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PODCAST

The Trailhead

The Trailhead isn"t your typical trail running podcast—we"re not dissecting splits or debating race strategies. Instead, hosts Zoë Rom and Brendan Leonard take you straight to the heart (and funny bone) of the sport, celebrating the people, stories, and quirks that make trail running so special. With a mix of humor, heart, and a little irreverence, we explore the personalities, people, artists, and everyday athletes who give the sport its soul—because trail running is about more than just the

sports running

All Episodes

01:06:09

Why Do Trail Runners Dress Like This Now? Lee...

The Trailhead ·

2026/09/30

Lee Glandorf is a writer, brand marketer, former Yale rower, seven-year Tracksmith veteran, and the creator of The Sweat Lookbook, a newsletter about sports and fashion through the lens of the female athlete. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan finally ask the question keeping them up at night: why is everyone dressed like it's 2003? (Bandanas. Oakleys. Boxy chore jackets with no discernible weatherproofing.) Lee makes the case that creative directors discovering trail running might be the unified

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53:33

The Freedom of Being a Beginner with Oladimeji "Dim"...

The Trailhead ·

2026/09/15

Oladimeji Ajegbile, known online as Hello Dim, went viral for filming bike rides through Edinburgh with his two-year-old son perched on the handlebars, narrating every tree and bus he sees. He's also a former architect, UX designer, startup founder, stay-at-home dad, and, as of last year, a runner who clocked a sub-50 10K on roughly two training runs and just finished his first half marathon with a 50K trail ultra on the calendar. Zoë and Brendan talk with Dim about why the toddler videos connected

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55:54

Margaret Glaspy on Pain Caves, Typewriters, and...

The Trailhead ·

2026/09/01

Singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy joins Zoë and Brendan to talk about the strange and surprisingly rich overlap between running and making art. She shares how watching her mom run planted the seed early, growing up close to the Western States course, how Courtney Dauwalter and Addie Bracy helped draw her into ultrarunning, and why learning to sit with discomfort has changed far more than her athletic life. Margaret also talks about quitting social media, writing songs on a typewriter, finding

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01:10:14

Doing It The Hard Way is the Point - With Writer Sam...

The Trailhead ·

2026/08/18

Sam Robinson writes the Substack Footnotes, works as a content designer at YouTube, and has a PhD in seventeenth-century science, religion, and philosophy, which makes him exactly the right person to ask why we're all trying so hard to optimize a sport whose whole appeal is that it's beautifully pointless. Zoë and Brendan get into the tension with him: distance running rewards incremental gains and deferred gratification, and it's also the least efficient way imaginable to get from point A back to

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57:30

What If the Hero's Journey Is the Wrong Story? With...

The Trailhead ·

2026/08/04

Heather Hansman is an award-winning outdoor journalist, an Outside columnist, and the author of Downriver and the bestselling Powder Days. Her new book, Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America's Love for the Wild, is out now. In this conversation: the therapist who mapped the heroine's journey, and the very famous mythologist who told her women don't need one; Georgie White swimming Grand Canyon rapids in 1945 in tennis shoes and a couple of hard candies; why there always

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59:47

Is Running a Religion? A 1,400-Mile Pilgrimage Around...

The Trailhead ·

2026/07/21

Adharanand Finn is an award-winning journalist and the author of Running with the Kenyans, The Way of the Runner, and The Rise of the Ultra Runners, and his forthcoming book The Running Pilgrim chronicles the 1,400 miles he ran around Ireland in 68 days. In this conversation, Zoe and Brendan talk with Adharanand about what Kenyan, Japanese, and ultrarunning cultures taught him about community and staying in the moment, why a pilgrimage is basically an ultra with better theology, the science of why

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01:02:22

Race Photographer Anastasia Wilde on What 200-Milers...

The Trailhead ·

2026/07/07

Anastasia Wilde is a Missoula-based adventure photographer who has spent the last five years shooting the country's biggest 200-mile races like Bigfoot, Tahoe, Cocodona, and hiking up to eight miles into the backcountry with thirty pounds of gear to photograph runners at their most unfiltered. In this conversation, Anastasia tells us how a Costco camera kit and a suspiciously well-timed $500 raffle win turned a middle school music teacher into one of ultrarunning's most prolific race

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01:05:25

Geologist and Pro Athlete Dillon Osleger on the...

The Trailhead ·

2026/06/23

Dillon Osleger is a geologist, professional mountain biker, and longtime trail steward whose debut book, Trail Work: Restoring the Paths and Stories of America's Public Lands, uncovers the buried history beneath the trails we run, ride, and take for granted. In this conversation, Zoe and Brendan get into why nobody wants to do the unglamorous work of maintenance (and the Kurt Vonnegut line that nails it) and how to read a trail like a layered history book. Dillon decodes what is hiding in plain

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01:05:44

How to Spot Fitness and Wellness BS with Exercise...

The Trailhead ·

2026/06/09

Dr. Nick Tiller is an exercise scientist at the Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA, a two-decade ultrarunner, and the author of The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science and the new The Health and Wellness Lie. In this conversation: why ultrarunning is, by Nick's cheerful admission, not actually good for you, and why we keep signing up anyway; the red flags that should trip your bullshit detector in 2026; the great protein panic and how a "health halo" turns a Pop-Tart into a recovery food; what the

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46:13

A Longtime New York Times Music Critic on How Running...

The Trailhead ·

2026/05/26

Ben Ratliff is a former New York Times music critic, a writing professor at NYU, and the author of Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening, longlisted for the National Book Award and named a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, which chronicles what he hears when he brings music into his near-daily runs through the Bronx. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with Ratliff about why running made him a better listener, and why the optimal-BPM

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01:02:51

Social Psychologist Emily Balcetis on Why the Wall Is...

The Trailhead ·

2026/05/12

When you hit the wall at mile 19 of a marathon (or mile 80 of a 100-miler) it feels like your body is the problem. Your legs are concrete, your stomach is in revolt, and the finish line might as well be on the moon. But what if the wall is mostly in your head? Emily Balcetis is a social psychologist who studies how vision and perception shape motivation: how what people literally see changes what they believe they can do. She runs the SPAM Lab at NYU and is the author of Clearer, Closer, Better: How

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55:46

Why Your Brain Needs You to Run with Evolutionary...

The Trailhead ·

2026/04/28

David Raichlen is a professor of biological sciences at the University of Southern California whose research examines how human evolution, physical activity, and brain health are linked across the lifespan. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with David about what's actually happening in your brain when you go from couch to consistently active, why exercise might be the closest thing we have to a dementia preventative, and why his research on the runner's high, which famously involved humans,

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01:01:43

Rochelle Bilow on Food, Running, and Romance Novels

The Trailhead ·

2026/04/14

Rochelle Bilow is a romance novelist, food writer, French Culinary Institute graduate, former Bon Appétit editor, and current kitchen gear expert at Serious Eats, and she just came back to ultrarunning after nearly a decade away from the sport. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with Rochelle about what she learned cooking on a farm that culinary school never taught her, why she pivoted from heartbreak memoir to romance fiction, and what it's like to balance writing deadlines with ultra

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54:09

From Cattle Ranching to 100 Mile Races with "Beef...

The Trailhead ·

2026/03/31

Ryan Goodman grew up on a cattle ranch in Arkansas, studied beef cattle science at Oklahoma State University, and now manages WSU's beef cattle research program as Beef Cattle Operations Manager in Pullman, Washington, where he also teaches hands-on lab courses to the next generation of pre-veterinary students. Online, he goes by @BeefRunner. He also runs a lot of 100-mile races. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with Ryan about what six weeks of calving season: sleepless, high-stakes,

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01:00:23

Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen on Why Ultrarunning Is a...

The Trailhead ·

2026/03/17

C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher at the University of Utah, a former food writer for the Los Angeles Times, a rock climber, and one of the world's leading thinkers on the philosophy of games. His new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game, argues that games are the defining art form of our era, and that the scoring systems that make them so joyful turn quietly destructive when institutions and apps wield them instead. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with CT about why

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55:01

What Running 150 Miles Across Iceland Taught Pavel...

The Trailhead ·

2026/03/03

Pavel Cenkl is a climate writer, ultrarunner, and Dean of Academics at Prescott College who has run hundreds of miles across Iceland, Scandinavia, and the Arctic through his project Climate Run. He grew up in the White Mountains, worked the AMC huts, started one of the first collegiate trail running teams in the U.S., and built a master's program combining movement, environmental philosophy, and ecology. In this conversation, Zoë and Brendan talk with Pavel about what happens when you push

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57:24

Science Journalist Christie Aschwanden on What...

The Trailhead ·

2026/02/17

Christie Aschwanden is a New York Times bestselling author, former lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight, and one of the sharpest science journalists working today. She's also a former elite Nordic skier for Team Rossignol and a national collegiate cycling champion, so when she set out to investigate the multibillion-dollar recovery industry for her book Good to Go, she brought both a scientist's rigor and an athlete's bullshit detector. In this episode, Zoë and Brendan talk to Christie about why

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51:42

Brad Stulberg on How to Be Excellent Without Burning Out

The Trailhead ·

2026/02/03

Brad Stulberg co-wrote Peak Performance with Steve Magness and has spent over a decade studying what excellence actually requires. He joins Zoë and Brendan to dismantle the myths of hustle culture and explain why genuine excellence isn't about optimization, it's about caring deeply about something worthwhile. We dig into "zombie burnout" (exhaustion from doing too little of what lights you up), what Brad learned from studying Courtney Dauwalter and powerlifter Layne Norton, and why chasing flow

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01:01:05

Why Run 205 Miles? Doug Mayer on Tour de Géants and...

The Trailhead ·

2026/01/20

What happens when you strip away sleep, ego, and every external measure of success for 330 kilometers? Doug Mayer, founder of Run the Alps, former Car Talk producer, and three-time Tour de Géants finisher, has spent years trying to answer that question. His new graphic novel, Last of the Giants, is his best attempt yet. In this episode, Doug joins Zoë and Brendan to talk about leaving a 25-year career in radio to build a trail running tour company in Chamonix, why he kept going back to one of the

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50:39

What a PhD Mathematician Learned About Running 100 Miles

The Trailhead ·

2026/01/06

Pat Cade has a PhD in mathematics, coaches high school cross country in Leadville, Colorado, and has finished the Leadville 100 six times. In this conversation, he explains what years of research math taught him about endurance: small steady progress compounds, inspiration only strikes if you're showing up every day, and sometimes the breakthrough comes when you stop following the plan and just go climb the mountain because it's beautiful outside. Pat shares how he and his wife landed in Leadville

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103 results

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