The Buzz

Kelly Halpin is a professional mountain runner, adventure athlete, and freelance illustrator from Jackson, Wyoming, with more than 30 FKTs to her name, the 2020 FKT of the Year for her solo, unsupported run of the Wind River High Route, and, as of October 6, the first listed women's unsupported FKT on Kilimanjaro.

In this conversation, Buzz and Kelly get into why she believes style matters as much as the time (and why Strava flattens that distinction), how she found an ethical version of "unsupported" on a mountain where a guide is legally required, and what eight days on Kilimanjaro with former record holder Simon Mtuy taught her about its disappearing glaciers. They also talk about why big-mountain records attract fraud, why mountain athletes don't have a death wish, how a downloaded GPX file can get people into real trouble, the moss-covered gully in Greenland that nearly gave way beneath her, and the hikers on Teewinot who should really learn to yell "rock." Plus: why the Grand Traverse keeps slipping off her calendar (a wedding was involved).

Shaun Martin is a Diné (Navajo) runner and coach, the founder and race director of the Canyon de Chelly Ultra, a five-time Shiprock Marathon champion, and one of the featured runners in the documentary 3100: Run and Become.

In this conversation, Buzz sits down in Shaun's kitchen in Chinle, Arizona, the day after this year's race, with race gear still being unloaded and a houseful of runners milling around. They talk about the four reasons Diné runners head east every morning (to celebrate, pray, grow, and heal), and the sunrise fire ceremony that opens and closes the race. Shaun explains how a race works inside Canyon de Chelly: the bib doubles as a permit, the field is capped at 150, and the lottery is drawn from his mom's stew pot. They also get into the scholarship the race funds, which stays with a local student all the way to a bachelor's degree, and Shaun's longtime mentorship from Billy Mills. Running's place in Navajo ceremony comes up too, along with hózhó, the idea of walking (and running) in beauty and balance. Fifty-nine years after his first ultra, Buzz finds a few new reasons to keep going.

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The Claims Department puts fitness, health, and wellness science under the microscope. Zoë Rom co-hosts with Dr. Nick Tiller, an exercise physiologist, researcher, and author of The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science. Every episode, they pick apart something you've probably seen on your feed: a supplement, a gadget, a training trend, or a confident claim from a famous podcaster. They look at what the research actually says, and they show you how to work it out yourself next time.

In this first episode, Zoë and Nick dig into peptides. That covers BPC-157 and TB-500, the so-called "Wolverine Stack," and why so many athletes are injecting compounds that were never approved for human use. They also get into the fine print behind a wearable company's health claims.

Like what you hear? Follow The Claims Department on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every other Thursday. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0WBiQDtu4QXau4faFBr0qx

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-claims-department/id6822333314

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT0ovVd1qK7A

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 Skyrunner World Series two months later, and why she spent three summers learning one mountain before she ran it. They also cover getting chased by a herd of goats on record day, what an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex has to do with alpinism, the double standard on risk for women in the mountains, and her long-game plan to get into France's elite ENSA guide school. Karina also talks with care about her friend Kalie McCrystal, the Canadian skyrunner who was lost on the Matterhorn on September 1 while scouting her own record attempt.

This episode is brought to you by Wahoo KICKR RUN, the treadmill that matches your pace automatically and simulates real terrain from a 3% decline to a 15% incline. Learn more at wahoofitness.com.

The Buzz is part of the UltraSignup Podcast Network.

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 everyone else is asking online: why the policy lets athletes register in the category that matches their gender identity, why Hardrock declined to follow World Athletics and the IOC toward gene testing, what the evidence actually says about performance advantage over 100 miles at altitude, and how the race is handling awards. Stephanie walks through the history of sex testing in sport, from the chromosome checks of the 1960s to the SRY screening now being rolled out, and explains why she thinks a lottery-based mountain race has no obligation to import elite track rules.

The Buzz is supported by Arc'teryx.

The Buzz is part of the UltraSignup podcast network.

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 years of failed IVF, what six to seven thousand calories a day actually looks like (spoiler alert: lots of burritos). She and Buzz get into what changed when Stephanie Case's post turned a quiet FKT into a story thousands of people were following, how her husband George ran the crew so she never had to make a decision, what happens when your van breaks down on a Sunday in Switzerland with no cell service, and why three to four hours of sleep a night works.... right up until it doesn't. Plus, what Sophie is lining up for next.

This episode is brought to you in part by Arc'teryx, whose new Sylan 2 is built for trail runners who want to move fast. Find it at an Arc'teryx store or Arcteryx.com.

The Buzz is part of the UltraSignup Podcast Network.

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 shifted from calories per hour to grams of carbohydrate, why super shoes and better fueling have quietly rewritten how fast athletes recover, and why he thinks a "triathlonification" of ultrarunning is underway, with the Ironman playbook showing up everywhere from UTMB's qualification system to the expo-week vibe at big trail races.

They also hash out whether or not running 100 miles is actually healthy. From there the conversation goes to the Dipsea, the oldest annual trail race in the world and the one race Mario has zero interest in running, and then through the seven training fundamentals he laid out in Outside: good runners are athletes first, rest is training and not punishment, small deposits compound, consistency beats intensity, perceived exertion is the most reliable metric you've got, once you get fancy fancy gets broken, and find joy in the drudgery.

Find Mario's weekly newsletter and occasional podcast at themorningshakeout.com.

This episode is brought to you by the Wahoo KICKR RUN. Learn more at wahoofitness.com.

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 ultra can, why a Ponderosa pine forest that used to burn every two to fifteen years is now carrying 150 years of missed fire, the reason your local prescribed burn deserves your support instead of your complaint, what PM 2.5 actually does to a runner's lungs, and why the whole vocabulary of "fighting" fire might be the wrong frame entirely.

This episode is brought to you in part by Arc'teryx and the new Sylan 2, built with a supercritical foam midsole and a forked carbon fiber plate for moving fast on technical terrain. Find it at an Arc'teryx store or at arcteryx.com.

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 comments about it.

In this conversation, Fred and Buzz get into why paying ultrarunners was the right call and why the purists were furious about it, the tortoise-and-hare start that lets mid-packers watch the elites suffer in real time, the two-person team challenge that almost nobody finishes (three of twenty-one teams last year, and Fred has a theory about which half of each team is to blame), his case for a race directors' association, and the concern that keeps the lawyer in him up at night: that the entire sport runs on volunteer labor and is one disgruntled volunteer away from finding out what that's worth. They also talk wildfire smoke, air quality, and what happens to small American races if the center of gravity keeps drifting toward Europe.

This episode is brought to you by the Wahoo Kickr Run, a high-end treadmill with automatic pace matching and grade control from a 3% decline to a 15% incline. Check it out at wahoofitness.com.

Featured race: Run Rabbit Run, 50 and 100 miles, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, September 18 and 19, 2026. The 100 miler climbs roughly 21,000 feet through the Routt National Forest and carries the largest prize purse in the sport. Registration is full for 2026, but the waitlist is open at UltraSignup.com.

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 Pheidippides and the 153-mile run to Sparta that Herodotus documented as history's first race report (hallucination included), why Greece is the best trail running destination almost nobody visits, the night Dean fell asleep mid-stride 350 miles into a run, the pizza he famously ordered to a moving target, and how he trains and eats to keep racing ultras at 63.

This episode is brought to you in part by Arc'teryx, whose new Sylan 2 trail shoe is available in Arc'teryx stores and at Arcteryx.com.

The Buzz is part of the UltraSignup Podcast Network.