Hey, everybody, happy new year.

Hope you're all doing great and staying faithfully committed to your new year's resolutions.

I for one am feeling optimistic, very excited about 2022. I think it's going to be a big year.

I think it's going to be a positive year. And I feel like we all deserve it after what's been

happening in the world recently. And today we're going to be making a bit of an

announcement about my new career change, I guess you could say. Last week, I announced that I was

going to be leaving my longtime sponsor, The North Face. And today, we are talking a bit about

what's next for me in the broader context of what is next for the sport by speaking to two

new entrepreneurs in trail running the two co-founders of speed land a new hyperperformance

trail equipment company based here in portland oregon who have recently released their first

footwear product the s lpd, the best trail running shoe ever made, in my opinion.

And I'm very happy to say, I'm very grateful to say that Speedland is going to be my new footwear partner going forward.

And I use that word partner very intentionally and I'll explain why.

But basically, to give you a little background here, over the past year or longer, probably closer

to 18 months, I have grown just somewhat tired of the traditional athlete sponsorship model

that I had been part of for the past

decade. There was a time in my career, really most of my career, where getting a free box of

gear and a paycheck and striving every day to be a good athlete was all I cared about. I have been in the sport. I've

been doing this for a long time and that is simply not the case anymore. I still, yes, obviously

want to be a good athlete. I still want to compete. I still want to push myself athletically.

But I also really critically became enamored of finding partners who valued me

as an athlete, yes, but who also saw the value in what we're doing on the media and community

...