Hey, fam, welcome to the free trail podcast. Of course, I'm your loving host, Dylan Bowman, here today with a special episode.

Today we're playing the audio from

Tofer Gaylord's keynote presentation from day one of TrailCon. For those who don't know,

Tofer has been one of the most respected leaders in the trail running industry for probably

25 years at this point. He has a longtime trail runner himself. He's held leadership roles at the North Face,

Mountain Hardware, and Under Armour. And now, among many things, he serves as the board president

for the Western States 100, a race that he has finished seven times himself, and which is the subject

of his keynote presentation that you're about to hear.

Of course, TrailCon took place in the days leading up to Western states, and it was a true

honor to have Tofer join us for this moving presentation. I hope you can feel it while you

listen, but this is really a powerful talk. We were all on the edges of our seats,

those of us who are in the room. I definitely got a bit emotional myself. And in our post-event

survey, many people flagged this as their favorite moment from the entire conference. We're calling

this talk, the spirit of Western states, roughly a 30-minute presentation

that speaks to the past, present and future of the original 100-mile trail race, the one and

only Western states 100-mile endurance run. The presentation began with a sizzle reel video

narrated by the great Billy Yang, so you'll hear his voice first

before Tofer takes over. And again, thank you to Tofer for doing this. Thank you to Craig Thornley

and the Western States Organization for their partnership with TrailCon. And thanks to you all for

listening. Speedland is on a tear recently with amazing products dropping its supremely high velocity, most notably two new shoes to celebrate the brand's partnership with the Coca-Dona 250 like me.

I know a lot of you are glued to the multi-day live broadcast

of this amazing and slightly insane race in Arizona. Well, the Speedland team was so inspired. They

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