The Trail Running Sea of Sameness | Nike ACG, Nostalgia, and the Cost of Optimization
12 June 2026

The Trail Running Sea of Sameness | Nike ACG, Nostalgia, and the Cost of Optimization

Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running

About

Modern trail running shoes are better than they've ever been. So why do so many runners still find themselves drawn to older designs like the Nike ACG LDV?

Josh and Inky use one nostalgic shoe to explore a bigger question: what happens when an industry spends years optimizing toward the same answer? Somewhere between old Nike catalogs, modern trail shoes, and a sea of increasingly similar products, they uncover why certain designs still stop us in our tracks.

Shout out to Marty from Global Sales Guys who talks about the Sea of Sameness in outdoor retail.

Please give us a follow, rate the podcast, and give a review.

If you’re new to Borderlands, start here.

Resources / Links
    The Mountain That Made ACGInky's Article about theROCKER

Related Episodes
    Ultra Running isn't Just RunningI Was Wrong About Kiprun

Presented by Kiprun.

----

Borderlands explores trail running through culture, media, and the forces shaping it.

Watch on YouTube

Read on Substack