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

episode, we meet with Reed Coolset, a professional trail runner for Solomon based in Hamilton,

Ontario. Reed burst onto the mountain ultra trail running scene last year with a win at the Quebec Mega Trail 110K.

He also competed earlier this month at the Black Canyon 100K and we'll be lining up for the

Western States 100 in June. Prior to this venture, Reed had an extremely successful career in

road marathoning. He represented Canada in the

2012 and 2016 Olympic Games and holds a 21028 marathon PR. It's been talked recently about to

no end, but indeed our sport is only growing, getting more competitive, getting more professionalized,

and Reed's entrance is just the latest proof point. We start off talking about his background

as a full-time professional athlete on the marathoning scene, but we spend the bulk of the episode

talking about lessons learned so far, making that transition from

the roads to the trails, the perceptions of our sport from athletes in other running disciplines,

what it's going to take to recruit more athletes like Reed, and much more around the state

of the sport. One thing that struck me about Reed was his openness and his willingness to talk about really

any issue in the sport, whether it was related to pro athlete compensation, drug testing,

training methodology, the list goes on. It made for a really authentic and engaging conversation

and I hope that shines through here. Let's get started. Welcome, Reed. Read Cool Set. Welcome

to the single track podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me, Finn. One thing I want to say before we get into it,

I'm a huge fan of our sport, and I get really excited talking with folks like you because you have a high caliber

road running background and you bring a certain professional pedigree to our sport. And athletes like

yourself just continually raise the bar. So I think we'll talk a bit about why you decided to

get into the trail scene and we'll cover your background on the roads. But just wanted to say that

...