The language of public lands carries a promise for runners. The promise of wild, scenic, and inspiring places—urban, rural, and remote—belonging to and welcoming all. RPL exists to realize this promise through protecting these beautiful landscapes, keeping them collectively held, and expanding sustainable access through education, community, and advocacy.
Last month we brought this mission to life in the Colorado Rockies, gathering more than 30 runners from across the American West for a weekend in Leadville that was part summer camp, part mountain adventure, and part civic engagement.
Around the campfire, local leaders of the Cloud City Conservation Center (C4) and Lake County Tourism District shared stories of a revolution underway in Leadville as regenerative agriculture and regenerative tourism replace the extraction and contamination of mining. Local farmers and business owners added depth to these stories, showing how the healing of land and community go hand in hand.
The weekend’s runs were extraordinary. We explored Leadville’s legendary, lung-busting trails in perfect summer weather, led by celebrated athletes Erin Ton and Dani Reyes-Acosta, and the C4 staff. Meanwhile our emotions ran the gamut of anger, uncertainty, and grief, given the congressional efforts to sell off public lands—combined with the fear many of us felt amid the immigration enforcement threats. The mountains were calling as usual, but now summoning us as a community to reflect on what public lands mean to us.
Watching and discussing Reyes-Acosta’s most recent film Outlier:Common—about connecting to the places we recreate in and bringing our whole selves to the outdoors—got us thinking about the new narratives our community was living into in Leadville, where environmental and social issues aren’t neatly partitioned, but rather, like in our own lives, profoundly overlap.
Finally, we partnered with the Friends of Lake County and the U.S. Forest Service to clear over 150 illegal fire rings in the region to regenerate the watershed. And RPL’s executive director Kat Baker guided us in writing letters to our respective members of Congress, sharing why public lands matter to us personally and urging them to remove their sell-off from pending legislation and use all means possible to support federal land managers.
We left Leadville energized—not just by the friends we made, miles we ran, and things we did, but by the sense that we’re part of something bigger: a revolution of runners fighting to protect public lands and embracing the broadest possible vision of who belongs to and benefits from them.
Five Reflections from the Weekend
- RPL’s power is relational power. When RPL board members, staff, runners, and partners—land managers, nonprofits, businesses, and brands—camp, run, learn, and fight side by side, we forge relationships that fuel our national policy work. Weekends like this matter because they build the human connections that drive systemic change.
- Our dedication runs super deep. Public lands hold immense value to runners across multiple dimensions: ecological, climatic, community, public health, recreational, cultural, spiritual, aesthetic, scientific, educational, democratic, nationalist, personally/politically transformational, economic, and resource-related. By bringing people together to protect the people and places runners love, public lands continue to offer meaningful common ground to a desperately divided country.
- Running wild is transformative. Running through remote, rugged landscapes doesn’t just build endurance, it shapes character. These experiences strip away distractions, call us into the present, and expose more raw, authentic, vulnerable versions of ourselves. Trail running is now becoming a path of both personal development and environmental advocacy—the latter in this case to protect and expand access to the public lands that make the former possible.
- Sportsmanship in a new mode. Sportsmanship means conduct becoming of one participating in a sport, and is usually understood as the social practices of fairness, respect for one’s opponent, and graciousness in winning or losing. Runners today however are extending that definition, adding advocacy, land stewardship, and civic engagement. They’re demonstrating a fierce watchfulness over landscapes they no longer take for granted. Restless, discontent, and uncompromising amid existential threats to public lands and clean air and water, runners are rising with both hope and courage—combining forces with other outdoor recreation advocacy organizations—to demand greater measures of protection and access.
- From sentiment to full send. There’s nothing wrong with feeling sentimental about public lands. But in the face of major menaces to them, runners are taking up the fight, willing to throw punches in Congress and courtrooms if they have to. Our love for public lands isn’t just an emotional thing, it’s also a political thing, and we’re going all in.
Vic Thasiah, RPL board president