Welcome back or welcome to the single track podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson, and we are

joined by frequent co-host Brett Hornig for another edition of the long run archives. In this

episode, we cover a lot of topics, including the Kokadona 250, the Mammoth Trail Fest, recent issues

in athlete-sponsor relationships, Killian Jornay's

thoughts on the competitive landscape, our Strava finds of the week, and more.

Let's get started.

So I was telling you offline, I think I've been stoked about this episode ever since we started

prepping for it.

And one thing before we start, I recently learned that when you were

an undergrad at Southern Oregon University, you did your final project on how to start a running

store? Did I get that correct? Yeah, for the for the business major at SUU, you basically have to

create an entire business plan. And like to get an A, you should be able

to just present the business plan to like an investor or bank and get a business loan.

So I mean, of course I did a running store.

I worked in them and was already working at one.

So no, the ins and out's enough where I saw a spot in the, you know, East Bay area where you could totally throw a store and was like,

this is how it could work. And they liked it. Maybe we'll go in depth on the economics of

running stores and trail specialty stores on a future episode. But I was just interested because

there's been a lot of talk in the Salt Lake community about building a trail-specific

running store here along the Wasatch Front, especially one that's really close to trails,

because our current stores, they're more road-running-focused, and they're adjacent to Highway 15,

which is, like, so far from the trails, and they're not so much community hubs.

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