The Mountains Are Getting Crowded
What We Lose, What We Keep, and What We Learn
When a Niche Stops Being a Niche
Trailrunning is booming. Ultrarunning is too. Every climb, every forest loop, every alpine switchback feels a little fuller. New faces, new packs, new excitement. The mountains are getting visitors who aren’t just passing through. They’re arriving to stay. And I mean that in both the best and the most complicated ways possible.
Because every boom comes with tension. And change.
Trail and Ultrarunning aren’t cool anymore… So What?
It’s a bit like when that band you and your friends loved suddenly gets commercially successful. You’re happy for them, yes, honestly. They worked hard, got the talent, they deserve it. But the feeling shifts. What once felt like a shared secret now belongs to everyone. Something intimate becomes public domain.
Or think of what happened to skateboarding. Once a bunch of punks celebrating a counter-culture, then a youth movement, now a global industry with coaches, academies, Olympic medals, and million dollar brand partnerships. Nothing wrong with that. Growth is not betrayal. In fact, it’s the most natural process of all. But it changes the emotional geometry. When something expands, the space between its people rearranges too.
Trail and ultrarunning feel similar right now. The thing that used to feel a bit quirky and nerdy, misunderstood by many, loved by few, is suddenly everywhere. More visible, more accessible, more structured, more commercial, more crowded. Not worse. Not better. Just different. A niche discovering it isn’t a niche anymore.
The Beauty of the Newcomers
On the bright side, it’s genuinely beautiful to see people discover the mountains as their new habitat of bliss. Trailrunning still has a magic most sports lost decades ago: low barrier, high spirits. No permission, no scoreboard, no polished identity required. Not to mention standing at the starting line right next to the fastest and best in the world. It’s all about dirt, long nights, and the willingness to see what happens when you keep going.
Watching people fall in love with that feels hopeful. Almost sacred.
But Growth Has a Shadow
And yet, the more this world expands, the more the tone shifts. The culture stretches. Brands see opportunity. Races get bigger, louder, slicker. Waiting lists grow. Prices go up. Algorithms do what algorithms do: amplifying the loudest, not the ones with the most heart. Communities grow and feel the urge to reorganize.
And suddenly, the thing that once felt like a refuge begins to resemble an industry. It surely has been before, but as I said, I am speaking of feelings, not of numbers.
No Villain. Just Dynamics.
But blaming “new trail runners” would be cheap and wrong. I don’t want to be such a gatekeeper, neither do you. It’s never the people’s fault. It’s the pace and dynamics. Trailrunning used to be a quiet room. Now it’s a crowded cabin. Old runners miss the solitude. New runners don’t know it ever existed.
There is no villain here. Just the challenge that every subculture faces once it becomes attractive: growth tests identity.
What Is Still Yours When Everyone Arrives?
This whole situation is making me feel a bit uneasy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I see it more as a chance to ask myself some uncomfortable questions:
What is trail and ultrarunning to me when all the external factors disappear?
What part of this sport do I cling to out of habit and what part because it truly feeds me?
Which parts of my identity collapse when others enter “my” space, and what does that reaction say about me, not them?
What do I protect when I feel protective: the sport, or my place in it?
And if trailrunning were to change completely, what part of it would I still carry inside me unchanged?
Trail and ultrarunning are expanding fast. Expansion creates more space, not less. For those who were there before, too. But only if we take the time to reflect, claim and reclaim our own part with intention.
Maybe the point isn’t to protect trailrunning from the world.
Maybe the point is to protect your trailrunning from everything that is not you.
Protect Your Version of the Sport
If this sport was ever a secret, it isn’t anymore. And that’s OK. Secrets fade. Fires don’t. Instead of guarding the door, guard the flame.
Remember the part of trail and ultrarunning that lit something in you when you ran through your first night, escaped a thunderstorm, drank from a river or slept by the wayside? That’s your flame. No boom can extinguish that. Unless you let it.
The future of trailrunning belongs to everyone. The meaning of it, your meaning, still belongs to you.
Everything Not Running
Everything around me is about running these days — except, ironically, my actual running. While I’m stuck somewhere between injury, bronchitis leftovers, and forced stillness, the rest of life keeps sprinting forward. Specifically: Bold Friday, the biggest drop of the year from my running brand Willpower. A drop we’ve been shaping for months is finally coming to life.
It’s strange building something rooted in movement while your own body refuses to cooperate. Maybe that’s why this collection feels different. Slower. Clearer. More true. When you can’t run, you start stripping things back. You stop pretending. You notice what stays when everything else falls away.
Maybe that’s why “Aura” became the center of it all — the idea of who you are when the noise finally shuts up. No performance. No costume. Just presence.
I didn’t plan the timing, but maybe it’s fitting that this release arrives in the same weeks my own running is uneventful.
So while I wasn’t running, something else was. Ideas, design, intention. And the quiet reminder that identity doesn’t vanish just because mileage does.
If you’ve been looking forward to it, enjoy the drop next week. And if not — enjoy the pause. Sometimes that’s where the real Running Aura shows up.
On Repeat
Entire books could and should be written about Converge and their artistic body of work. If I had to compress decades of noise, craft, chaos, and evolution into a single word, it would be relevance.
Very few bands manage to avoid sliding into self-repetition or quiet irrelevance after so many years and so many releases. With Converge, that never happened. Yes, it’s the quality, the back catalog is untouchable. But it’s also the posture. Converge have never compromised, never softened their edges to fit a trend, never diluted themselves for accessibility. The art has always been the center, the engine, the non-negotiable.
And you can hear that. Always.
Now they’re back with a new song, Love Is Not Enough. It’s strikingly direct and disarmingly straightforward — which, ironically, suits a band known for layers, tension, and complexity extremely well. The album of the same name drops in February 2026, and I’m genuinely looking forward to it.
“Now it’s a crowded cabin. Old runners miss the solitude. New runners don’t know it ever existed.”
I think you nailed it ^^
Ich glaube ich habe selten ein Konzert wie Converge erlebt, voller dringlichkeit und dennoch stand ich voller leere da. Diese Musik ist für mich nicht greifbar und das macht es wahrscheinlich so spannend, zumindest für mich.