TRE Was Weirdly Cathartic for Me
Call it getting TREmotional. Never thought I'd cry in front of a stranger at The Running Event in San Antonio but I did it! Twice! Can't wait to do it again next year.
On Monday, I’ll have the scene report, trends, and technical stuff that I’m super excited about. For the time being I need to rest a bit. For the many folks reading this in the industry either at TRE1, closely following, or covering for their coworkers who were away, take some time away from work. It’ll be out Monday morning.
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I was there on behalf of my main job which is for Sole Retriever. I was gathering up anything I could find on new and upcoming shoes, collabs, and fun lifestyle/run overlap. We also just got published in the WSJ, while I was here, to my surprise.
Doubling down on send it to a friend, I hate self promoting so do it for me!
Anyways, quick aside. The rest of this will read more of like a journal post. If you’re here for the usual roundups, check back in Monday.
Never thought I’d be crying in front of a stranger at The Running Event in San Antonio but I did that twice and maybe hid it well once. Nothing heavy, just an emotional welling-up that I maybe didn’t have the energy to suppress anymore.
There’s a lot there.
I haven’t been able to run as much as I’d like due to a knee injury (surgery in Feb). Luckily I can run a little, have this, the marathon Majors, and TRE to feel like my identity is intact.
Part of staying on the pulse of things means I’m really online. While internet connections have given me so much (@Lee, @Raz, @Katie), it’s also exhausting. Seeing all the hype bullsh*t on Instagram from substance-less D2C “brands”, viral accounts reposting marketing and branding it as “running culture,” (running culture is about the people!) and running being branded as a trend.
There’s a lot of not very good guidance out there from influencers and influencer-like accounts focusing on only the fun stuff and none of the important stuff. That’s shallow!
I have a lot of pent up frustration and feel a strong urge to protect the sport that’s given me so much over the 20 years I’ve been doing it. I deeply do not want it to turn into the Instagram carousel posts I see every day with thousands of likes: incredibly homogenous, male-centric, and seemingly more focused on the look than the sport itself. I had this conversation with anyone that would (willingly?) listen, because it was constantly on my mind and I have hella ADHD and can talk to a wall.
The phrase reverence for the sport comes to mind.
I don’t always feel that on marathon weekends. I don’t always feel that at the cool parties. I never feel that at any of the “hype” scene-y events, where the goal seems to be getting free stuff and being seen there. Cool for the sake of being cool is shallow and inherently uncool, and when things exist largely on a screen it’s easy to hide that lack of depth.
I already said this in on a “note” here, but TRE felt like a glass of cold water at 2 AM to me. I doubt many other people had this experience, or, at least, I hope not.
Here were some other thoughts I had along these lines.
Also if you find my ID let me know, it’s probably at bag check. Check back in for the scene report and what caught my eye on Monday.
TRE is The Running Event, a trade show where vendors will set up booths and retailers can visit to see what they want to stock. It’s a great event for networking and figuring out what to carry the following year.