Borderland.

Somehow we're still not learning borderland.

We still suck at running.

Welcome to the Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running podcast, episode 93.

My name is Josh Rosenthal.

I am the host and I am the founder.

Today is a three things kind of day.

I've got these three things that have been on my radar, that have made mattered to me, that have been on my mind, that I've been thinking about.

And I just want to pass them along to you because if they're interesting to me, I think by extension they're going to be interesting to you or material or simply just enjoyable.

Number one, I had dinner with Jean Marc Bajan.

If you've heard that name, it's because he was on the free trail podcast.

Or it also means that you're a big fan of shoes.

He is what Dylan Bowman called the original shoe dog of Trail running.

He's been doing trail running shoes since 1999 at Solomon, then north face, and now satisfy number two, a love letter to the desert.

I miss the desert and I want to tell you what I'm cooking as I'm sitting here in the city of Paris in the concrete jungle, there's no grass anywhere near me and I'm dying for that red dirt.

Number three, episode 100 is coming soon.

I'm writing a bunch of music for it.

It's gonna be a really special episode for me, and I hope then it is therefore for you as well.

Are you looking for a marathon or ten k in the mountains in the spring?

May 31, sponsored by path projects in Skyrim.

I am putting on a 50k with my buddies Joey and Jared.

It's open range races.

There will be no other fifty k, half marathon or ten k like it.

We are going to start rolling out all the fun stuff we have for it.

If you're just looking for a fun race, that you're going to go fast and have a great time, simply just by the traditional ultra go, run hard breakdown, reemerge and have the time of your life.

That's going to be very much possible here at our race.

But also, we're going to be layering in a lot of really interesting, unorthodox things that I think you're going to want to be there for.

So go to openrangeraces.com or you can go straight to ultra, sign up and search Salt Lake foothills trail races and you'll find our race May 31, 2025.

I hope you can join us.

It will be a blast, guaranteed.

Oh yeah.

I know what you're thinking.

If episode 100 has music, anything like that.

You're not gonna listen to it.

I intentionally wrote that.

Three things.

A little jingle to be cheesy.

It made me think of Paul Schaefer sitting next to David Letterman when they would what always appeared to me to be a song that they would write ten minutes before the segment on late night.

And it just.

It was just.

It was silly and ridiculous and uninteresting, and that's kind of what I was doing there.

I feel the need to explain that song every time, which means it's probably eventually time to change it to something that I think is cool, or at least cooler than that.

But for now, you get the Paul Schaeffer treatment.

Okay, thing number one.

I got to hang out with Jean Marc Bichon, and that's not, like, a humble brag.

That's not a show off in any way.

I had been interested in what he was doing when I heard that he landed at Satisfye.

Cause he was at Solomon in North Face for the last, what now, 25 years before heading over to satisfy.

And what's interesting about that is I did an episode with my friend Taylor Bodine of believe in the run lead trail reviewer, where we did a deep dive into Solomon, looked at the history of Solomon trail running shoes, how they evolved from being mountain running shoes to becoming trail running shoes.

And then our next episode was North Face.

I didn't quite know the name Jean Marc Bajan yet, but my first two episodes of a gear dive with Taylor were all about his portfolio.

That north Face portfolio, right now, that Taylor and others have declared the most underrated shoes in trail running, that's Jean Marc Bichon's doing.

And then prior to that, Solomon, so many of the iconic shoes, the S lab.

I mean, everything that was under his leadership as the head of.

I don't know how you'd say it, the head of footwear, the head of shoes.

And so I knew that he was in Annecy, France, one of my favorite cities in France.

That's where we would have lived if we didn't choose Paris.

I knew he was down there, and I knew he was working for Satisfye right over here in the 11th arrondissement.

It's not terribly far from where I live.

And when I office, every day, I office in two different places.

Both of them are this cafe Noir noir coffee that I really like so much, one on Ile Saint Louis, and the other one is in front of this store called Merci.

And I think that's technically in the third arrondissement, and it's right by the 11th, which is right by Satisfye and so I just said, hey, Jean Marc, if you're ever up here visiting Bris and satisfye offices and you've got some time, I'd love to sit down and just hang out with you.

And he responded and said, hey, that sounds great.

And then next thing I know, he's coming up to visit.

He's coming up here for a car show.

He's coming up to hang out in the office with Briese and the crew.

So we go out and have dinner at Les Roulette in the 11th arrondissement.

And it's a natural wine bar and a rotating chef.

A really, really interesting brasserie type place.

And we sit and we talk for two and a half, 3 hours.

And what I wanted to say about him, I've had the pleasure of having meals and coffees with really notable people, interesting people.

But the thing about Jean Marc that struck me more than just about anyone else I've ever hung out with is how down to earth he is and how interesting and conversational he is.

And before we even talked about shoes, and for the record, we talked about shoes very little.

He wanted to talk about, you know, the history of my family, not just where am I from in America.

We wanted to drill down.

We went way back into my family's history, into Hungary and being from Budapest and hundreds of years ago, and he took me back in his family history to the 15 hundreds.

And this is what we were talking about.

And if anyone is at all, in any way averse to the Enneagram, which, sorry, if you cringe because you hate the Enneagram, some of you may not even know what it is.

It's this personality assessment.

Personality, let's say, thing.

And I'm a five, which just means I love information.

I love information for the sake of information.

And so I am on the edge of my seat listening to his family's connection to North Africa, moving over into Spain and what happened and how they ended up in France, you know, the.

What was it, the early sixties or something like that, I'm loving it.

Point being, it is an absolute treat when some of the most notable people in, let's say, just in trail, when notable people in things that you love, things that you admire, are actually just really, really great people.

And I think more than anything, what I wanted to say is that, yeah, I know that we are all, you know, the trail running industry in general is super, if nothing else, curious about the first satisfy shoe that's going to be released.

I mean, if there's anybody in the world that can make a phenomenal shoe that will be extremely practical and very good looking.

It's Jean Marc Bichon.

We're all very interested to see what he's going to do.

I mean, satisfy already has the brand going for it.

Satisfy already has really great people.

They're hiring a lot right now.

There's so much going for it.

And then to bring in this legend who essentially was at Solomon when shoes evolved from being mountain running shoes, hybrid mountain running shoes that were hiking slash kind of running things into full on trail running shoes, the guy who did that and who was a part of those teams is now doing something at Satisfye.

We know it's going to be great.

They're going to release it at the running event in Austin in November.

But the person behind the design, the person behind the whole presentation of the shoe and how it's going to fit and how it's going to work and how it's going to look, all those sort of things is the person that is just a very good person.

And I know that in our industry of trail like, that's, we always talk about how good the people are.

But this Jean Marc exceeded expectations, and I will always look back at the night.

I was able to go have dinner and chat and have drinks with.

With the great Jean Marc Bichon.

And Jean Marc, if you're listening, merci, Pauladine.

I hope to do it again sometime.

I hope to make it to the trail running event.

Even though I'm almost certain I'm not.

There is a slight window that I could be there, and I would give anything to be there for the release of that satisfye shoe.

Okay, number two, I have this letter that I'm writing, and it's gonna be an open love letter to the desert.

To desert running, to desert ultras.

Living in Paris right now, I'm absolutely happy.

I'm not unhappy.

This is, you know, this is absolute first world problems, running on the concrete.

I mean, some people, that's all they ever do their whole lives.

They never discover trail running, and that's fine.

But I am not that person.

I have only ran on trails, or I should say 95% of the time, I'm at least on dirt or on a woodship path running around a park near my house in Salt Lake.

I'm learning to love road running, so don't get me wrong, but I miss trail running.

And further than that, I miss dirt.

The desert, the red desert dirt of southern Utah right now.

So much so that I'm writing about it.

You know, I'm writing music about it.

I'm writing poetry about it.

It feels like, you know, this is all I'm thinking about.

So I'm writing this letter.

I'm working on this video right now that I'm going to release soon, and I'm trying to articulate what is it about the desert.

It's so hard to just really name what it is that I miss about the desert, other than I just love the way I feel when I'm there.

And contrast that with living in a big city right now.

And there really is not much green space.

Here in Paris, even when the sun shines, it's really hard to get into a position where the sun would actually hit your face.

The buildings aren't tall.

It's just the way that Paris was put together.

There's some green space.

Of course, there's places that you've heard of.

If you've been here, you've probably been to tuileries, you've probably been to Luxembourg.

But there is concrete everywhere.

Everywhere there is.

I mean, I have to hop on a train.

It feels like to touch grass.

I have to go, you know, 30, 40 minutes to get to a place where there's grass.

And it's stunning out there, but I just miss it.

I miss the way that the dirt feels when I run.

I miss the moments of solitude with the moments that I also cross paths with other people.

When you're in a big city and other cultures, I mean, originally from Texas, I still have some of the ethos in me.

When you see someone, you nod.

When you see someone, you say hi.

And I get that in other cultures in the northeast, United States, you don't necessarily do that.

You don't necessarily do that over here in Paris, either.

But when I was out trail running the other day in the forest outside of Paris, people were doing that.

People still said hi.

People would cheer you on.

They would say, courage, which is to, you know, good job.

You're doing great.

Keep going.

Courage, I got.

I miss that.

And so right now, I'm working through some footage that.

Ben, honey, videography, the guy who's done all of the documentaries that I've released that look really good, he had a bunch of old footage of me running in the desert.

And I'm working on this open love letter to the desert, where I try to explain what it is that I love about the desert and what it is I miss about it, even different than the mountains, that when you stand up and you can see for miles and miles away just how relaxing it is to my eyes, to look on the desert landscape, that the way that the landscape moves is so smooth.

You know, there's not a lot of, like, harsh points or the contour line that creates the horizon in the desert is just a very rounded line compared to the mountains, where there's sharp points.

And just what that does to my eyes, just that it's.

It's.

My eyes are always relaxed.

And there's something about that desaturated red.

Unless you're in Bryce Canyon, when it's like this very saturated orange color, the desaturation and the way that the green then is of any foliage pushes up against that stunning desaturated red.

I could just stare at it all day.

I could just be there all day, sitting and looking.

But I would rather, even more than that, be struggling through an ultra.

In the desert.

There's nothing like the suffering in the desert.

I feel a sense of camaraderie with everyone who's done it before, whether elected or not.

And I think that's probably an interesting thing to think about.

The desert has always been this place that you've.

Has been a metaphor for.

Struggle has been a metaphor for a place that you go to survive.

It's been a means of a right of passage.

And so with all of that.

That depth, I'm just dying to be back there right now.

And so I'm thinking about this love letter, working on this video.

I'm super stoked on it.

And speaking of videos, I've got a video coming out soon about Devil's Gulch.

We're releasing that at the beginning of November, and it's one that Ben did.

So, you know, it's going to look good.

It's going to look really good compared to.

I released a video about Cirmlands, and it's called the lo Fi Runner's log.

That means I'm the one shooting and I'm the one editing it.

Still putting out stuff, still putting out content, still having a great time with everything I'm doing at Borderlands.

I'm just dying to go run in the desert.

Okay, number three.

I can't believe that I'm approaching episode 100.

Coming out of that trip to Cirm lands, and after kind of being starved for the trail running community and getting to be with them again, I was very inspired to start writing music.

But I have these really interesting constraints around writing music right now.

All I have is a computer.

I don't have an instrument.

I do have this microphone if I want to sing.

As I'm making this music, but I only have the computer.

I don't have a MIDI controller, which is like a piano looking thing.

So I'm writing a lot of music right now.

Inspired by Sirmlands was the thing that opened the dam, so to speak, that allowed the floodgates to start blowing of writing music again.

But I only can control it with the keys on my computer, and it's really most easy and most doable if I do it in the key of c.

For those of you who are musicians, you know, that's all the white keys, there's no black keys.

But for me, you know, the scale for the key of c, instead of being c, d, e, f, g, a, b is a s, d f, g, h, k on the keyboard.

I'm loving this constraint.

I mean, some of the most beautiful, some of the most interesting creativity comes from constraint.

Complete, unencumbered creativity feels very, very difficult.

I think creativity requires constraint in a lot of ways, especially in me.

So I'm wanting to write music right now more than ever.

And that's probably because I don't have an instrument, I don't have a midi controller, I don't have my guitar.

I have nothing.

So for episode 100, though, I'm going to be releasing probably five songs on that episode, as I also recount the first 99 episodes.

I hope that you'll enjoy all the episodes between now and then, but I think I've just got, what, seven more, and that'll come out.

And in those seven, I've got some really interesting episodes coming together.

More with Taylor Bodine from believe in the run.

I've got Thomas Newberger from believe in the run, the founder.

Coming on, we're going to do an episode about Adidas versus Puma.

For those of you who don't know, one of the Dossler brothers started Adidas, the other Dossler brother started Puma.

And I don't know how in the world two people from the same family produced two great shoe companies.

But we're going to talk high level about the two brands.

We're going to talk Road about the two brands, because they're both predominantly road.

And then we're going to jump in and go in on their trail offerings.

Adidas Tarex line, which it's not really holding up that much to scrutiny right now.

It'll be interesting to see what someone like Thomas thinks about it.

And then Puma releasing some trail shoes.

It'll be fun to do that episode.

Taylor and I are gonna do an episode about Hoka next.

I'm hoping to have my friend Marlee Dickinson back on to talk about the news of running ultra trail and some road stuff and sprint stuff.

He's the one who wrote the Camille Heron article that blew all that up about Wikipedia.

I've got Julian Carr, the founder of Cirque series.

Really one of the coolest series.

Coolest, like, race series in the world.

Short distances, 8 miles, but you're a give or take, but you're bombing up a mountain and you're bombing down it, and it's amazing.

It's a blast.

It gets huge crowds.

Julian is a brilliant business person and just an all around great guy.

I've heard great things about him.

He'll be on the podcast with me.

Drew Darby is going to join me to talk about how Matt Johnson's run across Texas went.

I've got a lot.

I've got a lot going on.

And the point here is that I think I'm just getting started at building this media company.

I've only recently embraced that I am starting a media company.

Someone reached out to me and said, hey, I don't like the way that you're playing the media game.

And I thought, oh, that's really bizarre.

I'm not playing the media game.

And then I stepped back and thought, huh, I guess I'm playing the media game.

Well, I should probably embrace that.

And at this point, people just think I'm playing the media game.

But I really haven't leaned in, so I'm gonna lean all the way in.

I'm looking to build what I think would be a very special, very unique, and highly scalable media company in the running space with Borderlands.

So there's gonna be lots to come, lots more podcasts, lots more documentaries.

We're gonna get creative as the year goes on over the next twelve months.

So the celebration that's coming of episode 100 really is just the beginning.

I don't think anybody could host a podcast really well, you know, too quickly without getting a bunch of episodes.

And so to me, I feel like I'm getting better at this.

I'm stoked at the number of people that say yes to join me on the podcast.

I think there's a ton of blue ocean right now in the running media space.

A lot of really great, untapped talent out there, talent that you've heard of and talent that you haven't yet, or maybe talent that I'm seeing in somebody they haven't or don't necessarily even see in themselves yet.

That's one of my favorite things to do, is go look for potential, and I think I see some right now.

So, yeah, I'm continuing to build the app.

I'm continuing to do events.

We're trying to do.

We're trying to put together some events in London, Paris, and Copenhagen.

Those are far from being settled, but that's.

We're putting a lot of effort into that.

I'm looking to do some desert events because I can't help but think about the desert, as I've already mentioned, looking to put together some desert events in America in 2025.

2026.

Got the 50k coming up.

So I'm looking to scale right now, and I've got a ton of optimism.

That's probably the greatest quality that an entrepreneur could have and the worst, because sometimes we should just not have be optimistic.

Sometimes pessimism would serve me a little bit better, but right now, I've got a ton of optimism and a lot of goodwill swirling around what I'm building.

And so I want to keep building that.

And that's really what episode 100 is going to be, a celebration of everything I've done so far with Borderlands and all the people who have joined me and leaned in and been a part of my silly experiments that I'm trying to figure out how to build community and grow this thing.

And then it's going to be about the future, and I'm going to inspired enough, thanks to being at Swermlands, to release music as well.

Man, I love this industry.

I love running.

I love the gift of running.

I'm super thankful for it.

I'm thankful for you all.

Those are the three things.

Those are the three things that are on my radar right now.

Number one, dinner with Jean Marc.

Number two, a love letter to the desert.

Number three, episode 100 and the future of Borderlands.

I'm really, really excited about it, really, really bullish on it and optimistic.

And I can't thank you all enough for leaning in with me.

All right, that's it for today.

I'll see you next time.

Thank you.

It's too damn cold war.