December 07, 2023

#24 Zach Friedley | Being An Adaptive Athlete, Not Saying No For An Answer, & Trail Blazing

1 hour 34 minutes

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In this episode, Troy Meadows talks with Zach Friedley. Zach is an advocate, race director, trail runner, and Adaptive athlete running for On. The conversation starts out with Troy telling the serendipitous story of how they got met and then they dive into how Zach came into trail running. How Zach fell into the perfect relationship with On Running. How the brand really gets it from an athlete's point of view and how they show up for Zach in a major way.

They discuss some of the difficulties that Zach has had with the UTMB organization when running the MCC event the last 2 years and the disappointment he felt with the work he has done working with UTMB to try to make their events more accessible for adaptive athletes. We dive into his desire next year to run the in the Golden Trail Series and some of his goals around those events. Lastly, we talk about Born to Adapt and the event that he will be putting on in New Zealand with Adaptive Athletes empowering that community to keep pushing toward their life and endurance goals! The work Zach has done and is doing in our sport is truly inspiring.His willingness to not take no for an answer and lean in to do very hard but impactful work to make our community more inclusive is something that we can all learn from.The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of opportunity

Zach’s Links

IG - @zachary_movement

TikTok - @trailblader

Things we talked about in the episode

Born to Run Ultra Events

Born to Adapt Born to Adapt YouTube Video

Trail Runner Article - ⁠UTMB Has a New Adaptive Athlete Policy. Some Say It’s Lacking.

On Running

Rising Hearts

David Killgore

Zegama

Sierre-Zenal

Marathon de Mont Blanc

Mammoth Trail Fest

ROMP Range Of Motion Project

Climbing for ROMP

Karl Egloff

Born to Run 2

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