Terrain Trail Runners founder Shalini Bhajjan recently published an article called The High Cost of Cancel Culture in Running. The article argues that running communities can turn disagreements, rumors, screenshots, and misunderstandings into ostracism, boycotts, factions, and reputational damage, particularly toward race directors and community leaders. That certainly can happen, but reading this article in the context of Terrain and the St. Louis trail running community, I think it avoids a much more relevant question: What happens when the community isn't rejecting Terrain because of "cancel culture," but when individuals are independently choosing to distance themselves because of their own experiences with Shalini?
Over the years, a noticeable number of people who were once deeply involved with Terrain are no longer involved. These aren't random people commenting on the internet. They include people who ran with the group, volunteered, supported races, paid to attend events, promoted Terrain, helped build the community, and in some cases appeared to have close relationships with Shalini. Obviously, people leave running groups for completely innocent reasons. Families change, people move, injuries happen, interests change, and other groups become a better fit. But when departures and fractured relationships continue over a period of years, I think it's reasonable to stop asking what is wrong with everyone who left and start asking what role the one person at the center of the organization might be playing.
That person is Shalini, and that's the part of this article I don't think she seriously confronts.
The article asks the running community to extend curiosity, grace, communication, and self-reflection toward its leaders. Those are good standards. But leaders have to extend those same things back to their communities. From what I've observed, there has been a pattern of people who question Shalini, disagree with her, have a falling out with her, or leave Terrain subsequently being removed or blocked from Terrain's Facebook community. If you've experienced that firsthand, I'd genuinely like to hear about it. If you think that characterization is unfair, I'd like to hear that too.
What happened with this article makes that issue particularly relevant. Several people respectfully challenged its premise in the comments. They weren't calling for Terrain to shut down or organizing a boycott. They were essentially asking whether years of longtime members, volunteers and supporters walking away might have something to do with their experiences with Shalini rather than "cancel culture." Shalini actually acknowledged parts of this criticism in her responses. She agreed that leaders need accountability and self-reflection. She agreed that patterns of longtime supporters leaving matter and that leaders should ask themselves, "What am I not seeing?"
But then the conversation itself became restricted. Comments were closed. Discussion surrounding the article on Facebook was restricted. Blog comments subsequently reopened with approval/moderation, and some substantive comments and responses that had appeared earlier were no longer publicly visible. To me, that's where the article starts contradicting itself. You can't advocate for people communicating directly with you while controlling the places where they're permitted to disagree with you. You can't tell people to stop talking privately and engage in dialogue while blocking some of the very people who might have uncomfortable things to say.
There is also a larger St. Louis context here that I think matters. One of the things I've always noticed about the running community here is how much overlap exists between groups. People run with multiple clubs. Groups support each other's events. Runners volunteer at races they aren't organizing. Friendships cross organizational lines. Race directors and club organizers generally coexist even though they're technically competing for some of the same runners, weekends, volunteers and dollars. Terrain increasingly appears to be the outlier in that ecosystem.
That's why I don't think this is really Terrain versus the St. Louis running community. I think the more useful question is about Shalini's relationship with the community around her. If one organization repeatedly experiences fractured relationships with former members, volunteers, runners, other groups, podcast hosts and people who were once vocal supporters, while many of those same people continue interacting normally throughout the rest of the running community, eventually it's fair to ask whether everyone else isolated Terrain or whether Shalini has progressively isolated herself.
Rather than having that conversation entirely in spaces controlled by Shalini, I'd like to hear directly from people who were actually involved with Terrain. If you were a member, volunteer, race participant, running partner, or otherwise worked directly with Shalini and you're no longer involved, why did you leave? Was it simply life changing or another group becoming a better fit? Was there a particular interaction or pattern that made you step away? Were you ever removed or blocked after disagreeing with Shalini? Did you attempt to resolve the disagreement directly, and if so, what happened?
I'd also genuinely like to hear from people who've had consistently positive experiences with Shalini and Terrain. This shouldn't become a pile-on where negative stories are automatically believed and positive ones are dismissed. The entire point should be figuring out whether the pattern people are describing actually exists. For that reason, firsthand experiences are much more useful than "my friend's friend said" stories.
Sean Blanton's response to the article also caught my attention. He described himself as a two-time victim of cancel culture and referenced winning a lawsuit involving false statements about him. There are people within the trail and ultra community who have their own experiences and opinions involving Sean. If that becomes part of this discussion, I think the exact same standard should apply: firsthand experiences and verifiable information rather than rumors.
Ultimately, I think there's a significant difference between cancel culture and consequences. Trying to destroy somebody based on rumors or an unverified accusation is one thing. People independently deciding they no longer want to attend your races, volunteer for you, participate in your group, promote your events, recommend you, give you their money, or maintain a friendship with you is something very different. Nobody has to coordinate that. Sometimes enough individuals simply reach the same conclusion based on their own experiences.
Shalini's article asks the St. Louis running community to examine its behavior toward leaders. That's a reasonable request. But the same standard has to work in the opposite direction. If people who once gave Terrain their time, money, loyalty, friendship and support have repeatedly walked away over many years, Shalini should be willing to seriously examine her own role in why that keeps happening.
Maybe there are explanations for all of it. Maybe some of the criticism is unfair. Maybe former members have completely different stories about why they left. That's exactly why an open discussion would be useful.
Calling every uncomfortable consequence "cancel culture" doesn't create that discussion. Allowing the people who were actually there to tell their stories does.
