Welcome back or welcome to the Single Track Podcast.

I'm your host, Finn Melanson, and in this episode, Anton Kirpichka joins the show to talk about all sorts of things.

We cover monomaniacal focus, the increasing allure of technical backcountry missions, capacity for self-reflection, the one regret of his career, the lifestyle

of being a pro endurance athlete, whether he would ever move to Salt Lake City. We even have a

debate about influence. It was all over the place, but it was a ton of fun. And I know Anton has

done a bunch of interviews in the past, but I do think that the questions and the banter here were relatively fresh and it's a conversation you will enjoy.

One last thing to mention, just to provide a fair warning to listeners. There are a couple moments in the conversation where explicit language is used.

You have been warned. Okay, with that, let's get started. Welcome, Anton.

Okay, we are live, Anton Krupichka. Welcome to the single track podcast.

Thanks, Finn. Appreciate you asking me to come on.

So maybe we can start here. You did Leadville about six months ago. And as a fan of the sport, I was stoked because it's great to see you racing again. And I'm wondering, now that

you're back in it, you're presumably healthy, are you following the sport? Are you tuned back in?

Is running your first love

or are all these other things like biking and skiing and climate you've taken up,

balancing it all? Oh, I mean, those other things are a huge part of my life. Running isn't,

running hasn't changed for me since running Leadville in August. It's still really touch and go

in terms of maintaining my running health. I was actually, I had a pretty good train block going

November and December and I was starting to think about, I mean, I was actually thinking like,

oh, maybe I should do Black Canyon or even canyons, you know, just not even I, if I were able to race into Western states,

well, I don't know. That's a whole other side thing. Point being, running was going well,

and then the last two months, my heel flared up and I wasn't able to do, I was still able to run,

but just not as much and now as consistently and certainly not vertical. But the past couple weeks, it's taking a turn for the better again.

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