Welcome back or welcome to the single track podcast.

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

a professional trail runner for the North Face based in San Francisco, California,

who is preparing for the Ultra Trail Cape Town 100K event in a few days.

This was our first time chatting on the pod, so I think you will enjoy some of the

background conversation we have in addition to the Cape Town stuff. With that, let's get

started. All right, Olivia Amber, welcome to the single track podcast. Thank you for having me.

First timer. First time and hopefully not the last time. But it is our first time meeting and I would love to get some background. We were just talking offline about how you are an alumnus of Colby College. And from what I understand, there's a great Nordic skiing tradition there, among other things. And you had a career in that sport. So can you talk about how you ultimately made the pivot into our world

of Mountain Ultra Trail Running and sort of what was at stake, like what the motivations,

inspirations were? Yeah. So running was always one of my favorite parts of training for skiing.

I definitely never expected it to become my main sport, but it was definitely an activity

I always enjoyed.

And, yeah, I mean, I grew up ski racing with Corinne Malcolm, who I think a lot of people

listening to us probably know or are aware of.

She's now a runner for Adidas Terrix.

She actually was on the U.S. biathlon team, but we grew up skiing

together in Wisconsin. And so I've known her since I was like eight years old. And I sort of followed

her transition into this running scene. And it was definitely really intrigued and inspired by what she was,

what she was doing. I remember when she ran her first 50-miler and one, and it was a

thing. And I was like, I can't believe people are running 50 miles. That was just so foreign to me.

And I was so much on the skiing side that I wasn't really paying that much attention to what

was happening on running side. But I remember just being so inspired by that. And I think it's always been an

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