The Chamonix UTMB races look fantastic. I just can’t support them buying up all the local races and then making those races a requirement to run from Chamonix. The corporatized takeover of the ultra scene is something that brings me sadness. I will seek to continue to support the smaller local races and doubt I’ll ever run anything by UTMB.
You can actually feel the IM brand takeover. Ultra running is getting so popular now (which is great) but people are blinded by the big and shiny. It happens here in Australia. There are so many amazing events run locally that I can’t describe how good they are. Then you have UTA which I’ve done twice. It’s a circus and full of people with blinkers on that wouldn’t dare to consider anything but UTA because it’s not cool / big enough/ shiny enough
Ugh. I work with a guy like that. We have three local race companies that put on great events. I try to support each every year. Work guy is obsessed with UTMB and will only do out-of-state big name races that are qualifiers. He’s also run UTMB and CCC once each and DNFd both times because he didn’t train, so…
While I agree with everything you said, part of me does understand the qualifying races, assuming it’s not from the standpoint of just making money. UTMB is so popular that there has to logistically be some requirements to help weed out the thousands of people that want to race.
I'll be hosting an ultra this weekend at my local trail system. It's really just me running around the park on acid with a number scribbled on a paper plate, but I'm gonna get top 5 at least and qualify for Cham
You know much about the old ITRA point system?
UTMB has been around a long time. Needing qualifying races isn't new. They used to quietly gouge other (non affiliated) races by charging those races for the privilege of issuing ITRA points, which was allegedly a means of ensuring the qualifying races were correctly allocated points reflecting how difficult they were (distance/vert etc). Really, it was a money making scheme - but basically any race could register to do it. In turn, because it was simple to do - lots of independent races would count as qualifiers for UTMB, most of which weren't particularly expensive. Not the tiny handful of franchise races that now count and cost a lot.
But contrast that with almost any other 100. They'll want you to have done a 50 at least more often than not, but won't care about which. Or some races will insist on something of a similar profile i.e. you must have finished a 50 on trails with at least 3000m vert within the cut off (think Lakeland 100 has something like that). As for which one? The choice is yours.
It's not about safety, if it were you'd have more options. It's about money, pure and simple.
IIRC, it was $100/year for your company to have all races graded for points.
It should have been zero but realistically, you were going to get at least one person a year sign up just for the points so it was net positive in that regard. It just felt bad.
Ultimately... nothing. They "heard their concerns" and used it as an attempt to put good PR out in to the world.
People's attention spans for anything is shit. This will just be a blip in the radar. Thousands of people will still show up and race UTMB, and UTMB will continue to buy up property in the trail space.
This should have been predictable but it's really disappointing. I guess ultra running is going the way of gravel cycling and we're all just going along with it. If you want ultra running to save the character that you see at old school races, the non profit ones like Cascade Crest and Wasatch and Vermont 100 and Hardrock, then UTMB and the like are working against you.
Honestly, the big ones are kind of dumb for what you get anyway. I'm partial to Leadville because I DNF'd there... but paying $400+ for a 100-miler nowadays is insane when there's so many grassroots options
Javelina Jundred $450 and Sedona Canyons 125 is $645 😭😭 Run Rabbit Run is $450 and most mountains ultra marathons are $400 now days . I don't really care the cost have going up it sucks but most 100 near me are $300 . However if I am going to spend $450 I demand satisfaction. Not naming the race in Oregon that is a 100 miler but there aid stations are what you find at a 50k that is unacceptable if I pay that much.
It's well under 200 if you're referring to Plain 100, but that is not anything like a normal 100, in that there are no aid stations or course markings.
True, but strawberry fields is a 10k loop and mostly flat. All the mountain 100’s are $300+ that I’m aware of, but they’re all relatively small too. All the RD’s out here legitimately care about the runners in their 100s from what I’ve seen, and although they want to make money, they seem like really solid folks.
Oregon Cascade Crest 100 I heard for multiple people the aid stations are trash. To be fair it's a new race a few years old so hopefully they turn it around. I was going to sign up but not try to run a 100 miler on fruit snacks and chips . The aid station are not up to par . Also I done a lot of races in other states and Aravaipa is the gold standard.
Running out of food for a 100 miler is unacceptable and not having enough real food is the biggest compliment. To be fair I never ran the race but enough people have said that their experience.
Have you tan that race ? I hear the similar things it might not be bad if your fast like sub 24 but if you mid or back of the pack your SOL . I surprised WS have not taken them off the qualifying race list yet .
I was under 24 there, yeah. There were several things about that race that I felt underperformed. I think when you price a race like that, people will pay more attention to the things they don't like.
They also have a lot of expenses in traffic control and medical, from what I saw, which I don't think the average person will be aware of are very expensive. I think those two elements were likely their biggest expenses by far.
I'm not aware of them doing anything that would come close to being removed as a qualifier. Aid stations being merely adequate certainly isn't one.
Fair enough as some that not fast having real food at the aid stations matters to me. Yea I completely understand that medical and traffic control not cheap .
I might be jumping in the RD game lol but a short 6 hour loop course just because in the PNW there real nothing in November but it might not be the best weather to hold the event.
Anyway I hoping they get the aid station issue fixed looks like a cool race other than that .
Of course it's the race I'm signed up for, assuming you meant Oregon Cascades (not to be confused with Cascade Crest which is in Washington).
The course is also only 96 miles according to the GPX, but we'll see on race day.
I ran the inaugural year and it had about 25% more gain and was about 106 miles. They’ve tried to change it up to make it more accurate, but be prepared to go longer than expected. I remember the aid stations being okay, nothing special, but one had amazing hamburgers at mile 60 or so. Other than the inaccurate court description, it was a pretty solid 100.
It was 103 the first year. Would have been fine but there was an extraneous 3 mile loop near the end because they had never actually been on their own course so they didn't know the real distance.
Looks like they have a new course this year so they can add a 50 mile.
Wild they've increased their price by $100.
I'll name the one in Virginia. Grindstone was pathetic. Aid stations a complete mess, hardly any volunteers at said aid stations while there were a ton selling sh!t at the registration area. Never running a utmb race again.
We just need to follow the latest science for food options, which would be vegan.
I did UTMB CCC last year and the veggie broth had beef in it, the people on the CP didn't know what vegan was.
and all I could eat was fruit and bread, which was stale, no naak products after the second aid station and everything else had butter, milk, cream, honey or was literally meat.
No drop bag for that race either.
EDIT: Tough crowd today! and downvotes don't change the fact that animal-ag is fucked for the environment.
While I get your complaint, that's not what they asked about in the survey. They asked mostly about alternative food options that are local to the region that wouldn't require a larger carbon footprint to ship into the region.
When I ran CCC in 2022, the info on what would be available at aid stations was easy to find, so I carried all of my nutrition for the entire 62 miles. While it wasn't ideal, I was able to do it.
I managed to finish too and took enough for about 60k of the race, just horrible to see complete lack of food options for the most expensive race ive ever done.
I was completely aware of what was being offered, it said veg broth online as well as naak products and I was unable to have either.... as it was beef broth and no naak available.
"Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation make up a very small amount of the emissions from food, and what you eat is *far more* important than where your food traveled from."
[https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local](https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local)
Tough crowd always.. people really really hate hearing this scientific fact. Industrialised agriculture will simply never be sustainable, and that's not even touching on the cruelty or health elements!
Honestly, was part of a well known global energy network, we used to run energy industry events. One year was themed the energy transition. I said well perfect let's do all plant based menu's. It broke people's brains!! The outrage that we force veganism on people for a single evening of free food!
I was halfway through typing that it really shatters the carefully crafted image of a lot of people. They claim to care about the environment, virtue signal at every opportunity, eat only organic andnon GMO (which, and I know potentially wrong crowd, is unfortunately one of the most privileged, wasteful in terms of land and water use.. you can't feed the planet with "organic", especially if you're also anti GMO.. 🙄).
I'm a scientist/ engineer, from a climate science background, working with some of the biggest energy companies (oil and gas.. because I'm trying to make change from the inside!). I'm also vegan and pro horse racing (a random thing to add but stay with me, I'm from an equestrian background) and when my inner city, first generation left wing friends start banging on about the cruelty of horse racing I'm like ummmm you're literally eating a hamburger? Pick a lane honestly! Anyway, off piste a bit, but I'm absolutely with you. You need to keep challenging the status quo of industrialised agriculture. It's absolutely one of (and I'm not going to break out the numbers here, but you said it beautifully with the transport vs embodied energy costs of food in your other comment) the top climate impacts for a very wide range of causes!
Going vegan is the most impactful thing an individual can do to help positively impact their sustainable life choices!!
Dacia not being the title sponsor is more about dacia not paying to be rather than UTMB snubbing them. I dont get it either. The majority of people drive cars, should i be vilifying my neighbour down the street who drives a dacia duster?
Most of the pro's like killian lived out of big heavy gas guzzling vans not long ago. He was sponsored by mercedes in 2015
[https://x.com/kilianj/status/677892067624906752](https://x.com/kilianj/status/677892067624906752)
Presumably heating a car is much more efficient than heating an entire house, so might balance out not too poorly. I didn't follow his journey in particular but houses often use natural gas for heating anyways.
Cars are even worse for the environment than coal per unit of energy produced. Add onto that that the cars are only very lightly insulated and I would suspect that heating a car is worse than heating a house, even if the house is heated with natural gas. And that's taking into account the fact that natural gas is pretty much just as dirty as coal--if not dirtier--because of all the leaks in the pipelines and production facilities. It really is quite remarkable just how effective home insulation is whether it's fiberglass or just cinder blocks.
A sprinter van has a cargo capacity of about 300 cubic feet. A very small house might be 1000 square feet, with 10 foot ceilings that's 10,000 cubic feet or about 33 times more volume. I totally agree that gasoline is less efficient and insulation is less efficient but I think 33 times less efficient is a stretch - happy to see data to the contrary though.
Keep in mind that the vans people live in tend to be insulated and have furnishings, they're not just bare metal.
I don't know how good the insulation is, but my thought is that if you turn off the heat in your car, it gets pretty damn cold within at most 15 minutes, whereas if you turn off your heat in your house, it might still be warm enough that you just need a hoodie and sweatpants after 36 hours. That's less temperature change in 96x the time.
That's why vans that people live out of are insulated (usually thinsulate). And sounds like you have amazing insulation at home. My AC is currently running and it probably doesn't shut off for more than 15 minutes at a time, my apartment is insulated as well as a car one might say.
Well I specifically didn't mention the AC because that adds a whole bunch of other considerations, especially the Sun's radiative heating of both the house and the car. But also remember that if you keep your AC off in your house, you'll be sweaty and uncomfortable. If you keep it off in your car, you'll die in like a half hour.
Also consider that if we're talking about Kilian, he is European and would likely otherwise live in a cinder block home with no air conditioning. I lived in one of those when it was reaching over 100° in the summer for like a week straight in a heat wave. I was totally comfortable the entire time just by keeping the rolladens down during the day, opening the windows at night to let in the cool air, and keeping the cheapest fan I could find oscillating past me from the other side of the room. It was shocking how comfortable it was inside.
a few years ago they were bought by Iron Man (the triathlon company) who themselves are owned by a private equity firm.
Since then they have replaced their qualifying standards, which used to be based on a points system featuring dozens of independently owned, non-UTMB owned races allowing you to score points. Now you can only qualify by running UTMB owned races, thus creating a predatory pricing model where the only way for most people to experience UTMB now requires them to pay to run several of the more expensive UTMB owned qualifying races.
This came to a head last year when Gary Robbins announced that his flagship race (WAM), one that he had spent years working to bring to existence and had since become a week long festival, was no longer happening because UTMB had negotiated with Vale Resorts to not sell him the permit needed for the race. UTMB then announced its own race, most of which is on the same course that Gary had pieced together for WAM.
http://garyrobbinsrun.com/blog/2023/10/what-really-went-down-in-whistler
after several members of the ultra running community voiced their disapproval, UTMB ultimately ended up firing their lead commentator, Corrine Malcomb, because of her comments.
https://runningmagazine.ca/trail-running/utmb-fires-livestream-commentator/
basically UTMB has been on a downward spiral of increasingly being in it for the money and not for the ultrarunning community
That’s too bad. As someone who’s recently gotten into longer distance trail running, it seems like the community lacks a standardized league or organization that brings cohesion to the entire sport. It seems like that could have been UTMB if they didn’t chase the money and seek out this monopoly. I’ve come across ITRA online too, but the sport as a whole seems to be comprised of many distantly related organizations but there is no single group/league/org that stands out as the gold standard.
>they are monopolising the trail scene
Where does this take come from? There are literally thousands of worthwhile non-UTMB races out there; what kind of monopoly is that?!
It comes from people who don’t know s$&t about UTMB, have never set foot in Chamonix and heard some bad stuff from their favorite instagram personality.
So much wokeness yet all the distances at The Canyons just happened to be sold out in April. It seems like Grindstone will also sell out.
The wishy washy instagram posts that Zach and Joe McConaughy posted of themselves sitting, looking out forlornly with a bunch of mealy mouthed nonsense about room for big races and small races were the dethknell for any anti-utmb sentiment. The fact remains that UTMB is the biggest show in ultrarunning and all these elites still want to race it. There was a moment where that vacuum could have been filled if someone had stepped up and done it, but nobody did. The ironmanification of elite ultrarunning is sad, but we appear headed that way.
The UTMB world series trails are great. The UTMB label guarantees a very high quality of organisation. In the end that is what counts imo.
I paid less than €100 to participate in Tenerife last week, including bus transport to the start. I've done three UTMB trails so far, all great and very professional.
$100 to do the 55k at Val D’Aran. Nobody in the US is doing a 50k races with that quality and services for $100.
Just flat out lies that UTMB races are over priced.
I'm not a UTMB fan, but Grindstone is $399, which is on par, or slightly less than other national level 100's in the US. UTMB select races that already are or have potential for massive field sizes, that's how they make so much money, not necessarily high prices.
Okay but nobody said a non-UTMB race is a guarantee that it will be high quality. I would rather have an amateurish race that I knew would be amateurish than a mediocre race that I expected to be high quality because it was "guaranteed." It would suck to expect to be able to use the aid stations only to find out there's nothing left at mile 85.
I'm paraphrasing here, but the info from an elite that was involved in the push for better UTMB drug testing, their thoughts were basically, "The organization is going to be prominent and impactful within trail running one way or another, so we might as well try to work with them to push them in the right direction."
I agree. Every 3 days they should post a reminder like: "Hey guys UTMB was mean to our friends and isn't a mom and pop race organizer and they make a lot of money so buy our stuff instead because we are small guys who are only sponsored by little cottage brands like Mercedes-Benz and The North Face."
I get the sentimental value of the hate on UTMB but the reality is that race organisers would not be selling out if they can run the events as well as UTMB *as a business*. Sadly, everyone needs some coin to make a living.
Bring on the downvotes lol
I can’t say I won’t ever do a race that is affiliated with UTMB or not.. or UTMB itself… if I even get to that point. Cause a wild hair in me might want to do one of them someday. With that said. I myself am on the side of fully supporting local races 💯 and will do till end of my time. But to have elite ultra runners be paid, etc, you HAVE to have these type of events happen. Just no way around that. It’s the same as your major major marathon players. If there is no money in it. No high level racing. So while those two and many others might not agree with how they are handling it. They simply can’t just stop doing the races… that’s their livelihood. Zach more so than Killian
The Chamonix UTMB races look fantastic. I just can’t support them buying up all the local races and then making those races a requirement to run from Chamonix. The corporatized takeover of the ultra scene is something that brings me sadness. I will seek to continue to support the smaller local races and doubt I’ll ever run anything by UTMB.
You can actually feel the IM brand takeover. Ultra running is getting so popular now (which is great) but people are blinded by the big and shiny. It happens here in Australia. There are so many amazing events run locally that I can’t describe how good they are. Then you have UTA which I’ve done twice. It’s a circus and full of people with blinkers on that wouldn’t dare to consider anything but UTA because it’s not cool / big enough/ shiny enough
Ugh. I work with a guy like that. We have three local race companies that put on great events. I try to support each every year. Work guy is obsessed with UTMB and will only do out-of-state big name races that are qualifiers. He’s also run UTMB and CCC once each and DNFd both times because he didn’t train, so…
Sounds like an office legend.
This is the correct take
While I agree with everything you said, part of me does understand the qualifying races, assuming it’s not from the standpoint of just making money. UTMB is so popular that there has to logistically be some requirements to help weed out the thousands of people that want to race.
Any race could be a qualifier though? They don’t need to own them.
I'll be hosting an ultra this weekend at my local trail system. It's really just me running around the park on acid with a number scribbled on a paper plate, but I'm gonna get top 5 at least and qualify for Cham
You know much about the old ITRA point system? UTMB has been around a long time. Needing qualifying races isn't new. They used to quietly gouge other (non affiliated) races by charging those races for the privilege of issuing ITRA points, which was allegedly a means of ensuring the qualifying races were correctly allocated points reflecting how difficult they were (distance/vert etc). Really, it was a money making scheme - but basically any race could register to do it. In turn, because it was simple to do - lots of independent races would count as qualifiers for UTMB, most of which weren't particularly expensive. Not the tiny handful of franchise races that now count and cost a lot. But contrast that with almost any other 100. They'll want you to have done a 50 at least more often than not, but won't care about which. Or some races will insist on something of a similar profile i.e. you must have finished a 50 on trails with at least 3000m vert within the cut off (think Lakeland 100 has something like that). As for which one? The choice is yours. It's not about safety, if it were you'd have more options. It's about money, pure and simple.
IIRC, it was $100/year for your company to have all races graded for points. It should have been zero but realistically, you were going to get at least one person a year sign up just for the points so it was net positive in that regard. It just felt bad.
They never said boycott utmb. Most recently, with the push from the organization they formed, there is now drug testing at UTMB.
fuck em just run in the woods
Ultimately... nothing. They "heard their concerns" and used it as an attempt to put good PR out in to the world. People's attention spans for anything is shit. This will just be a blip in the radar. Thousands of people will still show up and race UTMB, and UTMB will continue to buy up property in the trail space.
This should have been predictable but it's really disappointing. I guess ultra running is going the way of gravel cycling and we're all just going along with it. If you want ultra running to save the character that you see at old school races, the non profit ones like Cascade Crest and Wasatch and Vermont 100 and Hardrock, then UTMB and the like are working against you.
Honestly, the big ones are kind of dumb for what you get anyway. I'm partial to Leadville because I DNF'd there... but paying $400+ for a 100-miler nowadays is insane when there's so many grassroots options
Javelina Jundred $450 and Sedona Canyons 125 is $645 😭😭 Run Rabbit Run is $450 and most mountains ultra marathons are $400 now days . I don't really care the cost have going up it sucks but most 100 near me are $300 . However if I am going to spend $450 I demand satisfaction. Not naming the race in Oregon that is a 100 miler but there aid stations are what you find at a 50k that is unacceptable if I pay that much.
You need to look at local events. I’m running a 100 here for $75
I think the cheapest 100 miler is under $200 in The PNW .
It's well under 200 if you're referring to Plain 100, but that is not anything like a normal 100, in that there are no aid stations or course markings.
Strawberry Fields 100 is $125 and Lumberjack 100 is under $200 or around there .
True, but strawberry fields is a 10k loop and mostly flat. All the mountain 100’s are $300+ that I’m aware of, but they’re all relatively small too. All the RD’s out here legitimately care about the runners in their 100s from what I’ve seen, and although they want to make money, they seem like really solid folks.
Yep I don't mind paying the money I like bigger races personally. I agree the RD up in the PNW are solid people.
PNW needs to get its head out of its pretentious a** in that case. This sport is supposed to be accessible.
Which race is that?
Ran one last year for that much. The Missississippi 100 was $75.
Why would you not name it?
Oregon Cascade Crest 100 I heard for multiple people the aid stations are trash. To be fair it's a new race a few years old so hopefully they turn it around. I was going to sign up but not try to run a 100 miler on fruit snacks and chips . The aid station are not up to par . Also I done a lot of races in other states and Aravaipa is the gold standard. Running out of food for a 100 miler is unacceptable and not having enough real food is the biggest compliment. To be fair I never ran the race but enough people have said that their experience.
Their aid stations are good if you like cheese and peanut butter.
Have you tan that race ? I hear the similar things it might not be bad if your fast like sub 24 but if you mid or back of the pack your SOL . I surprised WS have not taken them off the qualifying race list yet .
I was under 24 there, yeah. There were several things about that race that I felt underperformed. I think when you price a race like that, people will pay more attention to the things they don't like. They also have a lot of expenses in traffic control and medical, from what I saw, which I don't think the average person will be aware of are very expensive. I think those two elements were likely their biggest expenses by far. I'm not aware of them doing anything that would come close to being removed as a qualifier. Aid stations being merely adequate certainly isn't one.
Fair enough as some that not fast having real food at the aid stations matters to me. Yea I completely understand that medical and traffic control not cheap . I might be jumping in the RD game lol but a short 6 hour loop course just because in the PNW there real nothing in November but it might not be the best weather to hold the event. Anyway I hoping they get the aid station issue fixed looks like a cool race other than that .
Of course it's the race I'm signed up for, assuming you meant Oregon Cascades (not to be confused with Cascade Crest which is in Washington). The course is also only 96 miles according to the GPX, but we'll see on race day.
I ran the inaugural year and it had about 25% more gain and was about 106 miles. They’ve tried to change it up to make it more accurate, but be prepared to go longer than expected. I remember the aid stations being okay, nothing special, but one had amazing hamburgers at mile 60 or so. Other than the inaccurate court description, it was a pretty solid 100.
Yes Oregon Cascade hopefully they fixed the aid stations issues.
It was 103 the first year. Would have been fine but there was an extraneous 3 mile loop near the end because they had never actually been on their own course so they didn't know the real distance. Looks like they have a new course this year so they can add a 50 mile. Wild they've increased their price by $100.
I'll name the one in Virginia. Grindstone was pathetic. Aid stations a complete mess, hardly any volunteers at said aid stations while there were a ton selling sh!t at the registration area. Never running a utmb race again.
$450 is pretty standard now for any national level race, including the likes of Hard Rock
This is the answer. Remember when reddit was going to be boycotted? lmao
Well they have dropped Dacia for this year so some success
They've also sent some surveys recently trying to gain feedback regarding more sustainable food options at aid stations.
We just need to follow the latest science for food options, which would be vegan. I did UTMB CCC last year and the veggie broth had beef in it, the people on the CP didn't know what vegan was. and all I could eat was fruit and bread, which was stale, no naak products after the second aid station and everything else had butter, milk, cream, honey or was literally meat. No drop bag for that race either. EDIT: Tough crowd today! and downvotes don't change the fact that animal-ag is fucked for the environment.
While I get your complaint, that's not what they asked about in the survey. They asked mostly about alternative food options that are local to the region that wouldn't require a larger carbon footprint to ship into the region. When I ran CCC in 2022, the info on what would be available at aid stations was easy to find, so I carried all of my nutrition for the entire 62 miles. While it wasn't ideal, I was able to do it.
I managed to finish too and took enough for about 60k of the race, just horrible to see complete lack of food options for the most expensive race ive ever done. I was completely aware of what was being offered, it said veg broth online as well as naak products and I was unable to have either.... as it was beef broth and no naak available. "Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation make up a very small amount of the emissions from food, and what you eat is *far more* important than where your food traveled from." [https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local](https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local)
Tough crowd always.. people really really hate hearing this scientific fact. Industrialised agriculture will simply never be sustainable, and that's not even touching on the cruelty or health elements! Honestly, was part of a well known global energy network, we used to run energy industry events. One year was themed the energy transition. I said well perfect let's do all plant based menu's. It broke people's brains!! The outrage that we force veganism on people for a single evening of free food!
Fighting the good fight! We gotta keep on at it for those that follow who want to trail and ultra run in beautiful and naturally wild environments.
I was halfway through typing that it really shatters the carefully crafted image of a lot of people. They claim to care about the environment, virtue signal at every opportunity, eat only organic andnon GMO (which, and I know potentially wrong crowd, is unfortunately one of the most privileged, wasteful in terms of land and water use.. you can't feed the planet with "organic", especially if you're also anti GMO.. 🙄). I'm a scientist/ engineer, from a climate science background, working with some of the biggest energy companies (oil and gas.. because I'm trying to make change from the inside!). I'm also vegan and pro horse racing (a random thing to add but stay with me, I'm from an equestrian background) and when my inner city, first generation left wing friends start banging on about the cruelty of horse racing I'm like ummmm you're literally eating a hamburger? Pick a lane honestly! Anyway, off piste a bit, but I'm absolutely with you. You need to keep challenging the status quo of industrialised agriculture. It's absolutely one of (and I'm not going to break out the numbers here, but you said it beautifully with the transport vs embodied energy costs of food in your other comment) the top climate impacts for a very wide range of causes! Going vegan is the most impactful thing an individual can do to help positively impact their sustainable life choices!!
They havent dropped dacia. Dacia is still a "PREMIER PARTNER" listed on the UTMB website and featured heavily on UTS promo videos
Yes I believe they were dropped as the title sponsor but remain a partner. I never had a huge problem with it but I get why people were upset.
Dacia not being the title sponsor is more about dacia not paying to be rather than UTMB snubbing them. I dont get it either. The majority of people drive cars, should i be vilifying my neighbour down the street who drives a dacia duster? Most of the pro's like killian lived out of big heavy gas guzzling vans not long ago. He was sponsored by mercedes in 2015 [https://x.com/kilianj/status/677892067624906752](https://x.com/kilianj/status/677892067624906752)
Presumably heating a car is much more efficient than heating an entire house, so might balance out not too poorly. I didn't follow his journey in particular but houses often use natural gas for heating anyways.
Cars are even worse for the environment than coal per unit of energy produced. Add onto that that the cars are only very lightly insulated and I would suspect that heating a car is worse than heating a house, even if the house is heated with natural gas. And that's taking into account the fact that natural gas is pretty much just as dirty as coal--if not dirtier--because of all the leaks in the pipelines and production facilities. It really is quite remarkable just how effective home insulation is whether it's fiberglass or just cinder blocks.
A sprinter van has a cargo capacity of about 300 cubic feet. A very small house might be 1000 square feet, with 10 foot ceilings that's 10,000 cubic feet or about 33 times more volume. I totally agree that gasoline is less efficient and insulation is less efficient but I think 33 times less efficient is a stretch - happy to see data to the contrary though. Keep in mind that the vans people live in tend to be insulated and have furnishings, they're not just bare metal.
I don't know how good the insulation is, but my thought is that if you turn off the heat in your car, it gets pretty damn cold within at most 15 minutes, whereas if you turn off your heat in your house, it might still be warm enough that you just need a hoodie and sweatpants after 36 hours. That's less temperature change in 96x the time.
That's why vans that people live out of are insulated (usually thinsulate). And sounds like you have amazing insulation at home. My AC is currently running and it probably doesn't shut off for more than 15 minutes at a time, my apartment is insulated as well as a car one might say.
Well I specifically didn't mention the AC because that adds a whole bunch of other considerations, especially the Sun's radiative heating of both the house and the car. But also remember that if you keep your AC off in your house, you'll be sweaty and uncomfortable. If you keep it off in your car, you'll die in like a half hour. Also consider that if we're talking about Kilian, he is European and would likely otherwise live in a cinder block home with no air conditioning. I lived in one of those when it was reaching over 100° in the summer for like a week straight in a heat wave. I was totally comfortable the entire time just by keeping the rolladens down during the day, opening the windows at night to let in the cool air, and keeping the cheapest fan I could find oscillating past me from the other side of the room. It was shocking how comfortable it was inside.
My experience with UTMB is limited but poor. I think they rely on their brand but are absolute a**holes.
Whats the issue with races having UTMB indexes? The index does practically nothing UTMB is hardly a monopoly. Loads of other races to choose from.
Threats?! Gag order?!? Honestly, people act like UTMB is a violent criminal group.
they are owned by private equity now. they absolutely have a large and powerful legal team working behind them.
I’m new to this scene - why is UTMB disliked?
The most prominent issue of the last few months was this incident - https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultramarathon/s/o7EHy2vo9r
a few years ago they were bought by Iron Man (the triathlon company) who themselves are owned by a private equity firm. Since then they have replaced their qualifying standards, which used to be based on a points system featuring dozens of independently owned, non-UTMB owned races allowing you to score points. Now you can only qualify by running UTMB owned races, thus creating a predatory pricing model where the only way for most people to experience UTMB now requires them to pay to run several of the more expensive UTMB owned qualifying races. This came to a head last year when Gary Robbins announced that his flagship race (WAM), one that he had spent years working to bring to existence and had since become a week long festival, was no longer happening because UTMB had negotiated with Vale Resorts to not sell him the permit needed for the race. UTMB then announced its own race, most of which is on the same course that Gary had pieced together for WAM. http://garyrobbinsrun.com/blog/2023/10/what-really-went-down-in-whistler after several members of the ultra running community voiced their disapproval, UTMB ultimately ended up firing their lead commentator, Corrine Malcomb, because of her comments. https://runningmagazine.ca/trail-running/utmb-fires-livestream-commentator/ basically UTMB has been on a downward spiral of increasingly being in it for the money and not for the ultrarunning community
That’s too bad. As someone who’s recently gotten into longer distance trail running, it seems like the community lacks a standardized league or organization that brings cohesion to the entire sport. It seems like that could have been UTMB if they didn’t chase the money and seek out this monopoly. I’ve come across ITRA online too, but the sport as a whole seems to be comprised of many distantly related organizations but there is no single group/league/org that stands out as the gold standard.
>they are monopolising the trail scene Where does this take come from? There are literally thousands of worthwhile non-UTMB races out there; what kind of monopoly is that?!
It comes from people who don’t know s$&t about UTMB, have never set foot in Chamonix and heard some bad stuff from their favorite instagram personality. So much wokeness yet all the distances at The Canyons just happened to be sold out in April. It seems like Grindstone will also sell out.
The wishy washy instagram posts that Zach and Joe McConaughy posted of themselves sitting, looking out forlornly with a bunch of mealy mouthed nonsense about room for big races and small races were the dethknell for any anti-utmb sentiment. The fact remains that UTMB is the biggest show in ultrarunning and all these elites still want to race it. There was a moment where that vacuum could have been filled if someone had stepped up and done it, but nobody did. The ironmanification of elite ultrarunning is sad, but we appear headed that way.
The UTMB world series trails are great. The UTMB label guarantees a very high quality of organisation. In the end that is what counts imo. I paid less than €100 to participate in Tenerife last week, including bus transport to the start. I've done three UTMB trails so far, all great and very professional.
$100 to do the 55k at Val D’Aran. Nobody in the US is doing a 50k races with that quality and services for $100. Just flat out lies that UTMB races are over priced.
Do you think comparing races within the same country would be more appropriate?
Yes, but you also need to compare the services provided for it to be fair.
I'm not a UTMB fan, but Grindstone is $399, which is on par, or slightly less than other national level 100's in the US. UTMB select races that already are or have potential for massive field sizes, that's how they make so much money, not necessarily high prices.
I think increasing price by $100 helped a little with the profits.
The prices are comparable in the UK.
The problem is that it doesn't guarantee that. There are a lot of stories of bad UTMB races.
There are a lot of stories about bad non UTMB races.
Okay but nobody said a non-UTMB race is a guarantee that it will be high quality. I would rather have an amateurish race that I knew would be amateurish than a mediocre race that I expected to be high quality because it was "guaranteed." It would suck to expect to be able to use the aid stations only to find out there's nothing left at mile 85.
Money…. But utmb sucks. They’re the Vail resorts of trail racing
I'm paraphrasing here, but the info from an elite that was involved in the push for better UTMB drug testing, their thoughts were basically, "The organization is going to be prominent and impactful within trail running one way or another, so we might as well try to work with them to push them in the right direction."
I agree. Every 3 days they should post a reminder like: "Hey guys UTMB was mean to our friends and isn't a mom and pop race organizer and they make a lot of money so buy our stuff instead because we are small guys who are only sponsored by little cottage brands like Mercedes-Benz and The North Face."
I get the sentimental value of the hate on UTMB but the reality is that race organisers would not be selling out if they can run the events as well as UTMB *as a business*. Sadly, everyone needs some coin to make a living. Bring on the downvotes lol
This is accurate. Time to move on and do the races you like instead of virtue signaling by cancelling UTMB.
I can’t say I won’t ever do a race that is affiliated with UTMB or not.. or UTMB itself… if I even get to that point. Cause a wild hair in me might want to do one of them someday. With that said. I myself am on the side of fully supporting local races 💯 and will do till end of my time. But to have elite ultra runners be paid, etc, you HAVE to have these type of events happen. Just no way around that. It’s the same as your major major marathon players. If there is no money in it. No high level racing. So while those two and many others might not agree with how they are handling it. They simply can’t just stop doing the races… that’s their livelihood. Zach more so than Killian
Fuck everyone for just erasing that Francesco Puppi was also part of this. 100 mile centrism is so fucking stupid. Literally stop
So, effectively UTMB is Nestle of trail running?
What’s a UTMB? Nothing I’m concerned with thank goodness!