The Buzz

Karina Andersen is a 23-year-old skyrunner, former University of Colorado track athlete, and holder of the fastest known women's time on the Matterhorn's Lion Ridge, which she ran unsupported from Cervinia in 5:14:53 this August. In this conversation, Buzz and Karina get into why a 10K on the track might be harder than the Matterhorn, what happened when she walked off her NCAA team and into the Sk...

Stephanie Case is a human rights lawyer, founder of Free to Run, Hardrock 100 board member, and the runner who won Ultra-Trail Snowdonia in 2025 while stopping to breastfeed at aid stations. Chris Twiggs is a longtime Hardrocker and fellow board member. Together they wrote the race's new inclusion policy for transgender and non-binary athletes. In this conversation, Buzz asks the questions everyon...

Sophie Woods is a five-time UTMB finisher, three-time Tor des Geants finisher, Marathon des Sables veteran, and coach who lives in Andorra. This summer she set the overall fastest known time on the Via Alpina, running the full length of the Alps through eight countries in 28 days and 18 hours. In this conversation, Sophie explains why she wanted a project that scared her after a difficult few year...

Mario Fraioli has spent nearly thirty years in running and still describes himself as infinitely curious, which is how a guy who came up through cross country and track ended up coaching Western States champions, marathoners, and mid-packers alike. In this episode, Buzz talks with the host of the Morning Shakeout about what's actually changed in coaching over the last decade: why the conversation...

Trueheart Brown is the fire chief for the Coconino National Forest, a former hotshot, and the 2022 Black Canyon 100K champion who set a course record at the Sedona Canyons 125 this May. In this conversation, Buzz and True get into the golden ticket he won at Black Canyon and the Pipeline Fire that kept him from ever starting Western States, what a hotshot crew teaches you about suffering that no u...

Fred Abramowitz is a retired natural resources attorney, the author of Travels in Africa, a veteran of 75 ultras, and the co-founder and co-race director of Run Rabbit Run in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In 2012 he did something nobody in American ultrarunning had done before: he put up a $100,000 prize purse, the largest of any trail ultra in the world, and absorbed several hundred internet comme...

Dean Karnazes is the author of Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, a ten-time Badwater finisher, a ten-plus-time Western States finisher, and the guy who once ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days. Buzz catches up with him in Athens, where Dean has spent the last three years living out his Greek roots, halfway between the city and the town of Marathon itself. They get into Ph...

Dan Patitucci is a professional mountain-sport photographer and athlete whose images for Patagonia, Black Diamond, and others helped shape the look of modern trail running, and who, with partners Janine Patitucci and Kim Strom, built ALPSinsight and designed the Via Valais, the Alps' first trail-running grand tour. In this conversation, Buzz and Dan compare the three mountain ranges Dan knows bett...

At seven years old, Hunter Leininger talked his way into his first adventure race; by ten he was a national champion, and he's spent the eighteen years since turning a childhood obsession into a profession, holding the fastest unsupported traverse of Iceland (370 miles), the FKT for the 1,110-mile length of Florida, and a Guinness World Record for climbing all fifty state high points. In this conv...

Nancy Hobbs founded the American Trail Running Association in 1996, helped establish USATF's Mountain Ultra Trail Council and chaired it for decades, and has served on the international boards governing trail and mountain running for some thirty years. Buzz and Nancy get into the underbelly of the sport: the governance. They cover how the USATF Mountain Ultra Trail Council grew from a $750 annual...

Danelle Ballengee is one of the most decorated endurance athletes in American history, a four-time Pikes Peak Marathon champion, two-time Adventure Racing World Champion, and six-time US Athlete of the Year across four different endurance sports. In December 2006, on a routine training run near her home in Moab, she slipped on black ice on the Amasa Back trail, fell roughly 60 feet, shattered her...

Matt Carpenter is the most decorated mountain runner in American history, 18-time Pikes Peak champion across twelve marathons and six ascents, holder of the Pikes Peak Marathon course record at 3:16:39 since 1993, and the man who took 90 minutes off the Leadville Trail 100 record in 2005 with a 15:42:59 that stood until 2024 when broken by David Roche. In this conversation, Matt walks Buzz through...

Dave Mackey is a two-time USATF Ultrarunner of the Year, former rim-to-rim-to-rim Grand Canyon record holder, JFK 50 champion, and, after a freak fall off Bear Peak in May 2015, thirteen surgeries, and a voluntary below-the-knee amputation in November 2016, one of the more improbable comebacks in the sport. Buzz and Dave recorded the first part of this episode on the exact rock Dave fell off, on t...

Jason Blevins is a veteran journalist at the Colorado Sun who has spent nearly three decades covering outdoor recreation, public lands, and the mountain communities of the Colorado high country. In this conversation, Buzz and Jason dig into the slow-motion crisis unfolding across the Rocky Mountain West, a snowpack at 61 percent of normal, a 103-year-old Colorado River Compact straining under the...

Buzz sits down with Karl "Speedgoat" Meltzer, 50-time 100-mile winner, previous Appalachian Trail FKT holder, and the man behind one of trail running's most iconic nicknames , for a conversation about a career that has never followed the obvious path. Karl is currently at 93 hundred-mile finishes, closing in on a goal he set four years ago: 100 finishes by the summer of 2027, with Hardrock 100 as...

Sean O'Rourke holds a PhD in computational physics. He also lives in a Ford Transit Connect, bathes in hot springs, and has climbed roughly 2,000 peaks across the American West, South America, the Alps, and Central Asia, mostly alone, entirely self-funded, and almost completely off the radar. He goes by Dr. Dirtbag, a name he's been writing under since 2010. This conversation is about what happens...

Ski mountaineering just made its Olympic debut at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games, the first new sport added to the Winter Olympics since 2002. Nikki LaRochelle, former U.S. Ski Mountaineering National Team member and color commentator for Olympic Broadcasting Services, joins the show live from Milan to break down everything that happened. The headline for trail and ultrarunners: mountain run...

Check out all the shows on the Ultrasignup Podcast Network! The Buzz is supported by Wahoo.  Max King might be the most versatile distance runner on the planet. A World Mountain Running champion, a 100K road world champion, a Mount Marathon winner, a top finisher at Comrades and Sierre-Zinal, the range is almost absurd. But when Buzz sits down with Max, the thread running through all of it isn't a...

The 44th annual Ultrarunner of the Year Awards are in, and this year delivered one of the deepest fields of women's performances in the history of the award. Buzz Burrell talks with John "Tropical John" Medinger, who has administered the vote when he took over Ultrarunning Magazine (sold in 2024 to Jamil Coury), about the full results, the voting process, and what made 2025 such a standout year. K...

Ski mountaineering is about to have its moment, and if you're a trail runner, you should be paying attention. Skimo shares DNA with our sport: the relentless uphill effort, the technical descents, the mountain culture, and a surprising number of athletes who race both. After decades as a European-dominated discipline, skimo makes its Olympic debut at the 2026 Winter Games in Italy. Nikki LaRochell...

  Buzz previews 2026 with Zoë Rom, coach Scott Johnston, Western States Race Director Craig Thornley, and Allison Mercer of FastestKnownTime.com. The panel digs into the Courtney DauWalter, Tara Dower, Katie Scheide showdown at Hardrock 100 and what the growing competitive depth in women's ultrarunning actually tells us (spoiler: progress is real, but parity isn't here yet). Scott Johnston makes t...

Can a sport built on dirtbag ethos survive the arrival of real money? In this end-of-year special, Buzz gathers Zoë Rom, coach Scott Johnston, Western States race director Craig Thornley, and FKT manager Allison Mercer to make sense of 2025. They dig into the paradox of professionalization, $275 super shoes, UTMB live broadcasts, Ironman private equity, while Zoë points to the data that says the g...

Camille Herron is the only athlete to win all three IAU Ultra World Championship distances, the only person to win both Comrades and Spartathlon, and the holder of world records from 50 miles to six days. But beyond the numbers, Herron is a scientist with a master's degree in exercise and sports science, a recently diagnosed autistic and ADHD athlete, and someone who has navigated more than her sh...

Olympic marathon medalist Molly Seidel joins host Buzz Burrell for a candid conversation about pressure, injury, and her shift into trail and ultra running. Molly unpacks her decision to drop out of the New York City Marathon, the long rebuild after breaking her kneecap, and why the trails feel like the right competitive home for the next phase of her career.  She talks openly about identity, the...

This week on The Buzz , Buzz Burrell sits down in Moab, fresh off the finish of the Moab 240, with newly crowned Triple Crown champion Kilian Korth. In a season that redefined what's possible in ultrarunning, Kilian swept the 200-mile series, Tahoe, Bigfoot, and Moab, setting a new cumulative record and proving that success is built on years of setbacks. He opens up about how pulmonary edema, DNFs...