The Legend is back! Finally! After a three-month absence, the Don Draper of ultrarunning returns for our latest installment of This Month in Ultrarunning, the craze that’s sweeping the nation. Phil and I start off with some final thoughts on the 2018 UROY and FKTOY voting (3:30) before turning our attention to the new year. We discuss some rece ...…

If you don’t follow the sport of ultrarunning outside of the big trail races, you may not know the name Geoff Burns…but you should. Geoff is one of the top road ultramarathoners in the US; he is the 2016 national champion at 100K, and has finished fifth at each of the last two 100K World Championships. He’s also a doctoral student in biomechani ...…

For the fourth straight year, I’m both thrilled and appalled at being asked to vote for Ultrarunning Magazine’s Ultrarunner of the Year…and for the second straight year, I’ve asked one of my toughest critics to join me on the show to tell me how badly I’m screwing it up. This time, we did it early enough that I could actually make a few changes ...…

David and Megan Roche are one of the power couples in US trail and ultra running today, with seven national championships between them. Not only that, they’re the brains behind Team SWAP and the coaches of some of the most successful athletes in the country, including recent winners of Western States, Leadville, Run Rabbit Run, and more. Not on ...…

We had so much fun talking with one of the fastest US women ever at 24 hours (Megan Alvarado) that we decided to do the same for the men. Pete Kostelnick is a two-time winner and the course record holder at the famed Badwater 135, as well as #5 on the all-time US 24-hour list, but he’s perhaps best known for his record-setting run across Americ ...…

The cancellation of the North Face championships meant that many of the top athletes who had been aiming to end their season in northern CA wound up journeying east for the venerable JFK 50 mile, the oldest ultramarathon in the country. The smart money was on previous winner Leah Frost (#3 all-time at JFK) or former Western States champ Kaci Li ...…

In the past few years, as ultrarunning and trail racing in particular has continued to grow in popularity, there’s been a concurrent increase in the number of world-class racers exploring their limits in timed events, and the competition at these races has become fierce. This week we welcomed Altra/T-Starr Running/Drymax athlete Megan Alvarado, ...…

Ultrarunner and filmmaker Sanjay Rawal joins the Pain Cave to talk about his latest documentary, 3100: Run and Become. The movie follows competitors in the 2016 Self-Transcendence Run, a 3100-mile ultramarathon around a single city blog in Queens. In exploring the secret of what drives these runners, the film journeys to a Navajo reservation in ...…

The Legend returns to the Pain Cave to rescue you from the ultrarunning doldrums, with recaps of the insanity at Big’s Backyard (3:00), Hennepin Hundred (27:45), North Coast, Run Rabbit, and more. This episode was recorded last week, before Javelina Jundred, which we’ll recap in our next episode. Also, I did want to point out one error/omission ...…

The fastest 100-mile of 2018 doesn’t come from a resident of California, Colorado, or Arizona, but from right here in upstate New York. Albany’s Jim Sweeney sits down in the Pain Cave to discuss his cool new gig at the West Kill Brewery (1:00), his background in ultrarunning and how his training has progressed heading into his breakthrough 2018 ...…

It may have been a disappointing year for many of the top Americans at UTMB, but US runners came through with podium finishes at TDS, the 121km companion race. We welcome mens’ runner-up Dylan Bowman to the Pain Cave to talk about his fantastic early season (4:45), how he prepares for big mountain races (20:15), his race at TDS (33:00), the car ...…

We hadn't planned on a UTMB recap episode, but after the craziness that transpired last weekend in Chamonix, Phil and I had to sit down for an emergency pod to discuss Killian's allergic reaction, Xavier's redemption, disappointment for the US men and women, and what this all means going forward. Tonight's beer: Zero Gravity Grand Royal Intro m ...…

Ultra geeks rejoice! We're joined once again by our "This Month in Ultrarunning" partner in crime, Phil Vondra, for an in-depth preview of UTMB. Phil and I recap a fantastic week in Colorado, including Leadville (2:00), Pike's Peak (15:30), and Transrockies (21:00), plus other news and results from the ultra world (24:00), before we go deep on ...…

The Legend returns to the Cave for this month's installment of TMIU, where we quickly recap some of the major storylines from Western States (3:00) before dissecting Perrier-gate at Hardrock (11:00). We also discuss the controversy surrounding the awards at the Vermont 100 (38:00), review some results from Lavaredo and Cayuga Trails, and get in ...…

Look, if we do these things for long enough, eventually we're likely to get injured. And those of us who have been there know the truth: just like training and racing, recovering from an injury is as much a mental exercise as it is a physical one. In this episode we chat with former elite mountain biker and injury recovery specialist Heidi Arms ...…

The new King of the Catskills, Mike Siudy, visits the Pain Cave following his incredible FKT of the "Direttissima"--a continuous, 140+ mile tagging of the thirty-five 3500' peaks in the Catskill Mountains. We start with how Mike's background as a climber and hiker prepared him for a career in ultrarunning (2:35), how he became a Gridiot (11:40) ...…

The Pain Cave journeys west to the venerable Western States 100, where I was pacing our very first podcast guest, Brian Oestrike. Since I was in town, I was able to finagle a sit-down with the great Eric Schranz of Ultrarunnerpodcast.com. As we recorded the day before the big show, Eric and I spent a few minutes discussing how we thought the da ...…

It's only been two week since our last TMIU episode, but we're too excited for this weekend to wait! We welcome home the Legend, Phil Vondra, to recap his epic run at last weekend's Bighorn 100 (2:10), briefly review some recent results from Comrades, Broken Arrow, and Mount Washington (17:00), and dig deep into our Western States preview (24:0 ...…

The occasion for this episode is the release of the second edition of Running Anatomy, which Joe co-authored with Patrick Milroy. We spent some time talking about Joe's experience writing the book initially (8:00), what the impetus was for the second edition (11:15), the idea of functional versus general strength (17:20), why coaching remains s ...…

Despite--or due to--engaging a bit too aggressively in the Avery Collins training plan, I had a blast recording the most recent installment of TMIU (a.k.a. FOR ULTRA GEEKS ONLY) with the Legend himself, Phil Vondra. (I did need to edit out a three-minute spasm of giggles about 35 minutes in.) We chatted about Phil's prep for Bighorn, the first ...…

As we delve back into the science of running, we've noticed that there are a lot of terms and shorthand we use that may not be familiar to everyone out there. Most of us have heard the terms "VO2 max" and "lactate threshold," but do we understand what those things really mean, or how they relate to our endurance pursuits? For this episode we de ...…

We're getting back to the science stuff next week, but today we've got another episode for ultra geeks. Spurred by Trail Runner magazine's recent profile on Coree Woltering, teammate Rich Heffron joins the show to discuss the current state of ultrarunning media. We tackle the question of whether there is a West Coast bias in ultra coverage (7:0 ...…

We're starting something new in the Pain Cave this week. We love delving into the science of sport, but sometimes we just want to kick back with a couple of beers and be geeky ultra fans. We're going to try to dedicate an episode each month to the stories and athletes making headlines in our sport, recapping the big races, examining the storyli ...…

We welcome back Unived and Altra athlete Laura Kline to the program in the wake of her runner-up performance at the national 50K championships. Laura talks about her athletic background, how she got into ultras, recaps her recent race at Caumsett, and gives us the lowdown on how she succeeds as a vegan, gluten-free athlete. Links: Laura's websi ...…

Author, physicist (?), journalist, and world-class miler Alex Hutchinson calls in from the Great White North to discuss his recently released book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. We discuss the role the mind plays in endurance performance (2:30), the work of Tim Noakes and the various ways it informs ...…

Dr. Zubair Jafar, the head of the Sports Cardiology program at the Heart Center, joins us in the Pain Cave to talk about the athlete's heart. This is an important episode for anyone with cardiac concerns or risk factors, or anyone who is curious about safely beginning an exercise regimen. We discuss the importance of exercise in maintaining goo ...…

It's a bit early to start repeating guests, but we couldn't ignore the performance of our inaugural guest, Brian Oestrike, at the famous HURT 100 mile earlier this month. Brian sits down with a couple of awesome double IPAs to discuss how he prepared for a race in Hawaii while training in New York in December, what separates HURT from some of t ...…

In our year-end, non-science-related episode, we delve into the ballot for Ultrarunner of the Year. I welcome in my good friend Laura Kline to debate who should make the mens' and womens' top 10 ultrarunners of the year, and the five best male and female performances of the year. We also discuss whether DNFs should count more than DNSs, why we ...…

Counselor, lecturer, sort-of-single mom, and runner Courtney Edwards visits the Pain Cave to address the mental side of the sport...but maybe not in the way you've heard it before. We cover a lot of ground: the emotional benefits of running and exercise, the biochemical basis behind these emotions, addictive behaviors, eating disorders, the imp ...…

I go back to my Ithaca roots for a conversation with my old Cornell teammate, Artie Smith, recently named the Alan B. '53 and Elizabeth Heekin Harris Head Coach of Women's Track and Field/Cross Country at our alma mater. We reminisce a bit about our days as students on the Hill, the history of the Cornell track program, the differences between ...…

Ithaca's Ian Golden sits down to talk about his run for US Congress in NY District 23. We chat about the running specialty industry (6:00), race directing (9:00), and PEDs (18:00), before Ian fills us in on why he chose to run for Congress (21:25), stepping into politics for the first time (25:00), his unusual campaign tour (26:00), the basics ...…

Physical therapist Greg Cecere joins the show to deconstruct how we experience pain. We talk about his background (1:30) before delving into what it means when we feel pain (7:30), the anatomy of the nervous system experience of pain and response to injury (14:00), chronic vs. acute injuries (20:00), the neurologic basis behind chronic injury ( ...…

We sit down with Brian Oestrike to recap his amazing performance at the Bighorn 100 (2:30) before discussing his background in mountaineering (22:00), why many ultrarunners become mountain climbers (and vice versa) (26:30), the crazy nature of this year's men's race at Hardrock (32:30), Killian's exploits on Everest (37:30), altitude tents (45: ...…