We Are Superman

Send us Fan Mail I’m very excited to bring you an extremely inspirational and energetic guest, who has been through a ton of challenges to get to where she is today. I was so honored to get to interview her in-person in the Hive and experience her energy. Athena Brownson is a former professional freestyle skier who has endured 27 surgeries, including nine on her knees. She believes that the resili...

Send us Fan Mail I hope you enjoy hearing about my tales of running the Leadville Marathon and the vitally important work that Team Leadville is doing to support the Boulder Crest Foundation to help stop veteran suicide. If you are able, I hope you can support with a donation - link below. Donate, share, or just help spread the word to help end veteran suicide. Thank you very much! https://weblink...

Send us Fan Mail We’ve featured a lot of people who have taken on epic challenges, but this guest, Ray Zahab of Quebec, Canada, has done dozens and dozens of them. When we recorded this two years ago, Ray had just completed a couple of weeks before a crossing of Death Valley from north to south. I’m very familiar with the Badwater 135, which just completed, but that is run on roads. I didn’t even...

Send us Fan Mail This is part two of my entertaining chat with Mike Melton of MCM Timing, the absolute best in the business of timing very long races. As I mentioned last episode, I inherited Mike for the American Heroes Run after David unexpectedly passed away less than four months before the race and I suddenly took up the mantle of race director, and I got really lucky because Mike ensured that...

Send us Fan Mail They say that a game is well-officiated when you don’t even notice the referees or umpires. I sure can’t say that about this NBA Finals, where the officiating has been atrocious. But if you’ve ever run an ultramarathon, especially a multiday race, and didn’t notice the timer, it might have been because that was Mike Melton of MCM Timing, the absolute best in the business. I inheri...

Send us Fan Mail One of the most common questions we coaches of long-distance runners get is, “How long should my long run be?”  Related to that is, “If I’m training for a marathon, how many times should I do 26-mile training runs?” I dive into these, training camps, and other related considerations in this Power Play episode that I hope helps you in your training for your next marathons and ultra...

Send us Fan Mail Cody Poskin is an emerging star of ultramarathoning, and his meteoric rise continued earlier this month at the Cocodona 250 in Arizona, where he placed second among men in 58:13:44, impressively knocking 13 hours off of his time from a year earlier. He attributes his progress due to lessons he learned from last time about sleeping, how not to chafe, increasing his training load, a...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s guest is one of the earliest members of David’s Leadville Ten Warriors group that all were overcoming their addictions and with David’s guidance gleaned from lessons he learned in his own life, battled back against those addictions and trained to run races like the Leadville Heavy Half and Marathon. Josh Lee completed the Heavy Half in 2019, but he had to hit rock bottom b...

Send us Fan Mail I’m talking today with three truly remarkable men, all veterans, all of whom have not let the loss of their eyesight and sometimes more affect their willingness to help others in monumental ways. They have started foundations and programs so others are not glued to their couches but instead get active and find meaning in their lives. They have found ways to adapt to the world to p...

Send us Fan Mail As you know, the American Heroes Run honors among others our courageous first responders, so when the opportunity came up to chat with Tim Carney, a professional firefighter for 33 years, I jumped at it. Tim learned early on during one of his rescues how much fitness comes into play. From this, he earned his personal training certification. But he was surprised how much resistance...

Send us Fan Mail Coming back from a suicide attempt, tumors, and pain so bad that he was bedridden for six months and couldn’t even operate a TV remote, Greg desperately searched for answers, any answers. He came across one that showed promise – hydrogen. But being the skeptic that he is, he recognized that there are gazillions of scams both in traditional and alternative medicine. It took him fou...

Send us Fan Mail David battled multiple addictions, including alcohol, drugs, and eating, but some other addictions don’t often receive the same attention. In this riveting episode, we hear the incredible story of convicted felon Jonathan Schwartz, who worked his way up in the finance world to the point where he was managing the money for numerous entertainment stars in Hollywood and beyond. Howev...

Send us Fan Mail While I was running a 12-hour, overnight trail race in Highlands Ranch, Colo. in 2024, I got a hamstring cramp that forced me to walk until I could get it to go away. In the middle of the night, when it was fairly cool. What the heck! I started to think afterwards about the number of times I’d been impaired by muscle cramps over the course of 35-plus years of races. At mile 30 of...

Send us Fan Mail What would possess someone to basically spend every waking moment for four weeks running back and forth along the same stretch of pavement only ¼ of a mile long… 5400 times. Is this some sort of Buddhist monk ritual? Or cruel punishment doled out by sadistic POW camp guards during WWII? Someone who should have been locked up a long time ago in a mental institution? Or someone comp...

Send us Fan Mail Awareness about barefoot running reached a crescendo with the publication of the book Born to Run about the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico who came to run the Leadville Trail 100 in 1992 and 1994. Steven Sashen and his wife Lena started a company that produced kits that allowed buyers to assemble their own huarache-style sandals that the Tarahumaras wore. This evolved into them desi...

Send us Fan Mail I’m really excited to bring you this episode’s guest. When I began ultramarathoning several decades ago, the only way I could learn about races and people in that space was through a B&W magazine delivered to my mailbox called Ultrarunning. I  read about people who became my first idols in the sport like Marshall Ulrich and Roy Pirrung, who I’ve had the great honor to chat wit...

Send us Fan Mail Have you heard about the latest thing in running challenges, the Burrito League? A year ago, Jamil Coury, owner of the race directing company Aravaipa Running, ran back and forth in front of a Chipotle in Tempe, AZ expressly to get them to give him a year’s worth of burritos. Back and forth, back and forth. And he succeeded. That was the genesis this January of the Burrito League....

Send us Fan Mail We’re going back Down Under for a really impressive comeback story. Olli Bryers was what we Americans would stereotype as a young, carefree, adventurous Australian who liked to surf, backpack, travel, and occasionally party. Usually, that youthful bliss only gets interrupted when the real world says that maybe you need to find a job to finance this lifestyle, or get serious about...

Send us Fan Mail Many of us have complicated relationships with our parents and then wonder how much of our inherited traits we are passing to our own children; it’s left up to us whether to nurture and grow those traits, or to discard them entirely. In his new book, “The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports,” Nick Thompson describes how his dad one day taking him to watch t...

Send us Fan Mail As many of you are planning your 2026 race schedule, you might be considering traveling out of town. Of course, that’s very different than waking up in your own bed, throwing your gear and some nutrition into the back of your car, stopping at a coffee shop along the way for some caffeine, and making a leisurely drive to a local race when few others are on the road. For answers abo...

Send us Fan Mail Jerzy Gregorek and his wife Aniela survived a perilous journey living behind the Iron Curtain in Poland while it was subservient to brutal Soviet Union domination. He describes the darkness of living there in the 1970s and 80s, and how it led to him becoming an alcoholic at age 15. He had a mentor who pretty much dragged him into weightlifting at the time of the rise of Solidarity...

Send us Fan Mail This is an absolutely don't-miss episode listening to the incredible wisdom of two former fat guy alcoholics who became sober endurance beasts. I promise you will gain more insights from listening to this pair than you would from reading an armful of self-help books. And make sure you stay for the song at the end! Enjoy this very special blast from the past - David's las...

Send us Fan Mail Running on trails in the winter takes different sets of preparation and skills.  As a long-time trail runner in all seasons, I share some of my insights to help keep you comfortable, on your feet, and enjoying the benefits and special beauty of getting off of the roads and into challenging yet peaceful trails to enjoy the next few months. Bill Stahl silly_billy@msn.com Facebook Bi...

Send us Fan Mail You can’t beat the trail running community for positivity, and during so many of my races I have randomly met the most interesting and often inspiring people, many of whom have become lifelong friends. During the descending miles of this year’s Leadville Heavy Half, I started chatting with a fellow runner and before long discovering Scott Tish’s inspiring story that included his e...

Send us Fan Mail Dealing with my dad's serious illness has reinforced the value of one of my core philosophies: It Will All Work Out. Anytime I have faced adversity, just as all of you have numerous times, it's a great tool to keep in your arsenal. Bill Stahl silly_billy@msn.com Facebook Bill Stahl Instagram and Threads @stahlor and @we_are_superman_podcast YouTube We Are Superman Podcas...