The GU Energy Labs Pinnacle Podcast

Sunny Stroeer used to be a hard-charging strategy consultant, armed with an MBA from Harvard,  but turned her back on material possessions and career shortly after turning 30 in order to live in an Astrovan so she could run and climb full-time instead.   

She’s done big-wall climbs, multi-day paddling trips, 100 milers, and everything in between.  Her specialty is the high altitude endurance realm; she holds speed records on Aconcagua and on the Annapurna Circuit. She is a true renaissance person.

In this episode, Yuri and Fatty talk with Sunny about her own transformation from couch potato to endurance icon, how Sunny is now paying that transformation forward with AWExpeditions  and the Summit Scholarship (https://www.awexpeditions.org/).

What happens when you combine one of the most historic mountain bike races with one of the hottest new gravel races? You get the LeadBoat Challenge! In this special edition episode of the Pinnacle Podcast, hosts Yuri Hauswald and Elden “Fatty” Nelson sit down with gravel-legend Alison Tetrick and SBT GRVL founder Mark Satkiewicz to talk about why a handful of cyclists have decide to take on both the Leadville 100 MTB and the SBT GRVL back-to-back.

Roxanne Vogel, the Nutrition & Performance Research Manager at GU Energy Labs, had a crazy dream: go from her home in California to the summit of Mt Everest and then back home to California — in just two weeks. Yuri and Fatty talk with Roxy about how she trained for and executed this incredible "lightning ascent" of Everest. It's an amazing story you will NOT want to miss!

(Earlier upload of this issue had audio issues; listen to this version instead.) One question every pro athlete has to consider is, "What am I going to do when I retire?" Naturally, a lot of them want to stay in the sport they love, but the way Tyler's gone about it is incredibly inspiring: he's invented the "Farm to Fork Fondo" series — a socially-conscious athlete's bucket-list ride if there's every been one. 

In our first ever podcast collab, we teamed up with Sarah Bowen Shea from the Another Mother Runner team for a LIVE conversation with GU Crew runner Katie Arnold.  Last year, Katie won the prestigious Leadville Trail 100 Run, and she just released a memoir titled Running Home.

We talk about her running career, life, and how the motion of running helped her get out of “that worry brain” after her father’s death from cancer and during the early years of motherhood. She also talks about taping into the “flow state” and tells us what it means to “JRA.”

YiOu Wang is a professional trail and ultra runner. She's a 2-time winner of the Lake Sonoma 50 mile, the 2017 Trail 50Km National Champion and a 2-time Marathon Olympic Trials Qualifier. Yuri and Fatty kick off season 3 of The GU Energy Labs Pinnacle Podcast by chattng with YiOu about running while traveling (YiOu didn't spend more than 10 days in one place in 2018), recommendations for traveling from a person who's been practically everywhere, learning from experience, and how to use a tree to stop yourself. Don't miss this awesome episode!

Jay Petervary is about as "ultra" as an ultra-racer can be. A ten-time Ultra Iditirod champ, Tour Divide record holder, and half of the only team to ever do the Dirty Kanza XL on a tandem, the big question usually circling around Jay is "what's next?"

Well, this past August, winning the Silk Road Mountain Race -- a thousand-mile, 85000 feet of climbing, unsupported bikepacking race in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan -- was what's left. 

Yuri and Fatty get Jay's story, from training to preparing to racing this next-level endurance marvel. You don't want to miss it.

It's a special mom-specific episode of the GU Energy Labs Pinnacle Podcast, and well...neither Yuri nor Fatty are exactly qualified to do this particular show. But you know who is? Sarah Bowen Shea of AnotherMotherRunner.com fame. She and three-time Ironman champ Mirinda Carfrae talk about what it's like to juggle being an athlete and a mother at the same time. Mirinda talks about the tradeoffs (say goodbye to recovery time, say hello to renewed focus and purpose, asking for help, and juggling schedules), as well as her game plan for the World Championships. For anyone who is — or knows — a mother who's also a determined athlete, this is a can't miss episode of the Pinnacle.

Imagine this scenario: You load up your car with everything you need to race both the Leadville 100 MTB race and to run the Leadville 100 running race, which occurs exactly one week after the MTB race.

But you're still recovering from an injury so don't really expect to do the run. 

But you find yourself feeling good after your top-20 finish in the mountain bike race, so decide to do the run. Which you not only complete, but win. By close to two hours over second place. And within ten minutes of an all-time record.

That's Rob Krar, and that's what we're talking about in this episode of the GU Energy Labs Pinnacle Podcast.

It's a rare athlete who dismisses yoga out of hand. Most athletes — whether we ride, run, kayak, climb, hike, or anything else — understand that it would be niceto learn yoga, as a way to improve our core strength and flexibility. Most of us leave it at that, though; we'd do yoga if we had more time. With time at a premium for most of us, though, we deprioritize yoga as one of hundreds of things we'll "maybe try during the off-season."

In this episode of the GU Energy Labs Pinnacle Podcast, pro athlete and GU community honcho Yuri Hauswald — along with friends and fellow yogis Pam Maldonado (Yuri's yoga instructor for seventeen years) and Nick Gould (a pro cyclist and yoga instructor) — make a strong case for why every athlete needs to find the time to bring yoga into their routine, no matter what their primary endeavor.

Whether you're already a yoga practitioner, are interested (but too busy), or even if you're skeptical of yoga, you need to give this episode of the Pinnacle a listen.