Powell & Hicks - Mr. & Mrs. Gump

Over the course of a few years, through dedication, honesty and hard work, their website iRunFar.com has become the global newswire reference for trail running and ultramarathons. Within their extremely busy travel schedule, they also recently managed to write a second book: Where the Road Ends: a Guide to Trail Running. Luckily, we recently interviewed them before they took off on their next adventure.

By Gaël Couturier

Editors note: Bryon and Meghan operate iRunFar.com and recently published a book “Where the Road Ends: A Guide to Trail Running” published by Human Kinetics which is available on Amazon

Gaël Couturier: Most people in the trail and ultra running community know about your website but very few of us are actually familiar with who both of you are exactly. Tell us how you ended up doing iRunFar.com.

Bryon Powell: I’ve been running since the beginning high school, including trail running. I’m from New Jersey originally and I’ve been running competitively both in high school and college, doing cross-country as well as track and field. I had more of a science background in the beginning but ended up getting a history major in the end. After graduation, I moved to Washington DC because that’s where jobs were, not that I had any plan in particular. Then I decided to go to law school and I became an attorney. Somewhere around 2006, at age 28, I started making iRunFar.com as a personal running blog and in 2007, it started to become a new information source on trail running and ultramarathons. In 2009, I quit my job as an attorney to produce the website full-time. I’ve always loved running and I just figured that doing it full time would also allow me to concentrate on my own running more and immerse myself in that endurance world. This last Fall, Meghan and I bought a cabin in Moab, this is the place we call home now. Previously , we were living in Park City and we came down to Moab for winter training because in the desert there is very little snow.

Gaël Couturier: Meghan, I remember you from the 2013 Marathon Des Sables, in the Sahara, Morocco. You won the race that year and, at the time, I couldn’t really tell if this win could have been expected or not because I really didn’t know you very well.

Meghan Hicks: Ah ah, well, I’m not sure if this win was so expected after all… I was born in New-York and pretty much grew up in Minnesota. In high school, I did track and field, mostly ran the 400 meters, but I also played tennis a lot. I was actually a lot better at tennis. At this small liberal art college in southern Wisconsin that I was in, I rapidly quit running to focus on tennis. After college, I wasn’t good enough to go pro so I went back into running. I did everything, 5K, 10K, half-marathons, marathons. I also started trail running because I was working at a national park: Big Bend National Park in west Texas. I had 400 miles of trails around me everyday at work so it was a natural conversion for me. In 2009, I came second of the MDS. In 2010 I blew up during the long stage and went directly from 4^th place to 12^th. In 2012, I came 5^th.

Gaël Couturier: I’ve run this event 5-times myself so I understand how hard it is. The heat, the sand, the thirst…it is a very punishing event. How exactly did you manage to win it?

Meghan Hicks: Well, I guess at that time I fitted right with the elite top 10% girls of some events. MDS is always a different story but I had won small races before. In 2013, it was my fourth time running it so I’ve had time to learn the ins and outs of that race. You learn for example that there is a strong element of fitness and leg speed of course, but there’s also a very strong element of strategy: getting your pack just right, using your energy reserve just right, taking good care of your feet. Practicing with your food prior to the race can be very important also. Now, having said that, the MDS is the highest-level win I have ever done and will probably ever be able to do. I was very strategic with it and I had very well trained for it. I’d love to do that again one day but you know how it is, you go through those waves of life where different things take over.

Gaël Couturier: Allow me a tricky question: do you find it hard to explain to other American why you keep going to Morocco in northern Africa, a Muslim country? Or is that not at all something you’re getting questioned about?

Meghan Hicks: The reputation of Morocco is that it’s not necessarily a difficult place to get to. I believe their society is based on a milder culture. Women are totally part of life over there, and outsiders are also very much welcome.

Gaël Couturier: I agree, Morocco is indeed a special place. Let’s now talk about how iRunFar became one of the running web references in the world. What’s the business model behind this website?

Bryon Powell: We have advertising. When I decided to quit my job and go fulltime on the site, I decided I would give myself a year or two to see if it was financially viable. After one year, if it hadn’t look like it was possible I would have gone down another path but it was actually ok and in two years it was sustainable so I kept with it.

Meghan Hicks: We are only two full time employees. Bryon is both the owner of the company and the editor in chief and I’m the senior editor. We have people who write for us once a month. Some are new; some have been around for years. We also have guest contributors who write for us once or just a couple times. Then we also have a huge and really wonderful group of volunteers located all over the world who we call up to help us when we need live race coverage that we cannot do ourselves. It’s obviously very expensive to travel around the world to cover races constantly. Fortunately, we have those fans help us with that.

Bryon Powell: Yes, there’s probably 15 to 20 people that are regularly collaborating to the website but all in all there’s about 40 to 50 people that help us out more than once on a given year.

Gaël Couturier: I have always been amazed by the act of volunteering in this sport. Why do you think volunteers help you for live coverage of races? Why do they feel it’s important to give back for free when you are actually making money out of it all?

Bryon Powell: First I want to point out that this is true for race reporting only. Otherwise we pay writers. Meghan and I, we try to choose the races we cover both domestically and internationally based on the level of competition at those events. Sometimes the cost of international travel may prohibit us from going to a race we really want to go to. And sometimes we just cannot physically be there because we’re reporting on another race. That’s when we ask people who enjoy following iRunFar to follow a specific event for us. Reporting on a race gives people a reason to spend a day in the mountains, on the trails. Some also enjoy the access they may get from such an editorial position, like being able to access a particular aid station where they’ll meet famous runners and help them out. Being a volunteer gets you an experience on how the inside of a race works. There are really fun social interactions involved. I guess people also enjoy being part of the iRunFar community. It’s the same act of giving back to the community that you find within running events. We all know that those races just wouldn’t exist without volunteers. Most of those trail and ultra running races are just pure hobby for the organizers. There may be one or two events out there in the world that brings enough profit for the people responsible for it to live for the year but for most of those races these people in charge aren’t getting rich at all. Meghan and I, we go volunteer at the same trail marathon every year around Moab and we also do it for some mountain bike races, although we don’t even mountain bike. I believe the act of volunteering is endemic to the ultra running lifestyle, or culture. It’s a crucial aspect because it makes the sport possible.

Meghan Hicks: One important note is to realize that the visitations to iRunFar are incredibly international. Our race coverage has been fairly global for 3-4 years. In 2015, approximately 40% of our audience was international.

Gaël Couturier: Is that how you explain your success? Everywhere I go, no matter what country I travel to, when I discuss trail or ultra running, there’s always someone who knows about iRunFar. You guys seem legit.

Bryon Powell: Well, we’ve been out there continuously for 10 years. Lots of websites have come and gone. Part of our success is probably due to how independent we try to be all over our content, not just for our product reviews. When we go to a race, we’re going to interview some of the most competitive athletes from the start list but it does not matter to us what brand they’re from or what country they’re from. We will interview known international champions but then we’re also going to interview the local athlete, even if he finishes fourth, because it’s always good to get a new perspective. We try to mix things up.

Meghan Hicks: We’re constantly reading all the other stuff that’s coming out in the media because we need to know what’s going on with the community but we purposefully try not to be super analytical about how other websites are positioning themselves or what their business or editorial practices are. We don’t want to be influenced. One of the reasons for the success of iRunFar is because we follow our own course. We do what it takes to tell whatever story is there. We do work super hard. Eventually, it pays off.

Bryon Powell: We’re terribly inspired by trail running and ultra running and we always try to present our coverage not as cheerleaders, not as promoters, but as much as we can as a news source. If we’re doing 200 tweets out of a 100-mile race are we going to cheer one runner with lots of exclamation points? No, not really. That’s definitely not our style.

Meghan Hicks: We remain factual. We do have some columnists we encourage to give their opinions and share their ideas on how the sport should grow for example but we always try to be set a clear understanding into what’s pure news and what’s more opinionated.

Gaël Couturier: Have you ever thought about pay-per-view or pay-to-read content?

Bryon Powell: I have indeed thought about that because there are models out there that are working but if you take the example of the NY Times who does it, it is a global news sources, across all subjects. It’s a very different product. I don’t think there is a strong enough following for any running media to have a pay to read only business model. What I know is that our model is sustainable the way it is right now. The number of advertisement we have is pretty much steady and we’re trying to cover our expenses with that. Advertising is how we’ll continue to support ourselves. We had a small online store also, not only with iRunFar merchandize but also with some items needed for trail and ultra running such as apparel, packs and shoes. But being a retailer is not my passion. When I started doing that, it was sort of by accident because we were selling Salomon products that were not yet available in the United States. Nowadays pretty much every outdoor running brand has their own website. Imagine if iRunFar reviews a product and then direct it to its own inventory, it would seems like a conflict of interest: people could rightly claim that we’re promoting a product through our editorial only because we have it in the store and we need to sell it. The problem with advertising is less direct. Sometimes, based on time and effort, we put direct links to some retailers from which we get a small commission. But we try not to encourage this. There’s no perfect model, in small journalism at least, and we decided to draw a line somewhere.

Gaël Couturier: I’m just curious: which media are you following?

Bryon Powell: I guess, everyone and no one. I like business and tech magazines. I don’t really subscribe to them but I check their website, like bloomberg.com, slashdot.org which is a geeky tech news aggregating website, or macrumors.com pretty much every morning. I also follow sport from my favorite team, the Phillies, on sportscenter.com. That’s sort of my fun media when I want a 10 min break from work.

Gaël Couturier: How can you explain your success when others, print or web, are failing one after another?

Bryon Powell: I don’t know, the media is a very hard place to be in right now. I think that running magazines have a hard time now because people can read a lot of short stuff online. Of course it’s not like reading the New Yorker magazine or the Economist. Not only did Running Times go away but Marathon Beyond, which was a specialty publication that has been around for a very long time, also just shut down. I sure wouldn’t want to get involved in print right now. People bring it up to me every once in a while for iRunFar but I can’t see that happening. A lot of websites take on aspects of what the core runner like. FloTrack comes to mind for those really into following track and field for example but there’s also a lot of science based training and physiology and nutrition websites. If you’re in a specialty area, the danger is that somebody can become more specialized than you. Regarding Ultra Running magazine, it’s just spectacular that it continues to exist, especially since there’s only a couple of people running it. If a more revenue driven company owed it, I don’t think it will continue to be published. Those guys are doing it more for the passion than for the money. I think that a magazine with a trail or ultra running focus would have to have great imagery and a great overall production in order to survive. It would have to be very inspirational, with great immersive visual content. I’m saying this because I believe that having a report on a race is pointless now since people can read it all online. But if you get a story in an insightful way and have great imagery to illustrate it, then you can really weave something together. At least, that’s what I think. I don’t do too much running magazine reading anyway. I write about running all day you know. But I can totally sit down with a beautiful magazine for half an hour in the evening before I go to bed. But if I’m looking for news, then the web makes more sense.

Gaël Couturier: Make sense. How do you select the gear that you review?

Meghan Hicks: We have a review team with about 8 people in it right now. Every year, we go to the Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City. Then we send a big list out to our team pointing out the cool stuff we saw and ask who would be interested in testing the products. Our reviewers point out whatever they are interested in and we’ll send them the gear. Sometimes it works differently: people on the team tell us they saw a piece of equipment that they really want to try out because they think we should review it, or companies send us stuff randomly for testing. But in the end, our reviewers aren’t bound to do any review, even if they have requested the gear and used it.

Bryon Powell: Our reviewers may get 10 items in a season but they may only review two of them.

Gaël Couturier: But don’t you get pressure by a company that has sent you gear that you may not have selected?

Bryon Powell: Yes, we do get pressure but I work as a buffer. I’ll get five emails from the same company asking me where that review is and I just tell them that the product is with my team and if they like it they’re going to review it. I let them know that our team can review their product but only if they want to and if no one does review the product, that’s fine by us, as an editorial team. We try to isolate the reviewers from any involvement with the brand so they don’t have to deal with any pressure.

Meghan Hicks: Bryon acts as a liaison between the companies that shares with us their latest gear. We are the one who get that gear delivered to our reviewer so that our reviewers never talk to the companies unless of course they have a technical question on what material or what stitching were used for example. We think that’s important because there’s a lot of paid advertisement reviews out there now and the public ends up not really knowing what is what anymore.

Gaël Couturier: What is it that you enjoy so much with your job?

Bryon Powell: For many years I didn’t give myself much time to enjoy this but over the last couple of years I’ve had a chance to go on some really great adventures thanks to iRunFar. For example I’ve recently spent a week between the Vibram 100 in Hong Kong and the Tarawera ultramarathon on the North island of New Zealand. Then I’ve spent a week on the South island of NZ, and I ran a lot. Recently, I was also in Tibet for a race inauguration and I went there to experience the race, the mountain and the area afterwards. I have those opportunities now that I didn’t have before because I was doing the intense work of building my business. To get out there and to see such cool places and meet such interesting folks, that’s a huge benefit of my job. Another clear benefit of what I do is to be able to share something I love with other people. Part of what, I hope, Meghan and I do at iRunFar is not only to inform people but to inspire people. When things have been really rough at iRunFar, like when I’ve been totally stressed out and had to endure a couple of personal breakdowns, I still wanted to share with other people something that means so much to me, and try to help people with it. That basically kept me going. I’m totally enjoying traveling now but I can also see myself in 5 or 10 years really wanting to not travel, to just take care of my garden. I so love gardening. Also, Meghan had a beautiful Border Collie when we met. Unfortunately she passed away a couple of years ago but I’d love to get a new dog. It’s just that when you’re gone 8 months out of the year it’s impossible to have a dog. I think that right now, Meghan and I are totally enjoying it and experiencing it to its fullest but we also definitely miss being home. iRunFar is what we’re doing for now but let’s see what the next chapter is.

Gaël Couturier: You seem to have a dream job. Are there any downsides?

Bryon Powell: Oh, yeah, there are plenty of downsides! A lot of the times, I travel to awesome places but I’m there for a week and I’m working for the entire week. I may run, twice for half an hour. Those trips are very intense and I don’t have a lot of time to enjoy the place. And if you keep doing that one-week after another, three out of four, it gets very tiring. Also, during those weeks when I’m traveling, I don’t get to do my normal day-to-day work for the website so then when I’m back, I have to catch up. I have some pretty long days at work. There’s also the stress of it because that’s how Meghan and I make a living now. It’s our own small business and we don’t have a huge publishing company backing us up.

Gaël Couturier: How much travel do you do every year? I mean, how many weeks or months are you away from Moab?

Bryon Powell: I’m probably away from Moab 8 months a year. Meghan is probably home a little more than me, but it’s still pretty similar.

Meghan Hicks: It’s a gift to be able to follow your passion. As you know there isn’t a lot of financial resources floating around this running industry so you have to work hard to make it a living. It’s certainly not an easy thing to do but, to be able to be independent and flexible and following your passion can also be priceless. We’re very happy about that.

Bryon Powell: A lot of the time Meghan and I, we don’t travel together. One thing that we definitely want over the next couple of years is to have some more adventures together. Right now, we kind of are in a position where, we have opportunities for one or the other to go to places. By having only two employees, one of us pretty much has to be around to take care of iRunFar. It’s definitely hard for us to live like that, to go have a lot of great adventures but not have a lot of those adventures together. When being apart is over a month, it definitely gets more difficult.

Gaël Couturier: Since you guys are probably among the best witnesses of the sport, tell me something: is there any race that in your view is completely underestimated by the media in general? What about a place, a country or a region on the globe?

Bryon Powell: It’s a hard question. There’s so many awesome races out there. Take a race I traveled to last year: Ultravasan in Sweden (vasaloppet.se). It’s a pretty flat rolling race based on the concept of the Vasaloppet, a 90 km long distance cross-country ski race. I was in Sweden reporting on it and that was a really cool experience. There’s so many steep mountain races in Europe that it was fun to see a more runable ultramarathon for a change. Then there’s the Ultra Trail Gobi Race in the Gobi desert that I ran last year (utgchina.com.cn). That’s 400 km. I understand not everyone would enjoy running that far across a desert but I loved the beauty and the simplicity of that race. Then Moab Red Hot 55K in Utah is totally underestimated. All that slickrock makes it very difficult because it requires lots of momentum shifting. And of course it is located in this incredible beautiful part of the world! I would also love to run in Iceland. I’ve never been there but it just seems…majestic: the cool mountains, the volcanoes. There’s something about it that has a huge draw for me. Then there’s Mongolia. The Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset (ms2s.dk/), which is a 42 or a 100 km race, reminds me of my college history major. Back then I focused on modern Europeans and specifically Russian history. I know Mongolia is not Russia but studying the eastern expansion of Russia made me want to see the steppes. I just want to run on the steppes. When I think of Mongolia, I see rolling grassland for hundreds of kilometers. That image appeals to me.

Meghan Hicks: In 2014, I ran the Tor des Géants in the Italian Alps, which is 330 km long, non-stop. I know…it’s stupid. But it’s stupid in a good way. They give you six and a half days to finish it but it’s a single stage event so the time never stops until you cross the finish line. It is incredibly esthetic, one of the most beautiful mountain ranges I have ever seen. People from the Aosta valley come out to volunteer at refuges. It’s insane. I mean they climb 4000 feet up just to offer you cheese and water in the middle of the night. It’s crazy how loving and supporting those people are. For the race organization, the logistics that they have to use is also quite crazy. They have had glitches within their logistics over the years but it’s really hard to manage a race of that proportion where runners get so spread out for hundreds of miles. This experience is going to stick with me forever even though it also hurt a lot. There’s an event in Morocco that I wanted to do for a couple of years and recently ran. It’s the Trans Atlas Marathon (transatlasmarathon.com). Funny how people all over the world call everything a marathon! This is a stage race – 6 days & 270-280 km – and it traverses a portion of the Atlas Mountains from East to West. Race directors are Mohamad Ahansal, 5-times winner of the Marathon Des Sables and his brother Lahcen Ahansal, 10-times winner of the MDS. The race has incredible altitude change: you’ll climb through a valley where you’re passing remote agricultural villages or farms and then you climb way up over a high pass and then you come back down again to the next valley, etc. You alternate between complete wilderness and cultural experiences. Morocco has so much beauty and diversity, incredible starkness but esthetic starkness.

Gaël Couturier: You’re right, if UTMB is hard, Tor des Géants is definitely the next level up. And the Ahansal brothers also never had the media focus they deserved. On that subject, tell me about an athlete who is either underestimated or yet unknown that you would want to mention?

Bryon Powell: I think Jonas Buud from Sweden never gets the credit he deserves. He’s a 100 km road world champion, which is a flat competition on roads, but he casually shows up at trail races like it’s nothing. He’s been second at UTMB in the past, won the Swiss Alpine Marathon consecutively from 2007 to 2014 and also won the last edition of the Tarawera Ultramarathon in New Zealand. The guy only does a couple races a year and doesn’t have that star status at all. He’s one of those guys, you know. You see him and you’d be like…yeah, he’s the man.

Meghan Hicks: This is again a really hard question to answer because our sport is filled with incredibly intelligent, corky, loving human beings. We’re all kind of weird in here and one of the guys I really admire is American Dave Mackey. Dave is a former high-level adventure racer, real hardcore guy doing expedition stuff. He turned to ultra running a little over a decade ago, when adventure racing started winging a little bit. Then just about a year ago he had a bad accident on a mountain up near Boulder, Colorado, and suffered a severe injury to his leg. It almost required amputation. I don’t want to speak for him too much but I doubt he’ll be able to return to the way it was because it was such a severe amount of damage. But Dave, he still fights back. You can imagine that when you go from being so categorically involved in a sport to not being able to practice it the way you were it must be hard. Dave remains very much involved and he’s still so eager to support other people who are having success. He comes out to events and shares his knowledge. At trail running’s core, there’s something more in people’s core than the normal human being.

Gaël Couturier: Is there a trend that you’re seeing emerging in the running industry these days, something that could potentially be a revolution?

Bryon Powell: The revolution has happened. The game has been changed forever. Five years ago, the introduction of the minimalism shoes, as well as Hoka One One concept, really blew the whole running shoe world apart and showed that anything was still possible. It led to this really great period of innovation, or experimentation. Whether some things worked or not, I think it really doesn’t matter. What matter is that runners, the public, got to try new things. There’s a lot of progress made today in the materials and constructions that are incorporated in the shoes: the new meshes, the thin TPU overlays that lighten any given shoes by 50- 60 grams… 300 grams (10.5oz) running shoes can now be used for really long distances because they’re just so well made. When I started trail running, a 340 g shoe (12oz) was considered a light shoe! Then it became a standard shoe and now 280 grams shoes (9,8oz) have become the standard for trail running shoes, but there’s also plenty of trail shoes going down to 200 grams (7oz) or even less. And that’s a huge change. I love it. And then, after Hoka One One and after that minimalism movement, somebody launches Altra with zero drop all across the range! I even have tracks spike from Altra sitting in my office right now. Imagine that this didn’t exist 5 years ago!

Gaël Couturier: In terms of racing, don’t you feel that longer distances are now becoming a norm?

Bryon Powell: Yes, you’re right, longer and longer official races have recently emerged. We’re talking 300 km or even 400 km events (186 to 248 miles). Then there’s this Trans-Pyrenees event that’s coming, which would be many many days of racing. None of those races existed only a few years ago. On the roads, in the 1990’s, there were extremely long races, like a trans-American run or a trans-Europe run. But now we’re having trail races that are 3, 4 or 7 days or even a month if you take this trans-Pyrenees event. Those races are still at their experimental stages. Somebody just told me about a possibly of doing two Tor Des Géants this summer. On the shorter side of things, Skyrunning has been on for decades now, it’s evolving more into run mountaineering, and really becoming extreme stuff.

Gaël Couturier: I think those extremely long distances appeal to more and more young runners, whether they happen on the trails or on the roads.

Bryon Powell: The trend is definitely growing, yes, but I think it’s growing even more quickly outside the USA and Europe. That’s because ultra running is relatively new there. So there’s a lot of room to catch up for countries like China or Argentina for example. Very quickly after I college I got into trail running and ultramarathons simply because I loved being outdoors. Some people love to camp, some people love to rock climb or mountain bike but the simplest way to experience the outdoors for a couple of hours is to go for a hike or to go for a run. And if you go for a run, then you get to see a little more. I also think there’s less pressure or judgment in trail running than in road running. Road running is very much about the time. If you have to take a walk break at some point on a road race, other runners will probably judge you, stigmatize you. In a trail running or in an ultramarathon race, from one year to the next, on the exact same course, you could be many hours faster or slower simply because of the conditions. If it’s muddy or it’s raining or it’s hot, chances are that you’ll go slower. Out on the trails, walking is part of what happens and no one really cares – not to mention that you’ll probably be alone at this point. In trail running you’re also facing steep trails, rocky terrains, all kind of environments that force you to walk. I do think that some people are making a quick jump from not having a running background to run ultra marathons. In some ways, it’s probably easier to make that jump than to aim for a sub-3h marathon. Regular road racing requires you to know about speed work and tempo work and strides and all sorts of technical aspects of running. But you can go out and run your first 100 km race by hitting the trails 3 days during the week for one or two hour max and then meet up with some friends on the weekends and spend the entire day in the woods or on the mountains. It’s not very complicated. Trying to become a fast road racer without any track background can be pretty intimidating.

Gaël Couturier: OK, last question. What’s that new book of yours all about?

Bryon Powell: I wrote a book 5 years ago about ultra running called Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons, which was my book solo even though Meghan worked on the editing. This new book, Where the Road Ends: a Guide to Trail Running, came directly to Meghan through her column she had in Marathon and Beyond. Someone there recommended her to the publisher, Human Kinetics. Later, Meghan brought me on board to write it with her.

Meghan Hicks: The publisher was looking to write a very comprehensive, how to, guidebook. You don’t get approached by a publisher very often in your life so you always say “yes”! It is a trail running basic level book, with very fundamental techniques to start with. Then it complexifies into different environments like big climbs, steep climbs, technical downhills, long downhills, and all kind of other terrains you may encounter in trail running. So, yes, sure, you can absolutely go and just run on a trail but you will make yourself more efficient and healthier if you tackle it the right way. We don’t make recommendations on different shoes to wear but we make recommendations on which features on shoes you should look for depending of the different type of trail experiences. Then, there’s a nutrition chapter where we talk about hydration and fueling. We also use twelve to fifteen experts who are at the pinnacle of the sport right now. Take for instance Stephanie Howe, who has a PhD in exercise physiology, and her specialty is nutrition. We used her in the nutrition chapter to transform the complex stuff into something everybody can understand. Max King, has shown his ability to apply well accepted endurance training methodologies to all different kind of trail running experience for himself so we used his expertise for the training chapters of the book to help us teach people the fundamental elements of training, and how to create training programs. Anton Krupicka talks about how to run in technical terrain as well as in uphills and downhills. Emelie Forsberg talks about running on downhill because she’s excellent at it. Kilian Jornet, wrote the forward to the book but he also wrote some advice on technical running. Anna Frost, gives advice on choosing the right clothing because she’s been so closely aligned in helping design clothing for her sponsor. Dylan Bowman, is also another athlete contributor to the book. He’s been involved with the design of shoes with his sponsor so he has a lot of technical knowledge to share. So, yeah, we definitely got a great deal of expert advice in there.

Bryon Powell: Each chapter also ends with a section called “races and places to inspire” which should get people excited to get up and run. It is meant for people who want to take their trail running to more remote locations, not suburban trails but kind of like out there and so we explain how to read a map, how to navigate, how to find yourself of you loose your way. They probably can’t make it to all of those wonderful places we talk about but we hope to inspire them to take trips abroad, to try something new, something they may have never heard of.