It’s the middle of October, which means the Santa Barbara Trail League is in full swing. Local Santa Barbara runner, Stephen Searer, created this awesome month-long community event a couple years ago. The concept is simple – Stephen posts 4 trail routes, and participants group up into teams of four and go run all four routes within about 1 month. Each person on the team should complete all the routes, and can do so on their own time within the month. There is a ranking system to determine a fastest team, but many people just run the routes for fun and socialization.

This episode is my first solo talk. I’m currently in the smallish town of Tubingen, Germany with Kerong and Basil, far away from Santa Barbara. But I’ve been paying attention to the action in the Fall 2026 season. On this episode, I talked through the routes Stephen chose for this season, and the fast times that have been going down on them. Things are heating up for a spicy second half of the season!

Apologies for the rather poor audio quality. I recorded this while my 9 month old son, Basil, was sleeping, so I was trying to be quiet but still audible 😅