The Trailhead

Anastasia Wilde is a Missoula-based adventure photographer who has spent the last five years shooting the country's biggest 200-mile races like Bigfoot, Tahoe, Cocodona, and hiking up to eight miles into the backcountry with thirty pounds of gear to photograph runners at their most unfiltered. In this conversation, Anastasia tells us how a Costco camera kit and a suspiciously well-timed $500 raffl...

Dillon Osleger is a geologist, professional mountain biker, and longtime trail steward whose debut book, Trail Work: Restoring the Paths and Stories of America's Public Lands, uncovers the buried history beneath the trails we run, ride, and take for granted. In this conversation, Zoe and Brendan get into why nobody wants to do the unglamorous work of maintenance (and the Kurt Vonnegut line that na...

Dr. Nick Tiller is an exercise scientist at the Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA, a two-decade ultrarunner, and the author of The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science and the new The Health and Wellness Lie . In this conversation: why ultrarunning is, by Nick's cheerful admission, not actually good for you, and why we keep signing up anyway; the red flags that should trip your bullshit detector in...

Ben Ratliff is a former New York Times music critic, a writing professor at NYU, and the author of Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening, longlisted for the National Book Award and named a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, which chronicles what he hears when he brings music into his near-daily runs through the Bronx. In this conversation, Zoë...

When you hit the wall at mile 19 of a marathon (or mile 80 of a 100-miler) it feels like your body is the problem. Your legs are concrete, your stomach is in revolt, and the finish line might as well be on the moon. But what if the wall is mostly in your head? Emily Balcetis is a social psychologist who studies how vision and perception shape motivation: how what people literally see changes what...

David Raichlen is a professor of biological sciences at the University of Southern California whose research examines how human evolution, physical activity, and brain health are linked across the lifespan. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with David about what's actually happening in your brain when you go from couch to consistently active, why exercise might be the closest thing we hav...

Rochelle Bilow is a romance novelist, food writer, French Culinary Institute graduate, former Bon Appétit editor, and current kitchen gear expert at Serious Eats, and she just came back to ultrarunning after nearly a decade away from the sport. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with Rochelle about what she learned cooking on a farm that culinary school never taught her, why she pivoted fr...

Ryan Goodman grew up on a cattle ranch in Arkansas, studied beef cattle science at Oklahoma State University, and now manages WSU's beef cattle research program as Beef Cattle Operations Manager in Pullman, Washington, where he also teaches hands-on lab courses to the next generation of pre-veterinary students. Online, he goes by @BeefRunner. He also runs a lot of 100-mile races. In this conversat...

C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher at the University of Utah, a former food writer for the Los Angeles Times , a rock climber, and one of the world's leading thinkers on the philosophy of games. His new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game , argues that games are the defining art form of our era, and that the scoring systems that make them so joyful turn quietly destructive when i...

Pavel Cenkl is a climate writer, ultrarunner, and Dean of Academics at Prescott College who has run hundreds of miles across Iceland, Scandinavia, and the Arctic through his project Climate Run. He grew up in the White Mountains, worked the AMC huts, started one of the first collegiate trail running teams in the U.S., and built a master's program combining movement, environmental philosophy, and e...

Christie Aschwanden is a New York Times bestselling author, former lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight, and one of the sharpest science journalists working today. She's also a former elite Nordic skier for Team Rossignol and a national collegiate cycling champion, so when she set out to investigate the multibillion-dollar recovery industry for her book Good to Go, she brought both a scientist's...

Brad Stulberg co-wrote Peak Performance with Steve Magness and has spent over a decade studying what excellence actually requires. He joins Zoë and Brendan to dismantle the myths of hustle culture and explain why genuine excellence isn't about optimization, it's about caring deeply about something worthwhile. We dig into "zombie burnout" (exhaustion from doing too little of what lights you up), wh...

What happens when you strip away sleep, ego, and every external measure of success for 330 kilometers? Doug Mayer, founder of Run the Alps, former Car Talk producer, and three-time Tour de Géants finisher, has spent years trying to answer that question.  His new graphic novel, Last of the Giants , is his best attempt yet. In this episode, Doug joins Zoë and Brendan to talk about leaving a 25-year...

Pat Cade has a PhD in mathematics, coaches high school cross country in Leadville, Colorado, and has finished the Leadville 100 six times. In this conversation, he explains what years of research math taught him about endurance: small steady progress compounds, inspiration only strikes if you're showing up every day, and sometimes the breakthrough comes when you stop following the plan and just go...

For the final episode of 2025, Zoë and Brendan share their own year-end reflections, summits, snacks, and slogs,  including Zoë's experience hitchhiking to the start line of a 78-mile race in Italy, arriving 90 seconds before the gun went off to stand between Kilian Jornet and Jim Walmsley in a downpour that would last 15 hours. Then they pull their favorite moments from this year's interviews. Yo...

Romy Ancona is a DJ, trail runner, and the force behind Broken Arrow's famously joyful finish line. Born in Cozumel and now based in Colorado's Roaring Fork Valley, Romy learned to mix on a trackpad on their mom's Windows laptop before somehow landing their first gig at a Maxim Magazine party in Hollywood. These days, they split time between spinning tracks on the mountain and chasing vertical on...

Lindsey Freeman is a sociologist, writer, and lifelong runner whose book Running offers a feminist and queer reading of the sport. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with Lindsey about what it means to treat running as a practice, becoming yourself through repetition, staying soft, and trusting that showing up matters even when outcomes don't. The conversation moves through ideas like the...

Raziq Rauf didn't set out to become a running writer, he set out to avoid burnout as a music journalist covering London's metal and hardcore scene. Now, through his newsletter Running Sucks, he brings that same critical eye to the running industry, asking where authentic culture ends and brand activations begin. We talk about his transition from music journalism to running writing, how to spot the...

Nick Thompson has spent his life chasing big stories and finish lines. The CEO of The Atlantic and author of The Running Ground joins Zoë and Brendan to talk about running through life's hardest moments, from a cancer diagnosis at 30 to balancing elite training with parenthood and a high-powered media career.  Together, they explore why running became Nick's anchor through chaos and change, the st...

What kind of person dreams up the hardest race on earth, and then follows it up with one of the weirdest? This week on  The Trailhead , Zoë and Brendan dive deep into the mind of Lazarus Lake, the man behind both the Barkley Marathons and Big's Backyard Ultra. Our guest, author Jared Beasley, joins to talk about his new book on Laz, unpacking the mystery, mischief, and mythology that made one man'...

Harvard evolutionary biologist Dan Lieberman is the scientist whose work reshaped how we understand running. His research on human evolution helped popularize the idea that we're born to run, that our bodies, from our toes and tendons to our oversized glutes, are uniquely adapted for endurance. In this conversation, he joins Zoë and Brendan to explore what running reveals about being human. This w...

Joe Grant has always blurred the lines between athlete and artist. From racing UTMB and Hardrock to biking between Colorado 14ers, Joe's career has evolved into something bigger than competition—projects that fuse endurance, place, and creativity. In this conversation, Joe joins hosts Zoë Rom and Brendan Leonard to talk about his journey from racing to FKTs to local San Juan projects, why he ditch...

This week on The Trailhead , Zoë Rom and Brendan Leonard sit down with one of ultrarunning's most quietly legendary figures: Junko Kazukawa. A two-time Leadwoman, breast cancer survivor, and one of the few athletes to complete both the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning and the Leadwoman series in a single year, Junko's story is a masterclass in resilience and joy. Born in Sapporo, Japan, and now based in...

 Take our listener survey! It takes just five minutes, and your input helps shape the future of UltraSignup! Take it here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeCgLdj8-92G_pLDxkPfuJ0-r477MzZPieRx_qlj1cmP2oybA/viewform?usp=header   This week on  The Trailhead , Zoë and Brendan sit down with writer, runner, and trail storyteller Sarah Lavender Smith. Sarah has been chronicling the culture of tr...

. 📣 Listener Survey: We want your feedback to keep making podcasts you love! Take our quick listener survey. Take it here! This week on  The Trailhead , Zoë and Brendan sit down with writer and ultrarunner Nick Triolo , author of The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere . From circumnavigating mountains to ditching Strava and racing for a year, Nick shares what it means to move through land...