Southern Indiana Trails

Ever wondered about something running related and looked for an answer on the internet? It can be very confusing: questionable advice, mansplaining, conspiracy theories, products that could either change your life or permanently maim you by accident, flimsy anecdotal evidence, amateur medical diagnoses, and other bullshit. It can all be hard to wade through. I wanted some real answers to some of the stuff I’ve seen, so I reached out to a successful running coach: David Roche, who, along with his wife Megan Roche, coaches runners through Some Work, All Play , coauthored the book The Happy Runner , and hosts the Some Work, All Play podcast . David was a good sport and provided some great insight. ( Illustration: Brendan Leonard) Myth #1: Training should be painful. “The goal of running training is to make faster, more efficient movement take less energy with time. As an athlete’s running economy improves, most training should feel easy, and even workouts should only...

After an initially chilly reception, the U.S. bike industry has embraced e-bikes and in almost all styles, including high-end road and mountain bikes. As a result, e-bikes are the fastest-growing segment of the domestic bike market. But e-bikes really got their start as utility machines for everyday commuting and errand running, and it’s still there that they have their greatest potential to get people on bikes. Choices range from speedy, lightweight e-commuters to ponderous kid-hauling land barges called cargo bikes. There’s even a new class of crossover e-bikes that combine the best of both worlds. Cargo bikes in particular are the perfect application for e-assist technology. Their compact, powerful motors strip away the burden of carrying heavy loads and give you a smooth, swift push that flattens hills and shrinks city distances. As a result, the once tiny category is thriving. In Europe, e-cargo bike sales in grew 60 percent last ...

Welcome to  Tough Love . We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is  Blair Braverman , dogsled racer and author of  Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube . Have a question of your own? Write to us at  toughlove@outsideim.com . I started using Instagram to document a road trip after college, and though I didn’t intend for it to become a career, it’s been my full-time job for five years now. I spend between 50 and 60 hours a week taking and editing photos, responding to comments, reaching out to brands, and developing sponsored content in the outdoors/travel sphere (I don’t want to say too much, but my brand is kind of like #vanlife without the van). I make enough from sponsored posts to afford health insurance and start paying off my student debt, which makes me better off than a lot of my friends. I also really enjoy the creative parts of the job, like composing and editing photos, which is what got me started i...

Nineteen years ago, I bought my first pair of climbing shoes—the MoccAsym slippers from Five Ten . Ten years and a bunch of different climbing-shoe models later, I bought another pair of MoccAsyms. Today you can still buy them. And for certain kinds of climbing (granite friction slabs and splitter cracks), they’re still one of the best shoes that exist. You might read that and think, Some things never change. But when it comes to climbing shoes, you couldn’t be more wrong. Back when I bought that first pair of MoccAsyms, there weren’t many brands to choose from. As of 2019, there were at least 41 climbing-shoe manufacturers worldwide (and I can think of a few more now). While larger companies (Five Ten, La Sportiva, Scarpa) still dominate much of the market share in the industry, it’s great to see some interesting boutique companies popping up with quality offerings. Here are a handful of brands making a splash. Acopa ( Photo: Courtesy...

Mike Bennett, the city manager of Fruita, Colorado, was camped out at 18 Road, a popular mountain-bike trailhead, when I called him on a Tuesday morning last spring. Over the howl of desert wind, he told me that the place was pretty much empty. “I’m staring around in the dispersed area, there’s no one here,” he said. Spring is usually a high season for this western Colorado town. Bikers flood the area after ski resorts close and before temperatures spike. Bennett says they’ve historically seen a 25 percent rise in sales-tax revenue each spring and fall, thanks to visitors. And over the past few years, as the area has focused on recreation, that revenue has gone up a further 12 percent year over year. But in 2020, as COVID-19 cases climbed across the country, Fruita and other outdoor hot spots across the West began  telling people not to come , shutting off the valve to tourism. While some businesses like bike shops stayed busy with locals...

On March 20, 2019, fish caught in Ohio’s Cuyahoga River were declared safe to eat  by federal environmental regulators. It was a major milestone in the river’s recovery—once one of the most polluted waterways in the country—because 50 years earlier, it caught on fire. Public outrage around that 1969 fire spawned a national reckoning on water pollution and led to the creation of the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Earth Day. Earlier this week, however, the Cuyahoga caught fire again. It’s a timely reminder that much of the progress made on water pollution during the past 51 years is rapidly being undone.  The Cuyahoga’s water helped create the industries that would pollute it. Tracing a distinct U shape across northeast Ohio, the 100-mile-long river flows into Lake Erie 30 miles west of its headwaters. With a series of rapids and waterfalls that cascaded 500 feet down that distance before it was dammed, the Cuyahoga didn’t of...

Enter for a chance to win one of our 70+ adventure-ready prizes featured in our 2020 Summer Buyer's Guide . Click on each prize below to learn more! Not Supported       by Outside Editors via Outside Magazine: All

The premise of this study is pretty simple: Whether you’re lacing up for the first time or you're an experienced runner, you could be training smarter. How? By basing your workouts on how recovered you are. Just how much of an impact tailoring your training to your personalized recovery data can have is the goal behind Project PR. This is your chance to break the old-school running mold. Here’s how it works.   Participants will opt into an eight-week 5k training program—starting in the beginning of October—designed by professional runners Nick Willis and Mary Cain of Tracksmith. We’ll send you a lightweight, waterproof WHOOP fitness tracker and a code for a discounted, six-month membership. As you log your training runs with Strava and specific behaviors on the WHOOP mobile app, your WHOOP strap will track personalized recovery, strain, and sleep metrics and suggest ways to fine-tune your training. Sound up your alley? Sign up below and we’ll be in touch with next steps. In...

62 Parks Traveler  started with a simple goal: to visit every U.S. national park in one year. Avid backpacker and public-lands nerd  Emily Pennington  saved up, built out a tiny van to travel and live in, and hit the road. The parks as we know them are rapidly changing, and she wanted to see them before it’s too late. Pennington has returned to traveling and is committed to following CDC guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the safety of herself and others. She’s visiting new parks as they open and closely adhering to best safety practices. Black Canyon of the Gunnison is not a hikers’ park. That fact became abundantly clear to me as I inched my van along South Rim Road, mouth agape at the sheer cliffs of dark, metamorphic rock. I parked at the visitor center, laced up my boots, and got ready for a long day of scrambling. To fully experience this destination, I would need to climb into the canyon’s jagged mouth. “This has got to be the most metal na...

Even in this brave new world, with wearable technology that tracks and shares our every twitch and palpitation, the fundamental unit of training data for runners is still very old-school: How many miles did you run last week? In fact, as a new opinion piece in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy notes, the rise of GPS watches has only strengthened our obsession with tracking mileage. And that, the article’s authors argue, is a problem—or at least a missed opportunity. The authors have plenty of cred in the world of running science. Lead author Max Paquette is a biomechanist at the University of Memphis (and the husband, for what it’s worth, of 15:10 5,000-meter runner Lauren Paquette). Chris Napier and Rich Willy are highly respected physical therapists and researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Montana. And Trent Stellingwerff is a physiologist and coach who works with the Canadian Olympic team (and the husband of two-time 1,500...

In a perfect world, I’d be out the door every day by 6 A.M. for a cool morning run. It never happens. Instead I spend that time feeding and entertaining my kids, walking my dogs, chasing deadlines, taking meetings, and fixing stuff around the house. By the time I’m finally free, it’s usually 4 P.M. That means if I want to exercise in the summer, I have to face the burning sun and temperatures that often hover around 90 to 95 degrees here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I know I’ll melt if I stay out too long, so I limit my runs to 30 or 45 minutes.   I also take water filled with electrolytes to make sure I stay hydrated. As a gear tester, I’ve tried my fair share of packs, handheld bottles, and water-carry systems but have landed on the CamelBak Flash Hydration Belt ($40) as my absolute favorite.  I like that the Flash puts the weight of the included bottle on my lower back. I’m not a huge fan of handheld carriers, because they interfer...

A few weeks ago, I received a PR email offering to put me in touch with an Accuweather meteorologist who, remarkably, was also a runner. “With more readers now trying to pinpoint the best time in their day for an outdoor run,” the email read, this savvy weatherperson would be able to “provide expert insight on this summer’s running forecast and tips on how to plan an outdoor run like a meteorologist.” I didn’t end up taking advantage of this unique opportunity—as the Dostoevsky of running writers, I prefer to focus on the big questions like when it’s appropriate for a man to run shirtless —but I’m going to guess that the expert insight would have amounted to something along the lines of: “Try to avoid running when it’s really fucking hot.”  Then again, I’m the last person who has any right to be a smartass about this. I live in New York City and during the excruciating summer months, I have a talent for picking what is objectively the stupidest time to exercise. More often ...