Good Morning! đđ»ââïž
During my summer vacation in Norway I reconnected with Matt, whose startup I invested in a few years back. Matt participated in the last Winter Olympics as a cross-country skier for South Africa and in true creator-style, he let everyone see how his training went in the two years prior to the event. When this was done, he looked for a new adventure: to place among the top 100 runners at the Oslo Marathon. He got a bunch of companies to sponsor him and then started his training cycle.
This weekend was the big event and all the training paid off for him. I am curious to see what his next adventure will look like.
Read on, my dear. And then go running! đđ»ââïž
The Running Flywheel
The forces that drive a wheel are personal. Competition might energize one runner and drain another. Solitude, community, routine, novelty, nature, cities, mastery, discovery: all of these can create momentum. They can also become friction (more on that in a moment).
Your sources of energy could change over time or day to day. A new runner might be fueled by rapid growth. A longtime practitioner might be more content where they are. What propels you during a marathon build may be different than what keeps you running ten years later.
This is an interesting observation. I am using the flywheel analogy a lot during my work, but I never applied it to running.
The state of the online running space
The online running space today is very different to when I started writing about running on a blog back in 2008. I was in my late 20s, going to PR events after work, enjoying the community and writing about running in London. There was less visibility then (which Iâm actually thankful for), because running was a lot less popular and there was a lot less money in it.
As someone who observes the online running space a bit, I can relate to Laura Fountainâs sentiment. I do think there are a lot of people out there who write about running because they love running and I try to neglect those who are just in it for the money. Iâm always happy for people who can combine the love of running and writing about it with actually making a living off of it.
Trail running hits its stride
Google searches for âtrail running shoesâ hit an all-time high in June, according to Google Trends, which has tracked searches since 2004. Trail running participation grew to 17.2 million in 2025, up 6.6% year over year and 57% from 2019, according to the Outdoor Industry Associationâs 2026 Running Report.
At REI, âtrail run is the fastest-growing category within footwear year-to-date,â Emily FrugĂ©, divisional merchandise manager, told Retail Brew. Sales are up about 12% to 19% year to date, depending on gender and merchandise type, she said.
I think thatâs fantastic as I think running in nature beats running in the streets always. Having said that, I do think that most trails around cities are runnable without special trail running or gravel or whatever fancy new label shoe. I ran through the forests in the 80s and I probably didnât even have proper running shoes back then.
I Connected Strava to Claude AI and Handed Over Eight Years of Running. Then We Played.
So this week I wanted to remember that data can be a toy, not just a courtroom. I wanted to mess about.
The excuse arrived at the perfect moment. On June 1st, Strava quietly shipped something called an MCP connector â and Iâve spent the last few evenings doing the most gloriously irresponsible thing a running nerd can do: I plugged my entire training history into an AI and started poking it to see what fell out.
This is the story of the five things we made. None of them will make you faster. All of them made me grin like an idiot. Letâs go.
My inner geek approves of this.
UTMB 2026. Turning the Mirror on Ourselves.
That being said, it feels like UTMB (the sport at large?) is creeping away from a celebration of that culture to a commercial event thatâs lost the plot. There is a ton of commerce that takes place at UTMB. Sanglard, the homebase retailer for Norda, had their biggest day EVER on Wednesday. That was the day Norda dropped their Black Diamond collab. Rabbit sold out of their event merch tees very early in the week. People come to Chamonix and SPEND MONEY. There are 3 models for that to take place - 1) the official expo village which is basically the wooden Christmas Market booths occupied by running brands, 2) a retail shop in town which can either be the actual brand storefront or a partner retailer like Sanglard, or 2) a chalet near town that is rented out by the brand - ie the Satisfy chalet, ACG chalet, etc. One of those three options pull people out of town, the other two keep people in town. Is spreading it out better? Should UTMB encourage one over the other?
When the circus comes to town. I have never been to Chamonix, but it sure feels overwhelming just to be there during UTMB.
If you missed last weekâs edition, you can read it here:
Now, go running!
â Nico
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