Welcome back or welcome to the Single Track podcast.

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

a professional trail and ultra runner for Solomon based in Flagstaff, Arizona, who is preparing

for the Ultra Trail Cape Town 100K in a few days.

We last chatted with Jared after he secured a golden ticket at the Canyon's 100K earlier this year.

I've always appreciated Jared's willingness to self-reflect and talk about the highs and lows of being a pro-athlete in our sport.

And we do get into a bit of that in this episode before previewing Cape Town.

With that, let's get started.

All right, Jared Hazen. Pleasure to have you back on the single track podcast.

Yeah, Finn, thanks for having me.

So last time we talked, it was late April.

You were coming off what I thought was a stellar performance at the Canyon's 100K.

You'd punched your ticket back to Western States.

I know that we're here to talk about Cape Town,

but I'm curious because Western States just, it means so much in our sport, and you've had the

highest of highs, they're the lowest of lows. Can you talk about what transpired on the day

and how that's sort of dictated the rest of your summer when it comes to racing and training?

Yeah, I guess to rewind like a little bit before state, so it got my ticket at Canyons,

and then about a week after that, I had gotten COVID. And so it made for a difficult,

difficult transition.

It just really abbreviated like the amount of time I had to get ready for stays, which, you know, many people got COVID before states. So I know it wasn't the only one, but I guess I had raced well for probably half of the race, like the first half.

And then I got caught up racing a little too hard, I think, from, you know,

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