Welcome back or welcome to the Single Track podcast. I am your host Finn Melanson and in this episode,

I am talking with Adam Peterman, Adam Mary, Jeff Colt, and Eric Lapuma. These four runners represented

the United States men's team in the 80K event at the World Trail Running Championships in

Chiang Mai, Thailand earlier this month, and they won the gold medal.

We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, including why each of these guys chose to race this event over other opportunities in our sport,

what training and the rest of the lead-up to the race was like, what the scene was like, what the ambiance was

like in Chiang Mai, of course, how the race unfolded for each of them, the post-race stuff,

whether they'd do it again, and we conclude with what 2023 might look like from a racing

standpoint for each of them. Before we get started with the episode, it is brought to you by gnarly nutrition,

Kodiak cakes, and Inside Tracker. Use the discount codes in the show notes section of this episode

for the best deals in trail running on all of their products. With that, let's get started.

With Jeff Cole, Adam Peterman, Adam Mary, Eric Lapuma, this is another episode of the single-track podcast, a special episode because we are celebrating world champions here today.

Most of you are veterans of the podcast. Eric, this is your first time on the show.

So before we kind of get into the meat of the episode, can you give listeners and viewers a quick background on how you got into our sport and

kind of what makes you tick? Sure. So my name's Eric Lopuma. I'm a runner and graphic designer

from Richmond, Vermont. I'd say in running, I kind of dabble in a little bit of everything.

I've done a bunch of road ultrass. I've done like your standard mountain ultras, kind of every sort of distance.

Mostly do like 50K, 50 miles stuff these days. But yeah, that's pretty

much my running in a nutshell. Right on. And you had a hell of performance in Thailand.

We'll get into that. But I think the first question I want to ask you guys, and whoever wants to take it first,

by all means, there are a lot of enticing events and series in our sport right now.

There's Western States.

...