Welcome back or welcome to the Single Track podcast.

I'm your host Finn Melanson and in this episode we are talking with Hillary Allen,

a professional trail runner for Brooks based in Boulder, Colorado, who is preparing for the Ultra Trail Cape Town event series in a few days.

We've had the opportunity to chat with Hillary multiple times this season.

It's always a treat and I think you'll enjoy the

wisdom she imparts in this one in addition to her comments on the racing and the training

leading into Cape Town. With that, let's get started. All right, Hillary Allen, welcome back to

the single track podcast. Thanks for having me again. I know we've chatted a lot this year.

I was going to say, as I was putting the questions together for this interview, I realized this is our third time chatting this calendar year.

We caught up at the beginning of January with your move to Brooks, then before Speedgoat.

And here we are in November, getting ready for Cape Town. And I do love to like catch up when we have these like

multi thread conversations. And I'm curious, given that we've spoken a couple times over the

past 12 months as a pro athlete, I'm curious, are you someone that likes to think in terms of like

year to year seasons and to look back at like the previous 12 months to assess whether you've

hit your goals and did what you wanted to do, all that kind of stuff. I'm curious as a pro,

like what your thoughts are there. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I'm honored to, you know,

that we've chatted a lot throughout the season. It's nice to kind of have different check-ins.

Honestly, as I prepare for, for Altret Trail Cape Town, this wasn't a race that was kind of like

on my calendar.

I actually had left the second half of my season kind of open.

So, I mean, honestly, I think it is smart to kind of plan a race calendar based off

of like the seasons, right, and the lotteries. But I'm always someone who kind of plan a race calendar based off of like the seasons right in the lotteries.

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