This past Saturday night at 1153 p.m. Tara Dower set the fastest known time on the Appalachian Trail in 40 days, 18 hours and 5 minutes, besting Karel Sabez, 2018 mark by 13 hours and 32 minutes.

Starting August 12th at 547 a.m. Dower averaged 54 plus miles per day over 2,197.4 miles of rugged and relentless

terrain from Maine to Georgia to set the mark. In masterfully riding a fine line of passion, grit,

faith, and resourcefulness, Tara and her crew have set a new standard on this trail.

I said all of this on an Instagram post shortly after the news broke, but I will say it here

as well. It is so easy. This happens to me all the time to get caught up in the moment,

especially in a year that has seen the likes of the first female Barclay finisher, a UTMB course record,

and a hard rock course record.

But I think this is a fair question.

Is this the female performance of the year?

Or better yet, let's throw out gender.

Is this the overall performance of the year?

Regardless of your opinion, you can't deny that this is a wild, volatile, exciting time to be a

fan of the sport. What a time to be alive. With all of that said, we were fortunate to have Tara

on the podcast shortly after her feet. We don't typically do the first interviews for these kinds of

things, but this might be one of them. And just given the

circumstances, I want to caution you, we of course did not cover everything. In a perfect world,

we would have sat down for four to five hours and gone over the minutia of every mile of the

attempt, which I'm sure will be covered in subsequent content. I will say I am hoping to have her

crew team on the show as early as

tomorrow so stay tuned for that. In this conversation we cover topics all about the

Appalachian Trail record. We get into her background preparation strategy,

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