Are Outdoor Pursuits Inherently Elitist?

And is running the solution, or just another problem?

I had a minor Twitter debate this week about whether outdoor sports were inherently elitist or not, my stance being they absolutely and almost exclusively are.

Jamie Currie @JP_Currie

@JustinHousman @amonthei @ozskier Come on, man, they’re almost the definition of elitist! Aspirational, expensive, instagrammable hobbies accessible to a cross-section of society (in most parts of the world) where participants make snap judgements about others based on appearances and how good their gear is.

We were talking primarily about mountain-biking and surfing, but I think you can extend this to almost every form of outdoor recreation (except for some forms of running, but more on that in a minute).

If you look up any definition of elitism it’s hard to argue against this assertion. According to Wikipedia (and paraphrased slightly for brevity):

Elitism is the belief or notion that a select group of people - perceived as having high intellect, wealth, power, notability, special skills, or experience - deserve influence or authority greater than that of others.

Read that again.

Now tell me which outdoor pursuit doesn’t include strong elements of this as a core part of the culture?

I’d say make a list, but I don’t think you could.

I asked my partner, Melanie, if she thought outdoor sports were elitist.

“Maybe things like mountain biking”, she said. “And definitely surfing.”

“Why surfing?” I asked, a little surprised at her decisiveness.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t start surfing because you wanted to be different”, she replied.

And I suppose she’s right, to an extent.

(Ironically, it was also my rebellion from the definitively elitist cultures of sailing and windsurfing, but that’s another story.)

There are practical reasons why surfing is elitist, mostly justified. Nothing else is so crowd sensitive and the resources are limited and scarce. It’s undeniable that many line-ups can’t function safely or effectively without a natural meritocracy. But this is a separate discussion worthy of a few thousand words alone, so I’ll leave it there.

Snapper Rocks, Australia. No way to make this work, pecking order or not. (Photo: Juan Medina)

If you think about it, some semblance of elitism is at the heart of anything we identify with. That’s not to say we don’t love what we do, but we love it because it’s our story, because it gives shape and meaning to our lives and who we are.

The dichotomy of humanity is our need to be part of a group or community, yet our aching desire to stand out as an individual.

We’re all just searching for an identity. And it hurts when the identity we’ve committed to gets co-opted by everyone else. We’re no longer the individuals we thought we were. We are no longer original. We are no longer elite.

For a while in my early 20s I worked in a surf, snowboard and skate shop. Mostly I hid in the basement fixing and servicing boards because that’s what I enjoyed, but I was actively trying to avoid the customers. An indoor snow facility had opened nearby and it attracted a whole new crowd of city snowboarders. Everyone that came into the shop was buzzing with the enthusiasm of this exciting new hobby. I was a grizzled old snowboarding veteran of more than ten years by this point (I’d done Seasons, you know…) and I didn’t want to hear about it.

Snowboarding was changing in ways I didn’t like, and I was stuck in a shop serving people who were out doing it. I didn’t want to hear about their trips to the Alps or how many days of riding they’d squeezed in. They bought kit I could never afford and I handed it over with gritted teeth, imagining what I might do with it instead.

I actually gave up snowboarding for a few years after this. Not because I fell out of love with riding, but because I didn’t like this evolving culture. It didn’t seem like me anymore. Or perhaps more accurately: it didn’t seem like mine.

I can see how stupid that is now, but it felt important at the time.

This type of elitism still remains in outdoor sports, and quite apart from my juvenile sulking, I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with valuing experience and authenticity. As with the surfing example, there are practical reasons like safety and etiquette to justify why people should listen and defer to experts. But just as inexperienced people need to recognise this, so too the experts need to understand that they’re not outliers anymore and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. Things change. You move on or you adapt and deal with it.

To surf, snowboard, hike, run or ride trails, or go “wild swimming” is about as ordinary as it gets in 2022. Everyone does the things we do. In a post-pandemic world, now more than ever.

The new pandemic is the quest for work/life balance, remote working, hyper-leisure…most of which involves outdoor lifestyles.

What once was counter-culture has become simply culture.

I started skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding as a kid because they weren’t clean cut. They were edgy, grimy, rebel cultures. They weren’t on TV and they certainly weren’t Olympic sports. In fact, they were the absolute antithesis of that. Some people believe they still are, but the fact remains there are now Olympians in all disciplines.

Increased participation in outdoor culture is also symptomatic of the fact that awareness of physical and mental health is greater than ever before, which is no bad thing. But people with a lifetime of dedication to their chosen pursuit have always implicitly understood the health benefits, so it’s no wonder it gets under their skin when all of a sudden everyone’s trying to sell it to them.

Money kills everything. The prevailing culture of the tech world has brought not only the means to broadcast what you do and conditions where we should question the authenticity and motivations of brands and individuals, but the idea that learning outdoor skills can be expedited through efficiency, hacking and optimisation.

Why do the hard yards when you can just shortcut it? As outdoor lifestyles have become more aspirational and fashionable they’ve also become more accessible and increasingly defined by money.

Mark Zuckerberg’s a surfer now. He hacked the process by buying 1500 acres of Kauai as a private learning facility and employing the world’s best all round waterman in Kai Lenny as a personal tutor.

When Lewis Hamilton wanted to get barrelled he didn’t need to wait years for his local beach to get good and endure hundreds of hours of shit waves and frustration, he just spent a few hours at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch with the man himself to coach and hoot him in.

These are extreme examples, clearly, but they’re part of a greater culture shift. You might not know anyone with Zuck money, but I’m sure you’re aware of people who’ve fast-tracked into a lifestyle in a way that wasn’t possible in the past, at least not for the majority. You know, the kind of people who can spend a fortnight in the Mentawais, or drop 10k or a bike, and all without making the career, relationship or commitment sacrifices it once took.

If my youthful interest in outdoor sports was because I wanted to stand out, I gravitated towards running in later life because I wanted to fade away.

Running was my escape route. I assumed it was beyond corruption and free of bullshit. How could something so simple be commandeered? But of course it can. The swelling trends of trail running and ultrarunning are as bad as anything else if you look in the right (or wrong) places.

The UTMB World Series and other major races are expanding into mainstream consciousness. You can pay £15499 for the privilege of “racing” 120 miles, and even at the conservative end of the spectrum you’d be hard pushed to find an ultra with an entry fee of less that £100. Even if you don’t shell out £290 for a pair of trail shoes that have a short lifespan, you’re still looking at £100-£200.

People have a tendency to take the things they love and squeeze them to death, and it’s no surprise that brands capitalise on this, quite literally. If you love something you can be certain it will be leveraged to make money.

You do it to yourself. No-one forced me to start paying attention to the running industry or what anyone else was doing. No-one twisted my arm and forced me to buy shoes or care about race results. For that matter, no-one forced me to start writing about it. Why don’t I just go out and run instead of having to define it all the time?

I suppose I’m a sucker for marketing and commercialism just like everyone else. If it didn’t work it wouldn’t exist.

Maybe there’s a way of holding things you love close without choking them to death, or maybe it’s about keeping them at arm’s length. In running and in life I’m still trying to figure that out.

But then, it’s up to me (or you) to remember why you’re doing it in the first place. You just need to remember that the reasons you love something can’t be bought or sold. With running in particular, I started because I felt like running, not because I was attracted to any sort of image or culture. And although many of the cultures I’ve been talking about have been irreversibly changed by money, technology and popularity, I don’t think running has to be.

Free for all, now and forever

There are niche and localised hill running cultures in the UK that remain unspoiled. That’s something I’m almost afraid to say, given that inclination to write about it is exactly how it could change. If you’re running up and down a hill in mud and bogs and rain, no-one outside of the top 4 or 5 really cares how fast you are, I’m pretty sure no-one cares what you look like, and I’m certain no amount of money is going to make you any faster. There might be elite athletes among you, but there seems to be little sense of elitism. There’s also no money in it, and no notoriety beyond your own village, and that’s what preserves it.

Perhaps I say all this with a bit of joyful, amateur naivety, but I do think running is a place where everyone can find their level and participation doesn’t always need to be about performance. There’s a purity in that, an enduring appeal that I hope can endure.

---

Great news this week is that you can now read Running High in the new Substack app for iPhone.

With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.

The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.