonix Mayor was Right

1. Like the Wind | Run Culture Live
2. Running Sucks - Raz Rauf
3. Borderlands.cc

1. Cocodona Has a Fan Problem

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack

UTMB is the biggest trail race in the world, but why did it happen in France? The easy answer is Mont Blanc. The better answer has more to do with culture, timing, and the kind of endurance tradition that was already there long before UTMB existed.

Josh talks with Doug Mayer, founder of Run the Alps and author of The Race That Changed Running, about the deeper conditions that made UTMB possible, from old mountain races and ski mountaineering to the Pellettis’ execution and the way places like Vallorcine turned the race into something people gather around, not just run.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

1. Run the Alps
2. Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
3. Josh Rosenthal on IG
4. Borderlands.cc
5. Subwhatever

1. Ultra Running isn't Just Running

Presented by Kiprun.

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack

Ultra running rewards obsession, but Tara Dower seems wired for something beyond results. She wants to solve hard problems, chase the best competition, run faster, and keep finding out what she’s capable of.

Tara joins me to talk Western States, her planned Pacific Coast Trail attempt, why she hasn’t raced UTMB, learning from Karl Meltzer, and her evolution with Altra from the Lone Peak to the new Vanish Carbon 3. Underneath it all is a bigger question: as Tara becomes one of the defining athletes of modern ultra running, what parts of herself does she want to keep?

For ultra runners interested in the people shaping where the sport goes next.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

This episode is in partnership with Altra for the release of its new super road shoe the Vanish Carbon 3 - a light, responsive, and efficient race day shoe made for PRs.

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:54 Tara Dower Has Always Been Stubborn
• 07:07 The Problem Solving Mind of Tara Dower
• 09:06 Results vs. A Life of Interesting Running
• 13:38 Why Tara Dower Hasn't Raced UTMB
• 17:54 The Problem with Pro Trail Running
• 20:07 Why Ultrarunners Want to Run Fast | Altra Vanish Carbon 3
• 30:31 What Speedgoat Taught Tara
• 36:40 What Tara Dower Wants Her Legacy to Be

1. Altra Vanish Carbon 3
2. Tara Dower Lives Between Two Worlds by Bryce Carlson
3. Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
4. Borderlands.cc
5. Thumbnail Photo by Pete Schreiner

1. Ultra Running isn't Just Running

Presented by Kiprun.

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack

Trail running has exploded into a global business, and Karl Meltzer somehow ended up at the center of it. HOKA turned his Speedgoat nickname into one of trail running’s defining shoes, Red Bull paid him to chase the Appalachian Trail record, and UTMB eventually bought the race he created.

Karl came up when ultrarunning was tiny and has watched the money, brands, athletes, and races transform around him. Josh and Karl talk about the strange experience of becoming valuable to an industry that barely existed when he started, selling Speedgoat to UTMB, his relationship with HOKA, and what someone who has lived through the entire boom thinks about where trail running goes from here.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

1. Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
2. Borderlands.cc
3. La French Trail

1. Ultra Running isn't Just Running

Presented by Kiprun.

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Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack