Ever since the victory of Frank Shorter in the ’72 Olympics Marathon—an event broadcast live—the running boom exploded. Frank made “us” all believe that we could achieve amazing feats and that those feats were not limited to a few blessed humans. Later, people like Steve Prefontaine created the rebel image; the guy just wanted to crush his opponents. Prefontaine was the rockstar that cemented Nike as the running brand. It was him who once said, “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” Prefontaine was the original anti-influencer. He didn’t run to fit a curated aesthetic; he did it at RPE 10. He was the center of gravity, and the trends had no choice but to follow him.

Today’s running isn’t living a boom. Today’s boom is the socialization around running, and that is a completely different thing. This new boom lives entirely on social media. But true running exists outside of the algorithm.

The critical difference between an influencer and an athlete is who adapts to whom. An influencer gets a brief from a marketing department, puts on the clean clothes they received that month, and adapts their personality to fit the brand’s narrative and, ultimately, its purpose. Athletes like Krupicka, Rivs, Versteeg, among a few others, operate with a completely different goal. They are the undeniable, uncompromising product of the roads and the mountains. When Krupicka took a knife to his brand-new shoes, New Balance didn’t tell him to stop; they built a new shoe line around his madness. There were no Dos and Don’ts handed to him by the brand. When these guys run, they are mining the deep, solitary truth of the sport. Brands don’t hire them to push a lifestyle; brands hire them hoping that a little bit of their raw, unapologetic authenticity rubs off on the logo, creating the aspirational moment they crave.

This dynamic is painfully obvious when you look at how mainstream brands are currently manufacturing “run clubs” and events with local digital influencers. Take a recent New Balance activation here in Portugal, for example. I will go out on a limb here without gathering much background info. I know that’s not the best approach, but the stunt itself doesn’t make me want to dig any deeper, so I am perfectly fine just judging it from the outside. They gathered a group of lifestyle influencers for a casual 5k night run, handed them green flares, blasted some music, and had them end up in a traditional tasca to slap brand stickers on the walls. There is no rebellion in handing a t-shirt to a tasca owner! If you know the guy, you know he is laughing at all of them on the inside, just as much as the influencers and the brand are using him as a prop. It was just a sterile, corporate reproduction of the gritty, underground vibe that indie brands like Satisfy pioneered years ago, awkwardly copy-pasted onto the streets of Lisbon. Instead of a genuine cultural activation, it just felt like a massive cliché—a hollow performance of a subculture they don’t actually belong to.

Which brings up a somewhat cynical, yet undeniable thought: is the anti-influencer actually the entity that gives birth to the influencer?

Think of it like industrial waste. A true pioneer—whether it’s Prefontaine bleeding on the track or Dean Karnazes running 100 miles through the night purely on stubbornness—mines the raw, authentic gold of the sport. It’s built on real effort, science, and suffering, all done in solitude. But as soon as that raw authenticity is exposed, the industry rushes in and builds a massive factory around it to bottle it and sell it to the masses. The modern “pop” influencer is just the synthetic byproduct of that commercialization. They are the plastic packaging and the industrial runoff left behind once the true essence, the actual grit of the sport, has been stripped away.

We don’t need to save running; we just need to ignore the noise. The real work is unglamorous. It’s strictly monitoring your RPE when you’d rather be sprinting. It’s the repetitive, often nauseating science of training your gut to absorb 60 to 80 grams of carbs an hour. It’s trusting your coach, your crew, and the brutal reality of the training plan. The next time you feel the FOMO creeping in because of some curated post, remember: the true essence of this sport is found in the lonely miles. And there is absolutely no algorithm for that

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Bruno looked at me with the confidence of a seasoned Zara sales clerk. A quick stare was all it took for him to hand me a size M blue tank top bearing the name of the race I was about to run. I looked back at my friend Miguel with a mix of confusion and amusement, which prompted a quick reaction: “That’s your race shirt, you idiot!” he explained.

I was stoked. I love free stuff, especially free stuff that proves I actually did something.

Once back in my hotel room, I took a mirror selfie wearing the shirt and sent it to my wife, Diana—my biggest supporter in this ultrarunning mid-life crisis. She told me how hot I looked. She would never tell me the truth. The shirt was hideous.

I have always been an easy mark for outdoor influencers, especially the ones who actually do epic stuff. I tried to get back into surfing shortly after Yeti launched their campaigns with the Malloy brothers. I thought I could climb a mountain the first time I watched Meru. I’ve been a willing commercial victim of people performing extraordinary feats. The only drawback is when those feats aren’t compatible with my age, my financial reality, or my geography. Or, plain and simple, reality itself.

There is a carefully crafted approach from outdoor brands like Yeti, Filson, and Patagonia aimed squarely at mid-life dads like me. Our lives mostly revolve around our cars and our jobs: driving the kids to school, driving to work, driving back to school, driving home. Sipping coffee at a red light from an over-engineered metal thermos makes you feel like you aren’t really in the middle of the city. In that split second, you’re out in the country. There are no buildings, just trees and mountains, and your car is carrying a mountain bike, a bow and arrow, or maybe a surfboard.

The reality? I am carrying my camera and tripods to a fine-dining restaurant to shoot food. It’s not that my life isn’t interesting, or that I don’t have a special job—after all, I’m not stuck behind a desk all day. But I’m also not out in nature. I am an urban dad living an urban life.

During the 2020 lockdowns, while confined to my mother-in-law’s country house, reality hit me. Even if life handed me that rustic dream on a silver platter, even if some magic spell transformed me into a rugged homesteader, I wouldn’t deliver. I am not a farmer. Those red-light dreams of sipping coffee in the wilderness quickly vanished, along with any hopes of becoming the next Malloy brother. Not even my beard was helping.

You can start a hobby or an “interest” out of pure passion, or out of a lack of options. If someone takes up photography as a part-time gig, I’d call that a passion. If someone starts going to a global-chain gym to lift the exact same weights and do the exact same drills every single day, I’d call that a lack of options.

Running was my lack of options. I had already proven to myself that I was frankly terrible at it. But approaching my 40s, and right after watching a video of Jeff Johnson going for a 40-mile run for his 40th birthday, I felt inspired (or influenced) to do the same thing.

A phone call with Miguel brought me back down to earth: I could never run that distance, at least not without a minimal athletic background. That’s when he suggested tackling Rocha da Pena instead. It would be my first formal trail race and, subsequently, my first running shirt.

Truth be told, I hated the t-shirt. I don’t like visually broadcasting to people that I did something. I’m perfectly fine talking about it at work (more than fine, actually), but I am not okay with showing off those race tees while jogging an easy 5k around the neighborhood. But maybe I’m just in the minority here.

Every time you go out for a run, you see a sea of those shirts, from the easy local 10k to the Madeira ultra distances. People love to show off their achievements. We could call them the official uniform of the dedicated amateur, and I hated it. I really did. Not because the designs were terrible, and not because the runners were annoying, but simply because people were flaunting something they had achieved. Envy just might be one of the most basic human instincts. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy,” and I was out there comparing myself to everyone who passed me. Not purely out of insecurity, but because others weren’t afraid to show that a simple feat is worth celebrating, or maybe just because they weren’t thinking about anything beyond the fact that they scored a free shirt.

This was my first real lesson about running. It is not a comparative exercise. You are not racing the other people by the river, in the city, or while grinding up the trails. You are comparing yourself to yourself. You are racing your ego, and you are judging your own insecure self.

I would love to finish with a cliché like “wear it proud,” but what I should really say is “wear it loud.” You did something for yourself, and it is none of my business. Just keep that mandatory field in mind, and make sure you choose the right size when you sign up for your next race.

I was quick to realise I was never going to be fast. I could run for some time at a slower pace but struggled to keep a fast pace for just a few minutes.
Anthony Bourdain once said in an interview that one of the beauties of embracing a new sport at an older age is the fact that you learn something new everyday, you are always a little better than the day before. I couldn’t disagree more about running, in fact the only “new things” I acquired daily were injuries and pain on a weekly basis.

In the middle of 2022, roughly 2 years into my incursion into trail running, I decided it would be wise to start working with a trail running coach. The amount of injuries, pain and difficulties I felt after my first and only ultra were now a little too much, it was obvious I wasn’t going anywhere, literally speaking, running by myself.

There is nothing better that a friend that hates coaching to get a good coach advice. I decided to call Armando Teixeira.

Besides his work as a coach Armando is also the organiser of a race, Estrela Grande Trail, an 85km race with 5000D+ at Serra da Estrela, mainland Portugal highest mountain. That was the challenge I needed so we talked about it and I signed up.

Estrela Grande Trail, or EGT, is not just a 85km race, it his as technical as a race can be. You actually scramble for most of the time, you twist your ankles, fall, get your feet wet and in a good year you might get some snow and avoid the rolling rocks on steep mountains. It is something between a UTMB or a MIUT, very technical during the first part and more runnable during the second half but with a lot of elevation gain.

Definitely not a race for my ability or experience but nevertheless I showed up at 6am, bib on and ready to tackle whatever I was thrown at.

For some bizarre reason I can run uphill, without training, without any obvious reason I can climb. The first part was mostly dirt road uphill and with the poles I breeze through it. The second stretch was a all different story. Growing up in an urban environment I don’t fell comfortable climbing and jumping rocks and that stretch was all about rock hoping. There was no way I would quit there so I decided that the best way to face my fear was to tag along in silence with someone and so I did, I ran 15km with a much more experienced runner than me, I tried to keep up with his pace, kept my eyes focused on his technic and made it all the way to aid station. Things are going better than expected.
I got to Torre almost 2 hours ahead of the cut off, my mind was already in survival mode. I left Torre as quickly has I could and started my way down.

From that part to Vale da Amoreira, 65km after the beginning there was a black out, I barely remember were I was, what I’ve done. I lost memory, I just ran and walked as much as I could.

Vale da Amoreira was a monster, from there I had to go up 750D+ in 5km. At that point in the race I already fell 5 or 6 times. The stress of getting to the finish line was getting worse.

The hill was nothing like I was expecting, due to severe wildfires last year the road was fill with debris and broken branches making every a challenge. I guess more experienced runners would breeze past that but I was already struggling.

Finally at the top, the flatter grounds were perfect to start jogging again even doe my legs were not in such good shape anymore. By then my watch warned me that it was 10 minutes until sunset, at first I got a little concerned about the race flags, I’ve been struggling during the entire race to see them, not because they were misplaced but because I am colourblind. As I get my head lamp on and the night falls the temperature immediately drops and hits me like a rock, I struggle to get my jacket out of my vest and to put it over the vest while holding my poles and my hat.

I still had some hopes of an easy, runnable end, even at night. I couldn’t be further from the truth. I still had a really steep descent with burnt roots, only this time I was really uncomfortable, cold, in pain. I was done.

I walked the last 3k to Sameiro were the last aid station was placed, when I passed the door I felt that most people there were looking at the dead man but I soon realised that the room was already filled with dead man. I recognised other runners that passed me at km 30 something, there were others that came with me during the last stretch. They were all eating and getting ready to leave. They all told me, without exception to join them in the last stretch, everyone there tried to bring me to life but I was done.

I DNF 10k from the finish line with still almost 5 hours to finish the race.

When I started the descent to Sameiro, during the phone call with my coach he told me that the hangover would be worst than the pain. He was right, I can’t remember crying so much in my adult life as I did the following morning as I walked to cheer a friend in his 26k race.

As a kid growing up we all start counting the days to Christmas on the 26. I started counting the days to EGT 2024.