Like most people passionate about the outdoors, my recreational interests have shifted throughout my lifetime. During my nearly 20 years with the 窪蹋勛圖厙 brand, I���ve dabbled in skimo racing, gotten briefly enamored with mountain biking, had an on-again-off-again love affair with yoga, and tried one triathlon (never again; y���all are crazy). But the one constant, the base activity that keeps me fit for all these pursuits, is running. I am proudly obsessed with every aspect of running, and always felt the 窪蹋勛圖厙 brand could be doing more in the space to drive conversations and fuel our readers��� obvious passion for the sport.

Which is exactly why I am so excited today to announce the launch of , a new site dedicated to��� well, you probably can guess. Whether you���re a diehard fan of the sport, a seasoned marathoner looking to find an edge, or looking to start running and aren���t sure where to begin, RUN is a brand dedicated to you. Powered by our growing run-dedicated editorial teams at 窪蹋勛圖厙, Trail Runner, and Wo鳥梗紳���s Running, we���ll be expanding our world-class coverage to bring you the very best storylines, training content, culture, and advice in the sport at large.

Today marks just the first day of RUN���s existence, but our diverse collection of launch stories demonstrates how we plan to deliver on that mission. It���s an Olympic year, so naturally we���re kicking things off with comprehensive previews of this weekend���s and U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in Orlando, where our team will be on the ground covering the action泭 all the way through to the final results on Saturday. For those who love reading about the sport���s most inspiring personalities, check out Ben Pryor���s profile of , a Navajo runner challenging stereotypes and making a name for himself in ultra racing. We���ll be covering a lot of gear, starting with a trend story on the recent rise of and a first-look review of the trail shoes. And for those of you who are signed up for a frigid winter race this season, we���ve got a round up of excellent advice .

What���s more, we���ll be fueling your running passion with the entire 窪蹋勛圖厙 Network, featuring running-specific films, series, and race live streaming on 窪蹋勛圖厙 Watch, offering training courses on 窪蹋勛圖厙 Learn, providing trail inspiration via our Gaia GPS and Trailforks mapping aps, and including race registration capabilities through AthleteReg. But enough of my rambling���come see for yourself at today.

The post Introducing RUN appeared first on 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online.

Several years ago, when our digital team was redesigning 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online, we gathered a diverse panel of 窪蹋勛圖厙 readers to help us better understand our audience. A lot of this research confirmed things we���d always believed���you are passionate about our longform storytelling, are obsessed with outdoor gear, and look to us for comprehensive advice on travel and fitness. But one thing took us by surprise: the majority of you desire more beginner content and tips for honing your outdoor skills. This finding led us to renew our commitment to offering readers advice on starting new sports, an effort that included turning our entire Summer 2021 print issue into 窪蹋勛圖厙 101, a how-to manual covering more than 60 essential outdoor skills.

Today we���re taking that commitment to encouraging lifelong learning to a whole new level. Presenting , our just-launched online education hub loaded with instructional courses for beginners and veterans alike. 窪蹋勛圖厙 Learn has more than 2,000 videos covering 450 lessons, on topics ranging from fitness and nutrition to running and cycling to survival and gear repair. And the entire library is available to 窪蹋勛圖厙+ members.

When you take any of 窪蹋勛圖厙 Learn���s courses, you���ll be guided by world-class experts.

• Want to sharpen your adventure-photography skills? Learn the secrets of the pros from .
• Looking to transition out of car camping and into your first backpacking trip? Let Colorado Outward Bound School instructor Sienna Fry teach you the basics in .
• Are you a beginner climber looking to build on your talents? Living legend Conrad Anker is here to .
• Curious about a plant-based diet but don���t know where to start? Registered Dietitian Lauren McNeil has all of the .

These courses, along with 46 others, are all available at today. What���s more, we���ll be adding dozens of new classes each month throughout 2022.

Our goal with 窪蹋勛圖厙 Learn is simple: make trying a new sport less intimidating and more convenient. After all, learning new skills can literally change your life, something I gleaned from longtime 窪蹋勛圖厙 contributor Tom Vanderbilt, author of Beginner: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, a chronicle of his midlife quest to tackle surfing, drawing, singing, and juggling, among other novel pursuits. ���Learning something new is one of the simplest ways to radically expand your sense of self,��� he told me in an episode of the 窪蹋勛圖厙 Podcast last year. ���The brain is a novelty-seeking machine and we all have great capabilities that are sometimes lying dormant.���

Ready to discover your own dormant capabilities at 窪蹋勛圖厙 Learn? Join 窪蹋勛圖厙+ today.

The post Introducing 窪蹋勛圖厙 Learn, Our New Online Education Hub appeared first on 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online.

Pop quiz: name the first person to grace the cover of 窪蹋勛圖厙 magazine.

Reinhold Messner? A worthy candidate, but wrong. Robert Redford? Nope. Also a strong guess, but he didn���t show up until 1978. The correct answer, of course, is none other than seventies country-rock superstar Linda Ronstadt.

To be fair, that was a trick question. I don���t expect anyone to answer correctly unless you���re or . (And if you are either of those people, Hello! Thank you for inspiring my career.) The truth���something our legendary fact-checkers have demanded since our inception���is that the very first edition of 窪蹋勛圖厙 was published as an insert in , which featured Ronstadt on the cover, along with a large 窪蹋勛圖厙 logo positioned above her left shoulder. You can think of 窪蹋勛圖厙���s launch strategy back then as a sort of benign bait and switch. An established media brand gathered its formidable audience in one place, only to direct readers��� attention elsewhere and expose them to an exciting new business idea.

It seems fitting, then, that 43 years later we���re executing the same tactic for what is effectively 窪蹋勛圖厙���s relaunch. The real reason we���ve brought you here today is to introduce , a new membership program for anyone and everyone that loves the outdoors. In case you missed the news, by Pocket Outdoor Media (since renamed 窪蹋勛圖厙 Interactive), linking us to dozens of other like-minded resources, from fellow media titles like and and , to revered services such as , , and , to iconic experiences like the bike series and the annual ski-and-snowboard film tour. Our new parent company has bundled the features of all these properties into . Sign up, and you���ll gain access not only to our award-winning journalism but to a host of additional perks and benefits, including:

• A subscription to 窪蹋勛圖厙 magazine and your choice from 12 窪蹋勛圖厙+ member titles
• Digital access to members-only content across all 窪蹋勛圖厙 properties
• Over a thousand hours of exclusive TV content via the
• Access to hundreds of virtual health, fitness, cooking, and outdoor classes
• Two free books a year from
• Personalized, ad-free experiences at 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online
• A subscription to , so you can download maps offline and
• Free training plans for running, cycling, and triathlon via
• Discounts on everything from gear to race-entry fees to event photography

窪蹋勛圖厙+ also represents a significant shift in our business strategy. Back in the 1990s, we followed other magazines in committing the industry���s original sin: abandoning consumer revenue in the digital space by deciding to give away all website content for free. That made us almost entirely dependent on ad revenue, and for the next two decades, 窪蹋勛圖厙���s fortunes followed the boom-bust cycles of the marketing industry. Many titles didn���t survive those lean periods���RIP National Geographic 窪蹋勛圖厙���and while 窪蹋勛圖厙 managed to stay afloat, we also knew that we���d eventually have to make the shift to a paid digital model to get back on solid ground. We had confidence that our digital readers would be as willing to pay for our storytelling as our print subscribers, but building the infrastructure for member-only access requires millions of dollars of investment. It took the resources of our new company to finally make it happen, and we couldn���t be more excited to put that confidence in our journalism to the test.

launched in May, but today marks our brand���s泭official integration into the membership program. That means you���ll notice some changes here at 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online, including registration and log-in features that allow you to customize your feed and see more of the stories you want, from 窪蹋勛圖厙 as well as all of our partner titles. More significantly, we���re no longer giving away everything for free. Going forward, we���ll be putting 30 percent of our content, including all of our print-magazine content, behind a member wall. We feel strongly that the work we produce at 窪蹋勛圖厙 is distinct and valuable, a vital service that readers are now泭willing to pay for. What���s more, we plan to roll out some exciting new member-only exclusives in the coming months, including an 窪蹋勛圖厙 Book Club, member access to our gear testing, serialized longreads, and unique travel opportunities. We believe that when you see all the additional perks of an 窪蹋勛圖厙+ membership, the value will be evident.

I should also add that there are many things that won���t be changing at 窪蹋勛圖厙, starting with our decades-long commitment to quality, in-depth reporting. Each day at 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online, you���ll continue to find one-of-a-kind longform stories, comprehensive travel advice and unbiased gear reviews, and clear-eyed coverage of critical outdoor topics that affect all of us, from the ongoing bike-safety crisis to the importance of making our nation���s outdoor spaces welcoming and accessible to all. And a significant amount of our content will always be free.

In short, the new 窪蹋勛圖厙 has more to offer than ever���but we can���t succeed without your continued support. I hope you���ll explore the benefits of an 窪蹋勛圖厙+ membership on our site today and join our growing community. Maybe one of you can even help us get Linda Ronstadt signed up.

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My journey to loving running was a tortuous one. It began at my small high school in Portland, Oregon, where the cross-country coach, often too short on athletes to field a competitive team, would poach members of the soccer team for important races. During my junior year, I was one of those reluctant recruits, and over the course of a half-dozen races I learned two lessons. The first was that I was reasonably fast but would never be a podium threat. The second? That running sucks.

I realize that statement doesn���t exactly square with the headline of this essay, but bear with me. After 25 years of lacing up my foam-cushioned shoes and heading out the door nearly every morning, I think I���ve collected a decent amount of wisdom about the sport, the most important of which is that you can���t skip over the part of running that sucks. You can learn to move through the discomfort of pushing yourself physically and the boredom of traveling the same neighborhood route for the 50th time, but on some level, on most days, there are long stretches during which even a slow jog can feel more like work than play. This is especially true when you���re just starting out, and it���s why a lot of people give up���or never fully commit in the first place. Who wants to subject themselves to that kind of suffering?

It���s a fair question, but with an undeniable answer: A lot of us. There are 55.9 million runners in the U.S. alone, . You see us on the streets every morning during your commute, and you should definitely join us. Ask a hundred runners why they���re out there and you���ll get close to a hundred different reasons. Motivation is a very personal thing. But there are a few common themes that keep people in the game, despite the suckitude.

Running is the key to unlocking a life of adventure. The fitness base it builds translates to nearly every outdoor sport, from hiking to climbing to surfing. If you can run, almost everything else is easier.

Running has essentially no barriers to entry. There isn���t any expensive gear required. You can run in a cheap pair of Chuck Taylors and jorts. Or go barefoot if you like. No one in the running community cares if you���re wearing a simple cotton T-shirt or a $95 moisture-wicking performance top.

Even if you think you���re not a runner, you are. Maybe it���s been years, but you almost certainly know how to run. If you���re looking to start out, just run 100 yards down your block. Slowly. If that���s when it begins to suck, that���s OK. Walk for the rest of your ���run.��� Tomorrow try 150 yards. Congratulations���you���re now a runner. You don���t have to bag a marathon to call yourself that.

A good soul-cleansing run is accessible anywhere, at any time. Your running shoes won���t get a flat tire. Your daily run doesn���t depend on fresh snow or good surf. You can run when it���s zero degrees and when it���s 100 degrees. And you can set out from any front door���whether that���s your house or the hotel you���re staying at in Midtown Manhattan.

Those are the practical reasons to take up running. But here���s the truth: most of us, including me, learned to love running because it���s a drug. The so-called runner���s high���a shot of endocannabinoids that kicks in after 30 minutes or so���is real. It���s also free and healthy for everyone. String together a few runs and you���ll probably feel it. String together a few weeks��� worth and it will start to alter your brain chemistry. I know this because on the days I run, I have less anxiety, think through problems clearly, and remain unflappably optimistic. On the days I don���t run? Best to keep your distance. That���s what really motivates me to run every day, and why I think everyone else should, too. It���s why I can tell you that while there are things about running that will always suck, they don’t really matter���that pushing through the suffering to achieve a goal, whether two miles or 26.2, is worth it. Because running will change your life.

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OUTSIDE: As our story related, in January 2010, aboard a craft called the Berserk, you set out from Norway with a crew of five people. In early 2011, you left Auckland, New Zealand���
JARLE ANDHOY: Well, the Berserk had done numerous expeditions before this. Our goal was to retrace the 100-year anniversaries of Roald Amundsen���s successful navigation of the Northwest Passage and his expedition to the South Pole. We sailed out of the Caribbean, from Puerto Rico, in 2006, and navigated through the Northwest Passage. That expedition hit a few bumps along the way, and we left the Berserk in Nome, Alaska. In 2009, we did work on the Berserk in Dutch Harbor and then continued.

Got it, thanks. To clarify: I was referring only to the Antarctica portion of your journey, which started in 2010.
ANDHOY: That���s correct. That year we sailed the Pacific from the Bering Sea down to New Zealand, with a mix of newcomers and some shipmates from the previous trip.

Let���s review who was on board when you left New Zealand. The crew included you, a South African named Leonard James Banks, and three Norwegians: Samuel Massie, Tom Gisle Bellika, and Robert Skaanes.
ANDHOY: Yes, and Bellika was the captain in the Southern Ocean. He had sailed with me in Greenland and through the Northwest Passage, so I knew him very well. Rob was a diver, and Lenny grew up surfing and sailing. They were selected for the expedition after about a year on board.

You sailed south and reached Horseshoe Bay, a body of water near the Ross Ice Shelf, in mid-February of 2011. While Bellika, Banks, and Skaanes stayed on the boat, you and Massie set off on ATVs to travel to the South Pole. Your plan was to reach it, head back to a rendezvous with the Berserk, and sail north. On your tenth day out, a big storm hit. Is that accurate?
ANDHOY: That���s right. And in our plan, safety came first, so I had a line of communication going with Bellika. I was expedition leader on land; he was captain on the boat. We kept in contact and all was good until we got notice about a coming storm the night before the Berserk left its anchorage and base camp in Horseshoe Bay.

Your mission was to reach the pole and get back safely. What was their job?
ANDHOY: To stay with the Berserk and, if necessary, take shelter inside Ernest Shackleton���s hut. [Editor���s note: The hut is from the 1907���9 British Antarctic Expedition, during which Shackleton tried and failed to reach the South Pole. It sits on Cape Royds in McMurdo Sound.] The bay is the safest place for getting shelter from big seas, ice, and winds. The Berserk crew were also making preparations for overwintering if they had to. That involved storing equipment like fuel, food, tools, and shovels.

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Road tripping has become an essential part of 泭path to success. The Bay Area���based泭innovation strategy consultant began her photography career as a side hustle. After pursuing master���s degrees in both design and urban planning������living under a rock for five years,��� as she puts it���she wanted to combine her dual passions of visual storytelling and climbing. In 2018, after she began a consulting job in Manhattan, she started taking on photo assignments for outdoor brands, using weekends and vacation time to travel from Brooklyn to California, where she shot fellow climbers in places like Joshua Tree and the Eastern Sierra. Here, Blount talks with Christopher Keyes about what she���s learned along the way���from her desire to illuminate Black joy to the key ingredients for a fun road trip.

On Pursuing a Career in Photography

���At one of the firms I worked at after grad school at Harvard, I was getting raised eyebrows, like, You���re taking all your vacation to fly out and do this photography work? And then my boss said, ���You know, I bet you could make that work full time if you wanted to.��� So I just decided to take a bet on myself.���

���I take my brother on adventures every year, and really wanted to capture that. I recognized that the life I live is really different from some of the people I went to high school with and some of my family, and I wanted to illuminate that.���

���My smile is very integral to who I am, and I want to share the things that make me smile in that way. There is so much negative imagery of people who look like me, and it can get really tiring and overwhelming to see our bodies portrayed that way. People need to see Black people being joyous. More importantly, we need to see ourselves being happy and joyfully reclaiming spaces.���

On Representation in Outdoor Media

���There are very few professional Black climbers, but there are tons of Black climbers who climb so well, who should be seen.���

���In the outdoors and outdoor media, there���s so much of a culture of suffering, of summit culture. Selling suffering to other people of color is not going to get them outside.���

On Road Trip Essentials

���Recently I���ve been exploring California���s Eastern Sierra. You can do a lot there. If Bishop is too hot, you can go up to Tuolumne Meadows or Mammoth Lakes or Owens River Gorge. There���s just so much, and that makes it really nice for road tripping.���

���What do I always pack? Dried mango, plantain chips, and blueberries. Maybe a little charcuterie. I like to bring in a little bit of bouge.���

���A good climbing or road trip is about the people I go with. I do consider myself an athlete. I train for climbing. When I���ve gone out with people who don���t allow themselves to have a drink if they, say, didn���t climb their project, it���s not as fun. It���s fun to try hard, but I feel like I���m winning just being able to be in some of these places.���

The post How This Photographer Learned to Bet on Herself appeared first on 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online.

Among the many difficult realities exposed by the 2020 pandemic is just how freaking far most of us are separated from our families. Mobility is one of泭America���s most treasured rights, so it���s become normal to live a thousand miles from mom and dad. Until this year, it also seemed normal to simply hop on a flight a few times annually泭to bridge the distance.

That all changed with COVID-19. There were the airport shutdowns. The shelter-in-place orders. The troubling second wave of infections and morphing rules around interstate travel. Anyone missing family has been faced with a tough choice: (a) skip seeing your parents or grandparents this year, (b) take a health risk and hop on a packed flight, or (c) pack your kids in the car for a multi-day drive. The clear choice for most families, including mine, has been that last option.泭But let���s not call it an easy choice. Stuffing yourself, your spouse, and multiple kids in one car for 20 hours is to risk existential questions about the purpose of even having a family. If you���re not careful, you���ll be Googling ���How do I make my children wards of the state?��� before you reach your parents泭driveway. But with a little planning, you don���t necessarily have to suffer. Here���s what I learned on our recent 40-hour, 2,494-mile round-trip drive from Santa Fe to Whitefish, Montana, to visit my mother-in-law.

Train Like a Marathoner

Running 26.2 miles off the couch is possible, but you won���t enjoy it. The same goes for marathon car rides. If you���re planning something ambitious���anything exceeding, say, eight hours in a single day���the journey泭will be infinitely more tolerable if you take a few easier, progressively longer shakedown trips to develop some road-trip fitness. Which kid is fine going hours without stimulus? Which podcasts entertain the whole family? Who needs bathroom breaks every hour? How many hours can a family-size泭bag of potato chips last? You don���t want to be asking these kinds of questions for the first time with 800 miles remaining. Before we left for Montana, our family of five took several summer road trips of four to eight hours.

Plan Your Route

If getting there in the shortest amount of time possible is your only goal, by all means, go with the recommended route on Google maps. But if you���re willing to add a few hours, consider the alternate options, especially ones that take you off the mind-numbing interstate and maximize sightseeing on smaller highways. Twenty-two hours in the car on scenic roads is more enjoyable than 20 hours on a high-speed expressway battling armies of 18-wheelers.

Let ���Em Watch ���Diary of a Wimpy Kid���

Becoming a parent means subjecting yourself to years of hand-wringing and unsolicited opinions about screen time. But here���s the thing: streaming movies is an amazingly effective tool for keeping the peace on long travel days. So while we���re strict about screens at home, we mostly throw out the rules���and the guilt���on travel days. We pack one laptop and a set of good headphones, download a couple of requested shows or movies for each child, and have them take turns. This method keeps everyone happy and avoids a much bigger sin of parental neglect, which is泭dragging your kids a thousand miles down the spine of the Rocky Mountains without them seeing any of it.

Don���t Overlook Audio

Our three kids range from age 2 to 12, so it���s nearly impossible to find a podcast or book on tape suitable for everyone. (Though here is one shameless plug: on winter car rides to the mountain, my oldest kids love the 窪蹋勛圖厙泭podcast, especially episodes in the Science of Survival series.) Music can be complicated for the same reason, but we���ve settled on a revolving-DJ approach that often keeps our clan engaged for two-hour stretches. Using a phone with Spotify, we all get a turn to pick a song. The result is a pretty bizarre mix, but I���m willing to endure repeated plays of Rafi���s ���Wheels on the Bus,��� or Steve Miller���s ���Jungle Love��� (my son���s latest favorite), if it means exposing my kids to Neil Young deep cuts. Bonus: your kids��� picks will occasionally surprise you. My nine-year-old once queued up ���London Calling��� by the Clash, and I nearly teared up with pride.

Go Big on Snacks

As with screen time, my wife and I toss out some of the at-home rules of healthy eating on big travel days. We pack lots of fresh fruit泭but also let the kids pick out some normally forbidden junk foods, like Doritos and candy, and dole them out liberally. The laid-back approach helps make road trips seem more like a fun novelty to your kids than something to dread.

If you���re traveling in the age of COVID-19, it���s also best to bring all your meals to avoid restaurants and other gathering spots. For that, I highly recommend shelling out for the ($200) as a travel cooler. There���s plenty of room inside for perishable food and cold drinks, and the soft-sided construction makes it easy to pack in the back seat and access your goodies without stopping.

Don���t Schedule Pit Stops

You���ll be tempted to study the route and choose designated stopping spots in advance. Don���t do this. You���re not a train conductor charged with keeping to a rigid schedule, you���re the lead guide on a Mount泭Everest expedition with an array of clients and unpredictable conditions to navigate. Your role is to take charge of the group���s pace by keeping tabs on your team in regular intervals, assessing the collective mood, and recognizing the signs of flagging morale before it���s too late. (Sibling bickering is usually a code-red indicator.) Only stop when necessary. Taking this approach, we���ve endured泭six-hour stretches without a break, something I never would���ve thought possible.

Find a Park

Gas-station stops are a necessity, but no one feels revived after wandering around a fuel-scented acre of concrete. Highway rest areas,泭with few exceptions, are equally limiting. Instead, seek out parks���almost every town has one. Whenever the mood in our car signals that we need a half-hour of freedom���莽喧硃喧!���my wife or I pull out the phone and search ���parks near me.��� Most recently, this approach led us to a massive playground on the Animas River in Durango, Colorado, and a shady statue garden with a crystal-clear stream for wading a stone���s throw from the capitol building in Salt Lake City. I also threw in spontaneous quick workout challenges during stops���from push-ups to jogging in place���challenging the whole family to get their blood pumping after hours sitting.

Leave Early

As in泭before sunrise. This approach has many advantages.

1.The first couple of hours go by faster at 5:30 A.M. than at 8:30 A.M. (Don���t question this;泭it���s just a fact.)

2. You���ll catch the golden hour, where even dull interstate highways seem majestic.

3. You���ll relieve the pressure on making it to your destination on time and build in room for spontaneous park visits.

4. Kids actually love a 5 A.M. wake-up call. It signals adventure.

Respect Personal Space

If your car has optional third-row seating, utilize it���even if you only have two kids. Everyone is happier being master of their own domain.

Embrace Games

We don���t play a lot of these, but they���re a good option, especially in the manic final two hours of an all-day drive. Our go-tos are 20 Questions and Would You Rather. You���ll have to set some rules around the latter, or things will turn gross and go off the rails in a matter of seconds. My kids respond well when this game is firmly planted in the ethical realm. This泭recent question had them really thinking and debating: Would you rather be one of the popular kids, with lots of friends, but have to pick on other kids to remain in the clique, or be picked on every day but not have to be mean to anyone?泭It also prompted the following gold nugget of wisdom from my son: ���What would my family be like? If my parents and siblings were nice, I could handle being picked on every day.���

Go Long on Day One

If your destination is multiple days away, make your first day the longest, and aim to go more than halfway if possible. After that,泭day two feels like it���s all泭downhill. For our 20-hour drive to Whitefish, we drove泭12 hours the first day泭and eight on the second. That also meant there was still daylight left to run around when we finally arrived in town.

Always Choose to Drive

This really only applies if you and your partner have a child under age three. Otherwise, riding shotgun is the prime position. But with a toddler, you can forget about dozing off or reading a book while in the passenger seat. Instead you���ll spend most of your time as an unpaid, immobile flight attendant, craning your neck to mop up spills, dole out snacks, and read books to your mostly bored and helpless two-year-old. My wife thinks I���m a hero for taking the bulk of the driving load, but I���m really just selfish and lazy.

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��ぼ硃餃餃聆?���

The single whispered word was almost inaudible���just loud enough to get a few parental synapses firing somewhere inside my amygdala and pull me out of a deep sleep. I forced my eyes open, but it was still dark and I was disoriented. To my right, my wife, Kelly, was sound asleep on our plush king-size bed, her face barely exposed to the pre-dawn light filtering through our canvas tent, the rest of her buried beneath two white down comforters. Just beyond, at her bedside, our 23-month-old daughter, Zevi, was stuffed into a snowsuit and breathing heavily in her Pack ���n Play crib: out cold. The same went for my 12-year-old daughter, Olive, hibernating to my left on her foldable cot, only her curly locks visible. OK, I thought. No one froze to death. I can go back to sleep.

I���d been up two times in the past eight hours, reporting for self-assigned woodstove duty. We were staying in a tent community run by , which operates glamping retreats near iconic public lands throughout the U.S. This one abutted Saguaro National Park, on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. It was late December, and last night the forecast called for temperatures in the high twenties. I���d set my alarm for 1 A.M. and 3:30 A.M. to add fuel to the stove. I���m not going to lie: I loved this responsibility. The act of stoking a fire to keep my family warm tapped into something deeply primal. Plus, I had every intention of milking my sacrifice, maybe even earning some off-duty nap time the following afternoon. But right now I wanted more sleep. I rolled over and closed my eyes.

��ぼ硃餃餃聆?���

The whisper had ratcheted up a few decibels. I was fully awake now, annoyed. I sat up and saw my nine-year-old son, Cash, standing at the foot of the bed. He was bundled in his down jacket and Houston Rockets beanie, holding two insulated mugs.

���Daddy,��� he whispered a third time, ���I got you and Kelly coffee.��� He handed me one of the mugs, then reached into his pocket and proffered two packages of cream.

My son had just brought us coffee in bed. He���d gotten up on his own, sneaked out of the tent, walked 300 yards in the frigid darkness to the Under Canvas communal tent, and filled our mugs with hot coffee. And he���d remembered the cream! Here was one of my proudest moments as a parent. Here was the moment I fell in love with glamping.

This was an unexpected development. My family loves camping. Traditional camping. Real camping. Camping in a complicated nylon pod you have to pitch yourself while cursing the bent tent stakes. Camping on undesignated sites down long, poorly maintained national-forest roads, ideally next to moving water but not neighbors. Camping that involves some degree of discomfort in exchange for outdoor wonder: terrible sleep, freezing-cold midnight trips to the bushes, the loss of feeling in the tips of your fingers from tinkering with a cranky WhisperLite stove at 7 A.M. as you try desperately to make coffee���coffee you earned.

Growing up, camping was synonymous with summer vacation in my family. We took extended road trips, including one long-haul epic from our home in Boston to California, up the West Coast to British Columbia, and all the way back through Canada. We camped at KOAs and in national parks, with the occasional night at a Motel 6 thrown in, a welcome dose of luxury. Now I have my own family, and camping is one of the reasons it exists. My wife and I both credit a spring-break car-camping trip through southern Utah as the vacation that sealed our relationship. I asked her to marry me in a Tepui rooftop tent outside Taos a few months later. All three of my kids spent several nights under zippered ripstop before they���d made a complete orbit around the sun. Zevi was the earliest adopter, earning her stripes in the at just five months old.

Ours is a blended family, however, my eldest kids and I having been mashed together in 2015 with two interlopers: first Kelly, and a few years later our third child. That sentence alone hints at some of the complications: Is Zevi our third child? No, she���s my third child and Kelly���s first. Life gets messy when you have to think hard about possessive pronouns and append step- and half- to immediate family members. We struggle most of the time to feel like a cohesive unit. But whenever we���re camping, we become a family, full stop. Bonding is easy when you���re immersed in nature and everyone���s experiencing the same mild hardships, sharing stories and warmth around a campfire, and persevering through low-grade emergencies like a dead car battery seven miles from the road or a hard rain pooling beneath your sleeping bags.

But glamping? Given all my experience with blending, I���m someone who should appreciate a clever portmanteau, but that one always grated. A combination of glamour and camping, the word does efficiently describe the whole idea: you get to experience all the outdoor exposure of camping, with an elevated level of comfort inside a luxury tent.

That was also the turnoff. For me, discomfort is a key ingredient in camping���s value proposition. There���s always joy in the simple act of being outside all day, but the true magic of tent life comes from transcending a little benign suffering, the same magic conjured at the finish line of a long endurance race, when somehow, after hours of pain, your first thought is Where do I sign up for the next one? Suffering transforms bad experiences into treasured memories, the kind you never want to stop collecting. How can one expect to suffer with 600-thread-count sheets, a heated tent, and daily kindling delivery?

Still, as the editor of this magazine, part of my job is keeping up with trends in adventure travel, and lately I���ve heard a lot about glamping. Since the late aughts, when high-end camps offering tents equipped with comfy beds, outdoor decks, woodstoves, and carpeted floors began to be marketed in earnest, glamping has boomed. , a California consulting group, the industry is now worth $2.1 billion and is expected to double by 2025.

Under Canvas, which sets up seasonal glamping sites near Yellowstone, the Great Smoky Mountains, and other national parks (), is one of the biggest players. But these days there are glamping opportunities everywhere, from rustic backyard yurts bookable through Airbnb and Hipcamp, to high-end luxury enclaves in the Texas hill country and around Big Sur.

In the past few years, as both glamping and my family expanded, I arrived at an unsettling realization: real camping can be a real pain in the ass. Not the activity itself; I���m referring to the endless checklist we must attend to like tax-season accountants just to get out of the driveway. Dog food. Headlamp batteries. Salt and pepper. Stove fuel. Meal plans. Diapers. Ice. Beer. Marshmallows. Any one of these can make or break a trip. (Don���t believe me? Try telling your nine-year-old you forgot the s���mores fixings. Things are about to get real.) Packing is the one form of camping-induced suffering that brings no joy whatsoever. Glamping basically eliminates all that. You just have to show up.

So yeah, I became glamp-curious. And I remember exactly when I became glamp-ready: March 2019. That���s when some good friends came over, fresh from a spring trip to Under Canvas Tucson and raving about it. You guys, seriously, the beds. Trails out the front door flap. And���oh my God, Kelly���the clean bathrooms and hot showers!

Kelly and I, meanwhile, had just spent the past week moving across town into a new house. What can I say? It was a vulnerable time for me. The pitch left an impression. (Props to Under Canvas: you guys have a pretty badass guerrilla-marketing team.)

Eight months later, looking for a post-holiday getaway, my wife pulled up the Under Canvas website. We were booked for a four-night stay before bedtime.

After zipping through our delightfully streamlined glamping packing list, we set out for Tucson the day after Christmas, driving seven hours from our home in Santa Fe and arriving at Under Canvas around four in the afternoon. Snow was dusting the highest peaks of the Catalinas, and city slickers were ambling by on horseback at the entrance. In addition to being adjacent to a national park, Under Canvas Tucson was located on the property of a historic dude ranch, Tanque Verde. As guests, we had access to the ranch���s pool, tennis courts, and horseback riding���a nice perk for families. (Since this story was reported, and prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Under 簫Canvas closed its Tucson operation. After U.S. states went into lockdown, Under Canvas revised its . All of its locations are now open泭except Under Canvas泭Glacier, which plans to open on July 1.)

After winding through the property to the ranch���s back end, we parked beside the Under Canvas reception tent. Waiting to check in, I leafed through the company catalog and read the opening letter from CEO Sarah Dusek. She explained how, when she and her husband, Jacob Dusek, started the company in 2009, they ���imagined a world where ��� enjoying nature didn���t have to be uncomfortable or difficult.��� This didn���t exactly speak to me, but I kept my sudden misgivings to myself.

After checking in, we were handed off to a twentysomething Under Canvas staffer named Shandee, who transferred the baggage from our car to the back of a seven-seat electric golf cart and told us to jump in. We bumped around a few curves, saguaro cactus towering above us, then headed up a steep dirt road toward camp. A minute later, the view opened up���two dozen or so cream-colored canvas tents spread out on four or five acres of desert scrub. The location was incredible. The sun was setting, and there were mountains in every direction.

Not surprisingly, the kids went nuts at their first glimpse of our tent, jumping on the bed and arguing over where to position their cots. Meanwhile, Shandee gave me a well-rehearsed tutorial on how to get the woodstove going. ���Just call us if you���re having trouble,��� she said. Yeah, OK, Shandee, I thought, pretty sure I got this.

After settling in, we walked down to the Tanque Verde saloon for dinner, then headed straight back to our tent. Kelly put Zevi to bed while the big kids and I went searching for the communal fire pit, where, we���d been told, we���d find a nightly supply of graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. We loaded up our complimentary stainless-steel skewers and then joined an Israeli family who were singing camp songs on the benches surrounding the fire. I looked up and saw a shooting star. Not bad.

Before bed, Olive and Cash grabbed their PJs and headed to the showers and bathrooms, housed in a wood-paneled single-wide trailer 50 feet away. I was skeptical about the solar-powered water heaters, but both children returned shiny and泭red-faced. ���There���s shampoo and conditioner,��� Olive beamed.

A half-hour later everyone was asleep, and I took in my first moments of semi-solitude. The fire was crackling, I was deep into a great book, and there was a Hilton-quality mattress beneath me. I could get used to this.

Turns out glamping doesn���t preclude suffering after all. We woke up the next morning to steady rain and the familiar feeling that our recreational options had severely narrowed. Our Under Canvas tent was carpeted, and some 190 square feet���a palace even compared with our massive six-person Big Agnes tent���but cabin fever is cabin fever. We went for a long hike among the saguaro, came back soaking, and then warmed up with hot showers. Glamping, just like camping, facilitates immersive, therapeutic bouts of nature, which is really what everyone���s looking for, right? The difference is the amenities you get in between. A two-hour hike in the rain while on a ���real��� camping trip means additional hours of soggy misery when you return to your tent. If you���re glamping, you just reboot. The showers are always hot and the warm drinks are always ready.

Despite my skepticism, glamping���s conveniences didn���t get in the way of the most enjoyable parts of camping, either. The rest of our days were unhurried and organized around nature���s bookends, sunrise and sunset. Childhood curiosity was constantly sparked (���Why do some saguaro have arms but others are just one pole?���), and the food, as always, tasted better outside. We suffered just the right amount for the magic to happen. I overestimated my fire skills and we all got cold the first night. (I suppose I should have called Shandee after all.) By night two, I���d learned that the stove needed frequent feeding, but in the wee hours I had to scramble to the communal tent in my underwear for a stealth resupply of wood. Olive���s hot shower turned frigid one evening.

And then there was the morning-coffee episode. I was miserable and tired from the heroic woodstove work when Cash woke me up. And he was close to shivering after his hot-beverage run. But now everyone was awake and the sun was coming up. Kelly grabbed her coffee and pulled Zevi onto the bed. Cash and Olive hopped on, too, after Cash made a second sortie for hot chocolate. We were, all five of us, a little cold and sleep-deprived and hungry, crammed into a single bed���and having a pretty awesome time of it. We were a family. A family who glamps.

The post I Went Glamping and I Liked It appeared first on 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online.

Why now?

Judging by the chatter on cycling Twitter, that was the most common reaction to ESPN���s announcement earlier this month that it would be premiering , a new big-budget, two-part 30 for 30泭documentary on the rise and fall of the world���s most infamous bike racer, on May 24.

It���s a fair question. After all, we���re now seven years removed from Lance Armstrong giving his first . That same year saw the release of The Armstrong Lie, a full-length documentary by an Oscar-winning director that, just like this one, includes Armstrong���s lengthy admissions of guilt and claims of sincere remorse. Since then his reputation has suffered death by a thousand memoirs, with nearly anyone with the slightest connection to the cyclist publishing their own tell-all, while Armstrong himself has launched multiple apology tours to demonstrate his contrition and control the damage. Whatever hunger there once was to reexamine this saga would seem to have been sated. The carcass has been picked clean. So why now?泭

The most cynical answer, of course, is ratings. We���ve all endured two months without the distraction of live sports, a cruel fact that has left the world���s biggest sports network with gobs of airtime to fill and nothing new to discuss. Aside from the NFL draft, the network���s lone bright spot has been , the ten-part Michael Jordan documentary that has garnered . The docuseries gave ESPN some elusive momentum, but the final episode aired on May 17, and Lance wasn���t originally scheduled to premiere until the fall. If you want to best understand why it rushed the broadcast debut to this weekend, picture a bunch of executives in Bristol, Connecticut, turning their baseball caps inside out and trying to keep a rally going.泭

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YUsakV8RzZo

For a more philosophical explanation as to why Lance exists, we can turn to director Marina Zenovich, who spent 18 months on the project. Zenovich is a big deal in the documentary world, having spent her career churning out portraits of complicated men, including , , and the . One could argue that her skills as a filmmaker are enough on their own to justify the project���few people challenge the Coen Brothers��� ���but she���s hardly been immune from the same line of questioning. Back in January, when Lance premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Zenovich . First question: Why now?

���A lot of time has passed,��� she answered. ���And I think he was willing to come forward and tell his story. I think. I mean, I tried.��� She laughed at that point, realizing that any discussion of Lance telling the truth was fraught. A few minutes later she zeroed in on what is perhaps the whole point of this project. ���What I found really interesting is that Lance has processed a lot of what he���s gone through,��� she said, ���and has come out the other side���for himself. Other people haven���t. And then you get into scorekeeping���Well, has he processed enough?���

And there you have it, the question we���and Lance���can���t stop wrestling with. We all know he cheated, got caught, and said he was sorry. But how do we break down his sorry into discrete units that can be measured on a public-forgiveness scale? Is he sorry enough that we should reevaluate his seven Tour de France victories, stop overlooking his inspiring work as an advocate for cancer patients, and let him back into our lives? Those questions are at the heart of Lance and perhaps provide the only sound rationale for tuning in. If there���s truly been a battle raging these last seven years between Old Lance (defiant, petty, destructive, lying) and New Lance (woke, introspective, apologetic, transparent), let���s check in and see if we can figure out who���s winning.泭

Part one of Lance sets the table for this analysis. During a very entertaining hour and a half, Zenovich retells the story of Armstrong���s meandering ascent up Alpe d���Fame. We examine his humble beginnings as the son of a teen mom in Plano, Texas; witness the discovery of his prodigious talent when he was introduced to swimming and triathlon as a teenager; and watch him eventually commit to cycling and use his raw abilities to become an unexpected world champion in 1993.

Early on in the episode, Armstrong promises Zenovich, ���I���m not going to lie to you, Marina. I���m going tell you my truth,��� but thankfully, his recollections of this era aren���t the only ones we have to rely on. Zenovich seems to have tracked down everybody for this project���coaches, teammates, friends, enemies. The list of surprising talking heads includes Armstrong���s estranged stepfather, who at one point tries to justify his tough love and physical punishment by arguing that teenage Lance wouldn���t have become such a fierce competitor without him. (Let���s just say that adult Lance doesn���t agree.)泭

Most viewers will be familiar with this material, but the pacing is stellar. And if nothing else, it���s still interesting to reexamine his rise, this time with none of the players weighed down by the pretense that Armstong was doing it all without performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Equally fascinating are all the old interview clips researchers dug up. Some of the Armstrong interview footage will be new to anyone who, like me, didn���t follow cycling between the era of Greg LeMond (who won the Tour de France ) and Armstrong���s first Tour victory in 1999. Watching a twentysomething Armstrong present himself to the world back then is cringeworthy. I don���t want to spoil anything, but boy, was he a dick.泭

Whatever you think of the man now, however, the cancer part of his backstory is still moving. We see Armstrong close to death, robbed of all his physical gifts, and humiliated as he tries to find a new team willing to invest in his comeback once he���s in remission. Part one ends with Armstrong���s first Tour win, reminding us why we were all so captivated by his story in the first place. We���re also reminded of how quickly he had to transition, literally overnight, from being virtually unknown to Wheaties-box famous. Consider that in July of 1999, Armstrong���s public profile largely consisted of a modest website for his recently created cancer foundation, housed on a few rickety servers in a friend���s garage. The day he stood atop the podium in Paris, all those servers crashed.

Things get a lot more interesting in part two, which airs May 31, beginning with Zenovich casually lobbing the following from behind the camera: ���Do you feel like you want to be relevant again?��� All we see is Armstrong, who seems to flinch for a second from the audacity of such a question. ���This is gonna sound terrible,��� he answers, ���but I am relevant. I am.��� The exchange may explain Armstrong���s participation in this project and why he���d willingly submit to hours of rigorous on-camera interrogation: He knows his previous efforts have failed. He���s done his time and doesn���t want to be an outcast anymore.泭

From there we return to the backstory, but the narrative gets bogged down. There are simply too many feuds and scandals to catalog and too little time to assess their impact on either Lance or his many adversaries, beyond listing the surface-level details of his transgressions. Fortunately, Zenovich���s interviews with Armstrong in part two contain enough drama to keep you watching. As anyone who covered him in his prime will tell you, his ability to intimidate journalists and don his ���cancer shield��� to diffuse tough questions made deep probing of the athlete���s psyche all but impossible at the time. In Zenovich, Armstrong has met his match. She seems unfazed by his legendary staredown and expertly sits through awkward pauses to force him into filling dead air. And on three occasions, she gets the goods.泭

The first happens after a scene filmed at Rice University, where Armstrong���s oldest son, Luke, plays Division I football. After we see Lance give a pep talk to the team, it cuts to him during one of his many sit-downs with Zenovich. She asks what he would tell Luke if he ever wanted to try PEDs himself. ���I would say, ���That���s a bad idea. You���re a freshman in college, that���s… it might be a different conversation if you were in the NFL, but at this point in your career, not worth it.������ So, no to doping now, son, but if you make it to the pros, all bets are off? Fumble!

A few minutes later, the topic turns to Floyd Landis, a former teammate who became the key witness in the government���s whistleblower case, which initially aimed to claw back some $100 million including sponsorship money that the U.S Postal Service hemorrhaged after the widespread news of Armstrong���s doping. This lawsuit once threatened to erase Armstrong���s fortune, but it was settled for $5 million in 2018. One understands why Armstrong and Landis will never be best buds after all that, but the film does a nice job of explaining how Armstrong put Landis in the position of ratting him out in the first place. Still, even though Lance has apologized and tried to make good with many of his other adversaries, it seems that well has run dry. After the film recounts all the money Armstrong lost in canceled endorsement contracts and lawsuits, it cuts to another sit-down.

Armstrong, gesturing to his palatial home in Aspen, Colorado: It could be worse. I could be Floyd Landis.

Zenovich: What, living in Leadville?

Armstrong: Waking up a piece of shit every day.泭

Zenovich: Is that what you think?

Armstrong: Yeah. That���s what I know.

Sorry, not sorry!

And then there���s the film���s penultimate exchange, the one certain to supply life-giving fodder to all of the sports-starved hosts working in ESPN���s hot-take industrial complex. The scene comes nearly four hours into this saga and clocks in at only four minutes, but it somehow salvages the entire project. It would be criminal to spoil it here. What I can say is that New Lance gets choked up, seemingly out of nowhere, and for 30 agonizing seconds tries to fight back sobs. Then he composes himself, a switch is flipped, and Old Lance is back. At that point, he delivers an extended, defiant monologue that adds up to his most compelling case yet for our collective forgiveness.泭

Should we buy it? I���ve watched the scene four times, and I honestly have no idea.泭

The post Lance Armstrong Gets Brutally Honest in ESPN’s New Film appeared first on 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online.

Generally speaking, a U-shaped curve on a graph that tracks fatalities over time is a sign of an emerging public-health issue that warrants serious concern. That���s exactly what you find when looking at the number of cyclists killed by drivers in the U.S. over the past three decades. From 1990 until 2010, fatalities dropped 27 percent, . From 2010 to 2018, they increased 38 percent, , the highest number since, well, 1990. After nearly 30 years, despite an uptick in helmet use and improvements in bike infrastructure, the grim totals are virtually the same. The same trends hold true for those on foot���for anyone outside a car, our streets and roads look more dangerous than they have in decades.泭It might not seem that way while cities are locked down and streets remain empty. But during the COVID-19 crisis, more people have been walking and biking than ever in the U.S.���a trend we hope Americans can sustain in the months and years to come. Drivers have continued to kill cyclists during the lockdowns, however, and when traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels, the death toll will surely spike again.泭

Of course, statistics can be misleading. Even before the pandemic, there were泭more people riding bikes泭than there were in the late eighties, so a rise in fatalities doesn���t conclusively mean that cycling is more dangerous. But we do know that the recent, nearly decade-long increase in deaths outstrips growth in participation. We know that more of these deaths are taking place than in rural areas, compared with three decades ago, including泭 alone. And we know that many European cities, where are even higher, haven���t seen upswings in tragic accidents during that same period. In fact, and , not a single cyclist or pedestrian was killed in a roadway crash last year. That���s no accident���it was the result of a comprehensive policy initiative, , designed to improve road safety. (New York has its own Vision Zero policy, but .)

Statistics can make important issues feel cold and abstract. But for 窪蹋勛圖厙, bike safety is personal. In 2018, longtime 窪蹋勛圖厙 writer and passionate cyclist Andrew Tilin was killed when he was hit by a driver of a truck while fixing a flat on his bike outside Austin, Texas. Last year, the fianc矇 of features editor Gloria Liu, Andrew Bernstein, sustained severe injuries after he was struck by a van while riding in Boulder, Colorado. (The driver fled the scene���listen to the rest of the terrifying story on the 窪蹋勛圖厙 podcast.) The result is that, when it comes to writing about the risks cyclists face, we���re no longer interested in old-school journalistic objectivity. We think something should be done. We think public policy needs to change.泭And a global crisis like this one could be a perfect moment to catalyze it.

So this year, we���re inserting ourselves into the debate. Along with launching our digital tool to track cycling fatalities through 2020, we���ll be examining the trends contributing to this recent, unacceptable rise, sharing your stories about close calls and family tragedies, and exploring the systemic changes that could reverse the needless surge in cycling fatalities, this time for good.

The post Why 窪蹋勛圖厙 Is Tracking Every Cycling Death in 2020 appeared first on 窪蹋勛圖厙 Online.