This year, Run the Alps has been celebrating its 10th Anniversary. To mark the moment, we asked Founder Doug Mayer to look back on his own improbable journey to Chamonix, the evolution of the company, and what lessons he might have learned along the way. Enjoy!

15 years ago, if you had told me that I would be living in Chamonix, France, managing a trail running company with a lively gang of new friends, I would have probably said, “How is that going to happen?!”

After all, I enjoyed my job working on one of NPR’s shows. I lived in the mountains with a tight community of outdoor pals, and things were going just fine, thank you very much. 

But life takes crazy turns sometimes.

As David Byrne puts it, “…You may find yourself in another part of the world…. And you may ask yourself, ‘How did I get here?’”

I used to think it was all because of serendipity, crediting a conversation one night a dozen years ago in Champéry, Switzerland. Talking with then-Salomon runner Rickey Gates, who, over pizza after a long day of trail running in the wild Dents-du-Midi range, paused mid-conversation, looked at me and said:

“You know, you should start a company.” 

But, truth be told, I think the answer is more nuanced than that.

I’ve spent some time reflecting on that question of how I got to Chamonix and what transpired along the way. I finally have a more complete answer for myself, and anyone else who might be interested in the story behind Run the Alps.

Anniversaries inspire reflection– and ten is a number that invites a little more introspection than usual. 

I think a lot of those memorable moments are intertwined with lessons learned en route. I’ve changed a lot along the way, and so has Run the Alps. Here are a few lessons and some of the key moments for Run the Alps during these last ten years.

What I’ve Learned from Run the Alps

Doors are open all around us.  But you can’t go through them if you don’t see them.

Eight years ago, Run the Alps was just getting going, and it was showing real signs of success. The timing seemed to be good– trail running was growing. Guests were telling their friends, and it was all starting to organically happen.  Each summer, I was coming and going from the Alps, between my home in New Hampshire’s White Mountains and Switzerland’s Valais region. 

A friend suggested to me that maybe I should move to Chamonix. My immediate reaction was to dismiss the idea. (Tip: sometimes it takes a friend to point out what is right in front of you. Second tip: your first reaction to something somewhat scary might be to say, “I could never do that!”  Stop and take a look at why you are dismissing an idea so quickly. Is there a fear behind your decision?)

Not everyone will be encouraging you to step through the door. Some may even argue against it. 

Starting something new isn’t just additive, either.  Sometimes it means losing both things and people. Some doors may close. A fair bit of courage and self-forgiveness is required. 

What happened? Well, I didn’t dive right in. Instead, I took a small step. I got a one-year, long-stay tourist visa to test out the idea. Which leads me to another lesson learned.

Take small steps. But take them.

Looking back over ten years, Run the Alps looks like one big daring leap. But the view of, say, a climb looks different from a distance. Get up close, and it’s a series of technical moves, usually with a demanding crux where you might fall once or twice before you succeed. In my case, that crux was the French bureaucracy. Not working for an international company, and not being an elite trail runner that would land me a (relatively) quick and easy talent visa, I was largely on my own with the bureaucracy– and it was not easy.

Here in the Chamonix valley, Hillary Gerardi, one of the world’s great runners on technical, airy terrain, has been pretty influential in my thinking on the idea of taking small steps. She talks about courage as being made up not of bold, capital-letter-C courage, but as a lot of “small c” courageous moments. In my experience, that’s spot on. (Here’s more from her on that topic.) Courage is not usually a big leap. More often, it’s one small tentative step after another. 

Ordained buddhist nun Pema Chodron talks about these small steps as concentric circles of challenge. (Take a moment and listen to her explain it better than I can, in this video.)

Run the Alps has taken small steps, too. Our initial trips were self-guided tours in quiet valleys in the Swiss Alps. We’ve evolved to meet a wider range of interests. And we’ve done it one step at a time. 

Kilian Jornet put it very simply, in his book Run or Die. “What matters in life is the pursuit. The important thing,” he said, “is to move.” 

And by the way: once you go through a door, it’s a little easier to go through the next one.

After you go through a door, there will be times it will suck. 

Change is hard. There are surprises, and not all of them are good. 

My first year in France was, if I’m being honest with myself, kind of lonely. I didn’t have a lot of friends here in Chamonix yet, the language was hard, some of the customs seemed confusing, and the bureaucracy was world-class. Refusing to accept a change of visa status– something that could have been done here in France– a bureaucrat once decided I should go back to the US to figure it out. Our Run the Alps trips were starting in a week… and I had to leave the country. I pounded my fist on the stone walls of the Annecy prefecture, then booked a flight to Boston where– of course!– I was told, “You do know that you could have done this in France, right?”

Put yourself in situations where things will happen.

There were times when I didn’t have a clear sense why a certain action felt right. But I did it, anyway.

In the summer of 2012, and very much on a whim, I decided to email mountain photographers Dan and Janine Patitucci. Based in Interlaken, Switzerland, they are two of the world’s best outdoor photographers. They are legendary. Their work has appeared everywhere from National Geographic to the Patagonia catalog. That one email helped kickstart Run the Alps, led to a book project, and a longtime professional partnership. (I wrote about that moment a year later.) 

Moving Run the Alps from Switzerland, where it started, to Chamonix, France, was another of these moments. I could sense that trail running was in ascendance in Chamonix. I didn’t have a perfectly clear reason to move here. It just felt right. Which leads me to my next point.

Trust your heart.

Okay, it’s a cliché. But bear with me for a moment. 

Clarity is a great thing when you have it. But how often is that? The world is complicated and choices can be bewildering. There’s a lot more gray than there is black and white. This summer, Charlotte and I had the good luck to have lunch here in Chamonix with the founders of Tailwind, Jenny and Jeff. They said something that immediately resonated with me– that they built their company on partnerships. The same is true of Run the Alps. Whatever it is that we have here has been built almost exclusively through friendships. In the early days of Run the Alps, more often than not, I’d meet someone and find a role for them, rather than the more conventional other-way-around. I would find myself thinking, “I don’t know how this is going to work, but I want this person as part of our team.”

The partners we have now have become close friends– more than just transactional business partners, we trust each other, share tips and ideas, and venture into new territory together. 

And good partnerships lead to deep loyalty. We are there for each other, whatever may come. (Like, say, a global pandemic.)

The same sense of partnership is true among our staff. At Run the Alps, we have a five-person Lead Team. (In case you’re wondering: Abby, Carrie, Emily, Steph, and me.) They are friends first, business partners second. Which conveniently leads me somewhat to my next point. 

Candor matters.

Plagiarism alert: I stole this principle a long time ago, from Axios and a Delta pilot.

You don’t always move forward without hard discussions. It’s just a fact of life. And that includes Run the Alps. I have learned though, that you can have those discussions thoughtfully. For example, there are different degrees of honesty. Just share what is necessary, and do it non-violently, expressing it in terms of your needs instead of as a direct criticism. 

I want that criticism flipped around on myself, too. It’s not always what you want to hear, but I want us to have a culture where it’s okay to tell each other that a particular idea or direction isn’t going over well. I’ve always believed humor is the best way to open these doors in each direction, so I find myself asking something like, “Please let me know if I’m being an absolute moron here!” The idea goes back to a friend of mine, a pilot for Delta, who explained to me once that they were actually trained to use humor in the cockpit to open difficult discussions. (During a stormy flight when the crew needed to make a quick decision, he once told his co-pilot, “In 20 minutes, we’re going to be on the ground, and I’d like it to be at an airport.”)

Admission: I’m not very good at being candid, when the conversation is hard. I fall back to humor to open those conversations, and I’m grateful my coworkers put up with it. I can find a few hundred things I’d rather be doing than having a challenging discussion. But I’m working on it. 

It can’t just be ”Yes,” it needs to be, “Hell, Yes!”

There are some things I’ve learned during these past ten years that I’m terrible at implementing. This is one of them. I’m not sure who shared it with me first– either Hillary Gerardi or Mimmi Kotka. 

These days, trail running is abuzz with possibilities. And nowhere is that more true than Chamonix. Everyone– every brand, every race, every athlete, every recreational athlete– has a project. And many of these ideas are glittery and their strong gravity lures you into their orbits. The charismatic leader behind each idea may want to partner with you.

But you need to stay true to your course. Which one of these ideas will move you a step closer toward your goals? Do you have the capacity to execute it as well as you have ticked off previous projects?

At Run the Alps, Giles Ruck has helped us develop a comprehensive “Run/Don’t Run” template that we now use to steer our thinking when a cool project comes in over the transom. We’re using it right now for several ventures– some of which we’ll announce soon, others which won’t get a green light. That “Is it Hell Yes?”  discipline keeps us from sailing towards the singing of the Sirens that, according to Greek mythology, left sailors shipwrecked on the rocks and starving. 

Have fun as you go.

Years ago, in what now feels like another life, one of my best friends and I worked on an oral history of mountain people. We were interviewing Dr. Harry McDade, a climber, pilot and adventurer who was arguably the world’s pioneer in the management of frostbite injuries. In his 70s, he paused at the end of our interview, looked at us both and said, “Dum vivimus vivamus: While we live, let us live,” then added, “Have a little fun as you go!” 

That thought has been a guidepost for me ever since. Are we having fun? If not, we might need a course correction. 

Keep Living the Dream.

Friends who don’t know me all that well often tell me that I am “living the dream.” And in many ways, that’s true. Friends who know me better know that the dream has also included a lot of really long hours that have sometimes complicated my life, my relationships, and once or twice, my health. 

One morning at around 5 am, a Run the Alps guide, Simon Conroy, came out of a bedroom at a staff apartment we had in Chamonix some years ago. He saw me answering emails on my laptop at the dining room table. “Ah… living the dream, I see!” he laughed. 

Case in point: As I write this, it’s a Saturday morning, and the sun is not even so much as a hint in the Chamonix sky. But I’ll get out for a run in an hour or two!

Making Run the Alps into what it is today has been one enormous team effort, with many people working long and unheralded hours. We are running an ultramarathon. And in the case of both ultras and building something new, it turns out the one thing you really need in abundant supply is grit. (This short TED talk is very much worth it, by the way.)

That grit is a collective quality shared by everyone on our Lead Team and by others throughout Run the Alps. And so, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the efforts of Abby, Carrie, Emily, and Steph, and everyone in the concentric circles that surround us– our guides, our freelancers, our far-flung friends, partners, and alumni. Many of these people are my role models. And together, one day at a time, we’re creating something wonderful. 

More great things are going to come from Run the Alps, because there are always more doors to open and we have the mindset to find them, the desire to open them, and the grit to make things happen.