A 30-hour trail race may not seem, at first, like it would make a great spectator sport. The course is too long to view from one location, and progress is relatively slow. But thanks to new technologies, the age of ultrarunning livestreaming is here.
Today, ultrarunning is one of America’s fastest-growing sports. On any given weekend, there are over a dozen ultrarunning events across the United States. The number of races in North America has more than doubled in the past decade, and, in 2022, there were ten times as many races as in 2002. Who would have guessed so many people want to run races of 50 or 100 miles—or, increasingly, even longer?
Despite this increasing popularity, vestiges of the sport’s niche history remain. There’s little prize money to be had, free camping at starting lines is common, and scruffy beards abound. Also, the infrastructure is still broadly low-tech. For some, these elements are seen as inextricable from the culture of ultrarunning. Others feel as though amateurism is holding the sport back. But things are changing as the sport grows, and the most impactful of these changes…
