Welcome back or welcome to the Single Trek podcast. I'm your host Finn Melanson and in this

episode we are talking with Caleb EFTA, one of the race directors for the High Lonesome 100

and the Sawatch Range of Colorado. Caleb joins the show to explain why UTMB races have been

excluded from the qualifying process for high lonesome, and this sets the table for a really interesting conversation

about the values of our sport, the nature and purpose of community events,

and the increasing commercialization and professionalization in this space.

If you must know, and it's probably not a surprise,

I support many of the high loans and

policies, like their positions on gender equity, pregnancy deferral, and non-binary identification.

That may ruffle some feathers, and that's okay.

At the same time, I am also a huge supporter of the UTMB World Series in what they're

trying to do standardizing the professional area of the UTMB World Series in what they're trying to do standardizing

the professional area of the sport. I've been to the race in Chamonie each of the last two

summers and have loved every minute of it. I'm also unabashedly a huge fan of commercialization

and professionalization of trail running. None of that should be a surprise either, but I recognize

that may alienate some folks as well, and that's okay. I say all this because it's both important and unimportant.

I certainly have my views and you deserve to know my biases, but I never want my voice to dominate the

dialogue or this podcast to get to a place where it's simply a platform for everything I believe

in or where I feel pressure to cowtow to my quote-unquote tribe. And while Caleb and I probably agree

on 65% of the topics addressed in this conversation, maybe even

75% honestly. Undoubtedly, there will be guests in the future where that percentage is

somewhere in the range of 0 to 35%. And I think that's a healthy thing. The marketplace of ideas

...