Hey, fam, welcome to Rest Day Free Trail's occasional news show talking about the latest happenings

and trail running, of course, the best sport in the world.

This week, Tim Tullifson is back to mow through a fun docket. We recorded the episode just

after the conclusion of our trail runner of the year rollout. So we spent much of the first half of

the episode recapping the results, sharing some statistics and contemplating what we can learn from the global

vote and how it played out at the end of 2025. We also directly confronted some of the

criticism. Free Trail Trail run of the year, so I spent time fully explaining the motivation

behind the award and transparently again sharing the way our voting

algorithm works and the rationale behind it. We of course discuss the absence of 200 mile

specialists from the trail runner of the year list and consider why that was. I also explain

why the vote is still distant agnostic, a response to criticism or questions

that we've gotten about why we don't especially separate short course and long course awards.

After that trail runner the year, debrief, we transition and talk about some free agency news.

Hans Troyer going to Hoka, Will Murray and Theodetian signing with Brooks, Ben Demon re-signing

with A6.

We discuss all those moves and others as we move through free agency season here at the

beginning of the year.

And then after that, we talk about some road to trail news, Molly Seidel, smash and

Bandera, Des Linden making trail moves, and Shelby

Hoolahan winning two races in his many weeks that led to a discussion about how we deal with

previously band athletes in the sport, which also led me to share some very exciting breaking news

for TrailCon. So you'll hear that in the back half of the episode we conclude

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