Welcome back or welcome to the Single Track Podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson, and in this episode,

we are talking with Courtney DeWalter, a professional trail runner for Solomon based in Leadville,

Colorado, ahead of the 2023 Bandera 100K. Before we get started, this episode is brought to you by Rabbit.

Use code single track 30 on their website for 30% off your next

order. Rabbit will be a presenting sponsor for the single track podcast in 2023 and we will have more

details about that partnership in the next few weeks. With that, let's get started. Courtney DeWalter,

welcome to the single track podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure to have you here. And I know that the main topic at hand is the Bandera 100K this coming

Saturday, but this is our first time chatting on the podcast. And there's a few questions I've always

wanted to ask you. And the first one, this involves reflecting back a bit

on when you first got into the sport. I've always been curious, what did you think was possible

for your career? Like, did you always imagine that becoming a professional and achieving the success

you've achieved was in the realm of possibility or was this going to be a hobby?

Can you talk about that?

Yeah.

No, I had no idea.

I didn't know ultra running was a sport.

I sort of stumbled into it after a few road marathons and I quickly fell in love with it and was like discovering all these new

races all the time and having my mind blown that people were doing these courses and you know just

like traversing these mountains with their feet I couldn't understand it but I knew that I loved it and I loved the community. So I wanted to be a part of it right away. But I didn't foresee that I could be a person to run a hundred miles. In fact, the first 100 mile race I did, I dropped out of it at around

mile 60 because I convinced myself that I couldn't do 100 miles and that it was a joke that

I was trying and I should just, you know, stop and be okay with running 50 miles. So I,

...