Welcome back or welcome to the single track podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson, and in this episode,

Eric Lapuma returns to the show to debrief his seventh place finish at the 80K World Trail Championships in

Innsbruck, Austria this past week. Also, he discusses his next moves for his racing season here in

2023. Before we get started, though, this episode is

brought to you by Rabbit, Features, and Morton. Use code single track 20 for trail apparel on the

rabbit website. Use code single track 20 also on the features website for Trail Sox. And we have more

details to come on that Morton partnership.

With that, let's get started.

Eric Lapuma, welcome back to the single track podcast,

and I should add thank you for serving your country so well two years in a row now.

Thank you, Finn. It's great to be back.

I was just thinking about this before we hit record,

sort of about how the universe works,

and it's crazy. You were on the pod about six or seven weeks ago. We'll link to it in the show

notes. And at the time, you were still debating whether you'd be doing the canyons 100K and

aiming for a golden ticket to Western States instead of heading to worlds.

How much of a butterfly effect are we looking at here?

Does this just slightly alter your current 2023 season?

Or did it create some bigger ripple effects in how you imagine the rest of your ultra trail running career panning out?

I think it's definitely had a pretty big impact in just like how I think about myself as a runner. Like I'd have no regrets about not running

Canyons 100K because now that I've run this like it's kind of changed the way that I think

like I guess just what the kind of races I like to do.

...