So what the heck is that? Maybe my memory is faulty or maybe it's me. We hope lawyers don't listen to this podcast. Okay. Welcome to the Trailhead of TrailRunner Nation. We go on virtual trail runs with guests that are going to help us become better, stronger, more efficient runners to motivate us to get out there on the trail and do more, and maybe in the process we'll learn to be better human beings. You know, most of the time we hear we can learn more by looking forward, but today we're looking behind us right from our very first episode of TRN. If you haven't tried John G. Yet, you're missing out on more than just great running gear. John G. isn't just another apparel brand. They design high performance gear inspired by global running communities. Every season they partner with artists from around the world to create limited addition collections that tell a story. Scott is just not about the looks. John G. Gear is built for movement, lightweight, readable, fast drying, and design with thoughtful details that runners actually care about. And here's the cool part. John G. Gives Back, a portion of every purchase supports clean water initiatives in the regions that inspired the season's designs. Super cool, right? So you're not only getting gear that performs, you're part of something bigger. Head to johng.com and check out their latest collections. That's johng.com and a bonus for listening to TRN, you can get 10% off your order by using the code TrailRunner. I lost my favorite to Fosy sunglasses recently. These were my daily go-to pair. My favorite pair, but all I had to simply do is jump online and grab a replacement pair. And they were only about $35. That is an amazing price for such great sunglasses. And they even offer prescription lenses now and the process is incredibly smooth. That's why Don and I love Tafosi, their top notch quality, affordable prices, and they look great. Today on our run, my custom Tafosi glasses flew off my head and hit the pavement. I thought they were gone for sure, but not a scratch. These things are tough as nails. Plus so many styles to choose from and they even have the photo tech lenses. Those are the ones that automatically adjust to the light conditions. Check them out at tofosyoptics.com. You can score 20% off with the code TRN20 at tofosioptics.com. Welcome to another edition of Trail Rear Nation. My name is Don Freeman, and my name's Scott War, and today's episode is a little bit different. It may be a little bit boring for you because we don't have a guest. It's just gonna be Don and I rambling, And this all started on a trail run that we did last Saturday. And I was telling Don that earlier that week I was out running and I noticed how the trail runner uniform has changed over the years. You know, back when When I started running, and Don started back when really shoes were invented.

But when I started running, and Don started back when really shoes were invented. But when I started running, the uniform was like Anton Krapitschka. If you can remember him, he wore really short, dolphin shorts, shoes with little tiny socks, and nothing else. You know, he was bare-chested. He would carry handheld water bottles. And it's kind of changed over the years. We're now people are using hydration vests like they're ubiquitous on the trail. Everybody has a hydration pack on. And I noticed that one of the newest trends in the uniform of the trail runner is to wear a long sleeve hoodie, you know, a very lightweight long sleeve hoodie. They have their hat on and then their hood is up and over their hoodies. So they're kind of looking like a little bit of a unibomber and that may have dated me a little bit, but they look like the unibomber. And then we started talking about how things have changed. And Scott, you know, that comment doesn't really alarm me too much because it could have been mentioned in any month of the year. But this is the end of July in California. I mean, there's no reason. I don't even know where my hoodie is right now. Yeah. So anyway, we started talking about that. And things then I'm not sure how we made the jump to the first episode that we ever recorded, which was all the way back on November 28th, 2011. So nearly 14 years ago. Yeah, I think I remember how we did it Scott. Okay. I think I said, you know what we should do, Scott? We should take oldest episode and just riff on it Play some of the things that we that we find interesting and see how they've changed And so we listen to the episode on the way home and we then contacted each other afterwards and said What did you think about that show and boy? Did we have some comments? We did so we're gonna play that out and in in real time right now. We're gonna play some clips and then comment on it. So this is how the very first episode of trail runner nation started back in November of 2011. And since that time, let's set this up just a bit more. Scott, how many episodes do we have? Because we've been pretty consistent

and been up there.

741, I think, is this one?

There's been a few.

Yeah.

OK, here we go.

We used to run longer back then, Scott.

Just think still running. You know Scott, we kept that intro for quite a while until we started getting a bit nervous. Welcome to Trail Render Nation. I'm Don Freeman. I'm Scott War and I'm Tim Smith. Okay, so what did you get out of that? First of all, say one of the consistent things that we've had on every single episode are those running footsteps. That has been probably the most consistent thing over the 741 episodes. We have always had the running footsteps. And those running footsteps come from No Hands Bridge, the end of Western States run with UNI one morning, right after they put new gravel on there, and we took our iPhone, put it down by our feet, and we ran, and collected that video, that audio, and brought it back to the studio. Yes, so that originated before the podcast originated, and we used that audio that we still use today. The thing I will say is that's a freaking long intro. It's way too much running, way too much music. Scott, we had to fill up the times with something. We didn't have a lot. So it was like, we could build an intro that goes for a while and it took us a while to run across that bridge I mean we weren't real fast Faster than than we are now true The other thing that I think is consistent over the the 14 nearly 14 years we've been doing this is you start off saying Welcome to trail runner nation I do yeah, that's right's right. And you always said, thanks for joining.

That was mine.

But for some reason, there were times when you started and I started, now I don't know for how many years we've been doing, you always started. Yeah. And so it's always welcome too. Well, it's quite easy because you do a lot of the heavy lifting right in the beginning of introducing the guest or whatever we're doing that. that takes a little bit of thought and consideration.

So I take the easy way out and just say,

welcome to and that's done my job and you go to work now something that have changed is if you've noticed

uh don't introduce himself i introduced myself and then there was this character named Tim Smith and uh we're gonna reach out to Tim and let him know that we're doing this because we owe Tim Smith a dead of gratitude Who is Tim Smith on how did he get involved now Tim helped us a great deal one? We had no idea how to even create a website We didn't know but we learned that Tim Smith knew he he contacted us some way I forget how we connected with him and he said hey I'm, I'm a trail runner. And I know something about technology. Maybe I can help. And he came with a lot of ideas. And we'll talk about this a little bit later in the episode. But Tim Smith came on for this first episode to really introduce the website and the specific tools that were on the website. And they were pretty cool. He was way ahead of his time. And we'll talk about some of those things as we get further in this episode. But Tim Smith was the creator of the original website. In fact, we use WordPress if you guys are internet folk. It's, we still use WordPress. and there's a lot of different ways to make websites now but we still do WordPress because that's the way Tim designed it. Now one thing that you contributed was the PEK performance enhancing coca-pele. I mean you had that captured from somewhere and you brought it over but it's Tim that dressed it up with some of the The font around there and the shaking look of the trail runner nation logo and we still that has not changed since he came along You're absolutely wrong. We should change it. I think it's good. Absolutely wrong. I am the logo That's the thing I love about Scott. You know history will show that I'm right. Go ahead Scott, you tell me how it worked. If, if, and Todd, I think it's actually very funny that you don't know that the logo changed. We changed the logo probably about five or six years ago. Oh, we did that thing. From that, that, that shaky logo with the arrows. Now it's a more of a line thing. It's black and white has the PEK, but it just says trail runner nation. Oh, good. Yeah. Did I know about that? Did I know about that? Yeah. You signed off on it. Okay. So my mind's eye, it's still the shaky logo, which Tim, I really liked and I think we should go back to it Don I invite you to visit our website I'll send you the URL after the podcast thank you yeah here's the next clip what is trail runner nation it's got why don't you give us a little lead some details before we get started with that I want to just know to make noted our audio has improved over the years as well. And hopefully the filters that we use now will kind of make the audio of this original podcast a little bit better. But the audio is better. But I noticed that Don, you have a little bit higher tone in your vocal range there. Yeah, yeah. I was younger and my VO2 max was a little bit stronger, so I had a little more umph behind my vocals. Okay, so here's the clip. It's actually interesting. Earlier this spring, back in February, Don and a friend of ours, Julie Fingar and I, we're on a long trail run at night. And we are discussing like all trail runners do about how to become better, better runners. And Julian Don are much more experienced than I am. And I was just commenting on how great it has been for me as a fairly new ultra runner to glean a lot of information from these experienced runners. And I also was telling them that I started to get into the podcasting sphere out there on iTunes and was downloading podcasts on ultra running and endurance sports and there's a lot of really good one that good podcasts out there but there was not one dedicated to ultra running and So as we were talking about, all of a sudden we all just started getting excited about it and thought that maybe there would be a venue for a trail run ultra running podcast on how we can coach and share experiences and training methods and that kind of thing for the community. And so it's kind of morphed into a little bit more than that and it's become more than a podcast. And now it's actually become a gathering place. Well, you know, I identified with that first comment that you said about having other runners pass information along to us as we learn the sport. As we go through some of the

hardships and the trials, there are people there that can help us and direct us and give us the advice that we need. And with the right advice, it makes it fun. It makes it tolerable. It's enjoyable. And so I can give you a list of people that have done that for me and continue to do that for me. We were hoping by a project like this of plugging some of those people into people's earbuds, is there going down the trail and running with some of the most knowledgeable trail runners that the country has to offer, as the world has to offer. It's a worldwide web, we can say that. So I think that's interesting that that's been a constant, or at least we hope it has over the 14 years, is that the podcast is to disseminate information to share knowledge. And that came out of a necessity scut because we don't have knowledge to share. So we had to bring people on and we just asked the questions. Now here's the thing that struck me right from the start. That, and I love you Scott, but we have different renditions and how things start. Yeah. And, but what I like to see is that your rendition hasn't changed since the beginning. It's because it's the wrong thing. And you're wrong now.

That's not how it started.

How did it start?

Well, we were on a trail run

and we were talking about podcasts,

but do you remember that I said this many times?

I was listening to a podcast,

produced by a guy in a pickup truck

...