Welcome back or welcome to the single track podcast.

I'm your host, Finn Melanson, and this is another edition of the long run archives.

I'm joined by friends and co-hosts, Brett Hornig, Jeff Colt, talk about UTMB,

we talk about agents in ultra running.

We talk about special projects, FKTs, the Mahusuk Traverse, a bunch of stuff. This is a wide-ranging one, fun. I think we're all stoked. I got a new timeware belt the other day, so I think I talked about that at the end. Just good old long-in archives episode. Before we get started, though, thank you to our partners, NAC, Norda, Gore, and Raid. raid raid one of the best ways that you can help the show is

by heading over to the show notes of this episode checking out the stuff that nord is making the

zero five goreware awesome apparel stuff that i trust in all of my racing and fk t projects

norda great nutrition and raid makers of my favorite belt, the LF2L, no bounce.

With that, let's get into it.

Okay.

In relation to this question about Jeff, you brought it up, are, would you say, are agents, the new coaches?

Yeah, our agents today, what coaches were 10 years ago. In 2016, I think there was all this

sudden interest in getting a coach, elites head coaches, some more recreation participants in

the sport had coaches, and this coaching boom really happened in a big way. And I think some

folks were well positioned to end up with a significant roster.

You know, are we looking at the landscape of agents in, you know, the kind of sponsored end of this sport?

Are they in the same place that coaches were 10 years ago where there's just a couple in the

sport and all of a sudden everyone wants one?

And that's because right now currently there's a lot of athletes out there seeking, what is it, representation from agents to help get sponsored.

A follow question that I thought of that I wanted to throw your way was, do you think that there's kind of a false sense of security? Like similar, I definitely see the value in having a coach in that being like, if I get a coach, I will get better at running. That's not always the case. But do you think there's a kind of false sense of hope in that a lot of these people like, well, if I can just get an agent, they will get me sponsored when it's a lot more nuanced, nuanced than that?

Yes and no. I think the similarity for me comes from as an individual, you're an end of one and you only have the context of yourself. And so if you're not

doing a great job looking at your training and understanding your race performance and actually like

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