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

John Kelly returns to the show, this time to recap this year's Berkeley marathons and

generally offer insights on the nature of the event. Before we talk about his exciting project set for

later this year, that is his attempt to set the fastest known time on the Appalachian Trail

in supported fashion. As always, it is great connecting with John, and if you are a geek like I am

over the multi-day racing scene, you will surely enjoy this one. Before getting into it, though,

thank you to Norda, the official footwear partner of Singletrack. I used their 005 model at the Antelope Island 50-miler this past weekend,

and it led to a massive breakthrough performance.

All hail, trail super shoes, especially this one.

Go check it out at norda run.com.

It is going to be, like I've said before, my racing shoe of choice for all of 2025.

John Kelly, great to have you back on the single track podcast.

How are you doing today?

Yeah, doing pretty well.

Thank you.

I'm excited to be here.

Likewise.

And I think where I want to start, I pulled this quote from your race report at Berkeley last year, 2024. You said,

quote, will the course get much harder? I don't think so. Next year we'll probably have a

worst start time, worse weather, and not as many strong veterans, end quote. And I guess my question

is, in retrospect, was this assumption all or mostly true for kind of what yielded this year's results?

So we did have a worse start time and we did have worse weather.

...