The TSA agent poured a bit of white powder onto a petri dish and squeezed two droplets of clear liquid onto what I now realized looked eerily similar to cocaine. The liquid turned blue, which judging from the TSA agent’s reaction, seemed ok. I was cleared to go.
The recovery bath salts were a parting gift from Gordon, a wiry runner with a Zeus-like beard, who is a legend in the renegade running world. I’d spent the last few days with him at Huckberry headquarters in Austin shooting a Merrell collab, interspersed with two four-mile runs in the sticky weather that had settled over Austin.
I only saw Gordon tired once – the morning after we stayed out a bit late at Equipment Room, a vinyl listening bar in Austin. The guy never stops moving. He’s full of stories – one tale bleeds into the next – and his favorite topic is running. More specifically, he loves the pursuit of outlaw running – unsanctioned races, like the Speed Project, a relay race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
Gordon gets animated when he talks about a race in the Atacama Desert, a runner he met who wears a motorcycle helmet during an unsupported trans-American run – symbols of a new brand of running, something more akin to skate culture or Burning Man than the more conservative images that get conjured when you mention ‘jogging.’
So as we zigzagged our way across Austin, en-route to Barton Springs, I pressed him on a few burning questions. Is zone 2 training legit? What’s the best way to avoid injury? We went deep into shoe design and he explained why Merrell’s trail runner was his favorite.
