Welcome back or welcome to the Single Track Podcast.

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

a professional trail and Ultra Runner for Ultra based in Austin, Texas, ahead of her race at the Ultra Trail Cape Town 100K this upcoming weekend.

All right, Nicole Bitter, welcome to the single track podcast. Thanks. I'm honored to be here.

So we could do an entire episode on your background, but for the purposes of this conversation, one thing I'm curious about is that you're also a successful lawyer in addition to being an elite ultra runner.

And I have to imagine just the nature of that

profession. It creates a lot of strain. Given your experience balancing the two careers, how do you

monitor that type of mental stress and know heading into a race like Havillina or Ultrachau, Cape Town

that you don't just have the fitness, but like that willpower, that mindset

reserve to go to the well and to perform. Yeah, that's a really good question. And I can't say that

I've always been successful in my endeavors, right? Sometimes it backfires, right? I can certainly

say that there have been moments where having too much additional life stress doesn't result in successful

races. So that being said, I think just having the mindset that all I can do is my best on that

given day, right? I mean, from my perspective, I really value doing multiple things. And, you know, we, we all know

balance is a tricky one, right? Because if you're balanced, you're not necessarily putting your

all into a specific endeavor. So from my perspective, I'd rather maybe be 90% at a couple of different things.

And I just find that brings me happiness as a human being.

So I kind of prioritize my happiness as a human being over maybe, you know,

being the best ultra runner ever.

Cool.

Well, one of the thing that I wanted to touch on before we get into the topic at

hand, which is Cape Town, my understanding, you know, Havillina was only two weeks ago, and my

...