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​Friday Inspiration 534​
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This is just a really pleasant way to spend 3 minutes: Watching backcountry ice skaters in Alaska, brought to you by adventure legend Luc Mehl. (video) (thanks, Alice)

Hilary has been taking classes to get her Montana Master Naturalist certification, so I have been getting to hear a lot about plants and birds over the past several months. (Like, more than I normally do.) AND, I got to read this amazing little piece about this insane thing that the earth does at 26-second intervals, and no one knows why it happens (although they do know where it originates).

Thanks to Jono Hey and Sketchplanations, I now know what recursive islands are, and the illustration Jono made here is pretty cool, but then underneath it is the caption "This happens for real" and then a little ways down the page is a Google Maps link to Vulcan Point in the Philippines, which I demand you click on and then zoom in and out several times so you can be the most interesting person at the next party you attend. [Related: Jono let me interview him on the My Favorite Things podcast a few weeks ago]

Do we get dehydrated when we sleep? I’ll just say I was interested and then kind of dismayed at the findings in this article by newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration, because I have religiously been drinking a liter of water every morning before I drink coffee for like a decade and a half now. But I started doing it while living in Denver, which is high-altitude and also has dry air, so maybe more justified?). Anyway: How does your body work to prevent dehydration at night? [reminder that this link will give you 15% off your first 2026 purchase of PFH stuff]

In conversation with Mike Foote about this new grant program The Rut is doing for this year’s race, I was really hoping they’d find a way to use the money to fund musicians playing at different spots in this year’s Vertical Kilometer race, and I said so, as well as a couple other ideas. The grant is for … kind of anything, as long as you can make a case for it: “We are not looking for projects that focus on competition, performance, or speed, such as FKTs or races. You can scratch that competitive itch at the Rut! The Rut Grants are about everything else outside of the competitive arena that nourishes and grows our sport.” I would just say that I have a feeling that if you are a tuba player who can play a lot of Metallica covers (or part of a group of tuba players who can play a lot of Metallica covers) and don’t mind hiking your tuba in to a spot on a race course on the side of a mountain, I think you’d be a shoo-in. Just my gut.

I am a huge Charlize Theron fan, so of course I was going to read this long interview with her (which is also a podcast and a video interview), in which the interviewer asks about her role in the new movie apex, saying, “you play a mountain climber who …” and Charlize Theron corrects her by half-jokingly saying, “Rock climber. Do your research.” (Fun fact: Beth Rodden taught her to climb for this film!) [GIFT LINK]

Sarah Lavender Smith (whose very excellent running Substack I have linked to in this newsletter before) sent me this great essay Scott Dunlap wrote about running his 22nd Boston Marathon, and it’s about time and the passage of time and why we go back and repeat things, and also kind of about running a marathon.

I almost put this video in the main spot at the top of this newsletter, but there’s a bit of violence/hazing in the scenes in the first half/first song of the video, BUT, I think it’s also necessary to set up the second half of the video (and the second song) that has the most amazing choreography, and I have been watching this thing repeatedly since I discovered it on Monday, so maybe if all that stuff doesn’t turn you off, you’ll like it too.

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