Uphill Athlete Podcast

Signed up for your first ultra? Coach Alexa Hasman, who has run 40+ ultras including seven 200-milers, joins Steve House to cover what first-timers need to know: why you don't need a road marathon first, how much runway to give yourself, why hiking is part of the plan, the minimum strength training that works, fueling, poles, dress rehearsals, and the two keys she wants you to remember: consistency and adaptability.

Buzz Burrell coined the term "fastest known time," and he's spent his life honoring the athletes who never tell anyone what they did. Steve House talks with Buzz about his 1969 run to Lake Michigan with no food, no water, and no one to tell; pushing multi-day FKTs on the Colorado Trail and the John Muir Trail; surviving a "widowmaker" heart blockage his doctors kept missing; and why, once goals and expectations fall away, what's left is simple: keep moving.

Trail running, climbing, skiing, riding: can you train for all of them without getting worse at each? Steve House and Director of Coaching Chantelle Robitaille share the framework Uphill Athlete coaches use with multi-sport athletes. Pick one priority per season, run an honest gap analysis, and harmonize your sports instead of balancing them. They also cover the interference effect, layering sports through the year, when to set one aside, and why strength training is non-negotiable.

Steve House talks with Dr. Eliza Sampey, a Doctor of Physical Therapy specializing in brain injury rehab, former professional endurance athlete, and concussion survivor herself about why mountain and endurance athletes so often underestimate head injuries, and what science-backed recovery actually looks like. Dr. Sampey explains that concussions are especially easy to dismiss in the backcountry because the injury is invisible and athletes are conditioned to push through pain. She walks through the neurometabolic cascade that occurs after a head or body impact — how stretched axons flood the brain with misplaced neurochemicals, disrupt blood flow, and trigger an "energy crisis" that takes three to six weeks to resolve, regardless of how mild or severe the initial injury seemed. She stresses why getting hit again during that window is dangerous, even life-threatening in rare cases of second impact syndrome, and can turn a six-week recovery into six to nine months. The conversation covers red-flag symptoms that…

Steve House sits down with elite mountain athlete Kílian Jornet, calling in from his home in Norway, for a wide-ranging conversation about what draws people to high-risk mountain pursuits. They explore mountains not as a destination but as a sense of home and identity, the fine line between earned confidence and dangerous complacency, and how fear and euphoria can each distort decision-making in exposed terrain. Jornet reflects on his upbringing; being "born into the mountains," his mother's nighttime forest walks, a family trek across the Pyrenees; and how he's now passing that connection to nature on to his own children with his wife, Emily. The two discuss the blurred lines between mountaineering, alpinism, and running as labels; the philosophy behind going fast and light versus slow and immersive; and the particular psychology of "accepting" mortal risk versus fighting to survive an emergency. The conversation turns deeply personal as Kílian opens up about the loss of his friend and climbing partner…

Steve House sits down with Dr. Marco Altini — data scientist, physiologist, and founder of HRV4Training — for a deep-dive into one of the most misunderstood tools in endurance athletics: heart rate variability. With over 50 peer-reviewed papers to his name, Dr. Altini brings rare scientific rigor to a space crowded with oversimplified wearable metrics. The conversation opens by challenging the industry's obsession with single-number readiness scores, which Dr. Altini argues dilute nuanced physiological signals into deterministic assumptions that don't reflect the complexity of the human body. The episode unpacks the fundamentals of HRV — what it actually measures, why morning is the optimal measurement window for endurance athletes, and how to interpret it as a marker of stress response rather than performance capacity. Steve and Marco also cover hardware accuracy across chest straps, optical sensors, and phone cameras; HRV research at altitude; and the broader question of how biometric data should support —…