Norta is the official footwear partner of our 2026 Western States 100 coverage.

All the Rage this summer is the imminent release of their new model, the 055,

the shoe that Rachel Entrican wore start to finish en route to her course record victory

at the Kokadona 250 earlier this year.

Go check it out at norda run.com and make sure you are subscribed to their mailing list

to get exclusive

early access to the shoe. I've put a bunch of training miles in it. It's the real deal.

We are back. It is Monday of Western States Week. This is the first in a series of preview

shows through Wednesday evening. And this is our Power Rankings episode. I'll provide some

context on that in just a second, but we haven't had a chance to properly introduce Leah Yingling into this year's coverage. Leah, how are you doing right now? Hi, guys. I am good. I'm happy to be here. This is what year number four. So happy to be here on the sidelines again at Western States, not running myself. I think this might be a little bit more fun doing it this way. Do you endorse the broken arrow triple crown? Should we do

this next year? Do I endorse it? Honestly, it's great training. I was telling a couple of people

out there yesterday. I asked them like what they're training for because I feel like people don't

exactly do the Triple Crown just to do it. They're training for something I feel like people don't exactly do the triple crown just to do

it. They're training for something. So it's great training stimulus. I don't know if I would endorse

otherwise. I'm so sore today. Well, probably a lot of the audience knows the context behind

the power rankings, but we did our first one of these about seven weeks ago. This was Brett Hornig's idea. And it received a lot of fanfare. There were people that just loved the concept. Of course, in the comments on our choices, a lot of positive, a lot of negative feedback. You're sleeping on this person. How could you overlook this person, et cetera? But that's kind of the nature of this. One of the biggest bits of feedback we got was, where's Leah? Yeah, I was going to say Brett didn't give me the invite for the Power Rangings episode. So I think that one was a very last minute late night. That was Finn's two buck chuck moment. And we were just so stoked that Jim Walmsley was officially announced for being on this year's start line.

That's what started. It was an emergency podcast for just Jim being on the start line. And then it was like, well, maybe, you know, where do you place him in these power rankings?

He's all sound like a lot of excuses, but.

Well, we're doing right. I'm already to invite you to this one. So again, Brett's idea,

we wanted to do multiple of these. Eight weeks out was sort of like our first glimpse at the

men's and the women's fields. A ton has changed since then. Anna Tarasov is no longer in,

Anne Flowers no longer in.

...