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

I'm joined by Hayden Hawks, a pro trail runner for Hoka, Khoros, and Precision based in Cedar City, Utah.

We talk about his bounce back from injury and surgery midway through last season, the tools and

knowledge he's added to his ultra-running arsenal over the

last nine months, how he's trained for and visualized his upcoming race at Black Canyon,

and some reflections on how his career has shaped up to date. Let's get into it. Hayden Hawks,

it is a pleasure to have you on the single track podcast. How are you doing today?

Yeah, I'm doing good, man. excited to be on with you. It's been a long time coming, so I'm really happy that I'll finally get on the podcast with you. Likewise, great to have you here. And I have to

imagine that coming off an injury and feeling strong again, that has to feel like a whole new lease on life. So talk about

that feeling. Oh yeah. Yeah, I feel like a brand new person, to be honest with you. It kind of,

you know, I feel like I'm kind of restarted my running career. You know, it was really tough last

year, you know, dealing with that injury and really fighting it over the last two, three years has been just really hard physically and mentally.

And to be able to finally like take care of it and get the surgery that I need to get done and then rehab.

You know, there's a lot of hard work after surgery, of course.

But to rehab that and to come out of it feeling really healthy, you know, and feeling just very

confident in what my knee can do now, what my body can do.

It's crazy how much I have been compensating because of that knee.

And I could feel a difference just in the energy distribution, you know, when I was running.

And now that I'm completely healthy, it's like I just feel so much stronger.

Things that used to feel hard, feel effortless.

And it's just really exciting. So it sounds like the

type of operation where if you do the rehab correctly, it can actually, like you said, maybe make

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