Dylan Bowman, Courtney Dauwalter and Kaci Lickteig- How their training has changed⎮KoopCast Episode 21

what's going on folks welcome to another episode of the KoopCast i appreciate everybody tuning in hope your days are going well hope this episode finds you out on a run if your favorite trails haven't been closed off yet hope everybody's staying safe and washing your hands during this incredibly unprecedented time that we are faced with right now i can guarantee you that if you're listening to this episode your race calendar has been completely upended a lot of races are getting canceled some of them are getting postponed until uh the latter part of the year and other ones are still stuck in this area of limbo is it going to happen is it going to not and so in order to provide some advice for everybody listening out there i got together with three of the best trail runners in the business i spoke with dill bowman who had a fantastic opening uh to the year at the trans grand canaria race which i happen to also be attending and now he is stuck in limbo waiting for hard rock to make a decision on whether they're going to run that race or not i got together with courtney de walter it's kind of the same position uh with hard rock and with UTMB and i also got together with casey lichtide uh who was obviously in the western states 100 this year and that race has been canceled and i discussed with them how they are approaching this whole aspect of uncertainty

within their race calendars and they each has some very unique perspectives that i hope that each of you get something out of in terms of how to manage your own calendar and how to manage your own training and also more importantly how to manage your attitude during these incredibly uncertain times as has been the case with the last couple of podcasts that i've done i'm going to shamelessly plug some small businesses that are some way shape or form related to the trail and ultra running community uh there's no doubt about it the economic uh uh ramifications of this pandemic are going to be widespread and it's going to be something that nobody in our lifetime has ever seen so if you do have the means please go and support your local small businesses there have been a number of uh number of athletes that are doing some incredible things out there including another one of my athletes cory woltering who is running every single street in his hometown to raise uh money for the small businesses out in ottawa illinois so you guys can go ahead and google that and check that out but expect ads expect a lot of them expect them to be very shameless and i appreciate anybody's support who uh goes out and supports those uh small businesses i would be remiss to mention before we get into the meat of this podcast that what we're talking about here with everybody having to shift their race calendars around really you guys

this is these are small potatoes yes running trail and ultra running and racing and being together with the community that we love it is meaningful and impactful to all of us my year revolves around the races it's impacted me greatly but at the end of the day there are bigger fish to fry right now than being worried about what to do with this race or that race or this event or that that event so we all love them we should absolutely do things to help us become healthier and hopefully a little bit more fit for once these races do start to actually take place maybe later in the year maybe it's 2021 but keep in mind that throughout all of this we have to be strong we have to be resilient and we also have to be very flexible with how we are approaching our race calendars so keep that in mind as you're listening to these three fine athletes and i hope you guys get a lot out of this next episode so here we go without any further ado first up is dylan bowman all righty up first we have none other than an athlete that i've worked with for several years dylan bowman he had a tremendous 2018 and a really crappy 2019 and this year 2020 was supposed to be his year of redemption and so he takes us through what that really meant for

him what that mean to be on the comeback trail and have it to really be cut short and also have this air of ambiguity around it as this covid19 fog is around us all takes us through how he's approaching training for the hard rock 100 just to put a quick time stamp on this we recorded this on march 27th and unbeknownst to us at the time quite literally the western states 100 sent out the communications to all the athletes that their 2020 edition of that race would be canceled and very foolishly dylan and i were prognosticating about what would happen during that particular event but i'm going to leave it in there as a cautious reminder for everybody to stop trying to predict these things and that is inclusive of both dylan and myself as always we have a shameless plug before this section of the podcast and i would have been remiss not to let dylan plug his own wife's small business because i want to give him all the brownie points he can get that's the type of human i am dylan you're welcome let's talk a little bit about blue willow this section of the podcast is brought to you by blue willow blue willow was started by none other than our next guest's wife harmony bowman dylan tell us a little bit about blue willow

well thank you Jason Koop uh that's very generous of you yes blue willow was started by my lovely wife my better half harmony bowman um it's a one woman operation harmony is a very multi-talented person uh her professional background was in wine and spirits and she transferred all the skills that she had in brand marketing there to start her own cbd kind of beauty skincare company called blue willow you can find it at this is blue willow dot com she's got a few products that you can buy for yourself or for your friends and family uh she's got sort of like a a body balm which i always rub on my sore muscles after long days of training uh and a body oil that you can be used for similar application and then also my favorite my personal favorite the cbd infused bath salts so i've been spending a lot of my unproductive time during the coronavirus hanging out in warm cbd baths and i would encourage you to do the same so shout out to my wonderful wife harmony bowman check out this is blue willow dot com and uh we appreciate your business and your support now i hope any points that you had getting you into the dog house have just been erased by that plug that was so that was so beautiful such a seamless plug

in all seriousness you guys go and uh show harmony some love at what's the website again dylan this is blue willow dot com show them some love buy their shit give harm some help we love her very much because you and i had the same experience where we both went over to europe to spain of all places and when you you left earlier than i did but even when i left i left i had to look at this the other day just to almost kind of like justify my travel because i was having traveler's remorse yeah so i left march 2nd yeah and um at the time the u.s had like 50 cases maybe a couple of deaths like it was all pretty you know of course the administration was like you know pushing it down even further but really when you looked at it on the surface like nobody's pushing the panic button and then by the time we go we go over to spain you know all the stereotypical bro i remember i remember i remember pablo and pal kissing their wives or significant others at the aid stations like i remember this very vividly now and i thought absolutely nothing of it at the time yeah yeah all the bro hugs at the end of the race and then we come back and like the world is totally imploded yeah it's crazy isn't it like i would do anything for a bro hug right now but yeah no i've had a

similar experience and just having such a feeling of unprecedentedness of this in my entire life and and just like this really the first time for me it's at least in my adult life where it feels like everything has changed in an instant right like when 9-11 happened i was really young you know i think i was you know in maybe ninth grade or something like that certainly not mature enough to understand like the global consequences of it and now having just turned 34 this week and feeling very much like an adult like it really does make it feel like you're living through a moment in history and as you said like just two weeks ago you know this was a news story but it certainly wasn't like a world-changing thing and now this is really something that's touching virtually everybody internationally in a unique way for each individual person and yeah like having just been in spain and us in particular we spent one day in madrid which has now become one of like the global epicenters um in terms of like the carnage that the coronavirus can inflict we were there for just 24 hours as we uh were in transit between the canary islands

and morocco which we where we spent a few days as well and when we were there at least harmony and and debbie my mother-in-law walked around the city basically the entire day um debbie's in her 70s you know like and now just seeing what's happening over there and just counting the days since we had been there the crossing the 14-day threshold you sort of like breathe such a sigh of relief of just like luckily we're all feeling healthy we're all feeling good but yeah it's just incredible how quickly the the global situation has changed uh we had the exact same situation on the way back because our uh it just happened that me casey miguel and jared were all in the same flight pattern back to the u.s is what happens all the time with these ultra races all the americans get on the same flight patterns and all four of us got stuck in madrid for the night because of mechanical so not not not planned just you know because we missed our connecting flight or whatever and same thing casey miguel and i we ran around this like really cool park in madrid you know kind of spent the afternoon the evening there you know had dinner there all of us went to the airport you know roughly around the same time the next day flew back and then i can't remember whether it was that night or the next night like i watched the presidential address i was watching it live yeah and you you

now i mean we all now know that you know there was a discrepancy between how some of the travel bans were originally announced and then when the department of homeland security came back and said no no no no no it's really really not like that so i immediately texted you and like three or four other people that i knew that were trying to get back to the u.s i'm like you guys get your asses back now yeah yeah well so our experience of that was yeah basically my phone went absolutely apeshit at four o'clock in the morning well i was in marrakesh of all places and so you know i i just happened to like roll over in bed and see my phone ringing and it was my sister-in-law harmony sister and of course i'm traveling with harmony and and debbie so i'm like what you know why is she calling me miss the call call her right back and she's like you know this is what's going on like you guys need to figure it out but we had two days before or no that yeah like the day before we were starting to get kind of a weird feeling with the development of all the news stories and we made the decision wisely that we were going to cut our trip a couple days short and and head home um so basically you know the day before uh the president made the announcement that they were cutting off all travel we had changed

our itinerary to come back in time thank goodness we had done that because otherwise it would have been a complete mess and we were able to call united before their phone lines got inundated and were able to make those changes um but yeah like waking up in the middle of the night to panic text not only from you but from you know my family as well and and other people um yeah again it was just sort of like wow like this is a really serious thing and so our feeling was at the time like okay well if this gets bad you know we don't really want to be in marrakesh you know like we should probably cut our trip a couple days short and and get home even though it seems like marrakesh is probably the safer place to be at this point uh we were really glad to get home um when we did because we end we ultimately got home they they were closing the borders again not to u.s citizens but they're closing the borders to international travel from europe um that friday night and we got home friday afternoon um and then it was the next day that all over the news we saw the like six hour waits at customs and we were able to breeze through the day before you know nobody took our temperature nobody asked us where we were nothing like that so again luckily we're feeling healthy um but yeah we feel very lucky uh not only to be healthy but to to have been able to get home in the way that we did

under those circumstances it's crazy what a difference 24 hours makes okay so let let's let's back up a little bit before we dive down the covet 19 rabbit hole because 2020 was supposed to be like your redemption tour and um i think i think to set to like set the table for 2020 let's go like give a really brief recap of all of the trials and tribulations that you had to go through for 2019 in in as consolidated of a package as you can because there were a lot of them yeah yeah well so backing up just a tiny bit further to 2018 i had a really really great season um and as a result of having a good season i was feeling really good about myself i was able to you know kind of uh renegotiate all my contracts with my sponsors get new sponsors you know people want to talk to you you feel good about yourself and uh and then sort of near the end of 2018 you know not long before the north face 50 was ultimately canceled due to wildfires i sort of just kind of like fell into this hole kind of felt a little lost we had kind of turned our life upside down by moving back to colorado so sort of uplifting out of our community and anyway they're just feeling a little bit off balance on a personal level and then

physically my body just kind of like started falling apart so my first race of 2019 went out to hong kong got incredibly sick the first day i was there ultimately ruined my ability to race there i got incredibly sick again like six weeks later this time with uh sort of like a flu like a respiratory thing rather than a stomach thing um but like bedridden type sick again uh for like the second time in two months which is really unusual for me to get sick in general and to get that sick twice was really unusual and then just as i was trying to get back into training for transvolcania which was my goal last spring my first day of training camp as you know i drove all the way out to oregon to try and get out of the snow in colorado first day first run have a really bad ankle roll end up fracturing my ankle uh which then basically i mean more or less put me on the shelf for the majority of the rest of the year it took me a long time to acknowledge that myself so trying to train through what was clearly an unhealthy ankle ended up leading to pretty bad achilles tendonitis ultimately forced me to stop training then of course because i wasn't running anymore i got on my bike went for a little bike ride crashed my bike separated my shoulder got a concussion and that was finally the the final indication of me of like all right bro like you gotta press pause like you're clearly trying to force something that's not gonna

happen and um and yeah so that was finally sort of like my wake-up call to to kind of address this sort of like inner feeling of unsettledness that i think was contributing to my physical health also deteriorating and yeah like you said um finally have been turning the corner and feeling good again and training well again and was able to go race at trans grand canaria which was supposed to be the start of uh yeah the revenge tour of 2020 so that brings us out you were psyched so this is this is the trajectory that i want to explore a little bit because 2019 you had it all like you had the personal stuff that was really difficult right you kind of uplifted you kind of uprooted your life as you mentioned you had different types of physical ailments things that you could not control getting getting sick getting respiratory infection and then things then training things that you know maybe we didn't manage very well right coming back from you know fractured ankle pushing the envelope a little bit on that on too much on that front and throughout all of that like all of those different combinations of of tribulations that you had to go through you were you were psyched and you were ready to go like i've never seen you as as as as fired up as you were at the beginning of this year and it all went to plan right i mean first three months leading in uh leading into trans grand canaria training kind of

for the most part kind of went to plan you had to you had to move some pieces around training kind of went to plan the race definitely went to plan i think that's about as good as you can run yep and now that the world's turned over a few times let's go let's go through what was supposed to happen for 2020 and now where it sits yeah well i think first of all the the experience of 2019 and the maturity that i gained from going through all those things and what i learned from it has helped me to approach this i think in a better more mature way but yeah the the whole point of this year as you know was to do what i called sort of like the revenge tour to get my body back to 100 and then get back to where i want to be and where i know i can be as an athlete competitively and trans grand canaria fit within that plan really well because part of the idea the revenge tour was to go back to races where i had not performed well in the past and one of the things i'm really proud of in my career is that i've been a pretty damn consistent runner you know even on a bad day i have an okay result like it's rare that i completely blow it right and trans grand canaria when i went to that in 2014 was one of those races where like i look back and it was just like man you screwed that one up bad and um so you know

penciling that in on the calendar as you know the first stop on this revenge tour going back and redeeming a result that i was not proud of in my career um fit with the theme of the year the main goal for the season and what we were sort of building everything around was hard rock and of course as most people will know hard rock was supposed to be my main goal for 2019 as well and was ultimately canceled due to the uh very substantial snowpack that you guys saw in colorado last year and it was fortunate for me that hard rock was canceled last year and that's part of the reason why as i just mentioned i was immoderate in my return from a broken ankle it was because i was like okay i'm in at hard rock like this has been a dream of mine to do this race so you know didn't give myself as much of an opportunity to recover as i probably should have but ultimately hard rocks cancellation was a good thing given the fact that i was so unhealthy i don't think i could have gotten through it anyway and if i could have it would have probably caused more damage done more harm than good so anyway that was supposed to be the main objective for this season and in between trans grand canary and hard rock i was supposed to do the volvic volcanic 110k on the world tour a fairly new race um and i just got the notification this morning that that has now been officially canceled so um that was basically as far

as we had planned um this year hard rock was sort of the the main cornerstone of uh of my season and certainly something that i've been motivated to do for my entire career and building towards it is an important thing i'm very lucky that if it does go off that i was able to get that 80 mile day and it trans grand canaria um but you know now now everything's a question mark including hard rock and and certainly including what to do between now and hard rock so so you've had this year that was full of crap basically you came back you had a good race and now you've had the race that was supposed to be after that the volvic race get canceled yeah and hard rock is certainly a question mark and probably a big question mark just given the timing of it all how are you like how just how are you like mentally processing that like after the big low and then another high and now this ambiguity yeah well i think first of all the ambiguity i'm not viewing as a low um and i think that's important right so it's not like i went from high or from low to high to low again you know i feel very lucky that i was able to take part in trans grand canaria this year like and get a long 80 mile 13 plus hour day in my legs just about three weeks ago you know so i'm still feeling

pretty high on life after that certainly still not feeling terribly antsy to you know go out and train and um you know get a lot of uh miles in my legs you know it's not as if i'm getting that stir crazy yet but definitely i guess the way i think about it more is just in the greater context of my career right like i turned 34 two days ago and you know feeling like i'm sort of in the prime of my career right and having had a great season in 2018 and then feeling like 2019 i was sort of like robbed of like a year in the prime of my career at a point when i really started to feel like i'm learning how to race learning how to train um you know just getting better at everything um so that's what i i view it more as is like well man if 2020 now is a is a is a lost cause if it if there's really no racing to be had this year and hard rock is canceled again that'll be a bummer you know because next year i'll be 35 and i'll have two years of my prime kind of taken from me um but you know the important thing for me is yeah i mean like this is touching everybody you know in so many different ways right and i'm so lucky to have the support of great sponsors and to also have like a day job that

is not being impacted in fact you know because we do sort of like air compressors and things like that the we're sort of considered an essential business too so like i'm lucky you know this isn't gonna really impact me in a way that it's gonna impact most people um so having that sort of understanding and that kind of like gratitude um makes it easier to deal with but certainly i'm somebody who who doesn't function well with uncertainty and that's something we've talked about a lot and something that uh has been really good with our move to portland is just having more certainty as to what direction my life is going and and so that's something that i have to have to deal with every day is like just being okay with not knowing what the next two weeks let alone the next year and a half might look like well and from a training perspective like you're at the inflection point right now because like literally right now we're recording this on march 27th you've gotten over trans grand canaria you're rested you're fired up like you're over your 14 day quarantine you've still got some sort of stay at home orders but you've got this ambiguous real but really big event in the july time frame that you need to start buckling down and training for and i almost view this i almost view the situation that

you're in right now where it has a big question mark as somebody who's on the wait list and is on like the edge of getting in or not it's like should i really double down on my track should i really train that hard with the slight chance of getting in or should i just kind of like you know laissez-faire meander through uh meander through the next part of the training process so it so here here it is we're gonna make the decision pretty soon right in the next couple next week or so like kind of how to how to hedge the training like where like where are you at with that i mean i i'm gonna train as if hard rock's gonna happen right so you know of course like i enjoy the process of training as much as i enjoy you know the training towards a goal you know and the if hard rock is ultimately canceled yeah it'll change the way i approach my my daily running but until they tell me it's going to be canceled i'm going to train as if it's as if it's happening and i like the analogy with the wait list because that's kind of how you have to approach it if you are you know one or two on the wait list and you're getting towards the last few days of hard rock you know you you at that point you've already trained as if you're going to run train for you that you're going to be racing but that i think is the same approach that i'm going to have to take here as well and you know what you and i'll have to

navigate then is knowing me as a person and my personality and how i race best usually is to then have some sort of like stepping stone goal in between trans grand canaria and hard rock and now that volvic has been canceled trying to figure out a way in which i could achieve that uh in a way that would set me up to have a good run at uh at hard rock in the case that it does happen so you know that's sort of the way that you know i imagine that we will approach it and you know my plan had been to after volvic after returning back home to basically throw everything in the truck you know dogs and harmony saddle up we're going out to colorado for six weeks before the race and we had a uh an airbnb all set up in aspen a place that we both love and have deep roots in and um you know now the guy who was going to be renting us this place who i also know personally is potentially going to be instead of having an airbnb you know looking for a long-term renter in his place because now the the tourist situation in aspen is totally flipped on its head as well so now we're not sure you know where um we would be staying and as you know you know when i train for a big goal i like to train very

specifically for that goal and so a big part of our preparation for hard rock was going to be that last kind of six week block acclimatizing to altitude marching up and down big mountains uh and getting specifically trained for the hard rock 100 course so you know that's um i guess the the long answer to your question of like yeah i intend to still train for hard rock you know starting you know basically now and um until they tell me it's not going to happen i'm going to assume that it is and uh just cross my fingers yeah and but you still have got this question mark of and i think a lot of other athletes that have either races that are in the like august september time frame or races that that are maybe a little more likely to happen or a race like hard rock is they want a stepping stone they want you know a 50 miler to do 100 miler 50k to do 100k or something like that and they're kind of going to be sol unless they completely cobble it together diy style you know an fkt attempt or they do something kind of in their backyard and things like that and i honestly think that for a lot of athletes that can be a learning experience because you can do it by yourself it you don't have to have a start and finish line you can you have the resources and now everybody's going to be forced to do this you have the resources to put together something like that a diy camp or a diy race or whatever

to have this like intermediate goal that can help get you ready for whatever the main goal is right but i'll be curious to see like how that impacts performance so hypothetically like if western states happens and most of the top athletes in the field have had basically no races under their belt and they have to jump into a hundred miler a competitive hundred miler like how's that going to impact the finishing times and the rate of attrition right so you know does somebody like tim tollefson who also has been fortunate like myself to be able to get a couple efforts in this year is he had a significant advantage over you know somebody like jared hazen or matt daniels or any of the other uh contenders in the field to you know perform better or what does it also result in like more attrition in the field like do more of the top men and women or more of the general field ultimately drop out of the race because they didn't have that sort of like race environment to to get ready for it because i see what you're saying but also coop like you and i both know like when i was training for the north face 50 a couple years ago and i was doing those cross-country races in the bay area i was getting more out of those cross-country races than i would out of any training session that i would have been doing

on my own and i think there is certainly like a performance benefit out of getting that race experience in even though as you're saying yeah you you do have to diy it now like you do have to play the cards you're dealt but i i wonder what that will eventually look like you know um in terms of the the ultimate goal because certainly it would be a it would be so sad if western states didn't go off but it would also be really strange to see so many sort of guys who guys and girls who who hadn't um you know really tested themselves that season yeah well on the prognostication side of it i think two i think two things are going to happen one is you will absolutely see the fact that athletes of all abilities not just at the elite side of all abilities the fact that they can't get in their normal routine of i'm going to do race b and then i'm going to do race a whatever that looks like that they've been doing for years that will absolutely get to people 100 because they because especially for the experienced athletes that's all they've known you know i'm going to talk to casey uh about this very same thing her pattern for western states all seven years that she's done it six years six years that she's done it has been i'm going to go do the training camp and then i'm going to go do the race and that's they haven't officially canceled the training camp but it's highly unlikely that they're going to that they're going to hold that and so this pattern that she's in she's just going to have to and she'll figure it out but they're going to be athletes that for whatever reason that gets to them i think i

think the second thing and i don't know how much of a limb this is going out on but i can i can i can see where somebody could certainly take the opposite uh the opposite approach i think that the because everybody's preparation is going to be less than ideal for a variety of different reasons the races the stay-at-home ordinances they've got to like you know people with kids that that that their kids are home like liz my my uh my wife who teaches high school english she's teaching at home all their students are at home the parents have to deal with that like everybody's training is gonna getting interrupted to various degrees i actually think that for all for everybody who's not trying to win the race they're all gonna hedge during the race of finish at all costs they're gonna cram the golden hour as much as they can and we could study this before and after right however many finishers are in the golden hour there might be like double this year because everybody is just like okay i'm just gonna finish i'm not i don't care about the big buckle i don't care about 27 hours i'm just gonna finish yeah wow yeah it'll be it'll be very interesting and yeah i i could see it going both directions too like what if everybody in kind of at the elite end of the field too is like just super motivated really well trained long training blocks and very fresh and you know we see an incredible an incredible race or you know is everybody a little bit under trained and you know still racing aggressively and maybe we see

a lot of attrition on the elite end of the field so yeah it's unpredictable just as life is right now but um yeah it'll this is going to be a year that i think we all look back on and remember not only societally culturally but within our little sport as well yeah okay let's pivot i want to get your take on one thing that's not training related you and you alluded to this earlier you put yourself in a pretty good position with your sponsors and in 2018 uh just because you had really great races how do you think that that landscape is going to change for 2020 because a lot of athletes are going to come to their end of their contracts at the end of this year and they don't have they have very little work product to show for it on the racing side yeah they'll still have the social side and what other obligations that the sponsors require of them but on the racing side and it's not any it's not their fault but they have they will have very little if any work product to show for it this is a difficult question i think it's something that is underappreciated you know when people look at you know the runners who do this quote unquote professionally which is very few people to be fair uh that really like make it a focal point of their life like it looks like a really awesome way to make a living and it certainly is and it you know i'm sure those people who are lucky enough to do it wouldn't trade it for the world

but it is like still making a living right and it's not an easy way it's still a job right and it comes with its own stresses and as you said one of those stresses is like well you know my my sponsors are expecting me to perform i can't perform you know a reasonable person would understand this is outside of my control but my sponsor also needs to sell whatever product it is and this is also having this coronavirus is also having an impact on their business and how am i going to be how am i going to fit into their uh their business plan once this is this is over so it's not only like did i fulfill my sort of like performance and social media requirements is it's more of like is the health of this company such that they're going to have the ability to you know sign and pay athletes and how is that going to impact the greater ecosystem of the sport and i'm very lucky just speaking specifically about myself that i have long-term relationships uh with the two major sponsors that i have the north face and red bull and i have very close relationships with the people at the company i had a really fun uh interactive conference call with many of the athletes on the north face team yesterday including the sort of global head of sports marketing jamie star who went out of his way credit to him to say to all of us hey guys

just so you know our company is healthy we're doing well we were looking for ways to help the worldwide community and i want you all to know that your jobs are not in jeopardy so for any other sports marketing people who are listening and um any other athletes out there listen for whoever you interact with at the company how you know they're talking about this and um for people who work in sports marketing um i would encourage you to be open and honest with your athletes and let them know like if this might impact them give them plenty of notice and uh if it's not going to impact them tell them because they will be stressed about it and um yeah like again it goes back to the point of just like everything is now in question you know it went two months ago from being like the most powerful economy and and and stock market that we've ever seen to now every single thing is in question every business is in question except for maybe amazon but um yeah and it trickles down it trickles down to everybody and uh so for me you know i'm lucky my situation is is solid um and the people that i work with uh i have close personal relationships with and uh i've been able to talk about it with them and uh i would encourage other athletes to to reach out to those people and for the people in the companies to be open with their athletes super sage advice for the sports marketing people out there i

think anybody who's listening is like yes i would hope my sponsors tell me the exact same thing because a lot of athletes and i work with a lot of elite athletes and i know a lot of elite athletes they all have that exact same emotion that you just expressed like all of this i'm worried about myself i'm worried about the company is something are they just going to all of a sudden you know fire everybody all at once because of how the global economy is doing they all have those same trepidations and if you broaden it out to the broader ecosystem of not only trail trail ultra running but just like running as a whole all of the sponsors that fuel the races that's a big part of their income right sponsorships and how they can actually run races those are going to get affected and so that'll see trickle down to the athletes that are participating in the race the races don't have quite the same infrastructure and on and on and on so it's always worth mentioning that you know just like this virus is showing us that we're a worldwide economy uh in a worldwide society that these impacts go far greater and far deeper than just what we are individually experiencing them all right man well you and i we got brass tacks to get to offline so we're gonna say goodbye goodbye goodbye here at least on air and i really appreciate it man i really appreciate you coming on and expressing these things so that everybody can learn a little bit from it KoopCast that's right man yeah it's great man thanks for having me absolutely

all right here we go this next section is with none other than western states and UTMB winner and ultra runner of the year courtney de walter although i don't work with courtney personally as an athlete i have nothing but the utmost respect for her i love hanging out with her at any of the races that we get to go to and as many of you all know she is just a breath of fresh air when in whatever room that she comes into and i think that that is readily apparent in the conversation uh that we are about to get into but before we get into that yes you guys realize what's going on it is the ads and i thought then i thought that since i was talking to courtney i would plug one of the small businesses that is very near to my home here in colorado springs colorado and also is serendipitously connected to courtney de walter and that is patsy's candy yes patsy's candy is a original it is a colorado original they make all different types of taffy and fudge and chocolate in their candy store here in colorado springs colorado about a half a mile from my house i ride my bike and i run by there almost

every single day and it is almost impossible for me to not go in and steal a couple of samples or take a box of chocolates home to my lovely wife so if you have the hankering for something sweet go ahead and check out patsy's candy.com and you can have one of their incredible confections shipped directly to your home you can even get cbd infused chocolates yeah that's right cbd infused chocolates sent directly to you if that happens to be your kettle of fish so check them out patsy's candy.com i guarantee you you will not be disappointed some of the finest candy in the entire world all right without any further ado here we go here's my conversation with courtney de walter did you apply to be an astronaut in their recent application process no i was not aware that i could yeah they just had opened it up i think it closed yesterday though oh i for sure don't have the stomach nor the qualifications to uh to make the cut so i would not try did you i didn't apply i would love to but um i was reading through what their qualifications were and i also did not meet those you would think though that you would get a like they would that you would you could qualify through a special exemption you know like there's some there's some things in your palmares that i think

would supersede whatever rudimentary base level qualification that existed for the astronauts like well i don't have a PhD in astrophysics but i won western states and UTMB that's got to count for something right i'd say no i'm pretty sure counts for zero in space okay courtney i'm glad i'm glad you're gonna stay on uh planet earth for the time being because for now yeah athletes like you to for now all right so you're so you're so you're saying there's a chance oh shit all right so let's let's get into this a little bit before this conversation starts to go off the rails anymore um i want to know i want to know to start out with like if you can remember way back three months ago to january when everything was normal relatively normal for ultra runners when everything was normal and you're planning like your season out which you had a pretty good outline of what that was going to look like what did that look like like what were you planning to do in 2020 not but three months ago yeah my main three objectives were uh hard rock UTMB and then big's backyard ultra um so i was pretty pumped to try the hard rock UTMB double stacking two mountain races in six weeks or whatever it was

um and then to go back to big's backyard was really exciting and uh who knows you know maybe things will be back to normal by then uh so those main ones didn't start until what july is hard rock and leading up to that was just going to be a lot of like training races i guess starting in april just uh easing into the year this time uh which normally i start racing in january or february and uh have learned some good lessons in the past eight months that uh pushed my season back a little bit more just so that i could be smarter about training and i i think that's also good to go over as well like you ended 2019 in a little bit of a broken state you know you had a you had a pretty good you had a really good campaign in 2018 you had a good campaign obviously in 2019 but the end of the year you you you're injured and you took some time off and that bled into the first part of of of 2021 we go back a little bit further and just like set the stage in terms of a time frame for when all of those you know injury things started to go awry for you uh yeah so i injured my hip during western states last june took july to kind of figure it out and see if i could still um get back on the horse i guess for any racing the rest of the year managed to make it to the start line of ut and be healthy enough to

race it and then was um troubleshooting it through um september in order to be ready for the u.s or the world 24-hour championships in october and uh totally wrecked it during that race so i ended up taking november and december basically off of running entirely so that um i would stop you know trying to fix it enough to keep racing on it and actually let everything heal up which made january february then you know just a slow build back into normal training again so the beginning of 2020 is was likely going to be just a slow ramp up for you anyway suffice it to say right yeah yeah that was the intent this year is to uh take those nuggets of lessons learned last year and actually apply them shocking so yeah all right hey you're courtney if you if you learn from your mistakes you're ahead of 99 of the people out there because how many stories how many stories have we seen and we heard of where people just make the same mistake over and over and over again so if you're learning from those freaking awesome great great for you i'm trying so yes shocking yeah that's all we can hope for okay so you're you're in the state right now and i think it's a i think it's an interesting

proposition for an athlete that i want to peel back a little bit where your like medium term racing plans and also to a lesser extent your longer term racing plan have this like cloud of ambiguity around them you don't know if hard rock is going to happen we're in just a time stamp this we're recording this on april 2nd it'll probably come out the next day april 3rd if i can get my act together um we're recording this on april 2nd hard rock which is in the middle of july has not announced anything UTMB a completely different race right tens of thousands of people all coming into a small valley across all corners of the world and at the very end of august early september is they haven't said anything yet and then big's backyard which is almost an equivalent of hard rock right few people they're on a kind of a contained course but still it's like a it's a it's a smaller type of event that's far enough down the line where they're you know not saying anything anyway so like how are you thinking about each like each one of those events right now i think i think i'm actually just not thinking about them i'm uh taking it week by week day by day and um there's so many things going on and so many things not going on that i'm uh trying to tune in to how i'm feeling mentally and physically and um just keep turning away at the miles when they feel good and easing back when when it's not happening that day so i'm not uh fixated on like training for

a race right now and mostly i'm just staying healthy and like keeping keeping the base sturdy hopefully well and to a large extent this like fits your normal mo right i mean you're renowned for going out you see how you feel and if you feel great you go a little bit longer if you don't feel great you go a little bit shorter if you want to push it you're going to push it and you're you're very much uh you're what i would call an intuitive runner versus a scheduled runner and if if anything like just like you said this doesn't change things a whole heck of a lot for you outside of some of the logistical things i i would assume yeah for sure i think uh the main thing for me that i'll have to try and figure out with this is a lot of times training races like help me uh remember to take some time off and like to build up towards a race and then you know start low again and so this i'll just have to make sure i do that on my own and not um keep banging my head against the wall just because there's no race that's reminding me i'm tired yeah i think if anything that if anything one consistent thing that all ultra runners and all real endurance athletes are going to experience is is their next race back is going to be a long way away compared to what is normally the case right normally you know maybe you race every two months maybe you race every four months but people are now they're in the situation where they might not have experienced a race for a year yeah and some athletes

are going to cope with that better than others just like just like with anything else but it's going to be a reality for a lot of people where they're going to toe the line again especially for competitive athletes who like that routine of getting ready for a race and putting the bib on and seeing the community and really dig into the wow like they like doing that every so often that cycle is certainly going to be broken so how i mean how do you you say you're not thinking about it but if you were to like prognosticate a little bit like the next time you you know you put a bib on is going to be for hard rock which will be how long since you're since you're uh last race oh man oh october till july and the october race was a flat you know slower pace 24 hour versus a mountain trail race so yeah it'll be fun to um to get back out there racing and just remind myself how to race i think it's been long enough where i forgot a little bit what that feels like to to be pushing for a really long time yeah and i think some people are going to revel in that and other people for whatever reason because they don't have that tune-up race they are just going to get psyched they're just going to like psych themselves out about it oh i didn't have this 50 miler to build up into this 100 mile or oh i didn't get this training camp or whatever else it is yeah yeah for sure i'm uh i mean it's easy to sit here and and like uh guess what it might be like but i think i don't know it'll

be i think i'm going to take it all the whole year is i'm just learning and um it's giving me a great opportunity to put into practice all these things i learned last year about staying injury free and um including cross training and you know not building up to the high mileage weeks and then just holding it up there because there's no race nearby so um it's a perfect it's a perfect scenario for me in that way where like now i get to actually try and do these things i learned in a like really large chunk of time well you have to that's the key point right there right you have to put them into place you're being forced like literally forced to put those into place part by circumstance of there not being any races but also because of i'm assuming some of the day-to-day changes that you've had to make where you're limited to the terrain that's just most uh uh kind of locally available to you so for everybody that's listening right now colorado's under a stay-at-home ordinance which is a you know it's like quarantine light as i keep describing to a lot of my athletes uh currently that's going to exist until until april 30th so what like how has your training routine changed with the different restrictions and things like that that we've been under here in the state of colorado fortunately not a ton i think um i don't drive to trailheads often anyways but for sure i haven't moved

my car in what a month probably at this point um so always running from the door which you know is limiting then which trails i end up getting to um and also uh just making sure not to like do anything crazy and get myself in a situation where i'm going to need some medical help but otherwise it's been pretty normal around here i am seeing a lot more people on the trails coloradans are coming out in droves to enjoy the outdoor life here in the front range so um it's cool it also is i think kind of altering when i'm going out and trying to avoid like some of the peak hours when families seem to be on the trails a little bit more yeah i have this weird i have this weird sensation i just said earlier that i'm getting out of the prediction business but i guess i'm getting back into it with this statement i have the weird feeling that the next step is that statewide we're going to see some of the system-wide parks either being closed or the access to them being restricted like the parking locks getting closed down or the there's some sort of metering that goes on at the trail heads or something like that i don't know if you have any any sense of that living up in golden yeah for sure i mean it's been packed there's been photos you know every day now of parking lots where cars are just

like spilling out into parking on the streets um so i think it would be pretty cool if they close the lots down just because i think it would make people see what's right near them that they can get to they don't have to you know drive to a trailhead to experience this outdoor world they can leave their house and be you know doing something just as cool um which i think would be fun for families to discover together like what's local yeah we still see though here garden of the gods is still packed oh i bet it's it's getting obnoxious uh the city of manitou tried to close the incline down for a couple of days and then it got reopened yeah it's weird because it is it is cool to see so many people outside and you know so many people out on the trails but at the same time it's like no don't don't wreck this well it that so i speaking of don't wreck it i think that that's i i think that that's likely the next step in a lot of areas where there's and this is just like any other rule and regulation that starts to come down is is the people that are violating the rule and regulation driving to the trailheads going out in big groups congregating and things like that they kind of ruin it for everybody else i think state statewide and colorado is not unique to this there'll be other states that enact something similar and it's already happening in california to a certain extent where they start to they just start to clamp down on what is acceptable behavior

at these parks either by closing them all together or closing on the parking lot or some combination of all that stuff and that's sad because as you mentioned you want people to enjoy the outdoors yeah yeah it's a weird balance we have to figure out i want to talk about one i'm going to pivot a little bit i want to talk about one last thing specifically with an elite athlete and a lot of elite athletes are out there looking looking at the landscape right now and saying literally shit i can't race and the oh shit part of that is because they know that it's inevitably and that that their race performances are inevitably tied to maybe not the dominant thing but tied to their sponsorship contracts and in addition to that the worldwide economy is going to take a hit here and i'm wondering how how you're viewing that as an elite athlete with sponsorships in terms of what do you think the the landscape is going to be after all of this and is that something that as an elite athlete like you kind of look at and go like i don't know what's going to happen yeah i have no idea how this will shake out and um in this year but also in the the following years what it means for companies what it means for athletes what it means for contracts maybe um it helps shift focus away from things like podium bonuses as a an income source um and um maybe athletes can start building in more of just a secure relationship

without a performance related to it all the time i don't know um i also don't know how a lot of the companies are going to fare through this so i think for me there's like it's not at the front of my mind i think there's so many things going on in the world that um i'm gonna you know do my best to just keep weathering this storm and then see what happens on the other side of it because worrying about it or predicting what might happen is impossible i think yeah i think that that is sage advice right there trying trying trying to predict as we were just trying to predict with what's going on at the state level trying to predict and worrying about it is like completely out of your control and if anything you can serve as a fantastic example put your head down and you run and you train and you abide by the cdc guidelines you ship things around subtly maybe it's the time of day that you're actually running at but by and large like if you're anchoring your workout and you're running routine that's a bit that ends up paying big dividends in the end not only just for your you know physical racing and things like that which will eventually happen but also just to like help manage the situation as a whole yeah and stay mentally healthy too i think like getting out and having a little routine still and getting your blood pumping is um an important part of my day and i'm sure a lot of people function the same way well courtney as always appreciate your time thank you a little bit yeah thank you for taking a

little bit of time and getting on the horn with me i think people will definitely appreciate it i'd be remiss though to ask you before uh we get off the line here has your candy consumption increased or decreased or remained the same while you're locked in your house once we were able to get to the store we were having to get pretty creative with food for a while because we had it restocked but once we got to the store the um i mean it is full-on jelly bean season with all the easter candy so we are fully stocked for at least a couple months of jelly beans i like to hear that you're a seasonal candy consumer just like you would think about like seasonally eating fresh fruits and vegetables you just kind of move you know when valentine's day comes around it's all chocolate and the little candy hearts and then easter comes around and it's all jelly beans and then when the and then when the fall and the you know the holiday season happen it's all cookies and stuff like that oh the candy you miss the candy corn season awesome all right thanks for the little bit of levity courtney we'll let you go yeah have a good day all right our next guest is none other than casey lichtag casey and i have been working together as coach and athlete for a very long time almost seven years now maybe it might actually be over seven years now and we have both as coach and athlete kind of

seen it all and this is something that neither one of us could have really anticipated uh she's been very public about how disappointed she was uh when western states decided to cancel and although it was absolutely the right decision to make it still left a pretty big pit in her stomach and we talk about that on this section of the podcast but before we get into that directly you guys know what's coming up it is the ads and this section of the podcast is brought to you by none other than dr howl rosenberg at mount tam sport and spine you will remember how because he was a previous guest on the KoopCast with casey talking about how to prevent entries that's all he does he helps a lot of my athletes he's helped out dylan who you guys heard earlier in the podcast he's helped out another one of our coaches corinne malcolm and if you go back to a previous episode of the podcast you'll just hear how fantastic he is and hopefully you're not injured but if you are and you're struggling to get into your physical therapist's office right now because let's face it a lot of them they're not meeting any patients howl has launched telehealth appointments which are virtual appointments that are held through a secure portal where you can meet with howl in real time on your computer your smartphone or your tablet and get sessed up and hopefully get rid of that nagging injury that is just plaguing you right now

because as we know all runners get injured at some point it is a total bummer he can take you through any exercise stretching mobilization self-care and other types of recommendations for dealing with any new aches and pains that you actually might have he can also take you through a self-care routine that you can do at home all of these things i know runners don't have a lot of access to right now personally i work with a physical therapist here in colorado springs they don't have a telehealth option and i have had to kind of go without and just kind of figure it out by myself so if you're one of those runners that you need a little bit of care right now you need some sort uh you need somebody to take a look at you and see what's going on and hopefully prescribe some things that you can do at home check out mounttamsportandspine.com get up get set up with dr howell rosenberg and let them help you out all right on to the next section of the podcast with the pixie ninja casey lictone i put i put this tweet out uh a couple of weeks ago and it keeps like it keeps getting better and better and better it keeps aging you know really well that you know the ultra runner of the year uh voters or i know right the ultra runner of the year and performance of the year voters are going to

have their have their uh work cut out for them and the the statement of the early front runners for either one of those two for either one of those two prizes like that statement is gonna be worth a whole heck of a lot more this year than it than it has been in previous years it's so crazy yeah what are they gonna do i don't know like literally they're no north american i might ask amy that the next time i have uh some correspondence with her like what are they gonna do if there are there's nothing except for january february and the first part of march to go off of i wonder if we'll have any fall races for sure or not i'm out of the prediction business you just don't do it yeah and inevitably i say that and then like 10 or 15 minutes later i'll have to make some predictions so we'll see we'll see if i can get through the this entire this entire conversation without making a prediction but um okay so let's let's frame this up a little bit because you and i were both out in spain at the early part of the year when when you left for spain what did your calendar look like in terms of the races that you wanted to do for the year because we had it we had it pretty well mapped out at that point in time made some early adjustments in february march time frame but once trans grand canaria rolled around like it was pretty it's been pretty set in stone so let's let's map that out first and

give everybody the context for what 2020 was supposed to look like okay so after after running trans grand canaria we you know take that break kind of get recovered before heading into the big western states training plan so then i was going to do some road races do the lincoln marathon and then follow that with the silver state western states training camp like always leading up to western states and then kind of recovering a little bit doing some high mountain races or i guess mainly training and then going into high lonesome in the end of july and since then everything but high lonesome has been taken off the schedule so so definitely silver state and western states those are out and yeah before we go any further i want to i want to talk a little bit about this because i mean you're you're you have inevitably been interconnected with western states for the last six or seven years it's it's a race that that means a lot to you personally it means a lot to a lot of people personally but you've definitely gotten like further and further drawn in and you and i first started working together for your first western states yes and so i've been a i've been you know a passenger on this western states journey uh with you and you you were kind of really public about the fact that you were super bummed when they decided

to cancel the race what what went through your mind when you initially got that notification my heart sank i i cried i was so devastated because i live and breathe this race like all year it's i'm not kidding i will dream about this race and just the people the connections i've made it's literally like a family reunion to me and like not being able to go just hit me hard and i went into that big grief so so you had this you had this time of grief right where you're processing like this literal loss that you had what was what was next for you and then i was angry and i became angry at this stupid virus and how it's you know taking people's lives and just throwing it out the door and so i got very angry and then i had to go through that acceptance of you know this is what's happening and you know things could be different could be worse and we're gonna rebuild and we're gonna go back and we're gonna have a 2021 western states race that's gonna be phenomenal and i just thought from then on you got to stay positive you can't look at these negatives and let them drag you down farther because we're in enough negative world right now that we don't need anymore so you went through this different like these different kind of like phases of pro phases of processing you know not being able

to do this race and i think the healthy outcome of that as you expressed is there's there are bigger fish to fry in the world right now like yeah racing means a lot to us it means a lot to you personally western states means a lot to you personally but then when you zoom the lens out a little bit there are bigger things out in the world and i think one of one of the things that i want to get into a little bit is is your perspective on that because you work in the health care system and you've seen that bigger picture play out very acutely just with how you like your day-to-day work life when you go into work you've got to deal with it and you see it very abruptly every single day what has that been like it's been stressful it's it's changing every day constantly um the guidelines for the cdc keeps changing and so our hospital gets more regulated and more restrictive at first when i came back to work i had to go on a 14 day quarantine so that was really struggling to me to figure out okay i i mean i i had to go through that process of i could have the virus i could be carrying it you know and i do not want to you know put in harm's way of any of my patients or my co-workers and so you know you take a step back and think don't be selfish and you know this is for an important purpose so when i returned to work again um it was interesting where we had maybe you know visitors could come up but at set times and

we had to wash our hands um even more than we already had and it was just interesting then the next week it got even more tight where there was only one patient could or only one uh person could come up and you know visit and then we had to wear masks surgical masks all the time and it just it keeps getting more and more um tight knit and surgeries have been canceled and people have been you know delaying that because we don't want to be exposing more people to anything in undue circumstances did the hospital at the time that you went back in or even when you got back did they even have the resources to to to test you for the virus no they just stay at home yep and they would take temperature checks everybody that comes in and out of the hospital and if you had a temperature they'd take you you know say send you back and yeah it's still we in omaha we don't have a lot of testing and so it's just first come first serve to those who actually have symptoms that are getting tested i i can't i can't imagine like going into work every day and knowing that you could potentially come into contact with this virus and then unbeknownst to you be a carrier to another one of your patients just the just the stress of that alone is kind of unfathomable to me like you know

a lot of us are like complaining about having to like work at home and shelter in place and things like that but you know you're walking into a situation where from one day to the next you you know the risk assessment is who knows what it's going to be it's scary i'm not going to lie it's stressful too it's just i don't want to be one of those you know carriers that i don't know i don't have symptoms and so i'm always thinking to myself you know if i'm out if i have to go to the grocery store or anything like that to make sure that i'm taking all precautions as possible and staying six feet away and you know only getting the essentials that i need at that time i mean we have to protect not only ourselves but we really have to protect everyone around us yeah okay so let's kind of pivot back to training a little bit so you have these two big events taken off your calendar but and now you have a maybe event which is high lonesome and and but my wife liz she's running high lonesome as well so i have a little bit of privy into this um they they've been extremely transparent and very good about communicating about what what they're doing why don't you just walk everybody through like what they've communicated to you thus far they're excellent about sending out emails and making sure that you know they will allow deferrals they will allow you know your money back and they're going to continue to hold the race at this point until they hear otherwise and they're going to do everything in their power to make sure that everyone's going to be safe they're not going

to hold the race and if you know they're not supposed to they're they're very good about communication though yeah and that's the right way to do it because we've seen it all over the map where some race directors are not communicating at all with their with the people that are participating in the race and then they make some decision right at the very end and then i'll i'll give you know a big fat kudos to the good folks at high lonesome almost at every step of the way even if it's a hey we don't know what we're going to do they're at least being in constant communication with all of the participants that hey we're evaluating this here's the restrictions that we're under here's what we you know here's you potentially what might happen next here are the steps that we're taking and to be in like this kind of like maybe situation it's i can i can imagine it's at least comforting to know something as opposed to not knowing anything it gives you a peace of mind yeah and you you tend to have a really packed calendar like you you race a lot and you utilize a lot of local races a lot of low-key races as pieces of training and they went from you know being abundant there was a plethora of them which you used a lot of times to all of a sudden evaporating and i'm wondering kind of how like how do you feel about like not having that that that previous like resource uh in front of you where

you can tap into those races for training purposes thankfully for it's going to be more mountainous so it's more like i'm just going to get to hitchcock and you know train on vertical as much as i can um it's been hard to at first to get motivated and like i still have a lack of motivation to do any type of speed work just because i don't have races to you know fire me up to get in shape for so that's been one of the key things i've noticed since this has happened yeah absolutely okay so high lonesome is still on for right now and i would say you've been doing a pretty good job of just like putting your head down in training but your training's also been impacted by your work schedule because you've had to pick up additional shifts yeah now i i potentially work seven days a week so it's it's weird like some days i can leave a little early some days i have a break in the schedule some days it's like i don't so it's just been kind of hit and miss on when i get out to a run well like i said seeing your training and i'm sure the people that follow you on strava they're going to be able to appreciate like the consistency that you do that you are actually able that you are actually able to train you go and run a lot and you lean on you know the training the training partners that you uh that you have there but not having this normal weekend warrior type of schedule to lean on where five days during the week you can do an hour and a half or two hours

or something like that and the weekends are generally unlimited like that's certainly going to be a a workaround point for the future that's definitely true yeah particularly for as the if if high lonesome happens or any other long race happens trying to get in those big long runs those big miles and things like that it's definitely gonna put a crimp in your style yeah it it will it but you know flexibility is part of our you know what we train for um we have to be flexible and do things that we may not want to do uh let's try to leave this off with one uh one kind of poignant remark and then what then you and i will have to get down to brass tacks on the phone afterwards yes that's a little bit of detail but i know i know your your grandmother is a big part of your life and not being able to see her on a regular basis i can imagine can be trying but you have been in communication uh with her so how's your grandma doing she is stir crazy she is the one looking out the window wanting to get out and like i want to go do this i want to go do that i've had to call her and kind of talk her out of all these things because she has to stay safe and if i can protect her in any way possible i will do that she's um actually been getting out and doing yard work and walking down the road we live like in a really small town so there's absolutely nobody on the street but

she's trying to do what she can to stay sane too in this process and how compliant has she been with the stay-at-home orders that casey has delivered to her she's done well she has rode in the car to like one of the neighboring towns to pick up a meal from you know curbside whatever but so far she's been really good she said she's self-quarantined for three weeks already and she's counting down the days oh my gosh unbelievable i can't wait to go and hug her though that's i just can't wait to do that yeah i think you speak for a lot of people that we're all missing hugs right now bro hugs grandma hugs friend friend hugs training partner hugs like the whole lot of them like we are all desperately missing a lot of hugs definitely oh all right case we'll get on the phone talk specifics after after after this i really appreciate you coming on and make sure you stay safe out there casey appreciate it all right folks what'd you think appreciate everybody listening tuning in today during these crazy times i hope you got something from dylan courtney and casey on how they are treating their schedules right now i know it's probably not the first thing on people's mind but certainly as we are all trail and ultra runners here it is something on your mind in terms of how you're managing all of this

uncertainty and i hope that these elite athletes can provide a little bit of insight to you on how you can handle it yourself irrespective of what your situation is right now whether you've got races taken off the table whether you've gotten certain ones that are ambiguous right now or they're far enough down the line where you can kind of see that there's a possibility that those races and events might actually happen appreciate everybody listening uh as always you can help the podcast out a lot if you go and leave a rating or a review on itunes but you can actually help people out a whole lot more if you go and support those small businesses either that are in your area or some of the ones that i mention on the podcast appreciate the love appreciate spreading the love in this time of need for a lot of a lot of people out there and i know that everybody here knows somebody that has been affected by this either from a health perspective or financial perspective or sometimes both so show them some love people we will see everybody out on the trails at some point and until then you all stay happy healthy and enjoy yourselves enjoy your loved ones peace out so you

you you