There's a New Voice at MoB and She Has Questions!
What does it mean to be a runner and who gets to decide? This newbie explores where she belongs in the Los Angeles running scene and brings us along for the ride.
Hi everyone, it’s Matt. I’m really excited to introduce you to a new recurring MoB series from someone with a different voice and a different perspective. It’s an angle I am simply unable to provide but a view that brings more value to MoB.
Deanna Quadrel is a female living in Los Angeles. She is newer to running and still making sense of the scene (aren’t we all?). She has a sparkling background at both Nike and Apple plus experience at smaller startups like Tonal and Eternal. Background aside, I admire her ability to question and articulate her way through the noisy running world.
I’m excited to bring Deanna into the mix as a voice and creative sparring partner in this conversation on brand and storytelling in running. Her series, I Have Questions, will drop periodically as she brings us along on her journey of understanding. I’ll let Deanna take it from here:
I’m a newbie to the running world. While I’ve run most of my life, I’ve never called myself a “Runner”. To me, that title is reserved for those who not only have the knowledge, network, and expertise of running, but have also rooted themselves in the day-to-day lifestyle that is running. I’ve been running in Los Angeles for about five years now. Not competitively and not professionally. Just consistently enough to feel like I’m part of it, and inconsistently enough to know that I am not fully in. That feels like the most honest place to start this particular conversation.
I will say however: even though I’m just scratching the surface, the LA running scene has become a special place to me, as it is to many. It’s where I’ve found belonging and a sense of self. Where inspiration and support stick to me like the sweaty clothes on my back. And where I’ve started to chase the best version of myself. Much like LA itself, it’s incredibly diverse. There’s always a pocket where you can find a version of home. For me, that was the Heartbreak store on Main St. and the “✨ Wednesday @ 6:15a✨ ” track girls.
I’ll actually never forget my first workout with this crew. I was a soccer player through college, so track etiquette alone was a learning curve. Picture a high school cross country team taking up lane one, moms walking the perimeter, a HYROX group doing something chaotic in the corner, and then: us. A group of speedy girls, all training for different races, that found each other (more like pieced together) in this particular era of our lives. One friend invited another to the track, then another. Girls found each other through long runs, junk miles, the gym. Not really a team, not really a club. Just a standing 6:15a track meet for girls who take training seriously, but also show up to laugh, sweat, and get better together. The kind of group where you can drop in any week and pick up right where you left off.
There were about fifteen of us. Some had their own workouts and others jumped into whatever sounded fun that day. I was training for a half marathon and showed up with a workout from my coach: 4x (800, 400, 200). Up until that point, I had been doing all my speed work alone on the boardwalk. Less pressure, but also less accountability. To be honest, the track intimidated me a bit.
We did the standard 2-mile warmup together, changed shoes, did a few strides, and then just… went. Everyone pressing start on their Garmin and taking off at different paces for different distances. On my last set, I realized I was starting my 800 at the same time another girl was starting her final mile. She asked what pace I was running. Same zone, and she says “Great, we’ll go together.” I was gassed and thinking, I don’t think I can hold that again. When we go, I start falling back within the first 50m. Might as well separate now, right? She looks over her shoulder, and (I kid you not) taps the outside of her thigh, and goes, “You got it. Right here.” Tap tap. I tucked in behind her and ended up running the full mile with her. Chloe. Legend. I never ran my speed workouts on the boardwalk again.
Like many of us in our 30s, I signed up for my first half-marathon as a dare to myself. Then my second. Then my third. All of a sudden, I’m living off gels and electrolytes, chasing paces and PRs, rotating through three pairs of shoes, and missing one of my big toenails. Poor lefty never had a chance. I carry toilet paper in a ziplock in my track bag, which feels like a badge of honor. Don’t worry, I’m still a personality hire with the track girls.
Like many, my story started small - a local run store and a group of friends. But in LA, it doesn’t really stay that way. The running scene has a way of bleeding into everything else. It stops being something you schedule around and starts becoming integral to everything else. Your social life, your work connections, your morning routine, your weekend plans. Unlike other sports I’ve been a part of, running stops being something you do and starts being a scene you exist in. More than a hobby, it becomes something you shape, and something that shapes you.
The reason I keep showing up isn’t just because I am getting fitter and faster, but because I can reinvent myself a bit. I started to romanticize running when I realized how deeply connected I was getting to the people I ran with. I grew up playing team sports, and played soccer through college. There were uniforms, rules, and expectations. Individualism wasn’t rewarded; team came first. In contrast, running celebrates individuality as much as it supports community and shared values. From the start, running felt more like a lifestyle than a sport. More art than science. And in most forms, more about freedom than rules and lanes. Personal invention shows up everywhere. In clothes and brands. In the communities runners form. And, where and how runners spend their time. Runners can shift their experience and identity, discovering new versions of themselves as the sport evolves with them.
My whole newbie experience got me thinking about the various doors into the sport. Who’s walking through them, and how do they find them in the first place? In this series, I want to explore the simple (and not so simple) question: How do new people (like me) come into running? Why are they staying?
I think the answers to those questions have shifted in the last few years, driven in part by a growing focus on community and gear. Running (capital “R”) is no longer just a matter of putting on shoes and running out the door. Run clubs, events, and lifestyle now shape how people show up, alongside questions like: Does it look cool? Does it help me perform? And, does it help me fit in? From that starting point, my focus turns to the relationship between runners and brands across the constantly evolving running pockets of LA.
The Runner/Brand Relationship
The question of how brands find runners (or vice versa) is a natural and familiar one for me. The last decade of my career has been spent inside sports and technology brands. Big machines like Nike and Apple, newer startups like Tonal, and most recently a longevity and performance company called Eternal that focused solely on endurance athletes. I’ve spent most of my professional life in spaces where media, marketing and product shape how athletes are presented and culture is sold. I’m close enough professionally to see how things are supposed to work, but involved enough personally to know that they often miss.
For example, when trail running exploded brands quickly moved in. Nike’s outdoor line, ACG, as well as On, neither originally rooted in that world, stepped into a space that companies like Salomon helped define, tried to interpret and, in some cases, reshape a culture that already had its own language.
Each has taken a different path to earn its place. ACG leaned into the MothTech direction, building on the performance vintage aesthetic that Satisfy helped popularize, and translating it into high performance trail gear for elite athletes to prove credibility. ON approached it from the opposite direction, targeting road runners making the jump to trail, pulling them in through color, styling, and cohesive fits that feel familiar. The look is evolving, and the product is getting there. But owning the experience, the way trail runners actually move and think, takes longer to earn.
You can see a different version of this play out on the road as well. Brands build strong identities, but in doing so, signal a very specific type of runner. Tracksmith is a good example. A relatively newer company that quickly built a cult following among serious marathoners, where it became almost a uniform for a certain level of runner. Truly, the Merino long sleeve (now Harrier) was everywhere. The product was strong, the aesthetic was clear, and the brand knew exactly who it was speaking to. And, about 5 years ago, it was considered expensive. (Now brands have met and exceeded that price tag, but that’s a conversation for a new post.) Over time, that clarity can read as exclusivity. Not necessarily by design, but in how it was adopted and evolved. You would hear things like someone being “fast enough” or “not fast enough” to wear the rabbit. Which sounds ridiculous, but it reflects how quickly brand identity can turn into a gatekeeping signal.
At the same time, the product itself did not always hold up in the ways runners expected. Inconsistent sizing, pieces that did not perform across conditions, details that mattered more once you were actually putting in miles. The brand was aspirational. But for some runners, it started to feel like you had to earn the right to wear it. Now we’re seeing companies like Bandit or SATISFY intentionally make their brand into something Tracksmith is not - encouraging runners to step up and into new running experiences, while keeping the premium feel.
Demystifying the LA Running Scene
As I mentioned earlier: I understand how sport brands are built, how athletes are packaged, how culture gets shaped and sold. But the running scene, specifically the pockets of it that have taken over Los Angeles, is its own organic, evolving, amazing thing. The identity, the community, the brand loyalty (or not) is in perpetual motion. Dipping my toes into the running scene in LA has felt overwhelming. From road to trail, marathon to ultra, sanctioned to unsanctioned, each space comes with its own subculture that could take a lifetime to understand. Each one holds different communities, and those communities carry their own values, priorities, and brands. Like the geography of Southern California, the differences in form and style feel both deeply rooted and constantly evolving. Is it about the aesthetic? Maybe. Is it also about something else? Definitely. What you represent means something. When you put on the kit, you’re aligning with what a brand stands for, supporting the community around it, and stepping into something that feels bigger than yourself.
Questions around personal and community identity sit at the center. Over this and any further editions of this column, I’ll dive into it by talking to other runners. These conversations are not meant to land on definitive answers, but to explore how runners think about these dynamics that influence us as we navigate this new and wonderful running world and what feels most true in practice.
I have a lot of respect for the LA running culture and the people who shape it, so my goal is to represent it as authentically as I can. I call the series “I have questions,” because I do.
Stay tuned.
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love this! LA running scene is unlike any other.
Welcome Deena!!! From Montreal with love!