In late-October of 2021, I travelled to Namibia to run the 7-day Namib Desert race, part of the Racing the Planet 4 Desert Series.

I ran a similar race back in 2015, the Grand to Grand Ultra, where we ran through the desert for 7 days from the Grand Canyon in Arizona to the Grand Staircase in Utah – while carrying all our food and other supplies for the week on our backs. I learned a lot in that first race which I couldn’t wait to apply to this one.

With a group of 30 other runners from around the world, I’d run 250 km through sand dunes, canyons, and moon-like landscapes in the deserts of Namibia. We’d battle extreme heat and high winds. All the while, we’d be carrying up to 18 pounds of supplies.

At night, we’d sit around the fire, we’d share stories, we’d learn about other countries and cultures, and would forge new friendships.

This is the story of my adventure.

You might have noticed in a few of my films over the past few months that I’ve been wearing two watches and have wondered why. Well, I’ve been testing the COROS Vertix against my trusty Suunto 9 Baro, and I’m here today to tell you all about what I have found.

COROS first entered the GPS watch market with the PACE multisport GPS watch in May of 2018, followed by the APEX later that year. The model that I’ve been testing out is the COROS Vertix which was launched in May of 2019. This GPS adventure watch immediately began making waves in the industry thanks to its incredible battery life, and I seems to have been positioned to be a direct competitor to the Suunto 9 Baro.

Like most premium GPS watches on the market these days, the COROS Vertix is packed with features. But none of those matter in my opinion if the watch can’t perform in two keys areas which are battery life and GPS accuracy. For me, if a watch can’t record an accurate representation of my track and last long enough to do so then it’s of little use. So that will be my primary focus of this review.

Seeing wildlife in their natural habitat is a truly special experience and the majority of interactions with bears don’t involve any aggression on the bears part. In most cases, a bear will act curious, will completely ignore you, or will simply run away.

Actual attacks are surprisingly rare. But as trail runners, our speed puts us at an increased risk for sudden encounters with bears which can provoke a defensive reaction, and the large amount of time that many of us spend in the backcountry and particularly in grizzly habitat also puts us at an increased risk.

So in this post, I’ll discuss how we can avoid potentially dangerous conflicts with bears, how to tell the difference between black bears and grizzlies, a subspecies of the brown bear, and what to do in the rare case of an attack. Most of what I’ll be recommending is based on advice from Parks Canada as well as the authoritative book by Stephen Herrero which I’d highly recommend reading for yourself.

When considering a headlamp for trail running, there are a ton of options to choose from. In this post, I’ll review what I personally look for in a headlamp to help you choose the right headlamp for you.

I’ll start by going over some of the features that separate the most common headlamps, including both the features that I’d consider absolutely essential as well as those that are just nice to haves. I’ll talk about a few different use cases where some of these different features might be important. And lastly, I’ll recommend a couple of headlamps that I’ve had good experiences with that yo can use as a basis for comparison when choosing your own.

In this post, I’m going to discuss my 5 favourite trail running apps for navigation and route planning, specifically for trail running. I’m not going to go into too much detail on how to use each app, but instead will provide a more high level overview of the features of both the free and paid versions of each, and some possible use cases.

I’ll also highlight a handful of other apps you might want to check out as well which while not on my primary list are all very useful in their own way.