Welcome back or welcome to the single track podcast.

I'm your host, Finn Melanson, and this is another episode of the long run archives,

where I'm joined by Brett Hornick and Jeff Colt to riff on a bunch of interesting trail-related topics,

including highlights from last weekend's Canyons 100K,

Merrill's push to get some form of our sport into the Olympics,

reports that Jim Walmsley is returning to

UTMB, and the spring energy gel controversy. It's a loaded episode, buckle in, but one thing

to note before we get started, we did have some internet connectivity issues throughout the episode

that did make the conversation at times a little bit disjointed. We do apologize, but we were able to do

some editing to make it feel somewhat unnoticeable. We will nail the tech sides of this thing

the next time around with that. Let's get started. This is Long Run Archives number 17,

joined by Friends, frequent collaborators, Brett Hornig and Jeff Cole. I am fired up for this episode.

We have a loaded docket of topics. First, though, would it be a long run archives episode

if we didn't have an awesome contribution from Ryan Gelfy? Brett, can you talk to this?

Oh, crap. I forgot to write down the awesome Ryan Gelfi contribution. But in a nutshell,

what he said was that a pack of elite runners can collectively blow up. Explain the phenomenon. Like what how,

like what opportunities arise? What drives this? Let's get into the theory. The text for clarity

reads, I was surprised the winning men's 100K time wasn't faster.

Ryan Gelfi believes an elite group of men can collectively, or an elite group can collectively

blow up.

Like when there's one or more people who you know are always rock solid and they start fading

early, it shakes the whole field and gets in everybody's head.

...