Later today, I head out to Salt Lake City to cover the 2008 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market (OR Show) for iRunFar.com. Pretty much every company that makes trail running gear will be there. For three days, I’ll be wandering the OR show floor looking for the products and innovations in which you’ll be most interested. iRunFar has also scored appointments with numerous trail shoe and trail gear companies. (See list below) I’ll be seeing what these companies have in store for the future, both in terms of products and presence in the sport. iRunFar will also be covering Trail Runner Magazine’s Uphill Challenge and Montrail’s Wasatch Wobble, both of which attract many of the top trail and ultrarunners who attend the OR show. (Read on to see who I’m racing in the Uphill Challenge!) While it will be a busy weekend, be on the lookout for iRunFar updates from the OR show.
Please drop me a comment or contact me privately to let me know if there are any particular products or issues that you’d like iRunFar to cover. Heck, if you’ve got a specific question for a specific company, let me know and I’ll see what I can find out for you! Also, if there’s a company you’d like iRunFar to explore in depth, please let me know ASAP and if I think other iRF readers will be interested, I’ll try and set up an appointment right quick.
Here are the companies the companies I’m scheduled to meet with:
- Clif
- END Footwear
- Gore
- Inov-8
- Karhu
- La Sportiva
- Merrell
- Montrail
- Nathan
- Osprey
- Patagonia Footwear
- Petzl
- Polar
- PolarPak
- Rab
- Smart Design (hosted by Teva)
Personally, the OR show is also a vacation. How can it not be when I’ll be in the Wasatch mountains and so many of my trail runner friends will be there?! I’ll also be running… a lot. I consider it a mini-camp for the TransRockies Run two weeks later. I’m not sure where or when I’m running on Friday, but Saturday I’ll be facing off against END Footwear’s new PR Director, Paul Curran, in the Uphill Challenge after Paul threw down the gauntlet. (Let the smack talking begin!) On Saturday night, I hope to log 25 miles through the Wasatch Mountains before finishing up with a third hard run in 24 hours by racing the Wasatch Wobble 5k on Sunday morning.
