Hey, fam, welcome to the free trail podcast. Of course, I am your loving host, Dylan Bowman, here today with Beth McKenzie, an American pro trail runner living in

Australia, who has been on a proper heater in the last couple seasons, including two podium finishes

at Ultra Trail Australia, two more podium finishes at the Tara Ware 100K, and last fall in her

100-mile debut, Beth finished second place at the Havillian 100,

running the fifth fastest time in that race's 22-year storied history.

Beth is a 45-year-old mother of two who has a really, really powerful story, honestly.

Previous to her trail running career, Beth was a professional triathlet

where she experienced a lot of success before her career experienced a huge interruption. In

2016, Beth tested positive for a banned substance called Osterine, a subject that we talk about

at length in today's podcast. Obviously, this has become a huge conversation in the sport in the wake of Steen Angermund

and Joeline Chapnanos cases.

We've covered it at length on the show now a couple of times.

And I think Beth's story is another informative case study for our sport and trail running

to learn from as we embrace anti-doping

measures while also hopefully avoiding or minimizing collateral damage to clean athletes

who do compete with integrity. Beth has so much to share here on that subject. I won't try to

summarize it at the top. Just listen

with an open mind. And if you want to go deeper, you can reference Beth's substack, which I linked

in the show notes of the episode. After we untangle that complicated story in the back half of the

episode, we move on to happier subject matter, including Beth's amazing entrepreneurship story with her performance apparel brand, Win Republic.

We talk about her recent very high-level race results, the value of biting off more than we

can chew in life, why she admires her coach Megan Roche and so much more.

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