351: 'Home Field Advantage', with Morgan Elliot

All right, let's do this.

Morgan Elliott, you are on Singletrack.

I'm super excited to have you.

I don't think I've ever done this that I had a winner of a race like within days of the race actually on the show.

My sort of podcast topics are...

Usually sort of more long, winding, evergreen sort of storylines.

But, you know, you just ran Beast of Big Creek, which is obviously my race.

You just won the race.

And Sky in the World Series is back in the U.S. And you won on your home soil.

How does it feel? And congratulations.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for putting together all the hard work to organize such an awesome event.

It was such a good time.

And for Sky Running World Series to come back to the U.S., have one on U.S. soil, that was definitely very special.

I think I enjoyed it more to, like, bring to have other athletes who I've gotten to race in other countries, come to my country and compete.

So it was just cool to share this area with them.

And yeah, I think just made it that much more special to be able to explore a new area for me, even, and be able to run without that fatigue of doing a long travel and having foreign food as if I was going into Asia.

So that was kind of nice to have a little bit of...

I guess, an advantage, if you will, and also to have a lot of support there and friends.

Absolutely.

I mean, home field advantage, right? I mean, this is how this works.

And you fully took advantage of it, right? I mean, you took the win, course record, first time winning a Skyrunner World Series event for you, right? So this wasn't just like, oh, yeah, we're checking off one more.

This was a big deal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've been in the series for a while and always had a goal before the year to like, I just want to win one Sky World Series race.

And I had no idea it was going to be this one.

So that was really special.

Yeah.

Well, before we dive into the race and how it unfolded, let's talk a little bit about you and how you got into that sport.