Hello, my dear friends, welcome back to the Pillars podcast. I'm Dylan Bowman,

and today I'm very excited to bring you a conversation with one of my biggest personal inspirations, one of the true icons of our sport and an overall high quality human being. That's right. Today we welcome the great Antonruppitschka to the podcast. I am so excited.

Of course, Tony will need no introduction to 99% of you. He has been one of the most

transformative figures in the history of our sports and someone who inspired an entire

generation of young athletes to find the

sports, including myself more than a decade ago. Tony really did become the representative

for my generation of ultra runners, not only as a great athlete, but as a great writer and storyteller through his

blog, and also just through his luck and his style and his method of training and racing,

he really just embodies the spirit of total commitment and ultimate freedom in a way that really did change the game

and push the sport forward. But obviously, some of the things that made Tony so great and so

successful as an athlete have also had negative consequences for him. He has a long and well-documented history with injury

that's kept him away from competition for many years,

and that, as you'll hear, for a time,

also compromised his love of the game

and his feeling of connection to the sport that he has been responsible for building in a lot of

ways. And as most of you will probably know at this point, Tony made his triumphant return to racing

a couple of weeks ago at the Leadville 100, the race that put him on the map way back in 2006.

And after a seven-year hiatus from racing 100-mileers, Tony put together a very solid third

place finish, much to the delight of his fans worldwide. As you'll hear, it wasn't a perfect

race for Tony,

but it did fill him with an immense sense of gratitude

to have the health and opportunity

...