Over the last four weeks, we’ve run a competition in partnership with The North Face, daring trail runners to bare their deepest, perhaps darkets, hopefully funniest secret from on trail. A confessional of sorts that gives insight into the weird and wonderful things that happen out on trail, be that physically or in the farthest reaches of your minds (which trail running, especially endurance trail, tends to reach into!). The judges from The North Face have laughed and blushed through…
Dan Lewis previews this year’s The North Face 100, with an A-Z guide of the iconic 100km Blue Mountains trail running event (May 15-17) that attracts elite athletes from around the world. IMAGES: Incite Images / Mark Watson A is for AROC Sport, the organisation that runs TNF100 each year and started it in 2008. B is for Kilian Jornet Burgada, the freakish Spanish trail runner who won the 2011 TNF100. B is also for the cherished belt buckles awarded…
I believe the children are our future. Sure, Whitney Houston may not have gone on to be the greatest role model of all time, but her lyrics hold truths far greater than her kitschiness. Teach them well and let them lead the way. That’s it – you gotta show them what’s possible if they are going to be able to lead the way. Check all those kids setting themselves up for thumb arthritis as they ‘play’ on screens. Worse,…
Vicki Woolley, NZ editor’s column from the latest edition of Trail Run Mag. The other day I picked up a crappy cheap canvas board from The Warehouse, plain black with blue writing: “ONE DAY CAN BEND YOUR LIFE”. It’s not hanging on the wall yet, oddly, I move it around the house every few days. Even now as I glance at it propped up against my computer table, I am simultaneously empowered and humbled. The course of my life bent…
Growing up I was interested in a lot of things that my peers weren’t and a fairly mundane chain of decisions led me to university. I’ll never forget going back to the town where I grew up, having a beer with a mate who’d decided to be a tradesman. He couldn’t wrap his head around how I could “be so smart”. That is, how I could get through the lectures, readings and assessment involved in being a tertiary student. I…
Event Preview: Victorian Trail Running Festival There are a few trail ‘festivals’ on the calendar. Kind of like the adjectives ‘extreme’, ‘toughest’, ‘hardest’, ‘festival’ is a word bandied about a bit. There’s the You Yangs Trail Running Festival, the Brooks Trail Run Fest at Mount Baw Baw, the On Trail Running Festival in Glenworth, the Mount Buller Mountain Running Festival, Wagga Wagga Trail Running Festival, Tamborine Mountain Sports Festival…and we could go on… Yet, to this scribe, the word festival…
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town Waiting for someone or something to show you the way – Time, Pink Floyd I look at my daughters, four and six. I watch them dart around the garden. Doing everything at once and nothing at all. And I yearn so badly to be a child in that…
Dear 39-year-old self, You’re eighty years old now and in hindsight I can tell you one thing: trail running saved your life. At the moment, as you near your fortieth birthday, you just think it’s something you stumbled upon and through; something that weaves symbiotically between your personal life and working life. It all started when you had to write a profile. Remember? Hah. Running with Dean Karnazes to get an interview. He said it wouldn’t hurt you to run…
One thing about the trail running community: they (you) are a pretty spirited and, usually, community minded bunch. There’s appreciation of fellow trailites, pointy end or back of pack, mutual respect, and while competition and the will to win comes into play for some (but not all) of us, at the end of the day the A-types and the But I just love to run trail types have something in common: a love of running wild. Yet some of us…
“Our search for understanding will never come to an end, and…we will always have the challenge of new discovery. Without it, we would stagnate.” – Stephen Hawking I remember reading somewhere that some (many?) of the world’s most brilliant minds were and are runners. Not Stephen Hawking, obviously. But others of his ilk more fortunate in physical capacity. Not only that, but when faced with one of their mind boggling problems – like, how do black holes work and is…
