Rod Farvard | Life On The Path
The Freetrail Podcast with Dylan Bowman
Dylan Bowman
4.8 • 866 Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rod Farvard is a pro trail runner for HOKA living in Mammoth Lakes, CA. Among other things, Rod is a past champion of the Canyons 100k and a runner up of the Western States 100. We recorded this in person at Freetrail HQ in Marinwood, CA, 24hrs removed from a long run together on my home trails.
Topics discuss:
- Feelings approaching the end of the year
- Finding and embracing "Your Path" in life
- Sacrifice as being a necessary element of being On The Path
- Focusing on UTMB after years committed to Western States
- Evaluating his 9th place performance in 2025 and where there's room for improvement
- Supported FKT attempt on the John Muir Trail
- Switching coaches
- Goals for 2026
- A lot more!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey friends. Welcome back to the free trial podcast. Of course, I am your loving host, |
| 0:17.5 | Dylan Bowman here today with Rod Farvard for what feels to me like a special |
| 0:22.5 | episode. A couple of Sundays ago, Rod was here in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, and we managed to |
| 0:28.9 | get out for a long run together. The run was about 23 miles and about four hours of beautiful |
| 0:35.3 | running, but also beautiful and deep conversation. We talked |
| 0:39.9 | about so many different topics, working out our problems together on the trail, chatting |
| 0:46.2 | about the sport and our respective places within it. And as I say in today's show, the run |
| 0:52.5 | itself, even though I'm still sore and fatigued from it, |
| 0:56.2 | was a highlight of the year for me. |
| 0:58.1 | Rod is such a great dude. |
| 0:59.9 | He's obviously also a great athlete. |
| 1:01.5 | And our sport is great because of people like Rod. |
| 1:05.2 | And so after our amazing run and the convo therein, I thought it would be great to have Rod here in studio in my backyard |
| 1:13.5 | to build off and continue that conversation that we had on the trail in a way that I hope |
| 1:19.4 | you all appreciate. The macro theme of the conversation here today is about finding and |
| 1:24.7 | embracing your path in life, your unique path based on your natural |
| 1:30.4 | interests, aptitude, talents, things like that, something that I think we're all searching for |
| 1:35.7 | and something that always requires sacrifice. Rod has a very unique view on this because in |
| 1:42.8 | 2025 he himself made some big personal decisions requiring |
| 1:47.1 | sacrifice to honor his path in life it's inspiring and it's a beautiful thing honestly so in |
| 1:55.1 | addition to that discussion we also talk about rod's decision to not pursue a return to western |
| 2:00.0 | states in twenty 26 We talk about his ninth |
... |
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