Southern Indiana Trails

Whenever I donate blood, I like to imagine the lucky recipient suddenly perking up, feeling the vivifying effects of my runner’s hemoglobin-rich red blood cells. “Whoa, that’s the good stuff,” I imagine this hypothetical person exclaiming. (Hey, it gets me off the couch and to the donation center.) Turns out I’ve been underselling myself, according to a cool new study that injects “runner plasma” from exercising mice into sedentary mice and sees a range of remarkable brain-boosting effects, including better memory and reduced inflammation. The study, published in Nature by researchers in the lab of Stanford University neurologist Tony Wyss-Coray, offers some exciting new insights about how and why exercise is good for the brain. It has also generated some media coverage along a predictable theme: “An exercise pill might one day produce health gains without the exertional pain,” as Scientific American puts it . Maybe so—but only in a very limited way. The details of the study are d...

Welcome to What You Missed , our daily digest of breaking news and topical perspectives from across the outdoor world. You can also get this news delivered to your email inbox six days a week by signing up for the What You Missed newsletter.  It may be the end of an era for U.S. professional bicycle racing. On December 22, Medalist Sports announced it was ending the Tour of Utah —the nation’s longest-running road-bike stage race solely for professional cyclists—after it was unable to find a sponsor to pay for the event in 2022. Organizers had canceled it in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic but were hoping to revive it.  The seven-day race, which began in 2000, was classified by Union Cycliste International, the sport’s governing body, as 2.Pro, which meant that only professional riders were eligible to compete. Throughout its 20-year history , the Tour of Utah became a proving ground for up-and-coming American cyclists, as it was a rare opportunity for them to r...

In September 2019, Himalayan guide Garrett Madison called off a summit attempt on Mount Everest, telling clients that an ice block hanging over the route made it too dangerous. The following March, one of the clients on the expedition, Zac Bookman, sued Madison for $100,000 for breach of contract and fraud. In response, Madison filed a countersuit seeking a declaratory judgment absolving Madison of harm, stating that Bookman wasn’t entitled to a refund because he signed a waiver acknowledging that reaching the summit is not guaranteed due to unpredictable conditions. After more than a year of legal wrangling, the pair settled their dispute last week in a Seattle court with Bookman agreeing through a stipulated judgement that he is not entitled to a refund for the trip. The signed agreement declared that “Madison Mountaineering and Mr. Madison are the ‘prevailing parties’ and the ‘successful parties’” and stated that “the fear of lawsuits and the financial repercussions from lawsuit...

It’s a Thursday afternoon in early March 2021, and Gabriel Bernatchez is sitting in his office in Montreal, explaining how he and two college friends are revolutionizing an industry. As a cofounder and the chief technical officer of Taiga Motors, a Canadian startup set to release the first electric snowmobile later this year, Bernatchez has reason for optimism. Three weeks earlier, Taiga announced that it was merging with a holding company and going public with a $422 million valuation. The 29-year-olds suddenly had $146 million in cash to work with—before they’d completed a single production run. Bernatchez wore a T-shirt as he downplayed Taiga’s encroachment on the nearly century-old business of manufacturing gasoline-powered snowmobiles. “We’re not exactly competing with combustion,” he says. “I don’t see them as an adversary. I more see them as a different option.” The estimated market for recreational power sports—snowmobiles, jet skis, and side-by-sides, or ATVs—is $40 billio...

As the new year rapidly approaches, running-shoe companies are dropping hints about the technologies and designs they plan to roll out in 2022. Based on what we’ve seen, it promises to be a banner year for running footwear, with refined tech pushing the limits at the top end and trickle-down innovations appearing across categories and price points. Here are a few models that we’re most excited about training and racing in. Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite ($220) Puma FAST-R Nitro Elite (Photo: 101 Degrees West) Evolving the Super Shoe Easily the most eye-catching shoe promised in the new year, the Puma Fast-R is a novel evolution of the Deviate Nitro Elite marathon racer that Molly Seidel wore to a bronze-medal finish in this year’s Olympic marathon. The Fast-R features all the familiar ingredients of today’s super shoes : ultralight construction (seven ounces), a thick stack of energetic foam (38 millimeters in the heel, 30 millimeters forefoot), and a rigid, curved carbon-...

Here at Outside , we’re all for pursuing your best self. We also believe that the path to fulfillment is paved not with relentless discipline, rigorous training plans, or—God forbid—diets but with joyful abandon . This year gave us plenty of challenges: COVID surges, climate catastrophe, and, to cap it all off, a painfully slow start to the ski season . Why heap more on the plate with a New Year’s resolution? This year, as always , we resolve only to loosen up a little, and celebrate the bad habits, vices, and indulgences that give more than they take. Driving an Absolute Disaster of a Car While I’m writing this, my 2006 Subaru Outback is relatively clean. There’s a bike stem and vise-grip pliers on the passenger seat, a few rolls of film in the cup holder, and biodegradable glitter inside the console, where a bottle of it exploded. There’s an ice scraper and a bike pump and a box of meat sticks on the back seat, as well as three helmets and a pair of skis in the trun...

Welcome to What You Missed , our daily digest of breaking news and topical perspectives from across the outdoor world. You can also get this news delivered to your email inbox six days a week by signing up for the What You Missed newsletter.  Rick Steves can point out the balconies in Milan where Mussolini gave speeches. He knows where to order the tastiest mangalica in Budapest, Hungary. And for more than 40 years, he has researched European travel for his popular guidebooks and television show , amassing a sizable fan base with his intricate knowledge of history, culture, and cuisine. Prior to 2021, however, Steves had largely overlooked one major side of European travel: the great outdoors. That changed in September when Steves went on a six-day trek through the French Alps. “Here I am, supposed to be this expert on European travel, and I’ve never done a multiday hike in the Alps,” Steves told Outside in a recent phone interview. “It was something totally new...

Last summer my daughter, Josephine, and I visited a zoo that houses two wolves, both of which were born in captivity. Josephine had approached all the other animals at the zoo with curiosity, but when I pointed out the wolves, she stopped in her tracks. “Are they bad wolves, Mama?” she asked with fear in her voice. I explained that wolves aren’t generally dangerous to people—and can even benefit biodiversity —but in her three-year-old morality that separates the world into good guys and bad guys, the wolves’ reputation had already been cemented as cruel and villainous. And I knew exactly where that view had come from. Over the previous year, with her father working as a nurse on the front lines of the pandemic and me trying to maintain my journalism career with little or no childcare, we watched more movies than I care to admit. During all those hours of guilt-inducing screen time, I’d noticed a disturbing trend: in children’s media, wolves are often shown as bloodthirsty killer...

How’s everyone doing? Because I am not great. Just this morning alone, while reading through my inbox, I wrestled with  disappearing orcas ,  melting polar ice caps , climate-related natural disasters , and the fact that we can’t get a federal bill passed that has even a little bit of foresight. There is so much bad news. I am languishing . Burned-out. Feeling both overwhelmed and ineffective at fighting the dread. And then pissed at myself for feeling exhausted. Who am I to take a break when things are this grim ? I have friends who are COVID-ward doctors. But pushing yourself through burnout leads to more burnout, and we can’t be effective citizens, advocates, humans, or friends when we’re ground down. We need respite. Luckily, we can look to a whole range of cultures for ways to achieve that and find light in the dark season. There have always been bad things happening, and across the subarctic , some of the darkest countries in the world have December practice...

Welcome to What You Missed , our daily digest of breaking news and topical perspectives from across the outdoor world. You can also get this news delivered to your email inbox six days a week by signing up for the What You Missed newsletter.  Adding to the end-of-days vibe we’re feeling this holiday season, The New York Times recently published a story on Earth’s Black Box , a tool that records our planet’s ongoing climate crisis.  Should all of human civilization someday be obliterated by climate change, this bus-size steel vault will archive critical information about the planet’s weather patterns and our catastrophic climate errors. The Times compares it to the flight recorder of a plane that records the craft’s final moments before crashing so that investigators can determine what went wrong. Earth’s Black Box will chronicle climate change through media hits and scientific reports. Every time something new is published or posted about climate change onlin...

Since the publication of my book  The Practice of Groundedness —which in many ways is a coda to what I’ve been writing about here for the past five years—I’ve spoken with all kinds of people, from elite athletes to creatives to traditional workplace professionals, on what it means to practice groundedness. What follows are 16 common lessons that have come out of our conversations. Taken together, these lessons provide a recipe for attaining more inner strength and stability in a frantic and frenetic world. And as we come to the end of 2021, these lessons could help you in the new year and beyond. Addiction to Achievement Is Real  In professional life, as in sport, it’s important to create boundaries so you can rest and recover from hard efforts. It’s easy to tell yourself that your work helps or inspires others, so therefore it’s OK to go all in, all the time. Eventually, this mindset ends in burnout. Wherever You Are, the Goalpost Is Always Ten Yards Down the Field ...