Welcome back or welcome to the single track podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson. This time around,

we have Matt Trappy on the show. If you are steeped in ultra-running content from the last decade or so,

you might know his name. He is part of the talent behind great YouTube stuff like Jim Walmsley's

Lighting the Fire series, Drottie and Ledman, the Dave Mackey story, among many other

great contributions to this area of the community.

Matt has a new brand that he recently launched called O'Tour Sportive that we will link to in the show notes.

He is also a great follow on LinkedIn if you hang out on that platform offering commentary and perspective

on some of the most important news dropping

in the creative and business realms of the endurance sports world. In this particular conversation,

we cover a lot of ground, including the role of storytelling and brand marketing, the importance

of context and human connection and athlete narratives, and the evolving landscape of trail marketing in the digital age.

We also get into how the cultural conversation is becoming more fragmented and why brands need to find new ways to engage with their audiences,

the potential coming split between professional and participant markets and ultra running, and we also have a lot of fun digging into some of the open at the time of recording

job roles in our sport like the PR position at UTMB and the global creative director position

at Solomon.

With that, let's get into this conversation.

Matt Trappy, it's great to have you on the single track podcast.

I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while. How are you doing today?

I'm great, Finn. Thank you for having me and giving me a bit of a platform to talk about all my musings.

You know, before we hit record, I was thinking about a good place to start, and I think it's with your filmmaking background and sort of like what you've contributed to the realm of ultra running.

My personal favorite is the Lighting the Fire series.

It's actually part of what I think brought me into the sport or at least educated me sort of baseline on what was going on, at least at the pro

...