August 2018 -

Rising to the challenge of the grand Tarentaise

When you’ve spent the past decade travelling the globe and running in some of the biggest trail races in the world, what do you do to stay motivated?

If you’re HOKA athlete Julien Chorier, you take to the Alps and tackle the 295-kilometre challenge of the Tarentaise, of course.

“At the beginning of the year, I couldn’t really find a main aim for the season, so I made the decision to create it,” says Julien, speaking just before his appearance in the TDS race at this year’s Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) event, where he finished ninth.

“I really wanted to create something new, something that would allow me to discover new things,” he adds.

Sharing the experience

But the opportunity for Julien to share this experience with his family and closest friends was the biggest motivating factor behind his record attempt.

“Most of all, I wanted to do it in an environment that I knew well, somewhere close to home, so that my friends, family and training partners could all be a part of it too.”

Julien completed his ‘Grand Tour de la Tarentaise’ in a record 66 hours and 13 minutes.

Rising to the challenge

The 38-year-old, who lives in Saint-Thibaud-de-Couz, France with his wife and two daughters, has enjoyed an elite trail-running career spanning more than a decade.

“Most of all, I wanted to do it in an environment that I knew well, somewhere close to home, so that my friends, family and training partners could all be a part of it too.” Julien Chorier

Julien won the CCC race at UTMB in 2007 and finished on the podium in the 171-kilometre event the following year.

He has won prestigious trail races around the world, and is a two-time winner of the Grand Raid de la Réunion, also known as ‘La Diagonale des Fous’.

Taking on the Tarentaise

La Diagonale des Fous translates to ‘The Madmen’s Diagonal’ in English, rather fitting given Julien’s appetite to take on the toughest of challenges.

The Tarentaise is more renowned for its beautiful ski resorts and the route Julien tackled featured 295 kilometres and up to 20,000m of elevation. It was certainly the sort of challenge he was after.

“I left Val Thorens on the Friday morning under sunny skies and just happy to be there,” recalls Julien. “I didn’t dare to consider the magnitude of the task before me at that point!”

The sunny skies didn’t last. Battling heavy rain and hailstorms, rocky paths, landslides and crippling fatigue, Julien arrived back at Val Thorens a little over 66 hours later.

Together, we go further

Julien’s journey was documented the entire way by Aurélien Colin and his Athlete 2.0 crew for a special feature film that premiered this week at UTMB.

It will be 2019 before the film is officially released – but for now, share in the spirit of Julien’s adventure with this teaser.

“Our motto was that, alone, we go faster,” says Julien, “but with many, we go further. I think we achieved that with this challenge.”

Photo credit: Rémi Blomme (Athlete 2.0)

The simple trick to running fast downhill

Jumping out of helicopters and hot air balloons. That’s what’s next on HOKA trail athlete Dani Moreno’s bucket list. An accomplished trail runner and adventurer, Dani’s portfolio is chock-full of adrenaline sports, not limited to spearfishing, lobster diving, motorcycle riding, surfing, rock climbing, sea kayaking and paddleboarding.

“From a young age, I’ve always done a lot. You’re gonna laugh when I say this, but my mom said it was because I didn’t want to interact with people. I was really shy. I would get myself into so many things so I didn’t have to actually talk to people. And now you can’t get me to shut up,” Dani says.

A California native, Dani finds herself in the outdoors year-round. She’s a graduate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she ran track and cross country. Growing up, running came easily. But it was always more than just wanting to be the fastest.

“For me, running isn’t just to try and win races. It’s the way I prefer to see the world — by foot. It lets me test myself mentally and get to know other people and parts of the world,” Dani says.

Her running motivations are humble, but her accomplishments are not. The first of many accolades, Dani’s season already boasts a first-place finish at the XTERRA World Trail Championships and another first-place finish at the Ezakimak Challenge (a 5K race with around 2,000 feet of elevation gain).

Conquering the unfathomable

And her most recent achievement? AN FKT, OR FASTEST-KNOWN TIME, ON A SEGMENT OF TUNNEL TRAIL IN HER HOME OF SANTA BARBARA, CA. This specific section of trail is well-known for its technical terrain and steep grade. But for Dani, it holds another meaning.

“When I first found this section, it was by accident. I got lost and was trying to find my way back down. I was going downhill and was like, ‘What is this? There’s no way someone can run this.’ The whole thing just seemed unfathomable. So I just walked down,” she says.

“I tried to run a few parts, but said to myself, ‘This is stupid. I could fall.’ After that, I realized I needed to be able to run it. And I told myself the day that I could run that section is the day that I would’ve really started getting trail running.”

Dani owned her FKT on the 2.54-mile loop with 1,114 feet of vertical gain. To put these numbers in perspective, the Empire State building stands at 1,250 feet tall, excluding the tip. She clocked in at 26:23 for the full loop and clocked under 10 minutes for the downhill section of the run.

Raising the bar

“To support the launch of the new TORRENT trail shoe, we wanted to set an FKT somewhere really gnarly and crazy in Santa Barbara. I immediately thought of this section. I was stoked about it, so I went out to hike it the next day. Immediately I was like, ‘What did I do to myself? How can I run this?’ I was just cracking up,” she says.

“But then I thought it would really force me to take this particular stretch to the next level. I’m really happy that we chose it. It definitely pushed me to understand a new potential for myself in terms of running fast downhill.”

As superhuman as she may seem, sometimes she’s just like the rest of us. And yes, sometimes she even falls. “Yes, I definitely fall sometimes. When you’re mountain running, you can’t get upset at the trail for tripping you — especially when it’s your own mistake,” she says. “But, I love falls. Without them, I’d never push myself to get better. Plus, who doesn’t love a good scar, cut or bruise for storytelling? Us mountain runners are warriors.”

Getting back up again

Dani’s worst fall happened during the 2017 World Long Distance Mountain Running Championships in Italy. A few months before the race, she’d severely sprained her ankle — while rock climbing, no less.

“Literally on the first downhill, I rolled my bad ankle and I just freaked out. I was so mad. Girls were passing me and my ankle started blowing up. I gave myself a couple seconds and I then I pulled myself together,” she says.

“I realized that sometimes you need to pep talk yourself really quickly. There wasn’t time for anything else. That was the big realization — that every time you get pushed down you need to get up immediately.”

Trusting her instincts

One thing that’s given her an edge on the trails is something she’s had from day one — the ability to let go and trust her instincts.

“When you run a downhill, sometimes the best way to do it is to lose control. Not in your running form, but by swinging your arms. I don’t know if that’s just me, but that’s my body instinctively saying this is how we’re gonna balance.” Dani says. “Your body doesn’t want to fall as much as your mind. It’s instinct. Give credit to your body and mind because they’re gonna take care of you. And if you fall and hurt yourself, don’t blame me.”

Excelling at so many different activities isn’t easy, but for Dani, balance is always the common denominator. She focuses on being well-rounded — a synonym for what she calls “circle-ness.”

“I’ve always been obsessed with circles and I see people as circles. As a circle, essentially your whole life is well-rounded. And if you’re well-rounded in what you do, then you’re well-rounded in how you treat people and portray yourself,” she says. “I think it makes you a more empathetic person. You get to have different experiences and that not only gives you different types of hard times, but also different types of rewards.”

Dani’s balanced bucket list is still growing. In addition to getting her skydiving license, she’d like to climb Denali or Everest, get another motorcycle and get better at surfing. But, she’s taking things slow in that realm for now. “You gotta keep it mild before the spicy hot,” she says.

Learn more about the fast, aggressive and agile Torrent trail running shoe that Dani wears.

The masterminds behind the Fly Collection

In February 2018, we introduced the Fly Collection — an entirely new collection that looks different than anything we’ve done before, but has the same feel you know and love. So, where did this idea come from?

“Creating shoes is almost like a sport. You can always get better. You have to be able to adapt and change your strategy. You’re trying to solve a problem and it’s just that idea of ‘it’s never done,’” says Gretchen Weimer, one of the creators of the Fly Collection. As the vice president of product at HOKA and with over 25 years of experience in the footwear industry, Gretchen helped create the brand’s revolutionary collection. She describes herself as single-minded and competitive, two qualities that have pushed her to where she is today.

Beating the competition

Hailing from Buffalo, NY, Gretchen ran cross country in high school. “I went to an all girls’ school and they had just started a cross country team. But we didn’t have anyone to train with,” Gretchen says. “Our partner school was all boys’, so we’d have training days with the boys’ team and we all competed in the same races. That was really wild.”

“I remember running in a race and encouraging one of the boys from the other school I was competing against. I was encouraging him and I was beating him. He was so pissed off,” Gretchen says, laughing, “I knew I could beat him. I’m super competitive. I was like, ‘I’ll be nice to you, but I’m gonna beat you.’”

“Creating shoes is almost like a sport. You can always get better. You have to be able to adapt and change your strategy. You’re trying to solve a problem and it’s just that idea of ‘it’s never done’.” Gretchen Weimer

After a year or two of cross country, Gretchen found her true passion, rowing, and she worked hard to became a world-class single sculler. Single scullers race individually rather than with a team. After making it through the Olympic Trials, she was in the Olympic Selection Camp before eventually being cut.

Climbing the career ladder

During her training for the Olympic Trials, Gretchen worked for a financial services company in a specialty program designed for athlete job opportunities. “When I didn’t make it to the Olympics, they offered me a job in their broker training program. And I was like, ‘Hell, no,’” Gretchen says, “I’d spent the last ten years of my life in a wet T-shirt and shorts. If you can’t see yourself doing something, it’s probably never gonna happen.”

Gretchen tracked down a sales rep and edged her way into a job as a technical sales rep before moving into a sales position, then becoming a product line sales manager, then finally landing as an account executive. “As an account executive, I was managing the outdoor and women’s lifestyle footwear for a retailer. And that was my first taste of creating product. It was me, the buyer, the designer and the developers all working together to take the stories from the marketing team and give it to them in a different package,” Gretchen says.

Later, she managed small-scale women’s casual footwear brands and men’s and women’s performance outdoor brands. I ask how she’s stayed interested in such a specific topic for her entire career. “Being an athlete was my life for so long. And working around other athletes and being in a competitive environment just made me feel like, ‘Oh. These are my people,’” Gretchen says.

Turning ideas into reality

Joining the HOKA team in early 2016, Gretchen and her team had a vision for the Fly Collection. “It’s never one person doing all of it. I have a team, a really talented team. And we’re always working to tap into other people’s experiences and try and create something from all the parts that we have,” she says.

“With HOKA, the idea for the brand came from this fundamental concept of geometry and foam and how the two interact. And we’re trying things like how we can make someone go faster by tweaking the geometry. Or make them more comfortable by tweaking the foam. It’s finding what the levers are and how you can use them to tune the product,” Gretchen says.

“It’s never one person doing all of it. I have a team, a really talented team. And we’re always working to tap into other people’s experiences and try and create something from all the parts that we have.” Gretchen Weimer

Basically, creating product is problem solving. It’s taking different pieces of information and data and then combining them to create a shoe. Then, working with the designers to make those innovative ideas into a reality. Pushing limits is where Gretchen thrives and she was able to channel that into the Fly Collection. “We kept wondering, was it too much of a leap? Or just enough to make people uncomfortable?” Gretchen says.

The idea for the Fly Collection started with two shoes that were very successful, the Clayton and the Vanquish, but they didn’t fit within the other long-lasting legacies of the brand. Names like Bondi and Clifton are almost synonymous with HOKA. “We took two shoes and amplified them by talking about them in a different way. They represented something and we put them in the Fly Collection to tell a story about why and what they represent,” Gretchen says.

As part of HOKA’s DNA, flight seemed like a perfect way to tie everything together. After all, when translated, the brand name loosely means “to fly over the earth” in Maori. “We went after this notion of flight and created a story around it. And added another shoe to round it all out — everything is better in threes,” Gretchen says. So, they created the Mach using the DNA of the Clayton, the Elevon from the Vanquish and then added the Cavu for a full set.

Looking into the future

The result of all this? Three shoes that are incredibly lightweight and still offer the signature cushioning HOKA is known for. And this revolutionary collection is just the beginning of a new wave for the brand. Not to give away too many secrets, but they’re currently hard at work to create another new collection — this time with hiking.

“HOKA was born on the mountain and then we moved to the road and in some cases the track. Now, we’re going back up the mountain,” Gretchen says. “Especially since there’s a bridge from trail running, to vertical running, to hiking and fast hiking. We’re trying to take it in a natural way to the mountain.”

We’re constantly finding ways to make improvements and think outside the box to define what’s possible in a running shoe. Our brand was born out of innovation and we’re still continuing to do that today — with Gretchen and her team at the forefront.

Check out the Fly Collection today.