The Strongest Counterarguments To My Cocodona Piece
How much of the sport’s friction is actually part of its identity?
I genuinely did not expect the response to my Cocodona piece to become this charged.
Read the original Substack article→
Watch full video →
A lot of people agreed with the core argument that trail running’s live coverage still asks too much from the audience. But a lot of people also thought I completely missed the point of what makes this sport special in the first place.
And honestly, some of the counterarguments were good.
Underneath the debate about livestreams was a much deeper tension about what trail running actually wants to become.
My argument was basically this: the audience for trail running already exists, but the viewing experience still creates too much friction for people trying to stay connected to the race.
The strongest pushback was not you’re wrong about the production.
It was: maybe the friction is part of the culture.
Comment: “Even my mom who has 0 interest in this was hooked.”
This was probably the strongest direct challenge to my entire argument.
If someone completely outside trail running got emotionally invested in the coverage, then maybe the experience is already working better than I’m giving it credit for.
And honestly, I think there’s real truth in that.
The race itself was compelling.
Rachel’s run was compelling.
The scale of the event was compelling.
A lot of people clearly did get pulled in.
Ultra running might already be powerful enough as a spectacle that viewers are willing to work harder to stay connected than I assumed.
Comment: “The commentators not being professional is why it works.”
I understand this.
Because part of what people love about trail running coverage is that it still feels human. The commentators sound like people from the community, not polished broadcasters reading a production sheet.
There’s looseness to it.
Awkwardness sometimes.
Inside jokes.
Long pauses.
Tangents.
But also authenticity.
And I do think there’s a legitimate fear underneath a lot of the pushback to my piece:
that making the coverage more “professional” might also sand away the exact personality that makes the sport feel different from everything else.
Comment: “The real problem is a lack of patience.”
I think “viewers should simply try harder” can become an easy way to dismiss real friction in the experience itself.
There’s probably some truth here.
Ultra running is slow.
It’s repetitive.
It’s uncertain.
A lot of the meaning comes from accumulation over time.
And maybe part of the disconnect here is that modern audiences have become so conditioned by hyper-optimized sports media that sitting with ambiguity for hours now feels uncomfortable.
That may not entirely be the fault of the coverage.
Comment: “We’re just waiting for the documentaries. I’ll pop in and see how it’s going. But I’ve got work.”
This comment showed in different forms.
Not necessarily as criticism of the livestream itself. More as an admission that ultra running might fundamentally always only work better as a retrospective storytelling format than a live one.
There’s truth to that for sure.
But live coverage is different.
It asks viewers to sit inside uncertainty for hours at a time. Which is part of what makes ultra running interesting in the first place. But I also think some people used that’s just the nature of the sport to excuse friction that actually is solvable.
Those are two very different things.
Comment: “🍉🏀🍺💛🥖🦬⛰️. Ts was a whole language in the chat🙌”
People genuinely loved the livestream chat becoming its own insider ecosystem.
The coded language… IYKYK stuff.
And honestly, I always love that when I know what it means.
Part of what makes trail running feel special is that it still feels small enough to develop its own strange internet culture around these races.
A feeling that you’re inside something niche and that you belong.
But if the insider culture becomes required to understand the broadcast, that’s probably a problem.
The coverage itself should still be able to orient someone who hasn’t spent years inside the sport.
Comment: “To say the live coverage hasn’t advanced is insane to me... It was only just a few years ago that we didn’t even have live coverage.”
This was probably the fairest criticism because the coverage absolutely has improved.
But I also think trail running sometimes uses gratitude as a way to avoid standards.
“Look how far we’ve come” is true.
But it can also become an excuse not to demand better.
Production quality improving and the viewing experience becoming easier to follow are not automatically the same thing.
A beautiful drone shot of Rachel descending Elden still does not solve the underlying orientation problem if viewers are constantly asking:
Who are we watching?
Where are they in the race?
Why does this moment matter right now?
I still believe the core argument of the original piece: the audience for trail running is already larger and more emotionally invested than a lot of the sport realizes, and the viewing experience has not fully caught up to that reality yet.
But the comment section also made something else very clear. A lot of people are deeply protective of the friction, weirdness, intimacy, and insider culture that make trail running feel different from mainstream sports in the first place. And honestly, I understand that instinct.
The real challenge going forward is probably not “how do we make trail running more professional?” It’s whether the sport can improve the fan experience without flattening the culture that made people fall in love with it to begin with.
Here are some more comments for your enjoyment both in support and opposition to my piece.
“The chat knew more than the coverage.”
“Even my mom who has 0 interest in this was hooked.”
“We’re just waiting for the documentaries. I’ll pop in and see how it’s going. But I’ve got work.”
“The real problem is a lack of patience.”
“I couldn’t even tell if the race was still happening or if I was seeing old footage.”
“I had the livestream, Instagram, live tracking, and chat all open at the same time.”
“Black Canyon proved a lot of this is solvable.”
“The commentators not being professional is why it works.”
“The post race interview with Rachel on the livestream was embarrassing.”
“People don’t watch sports to see average performances.”
“This isn’t a production problem. It’s an orientation problem.”
“The stream kept making me work to stay connected.”
“The audience is there. The product just isn’t fully there yet.”
“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
I don’t understand the push for professionalization in trail running, especially as it relates to coverage. The major sports are even going in the opposite direction. The NBA made Inside the NBA their top program, the ManningCast for Monday Night Football has won multiple Emmys, every MLB team is trying to build a meme worthy broadcast booth. No one wants to hear the same old boring sideline report. Certainly not in trail running when there’s so many great personalities both among the elite and amateur.
Do you guys use AI to write/edit your substack pieces?