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What if there was a dedicated event series where brands like Hoka, Salomon, North Face, and Adidas Terrex had the opportunity to showcase the strengths of their teams and exclusively compete against each other across the primary mountain ultra trail running distances?

In this episode, I am joined by Dani Moreno, as well as frequent co-hosts Brett Hornig and Leah Yingling, to reflect on Dani's idea for a regular "Battle of the Brands" in our sport. We discuss how teams would be organized, the race distances that would be included, how scoring would work, which teams appear to be the strongest right now, whether athletes, fans, and brands would be interested in this idea, and what we learned about our sport through the research process for this idea.

Timestamps:

(1:09) - explaining the idea of "Battle of the Brands - the number of runners, events, and brands, how you win, etc
(5:52) - what makes this idea exciting
(9:30) - brand teams that have the best chance of winning in 2022
(18:51) - discussion of proposed Salomon, Hoka, North Face, and Adidas Terrex teams
(48:34) - whether athletes would be interested in racing this event
(62:48) - whether fans would be interested in following this event
(69:09) - what we learned about the sport in the research process for this hypothetical event

Sponsors:

Rabbit - use code Singletrack20 at checkout on their website (https://www.runinrabbit.com/discount/SINGLETRACK20) to get 20% off your next order
HVMN - use code Singletrack20 at checkout on their website (https://hvmn.com/SINGLETRACK20) to get 20% off your next order

Links:

Battle of the Brands Athlete Spreadsheet
Follow Dani Moreno on Instagram and Strava
Follow Leah Yingling on Instagram and Strava
Follow Brett Hornig on Instagram and Strava
Follow Finn Melanson on Instagram and Strava

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The ethical demands of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967)