Sydney Allen Ash
Some of my favourite memories with Ciele were the ‘firsts.’
My first editorial I shot while actually hired by Ciele took place a little over a year later. We had no money, permits and may or may not have snuck into a university campus to shoot it. They are not my favourite photos aesthetically, but they contain great sentimental value and the experience of leading a shoot at that age was instrumental to my confidence as a creative.
My first time shooting the Wild Bruce Chase women was phenomenal. Those are some of my favourite photos I’ve ever taken. We were on the Rideau Trail in 2017. In my recollection it poured rain for a good chunk of the time but the runners were unfazed. They were disciplined and organized and tough as nails. I feel so lucky to have been invited into their corner of the running world. I hold it in very high esteem.
My first time making a narrative podcast, Toenails — a podcast about running and also not about running — began during COVID. Every episode took me months of rigorous research, interviewing, writing, editing alongside weeks of meticulous creative work by my collaborator Marvin Lau to make each episode’s video trailer and social assets. The Toenails perspective and visual identity still stands out as one of one in the running and sports world.
This has been a beautiful ten year friendship and partnership and has been absolutely foundational to my relationship to running, sports and my creative work as a whole. I wish Ciele nothing but love for the next ten!
TOENAILS
What else can running do? With this question in mind host and athlete, Sydney Allen-Ash explores a wide array of alternatives to thinking about and participating in running that challenge our expectations, embrace contradiction and immerse our normally sanitized sport into the real world. Join us in a month for the first real episode of Toenails, a podcast about running and also not about running.
Muscular Christianity
The deification of victory—turning those who win into gods—is as old as human history, but what does winning really mean, and why do we care so much?
In our first full-length heavy-duty episode of Toenails, Sydney plots our obsession with sporting success from the 1800s till today with special guest appearances from runners Rio Lakeshore and Emma Cameron.
Mutual Aid
To understand patterns of exclusion in outdoor sports, like trail running (which would be a normal topic for a normal running podcast) we have to first start with our relationship to the land. What is “the outdoors” and where did this separation between humans and nature even come from? Join Sydney Allen-Ash for Episode 2 of Toenails to find out.
This episode features interviews with Myia Antone, Kristen Sison, and Ashleigh Thompson
Quantitative Creep
As athletes, tracking data is meant to convey not only our skill level but our commitment to the sport itself. Host Sydney Allen-Ash has a *big* problem with this. What does all this data do, what are we working to optimize, why are we all trying so hard?! Listen now for explorations of these questions, a deep dive into the entanglement between capitalism and sports, an interview with Ryan Willms about balancing freedom & rigor, and more.
Smells Like Dionysian Spirit
After a lengthy hiatus, Toenails — a podcast about running and also *not* about running — returns today. This episode takes a historical deep dive to explore why we move together (and why society might not want us to). What can trance, dance and raves tell us about the future of running crews? Tune in and find out.
The Bridge
In a follow-up to the previous episode, Smells Like Dionysian Spirit, this episode features conversations with an OG of the urban running crew movement, Charlie Dark, about the history and future of running crews, recorded during Bridge The Gap weekend in Toronto in October 2022.