Trail running culture loves winners. That's obvious. The sport builds documentaries about them, fills Instagram feeds with them, and spends months debating who will win Western States. But the more Josh thinks about it, the more he wonders whether trail running is actually comfortable with the competitive mindset that creates those winners in the first place.

As Western States season begins, this conversation explores the difference between the participation version of trail running and the elite version, why those two worlds often get conflated, and what we miss when we use the values of one to understand the athletes competing in the other.

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Topics / Timestamps

00:00 Two Sports Sharing One Start Line
02:51 The Values That Make Champions
05:49 Elite, Professional, and Why It Matters
08:38 What Trail Running Rewards
11:26 Telling an Inward Story About an Outward Competition
14:22 Do We Actually Want Competitors?

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Related Episodes

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.

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