Doug Mayer

"The Race that Changed Running" is about the UTMB (Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc), one of the most renowned trail races on the planet. The book was published in 2023, which is the same year as the 20th anniversary of the race, which I can't imagine is a coincidence.

This book is structured... actually, I'm not sure the best way to explain the structure, as it wasn't hugely coherent to me. The first chapter is a rough history of the race (with perhaps too much detail as the author goes into the very early geography and settling of the area), with a focus on the major players who got the race started. The second chapter goes over the first running of the UTMB and information about the course in general. Chapter three goes over the growth of UTMB into the present day. The last chapter covers issues post-Covid and how the corporate structure of UTMB has changed. However, each chapter isn't necessarily narrated in chronological order. It jumps around, but not in a consistently clear manner.

I'm a big fan of running (albeit not necessarily trail running) so I figured I'd enjoy learning more about a race that I've heard about but have no intentions of ever running. (Notably, I learned about UTMB for the first time in "The Rise of the Ultra Runners" by Adharanand Finn.)

Personally, one of the things I love about running is that I can just throw on a pair of sneakers and go. There's minimal gear involved (unless you're into gear, in which case you can totally go to town), there are a TON of charming road races of distances spanning a few miles to hundreds of miles. And if you're into big ticket events with thousands of participants, you can find those too!

So I didn't totally love the subtle digs here and there in the book about how trail running is somehow more pure than road running. Please, leave me out of this! Both of our sports are equally valid! Honestly, there's so much more in common between road running and trail running than there are differences between the sports.

The author (and also Kilian Jornet, who wrote the book's introduction) also take a few jabs at the sport of triathlon. I'm not going to lie... it's totally valid! The Ironman corporation is a pretty gigantic company owned by private equity who has bought out many of the 140.6 distance races and pretty much obliterated little "mom and pop" long-distance tris. The Ironman event is also pretty notorious for catering to mega-wealthy CEOs who pay concierge-level funds to get bikes set up, purchase extremely expensive gear (we're talking second mortgage levels for mere mortals such as myself), epic race day accoutrements, etc. (This is not to say all tris are like this... many of the shorter tris are similar to road races. You'll find many charming local sprint and olympic tris all over the US, at least.)

So while this criticism is completely valid, it also struck me as somewhat disingenuous as the information comes out at the end of the book that Ironman is now part owner of UTMB. And considering what's happening today with UTMB/Ironman and other "mom and pop" trail races... calling out Ironman triathlons for being corporate is kind of like the pot calling the kettle black.

On that note... The UTMB isn't without its criticisms, particularly as I write this review in early 2024. Right now the current criticism is with a local trail race in Whistler Resort in British Columbia not being renewed... in its place, a UTMB/Ironman race will be held instead. The trail running community (including many of elite trail runners) are rightly upset that the giant corporation that UTMB/Ironman has become has basically edged out "the little guy." (Whether or not this is objectively true, it is certainly extremely poor optics for UTMB/Ironman.)

There are other criticisms of the race. Because of the fame of the race, naturally many runners want to participate, more so than can actually participate due to logistical and environmental limitations. To qualify, hopeful participants enter a lottery system. You can earn "running stones" that will increase your likelihood of entering the race by running other trail ultras. Recently, it appears that you are only able to earn "running stones" by running UTMB races. While UTMB has vastly expanded their international offering of races, it strikes me as unbelievably self-serving to do this. It also really cuts down on the demand for smaller (by which I mean "mom and pop") races, as people who really want to enter UTMB no longer have any extrinsic motivation to run those races as qualifying events... they will simply be extra training that doesn't help them improve their lottery chances to get into UTMB.

Other criticisms have to do with the diversity of the sport. The gender angle was looked at in this book to a small degree. One of the runners, Rory Bosio, who won several times, essentially boycotted the race until as many women athletes could podium as male athletes. The author at one point in the book notes that Catherine Poletti is "one of the few female race directors globally. Though she rarely points it out publicly, she became a sort of accidental pioneer. Poletti's role is often overlooked by critics who would like to see the race doing more for women." Um, just because you have a female race director doesn't mean you're doing the right thing for gender equality.

Also, this book ENTIRELY overlooks any other aspects of diversity, including race or existence outside of the gender binary. This irked me particularly in the introduction where Kilian Jornet states "[t]rail running is now diverse." But then goes on to talk about diversity in terms of the selection of trail races available, not in terms of the participants. (I'm willing to give Kilian a pass here, I'm not sure if English is his first language, and I'm also not sure if these quotes were taken out of context or if he wrote the introduction as a cohesive whole.) Basically, the diversity of the race participants was not brought up in this book to any meaningful degree.

The environmental impact of the race is also kind of glossed over in the book. The author does mention how a lot of trail runners try to be cognizant of their global impact on climate change if they rely on jet travel to attend international trail races, but then the author totally glosses over how Ironman states that they make a lot of money from merch. Which isn't exactly carbon-neutral.

The author brings up just enough of the critiques of UTMB in the book to make his apologies for the company seem genuine. Honestly, I believe that many folks genuinely love UTMB. I believe that the Polettis are probably great folks who are doing their best to run the race in the way they see fit. However, the author does run a trail-running company and very likely can't afford to alienate UTMB or the Polettis in any meaningful way, so I'm not sure how much of a grain of salt to take the apologetics in this book. (You could argue that a book written by a neutral party is more objectively critical, you could also argue that it's more subjectively critical. I don't have a good answer to this issue.)

So in all, this book was interesting and I learned a lot. I wish it was slightly more coherently organized, and I wish the author could convince me of being more objective than he came across in this book. But for sure, it has made me curious about learning more about the sport and doing some more of my own research online and seeing what I find out.… (mehr)