We Are Superman

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 veteran ultrarunner and current UTMB champion Jim Walmsley. Charlie is 28, self-coached, and his previous longest run had been 35 miles. He completed the distance in 4:48:21 at the Tunnel Hill 50 Mile in Illinois, averaging 5:46 per mile. I like that Charlie didn’t run it on a track or in an artificial environment, but in an actual race, on a mostly gravel surface with some hills. Charlie, a native of Foley, Minn., got the inspiration to challenge the record, which he was actually confident he would secure, from American two-time Olympian Des Linden after helping pace her to a 50K world record. After sitting out most of 20

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 the world around him. Along the way, in his memoir, Out There: A Story of Ultra Recovery, he showed how he could attain a huge measure of that by showing his vulnerability, unashamedly exposing his mistakes and shortcomings, discussing the self-loathing he felt, and letting people make up their own minds about his efforts to make amends, and importantly, not harboring ill will toward them if they chose not to accept any of that. He understood that we all have done things we regret, and he was willing to accept others for who they were trying to be instead of judging them for past misdeeds.The most interesting book alo

Bill Stahlsilly_billy@msn.comFacebook Bill StahlInstagram @stahlor and @coachstahlYouTube We Are Superman Podcast

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 Stahlsilly_billy@msn.comFacebook Bill StahlInstagram @stahlor and @coachstahlYouTube We Are Superman Podcast

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-tuned. It should arrive just in time for a project that will begin on Oct. 26 that will highlight the needs of other adaptive athletes. Thanks in part to Julia’s efforts, races have added or enhanced their pushrim divisions, including the Colfax Marathon and the Bolder Boulder, and more racing chairs are available to other adaptive athletes in Colorado. During her project, which she calls the Beckley Marathons, an intention pun on the infamous Barkley Marathons, she will wheel herself through a marathon on consecutive days in various corners of Colorado, beginning in Fort Collins, hitting southern Colorado, the Wester

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 template for young people like them. Along a similar vein, at the American Heroes Run last month, we had a fascinating scenario involving a 15-year old completing the marathon. Nathan Maze, from nearby Commerce City, Colorado by no stretch is your typical skinny kid whose parents pushed him to run from a young age. In fact, Nate was once a 5’4”, 180-pound middle schooler who never even contemplated running. Determined to change his body, Nate dropped 50 pounds, no small feat for a young guy. Then he got into the gym and became, well, jacked. Nate soared to over 6 feet in height, put on muscle, and now weighs a lean 170. Che

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 called Left Ventricular Non-Compaction Cardiomyopathy that prevented her heart from developing normally. So this ever-cheerful and funny woman found joy in other areas of her life. Until one day in August, 2017 her heart stopped, and she keeled over and died. She didn’t even realize what had happened to her as she clowned around with the paramedics in the ambulance until she was informed that the defibrillator that had been implanted in her chest had kicked in to restore her heart rhythm and save her life. However, her heart was now on borrowed time and in July, 2018 she received a heart transplant from a stranger. Andre

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 and graduated high school at the age of 15. He got an incredible break when an American philanthropist awarded Drexwell a scholarship to attend Wilmington College in Ohio, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Business Management in only three years. He then precociously added on an MBA from Miami (Ohio) University by the time he was 19. Armed with these degrees before he turned 20, he returned to his home islands, hoping to get into the hospitality industry. We have all encountered this Catch-22 - he was told he couldn’t get into that industry because he didn’t have experience. So with his accounting d

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, her longest previous race was 6K. Yes 6K, a bit over 3½ miles. She had never before run a trail race. Plus she had been injured and cross-trained for months until she was able to begin running again in June – two months before the race! Her longest training run in that span was 30K. Hope Pass was the only part of the course she’d ever been on before. Her finish time was a very, very respectable 28:19:50, and how about this? That made her the 29th female overall! Yet her understated reaction on her Instagram post was “Ouch.” Here’s a quirky stat, she was actually faster going up Hope Pass than down it!  So how did she

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, an Altra-sponsored professional athlete, is hoping this victory opens up new opportunities for him. Despite earning the Leadman title in 2022 for accruing the best time for all of the Leadville running and biking races, sponsors weren’t yet knocking down his door, and a disappointing finish at the Western States 100 in June didn’t help that or his path forward. So the self-coached JP tore down what he was doing and quickly pivoted his training, which obviously paid off. JP sees a lot of upward potential for himself being that he’s only 29 years old with not a lot of miles on his bones. Even though he made his Leadv

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 early 20s. In 2019, I ran the start-to-May Queen stretch of the LT100 alongside college senior Harrison Hornung, actually named after the main drag in Leadville, who was attempting to complete Leadman, which he did. There’s no doubt the demographics in ultramarathons have trended younger, yet I was pretty surprised when I was up at the LT100 this year and saw that there were 4 or 5 runners in the 18-19 year old division. Alden Iselin of Newton MA just graduated from high school and impressively finished in 29:11:33. I was curious what made this young man tick, and what I discovered is an energetic 18-year old who is e

Michael O’Brien had one of those life-changing, near catastrophic events in 2001. He was struck by a car while riding his bike, resulting in multiple, possibly lethal, serious injuries. The doctors’ prognoses for how his future life would look were grim. Obviously, he had the option of accepting these and leading a life just scraping by. One of the revelations that someone provided him was that he could choose his own labels, in other words, what attitude do you want to have toward hardships? Michael decided that the day of his accident would be his last bad day. Challenges are simply moments, not chronic conditions if you believe you can overcome them and opportunities to move forward. His rehab was tedious, but his mantra was that working hard today would create a better tomorrow. Boy does this surgery rehab veteran relate to that! Michael also gained a lot of insight into meditation and mindfulness and began leading sessions. The pandemic spurred him to leave his corporate life and devote himself to introd

Climb all 122 peaks in the Rocky Mountains, and do it in less than 40 days. That’s 58 Colorado 14ers, 37 Wyoming 13ers, and 27 Montana 12ers, many with backcountry treks just to get to their trailheads. That’s averaging more than three peaks a day, every day, for almost six weeks. The equivalent of more than 26 marathons in length and 318,000 feet of elevation gain, or sea level to the top of Mt. Everest 11 times. Add in storms, deep snow, some wrecked feet, and unforeseen hurdles like crew abandoning at the most inopportune time. Those were some of the challenges faced by Jason Hardrath, who completed the Rockies Grand Slam just a week before we recorded. He and I are accompanied on this episode by ultrarunner and coach Miki McConaha. Don’t believe for a minute that Jason is some one-hit wonder. This is now one of something like 116 FKTs that Jason owns! Yes, 116. Jason has documented part of this journey in a film called “Journey to 100.” A few of these is his record Norman’s 13 traversing the 14ers in the

We have talked a few times to organ transplant recipients, but today we’ve got a great conversation with a kidney donor. I met Mike Kennedy while I was volunteering in June at the Leadville Heavy Half and Marathon. He had come out from Bethlehem PA, and as we got to talking, I found out about his organ donation. As you heard me describe earlier, it was a sloppy, snowy, muddy epic sort of weather day. But I was surprised when I saw Mike cross the Heavy Half finish line in 11th-place overall in 2:30:20! He was also third in the men’s 30-39 age group. This was less than two years after he donated one of his kidneys to an anonymous recipient to indirectly help his mother-in-law, who had been on dialysis for many years while waiting for a kidney transplant herself. A sort of give-a-penny, take-a-penny dish arrangement that is common in these cases where the waitlist for a new kidney usually stretches for years. Mike had even completed a Half-Ironman triathlon only a year after his donation. Subsequent to Leadville

We’re making another trip Down Under, this time to Wellington, New Zealand and talking with an expert in your physical, psychological, and digestive well-being with the goal of giving his clients better energy, mobility, purpose, gut health, mental sharpness, confidence, workout effectiveness, and life balance. His name is Olly Wood, and his understanding of the big picture led him to start the Body Reset, which enables people, especially those who are busy, to get back to functioning at a high level. So much begins with our fuel intake whether we are an athlete, office worker, or stay-at-home, so Olly and I discuss rather extensively the history and issues with today’s diets in regard to feeling and performing at one’s best. I like his ability to make his insights very relatable. Olly and his team’s coaching staff and the many articles and other information on his web site are invaluable resources to get people to understand what is holding them back from achieving the results they are hoping for. We could h

When I heard about Dr. John Lewis, I was mesmerized by how committed he is to healthy living and helping others enjoy their best lives, too. But what cinched it for me is that he has done the research himself through dozens of studies as a professor at the University of Miami School of Medicine that demonstrate the links between proper nutrition, exercise, and dietary supplementation to optimum health and that have been published in almost 200 peer-reviewed medical journals. His studies on brain health in particular have led him to branch out into the private world to further study Alzheimer’s. It’s been conclusively shown that there is a close connection between our lifestyles, what we put into our bodies, and our brain health. Even just in recent days I heard about a study in the mainstream media that found that runners have a lower incidence than others to contract Parkinson’s Disease. Dr. Lewis’ study of polysaccharides has led to pioneering approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer’s and the development o

This is part 2 of my chat with one of the legends of high school basketball coaching not just in Colorado, but in the country, Dick Katte. I hope you had a chance to listen to part 1; if not, please catch that first. Coach Katte began coaching basketball and teaching math at Denver Christian High School in 1960, becoming the head coach in 1964. He finished with a record of 876-233, which until surpassed this season, represented the most wins ever for a coach in Colorado. His final team in 2012 went 26-0 and culminated with his eighth state championship. During this long journey, he hit some daunting obstacles, to say the least. In 1984, he suffered a brain aneurysm that almost killed him. Nine years later, he contracted cancer which necessitated the removal of 4½ feet of his small intestine. Through each of these challenges, as we talked about in part one, Coach Katte felt like he was being tested by God to re-evaluate the way he was conducting his life on and off the court, and he came out on the other side

We are bringing you a special treat in this episode, a sit-down chat with one of the legends of high school basketball coaching not just in Colorado, but in the country. Dick Katte began coaching basketball and teaching math at Denver Christian High School in 1960, becoming the head coach in 1964. He finished with a record of 876-233, which until this past season represented the most wins ever for a coach in Colorado. A lot of you know me as a running coach, but I actually broke into the coaching biz in basketball, way back in 1983. A dozen or more of Coach Katte’s wins were against teams that I helped coach, and it was always particularly gratifying when you could steal a rare win from the master, as we did in the 1998 state title game. Sorry Coach, I had to throw that in. His final team in 2012 went 26-0 and culminated with his eighth state championship. Coach Katte has been inducted into an alphabet soup of halls of fame, including those of CHSAA, the Colorado Sports HOF, the National High School, and Nati

Baseball hero and color barrier-breaker Jackie Robinson once said, "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." As coaches, we make impacts on others' lives every day, sometimes in large ways and at other times in very low-key ways. This year I have had one standout opportunity to do so. When Nate, a young man I coached, was in need of a place to live when he would turn 18 years old in March, I didn't hesitate to jump in to help. The original plan was to find a temporary home until he would enter the Army in July. But an unexpected turn of events led to me offering Nate a room in my basement, which would be a safe and more positive place for him to spend the next 3½ months. From there we got him back on his school's track team so he could finish his senior year on a positive note. He overcame being born with fetal alcohol syndrome by graduating from high school, which is achieved by only a small percentage of those who start life with it. Nate impacted me prof

One more in our series of standout performers at the Colorado High School State Championship meet, we are heading out to the farm, literally. I happened to be hanging around the finish line there talking to Matt Kleve, whose son Max was competing in sprint events for Holyoke High School, a school of about 250 students way out on the Eastern Plains of Colorado not far from the Nebraska line. Generations of Kleves have lived in Holyoke, a town of around 2500 residents, and Max’s family grows wheat and raises cattle, so like I did, you will learn a little about farm life and FFA, formerly Future Farmers of America. Matt told me some of his son’s story of suffering a disastrous ACL tear in a high school football game his junior year, enduring a long, arduous rehab process, and coming back to compete at the state track meet. Max is a very bright and perceptive young man, and what is cool, too, is that Max candidly discusses his battle with anxiety, going to therapy, and how through discovering there is something b