syndicate log, issue no. 022: socks in stereo

the morning tape

a pair of courier HiFis raced a half marathon this weekend, a few days after a 20 miler, and did well enough that we're ordering more. so why doesn't the sock company won't tell you which sport its socks are for?

the answer is a lower leg injury. matt, one of courier's five co-founders, ruptured his achilles, had it repaired, and then went ahead with a bike trip he'd spent two years planning, village to village through the french alps to a friend's wedding. his surgeon was against it. every morning of the trip he taped the leg, and he's plain that the tape wasn't doing anything mechanical. it made the leg feel held, and that was enough to get him up the climbs.

so courier sorts its line by feel. hifi is the thin one, where more of the road comes up through your foot, with small terry pads placed where a foot takes load, one of them over the achilles. lofi turns that around and goes big on cushion, with vents so the heat has a way out. arofi is the merino. you choose by what you want underfoot, not by whether you're running, riding or walking the dog.

one thing worth knowing about fit. courier sizes in bands, and one of us sits at the very bottom of the 9 to 12. at that end the heel cup rides a little high and the locked-in feel softens, which matters in a sock whose whole pitch is feel. the other of us hasn't had that at his size. so the next order goes one band down, and we'll report back. if you're between sizes, work out which end of the band you'd land at before you buy.

five people run courier, two of them full time. the rest is on the journal: the surf session that became a sales pitch, three factories handed the same brief, and whose idea the renaissance athlete was.

disclosure: courier sent us socks to test. that never buys coverage.

or go straight to courier, and follow them on instagram.

common interests

the purse is the easy part

at the run rabbit run briefing in steamboat springs this month, insight global's ceo bert bean announced $100,000 each to the women's and men's 100 mile winners in 2027 and 2028. western states pays its winners nothing. bean also asked shoe, sock and fueling companies to step up, which landed differently in a week we spent writing about socks.

jonathan levitt, who runs the long run labs podcast network, did the arithmetic in the purse is the easy part. $200,000 a year is about 0.005% of insight global's u.s. staffing revenue, and he argues it isn't charity either. the people who hire a staffing firm are a lot of the same people who sign up for 100 milers.

the line worth keeping is his: prize money solves the athlete's problem, not the attention problem. a purse buys a field. it doesn't make anyone care who wins, and run rabbit run has paid real money for years without catching western states. somebody has to tell those stories all year, and the check doesn't cover that. levitt says up front that he sells the fix, so read it knowing that. he's still right about the gap.

"i was ready to run for what felt like forever"

the new york times covered backyard ultras this week, and some familiar faces are in it.

the piece uses prairie on fire as its entry point into the format, with our own very battle of the run clubs competitors included. read it here.

that's it for this week. if you know someone who owns a different sock for every sport they do, forward this to them. if you'd rather see something else in here, hit reply and tell us.

midwest grit meets pacific northwest rain.

come run with us.

graham + mark

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