Getting back up and running

I’d thought ULTRA was, at best, dormant.

Things had got on top of me. ULTRA, my day job, family, music, training for running, running. Each issue was getting harder to make for our small team, and something had to give. So a couple of years ago I made the semi-conscious decision to let ULTRA slide. I realised what a wasted opportunity this would represent; for the last few years I’ve believed that the ultrarunning world needs ULTRA (or something like it) to glue the different communities together, a platform to share stories, representing the elites and the everyman and everywoman. I’d also miss the team; I knew Stuart and Amy before the mag started, but it was always a great excuse to get together and have an ‘editorial meeting’, usually an hour or two of coffee and a natter, followed by a shorter time talking about the mag. I think we’d all miss that. I’d get to my deathbed (hopefully a metaphorical one, for quite a while anyway) and think ‘what if?’.

As it transpired, Robin Bush was the answer to that question. I’d met him while recceing Dragon’s Back in early 2019, he’d picked up a copy of ULTRA and liked it; and when in late 2020 he was wondering what he could do beyond his day job he gave me a call. We hit it off again. During a window between lockdowns we met up in some salubrious location just off one of the motorways around Birmingham, and hashed out a plan to work together. He’s been successfully running large businesses for a while but wasn’t so strong on the creative side; I’m not bad at the creative stuff but generally not so good with business.

As Robin keeps chiding me, “You’d give these things away if you could, wouldn’t you?”

To be fair I’ve never borrowed any money to make ULTRA; but back in 2015 I did go see my bank manager to let him know what I was doing. I remember giving him the numbers representing the ultra community in the UK, and he raised an eyebrow before asking me “Couldn’t you have picked a pastime that’s a bit less niche than this? You know, like competitive Tiddlywinks or Extreme Ironing?”

Robin and I share a great deal of common ground. Not least that ULTRA is highly unlikely to make any of us millionaires. But what it might do, with a bit of downhill and a following wind, is give us a fun thing to do on the side, a magazine that we love and we think a lot of other people will love too, and a bunch of opportunities for races and events around the ultrarunning community that we think it needs. Like World Ultrarunning Day, and the ULTRA festival that’s coming in May. Put more back in than we get out. Join people together. Use the magazine and the festival as platforms for people to share stories. Ask tough questions. Do proper gear reviews, if we do them at all.

So we’ve started.

Stuart, Amy and I have almost finished Issue 13 of the magazine, and a new printer is ready and waiting to accept the files and get it down on paper.

Robin, Sarah and Gail are running social media and communications, something we used to do but now in a much more structured way.

Sarah is posting back issue orders once a week, gradually whittling down the remaining numbers of back issues from boxes in the loft, under the stairs, in the cupboards and on the landing and sending them to happy recipients.

Robin, Paul and I are organising ULTRA festival online for April 30th-May 2nd, gathering together a wonderful group of people that will talk about ultra-related subjects via Zoom and hopefully people from all over will come and listen, and we’ll all raise a bit for the lovely Chris Lewis of Patterdale MRT.

We’ve got an environmental manifesto, with a pledge to reduce waste and carbon emissions, and to offset our paper usage by partnering with Trees Not Tees to plant the equivalent paper usage in a sustainable forest.

We’ve declared World Ultrarunning Day as May 1st; it’s when we launch issue 13 and the festival weekend, but also it’s intended to mark a time when at least in the UK we’re looking forward to a time when races can start again, hopefully this summer, and we can help inspire people who’ve been missing that fix of racing for more than a year. We started a Strava group with the aim of getting people all over the world involved, and offered to plant a tree for the first 100 people to rack up 1,000 miles following May 1st; it’s already got 400 runners from far-flung places like Brazil, Iran, Peru, Sweden, USA, Spain, Japan, Ukraine… I love it that I can go give Kudos to someone in one of these countries and they might comment on my latest run; sharing stories and uniting our ultra communities one like at a time.

We’ve started ULTRA TV on YouTube, starting with a review and who knows where that might go. And we’ve got tons more ideas of things to do, which are on the back burner for now but we seem to be burning through things quite fast so we might get them on the boil sooner rather than later.

But most of all we’ve realised how many friends we’ve got, that we’ve made over the last six years of ULTRA magazine. Some truly magnificent people. Race directors we can call on, customers who have been with us for the whole journey and believe in what we’re doing; writers and photographers that we support around the sport, volunteers for the races and the festivals, legendary athletes who love what we’re doing, and thousands of followers on various social media channels. So we don’t at all feel alone in this venture, in fact we feel loved. I hope we can live up to this faith that all these people have in us. Signs are good so far - issue 13 is looking so far like the best thing we’ve ever made.

So if you’re along with us for the journey, we appreciate it more than you know. We’re only here because you are, and we’re looking forward to an ULTRA future together.