We Are Superman

Jack Rubalcave and I are at the end of our now-four-part summation of our amazing trip to Asia this past fall. I hope you’ve gotten a lot out of hearing about our adventures and that we have helped inspire you to go explore the world yourself. As you have been hearing, we encountered so many unexpected experiences, but they were almost all positive. The terror of driving scooters through the chaot...

Tim Kaufman fell victim to all of the classic American poor lifestyle choices. He ate primarily processed food – and large quantities of it.  After surgery related to a crippling disease called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, doctors prescribed painkillers and soon he was hooked on them. Like most addicts, he connived ways to get more of them and even more powerful narcotics, like fentanyl. He smoked, he...

Jack Rubalcave, my 24-year old traveling companion, with whom I’ve previously traveled to Portugal, the Azores, and Ecuador, took an amazing 3½-week long trip to Asia this fall, and we want to share with you some of our adventures and inspire you to seek your own. We carried nothing but a backpack, took 13 flights, visited seven incredibly interesting countries, and probably spent less than $1000...

If you think you can’t accomplish a lot of change and challenge yourself to achieve new goals in a short amount of time, then you’ll benefit from listening to this chat with Diarra Cropper. I’ve gotten to know the ever-enthusiastic Diarra through the Black Men Run community.  Black Men Run is a dynamic nationwide organization that is a movement that encourages Black men to be active to reverse hea...

Keenan Haga is who you might call a serial marathoner. In fact, he has run 311 of them so far. On every continent, including Antarctica. He has run one in every state – three times. Keenan’s goal for 2024 is to run 100 marathons, including 13 in 15 days, plus a 100-miler. You’ll undoubtedly enjoy hearing about his cool experiences running among polar bears, sea lions, on the race track at Churchil...

Helping and honoring our military veterans was deeply meaningful to David, and he helped support them with his American Heroes Run. As you may know, I now direct the event to continue his important legacy. Proceeds support Warriors’ Ascent, an organization that provides holistic programs to veterans and first responders experiencing post-traumatic stress. Treating veterans with this not-as-visible...

In a little bit of a twist, I’m chatting today with another podcaster, Joe Corcione, from the Everyday Ultra Podcast. Joe is a fellow New Yorker who also cheers for, and often suffers with, my same New York teams the Giants, Yankees, Rangers, and Knicks. The Everyday Ultra Podcast is laser-focused on the ultrarunning world with one of the best lineups of guests to keep ultra aficionados informed a...

If you’ve ever run an ultramarathon, you almost certainly know the name of Marshall Ulrich. His accomplishments are unparalleled, and if I tried to list them, I’d undoubtedly leave out many. I could naturally mention his 29 official Badwater finishes in Death Valley, a race most of us would not want to tackle even once. Or that he dwarfed those finishes by continuing on to the Mt. Whitney summit,...

We are into the dog days of winter, and for a lot of folks the days are gray and cold and New Year’s resolutions are starting to fade into oblivion. That’s why I thought it would be great to bring back Dan Herman, whose upbeat approach to health, fitness, and setting goals would be a refreshing antidote to the winter blahs. Dan owns Dan Herman Performance in New Jersey, and I think he offers some...

For 24 days beginning in mid-October, Jack Rubalcave and Bill (and Nigel Leonis for part of the trip), had an amazing time traveling through 7 countries in Asia. In part 1 of this trilogy, we described the incredible energy and culture shock we experienced in Japan, and the interesting Communist world of Vietnam. In this episode, we share with you our experiences in South Korea and Taiwan, two cou...

For 24 days beginning in mid-October, Jack Rubalcave and Bill (and Nigel Leonis for part of the trip), traveled through 7 countries in Asia. It was truly an amazing trip and we crammed an incredible amount of activities and saw so many sights in such a short span of time in each place. We each brought only a backpack. We took 13 flights in the 24 days, and get this, our total outlay for airfare wa...

It's that time of year for resolutions and goal-setting. But how do you do this after last year was derailed and you're still struggling to take the first steps to even set goals for the new year? Using my own current experience battling back from August bunion surgery that still hasn't yielded good results, I discuss strategies to set your sights on goals you'd like to achieve...

It’s the New Year, and we all know what that means. Perhaps you are already on your way to working toward your 2024 goals. Others might be planning to start on Jan. 1. Or maybe later when the snow begins to melt. Some will go it alone, so to speak. But for a great many, coaching will improve the chances you can have success. After all, I have yet to see a football team take the field this bowl sea...

Our annual tradition is back!  We began this with David Clark and have continued it since.  Gary, a former obese alcoholic who became an ultramarathoner and all-around extremely insightful human, and I share a chat which goes in any and all directions.  Always one of our most downloaded episodes, you're sure to gain some gold nuggets when listening to Gary's wisdom. Enjoy, and Merry Sobe...

This year we have highlighted several runners who have logged incredible achievements in longer distance events at a young age. Remember Lauryn Wojcik, who had never raced longer than 6K and yet crushed the Leadville Trail 100? This next performance caught my eye, and the guy is right in my backyard. Boulder-based Charlie Lawrence last month broke the 50-mile world record previously held by vetera...

As many of you know, David, the founder of this podcast, was an incredibly insightful man. A lot of that was gleaned from the hardships that he endured, many that were self-inflicted. He also studied Eastern religions like Buddhism which helped him acquire a better understanding of the human psyche, and pointed him toward directing his energies inward toward improving himself in order to improve t...

Bill Stahl silly_billy@msn.com Facebook Bill Stahl Instagram @stahlor and @coachstahl YouTube We Are Superman Podcast This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit billstahl8.substack.com

A quick guide to how to use this very effectively tactic in your races to beat your competition and run faster. Please feel free to contact me if you have specific questions on implementing surges into your tool kit.  Bill Stahl silly_billy@msn.com Facebook Bill Stahl Instagram @stahlor and @coachstahl YouTube We Are Superman Podcast This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with...

You might remember early last spring, an athlete who I coach, Julia Beckley, had her racing wheelchair stolen from her garage. We put out the word to every local media outlet we could, yet unfortunately it never turned up. However, the good news is that a GoFundMe that was setup raised enough funds for Julia to order a new chair and fly to Atlanta twice to get fitted for it and then have it fine-t...

Do you know how we look at young kids running and marvel at how free and easy they seem to run because no adult has yet tried to correct their form, so to speak? As you may have heard in the two episodes I presented with the two 18-year olds who finished the Leadville Trail 100, that pair took their own unique and surprising paths to completing the race because there really isn’t much of a templat...

Imagine trying as hard as you can to run, bike, dance, or hike and yet always struggling to keep up with everyone else. Worse yet, getting told by coaches, PE teachers, even friends that you were just lazy, or worse yet, that you plain sucked?  Andrea Ogg experienced that her whole life until she was 35 years old. Then she got the diagnosis that it wasn’t her, but a congenital heart condition call...

We are going to drop into a whole new kind of location on the WASP, the Turks and Caicos Islands, near the Bahamas. Drexwell Seymour was raised in this British possession into a family with very modest means but not knowing any different, he was a happy child. However, he endured quite a bit of racism while in school, which greatly affected his self-confidence. He threw himself into his studies an...

We have spoken on the WASP with a few of among the hundreds of amazing personal stories of how they got to the starting line of the Leadville Trail 100, and more so, to the finish line. I was rather impressed with the 18-year old guy we spoke with, Alden Iselin, completing the race as such a green runner, but the 18-year old division female winner, Lauryn Wojcik, really blows me away.  Get this, h...

This year’s Leadville Trail 100’s winners both hail from Boulder, CO, so I got to venture a tad north and west to visit at the house of the men’s winner, JP Giblin. JP seized control of the race just beyond Winfield, the mid-point of the race, and he kept adding onto his lead, finishing in 17:07:25, 40 minutes ahead of runner-up Luke Paulson on one of the hottest Leadville race days in history. JP...

When I first ran the Leadville Trail 100 in the early 90s, and for many years afterward, there had never been a finisher younger than 23 years old. A few had unsuccessfully tried, but it was considered too much of an endeavor for a younger person to do the necessary training for an ultramarathon. But then along came Clare Gallagher and Annie Hughes, major race winners and record-setters in their e...