Run Long After 60

Run Long After 60 is a podcast about durability, curiosity, and continuing to do hard things as the years stack up. Hosted by Mark Vega , the show features long-form conversations with runners, endurance athletes, coaches, creatives, and professionals who are still showing up — often well past the age when society expects people to slow down. This is not a podcast about speed, podiums, or shortcuts. It’s about adaptation. Perspective. And learning how to keep moving forward — physically, mentally, and creatively — over the long arc of a life. Episodes are often recorded in motion, including running intros captured mid-workout, because this show isn’t about talking around endurance. It’s about living it. Conversations explore training, aging, setbacks, reinvention, discipline, failure, resilience, and the quiet decisions that allow people to keep going long after others have stopped. R

Run Long After 60 is a health podcast hosted by Mark Vega, with 42 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Mark Vega hosts Run Long After 60, a health show with 42 episodes published.

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  Run Long After 60

  Episode 42 - John Clarke | The Last Annual Heart of the South. 7 Starts. 7 Finishes. Nobody Else Can

  Aug 16, 20261h 28m

  The race has been held seven times. John Clarke started all seven. John Clarke finished all seven. Nobody else has ever done that, and nobody else ever will. It isn't a record waiting to be broken — it's closed. To match it you would have to go back to 2020 and start over, and 2020 is gone. The Last Annual Heart of the South is Lazarus Lake's journey race. You park your car at a farm in Castle Rock, Georgia, overlooking the Tennessee River. You board a bus. Nobody tells you where it's going — Arkansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, it changes every year. You check into a hotel, you eat the Last Supper, and roughly twelve hours before the start a GPX file lands on your phone. Then you run home. Three hundred and fifty-five miles this June. Four hundred in 2025. Three hundred twenty-six the year he won it outright. No aid stations. No crew. No pacers. No course markings. You resupply at gas stations, and you sleep wherever you can — which for John usually means a church porch. John Clarke is sixty-one years old and lives in Colorado Springs. He has fifty-eight races on his UltraSignup: Barkley, Hardrock, Moab 240 twice, Leadville, Leadman. In February he finished the Iditarod Trail Invitational — three hundred and fifty miles across Alaska in nine days and nineteen hours, five hours inside the cutoff. He holds fifty-four fastest known times across twenty states. He mentioned almost none of it on his own. He carries a pack with a base weight of two pounds. Most of the field carries six to ten. He has published photographs of every item he takes. People still don't believe him. This is the second episode of The Last Annual, an ongoing series about the runners who take on Lazarus Lake's three journey races — Vol State, the Heart of the South, and the Third Circle of Hell. It began with Will Cooper in Episode 40. Both men were found by Tim Hardy, who started making calls to runners over sixty and turned them into a season. John walks Mark through the bus ride and the twelve hours that follow it. Ninety minutes of sleep a night for a week. Toe socks, road camber, and which side of the traffic you run on. Why he got certified as a coach in order to train exactly one athlete — himself. How his VO2 max went up as he got older. The four documentary films he shoots during the race and edits himself. And the twenty-five-year-old who beat him in 2024.

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  Run Long After 60

  Episode 41 - Lori Balue | Fat-Adapted at 63. 100 Pounds gone. No "Just Water" Stops.

  Aug 9, 20261h 36m

  In this episode of Run Long After 60, I sit down with Lori Balue — a 63-year-old functional health practitioner from Southern California who was 225 pounds at 40, asthmatic, pre-diabetic, and on an inhaler a doctor told her she'd never get off. She takes no medications now. She hiked San Bernardino Peak two days before we recorded this. She's got Mount San Jacinto this weekend and Mount Whitney in her sights. But this isn't a weight-loss episode. Lori has told that version of her story on twenty-five other podcasts, and she tells it well. What nobody had ever asked her about was the trail — and what she eats to get up it. So that's where I kept steering, and I interrupted her more than once to do it. She was a good sport about it. You'll hear me say "Mark, let her talk" out loud near the end, because I knew some of you were thinking it. What comes out is a conversation I haven't had with anyone else on this show. Lori walks through her entire fueling protocol line by line — keto bricks cut into pieces in a front pouch, Ketone IQ on the climb out of the Grand Canyon, free-form amino acids, creatine, collagen, and roughly ten grams of sodium on a 110-degree day at the bottom of the Canyon. At the Glacier Half Marathon she skipped every single water station. She was already saturated with electrolytes and didn't want plain water at all. We also get into where fat adaptation actually holds up for the hundred- and two-hundred-mile crowd, and where it might not. And there's the woman who started all of it. A 70-year-old who blew past Lori on the climb out of Phantom Ranch back when Lori was 52 and hurting. Legs like a 40-year-old. Ten miles a day. Hiked the Canyon every year. Lori says she didn't understand what she was looking at until years later. We talk about: Being 200 pounds at twelve, and what her mother did about it in the 1970s Losing her father to diabetes and a sister to cancer — and what that does to how you eat The food sensitivity work that finally moved the weight after decades of failed diets Eight hours down to Phantom Ranch in 2016 on knees she thought were finished Rim to rim at 60, seventeen miles, and the difference a hundred pounds makes Why she rejects "chronic cardio" and rarely trains for the races she enters Protein synthesis after 60, and why she thinks most older runners are under-fueling it Handing salt to strangers half her age on the Grand Canyon switchbacks Tim Noakes reversing his own position on carbohydrate Two weeks on the road with her 87-year-old mother, and a truck tent at Bryce Canyon The 500-foot descent in Yellowstone she refused to take at 40 — and hiked last summer Lori is a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner and an Adapt-Certified Functional Health Coach. She is not a physician, and she says so herself on the record. Everything here is her own experience and her own practice — it isn't medical advice, and it's no substitute for talking to your own doctor before you change how you eat, train, or supplement. She's 63. She's not on a single medication. And she is out there. Find Lori at loribalue.com and on Instagram at @loribalueweightloss. Run Long After 60 is a video-first podcast focused on running after 60, ultrarunning, longevity, and staying active later in life. If you'd like to watch the full conversation, you can find the video version on the Run Long After 60 YouTube channel. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, or Amazon Music to follow the journey. Hosted by Mark Vega

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  Episode #40

  Episode 40 - Will Cooper | The Last Annual Heart of the South. 7 Starts. 6 Finishes. 67 Years Old.

  Aug 2, 20261h 37mS2

  You pay your entry fee. You drive to a cornfield in Bryant, Georgia, and you park your car. You get on a tour bus. Nobody tells you where the bus is going. That's how the Last Annual Heart of the South begins. Somewhere out there — for Will Cooper, it was three hundred and fifty-five miles away this year — the bus stops. The route arrives by email the night before. There is no crew, no aid, no course markings, no pacers. There is a rolling cutoff called the Grim Reaper. And there is your own car, waiting where you left it, ten and a half days away on foot. Will Cooper is sixty-seven years old. He has two artificial hips. He gave up running more than twenty years ago and walks every step of every race he enters. He has started the Heart of the South seven times — every edition there has ever been — and finished it six, most recently this June in ten days and ten hours, with roughly two and a half hours to spare. He came in second from last. It was the third time he's done that. He tells you so without a trace of apology. This is the first episode of The Last Annual Podcast Series, a limited series about the runners who take on Gary Cantrell's journey races. Cantrell — better known as Lazarus Lake — created the Barkley Marathons, the Barkley Fall Classic, Big's Backyard Ultra, Little Bigs Backyard Ultra, Strolling Jim, A Race for the Ages, the Last Annual Vol State Road Race, and the Last Annual Third Circle of Hell. He starts his races by lighting a cigarette. His runners call them journey races, and there is no better word for what they are. Will walks through all of it: the eight-pound pack and what's in it, the food deserts where the next resupply is thirty-seven miles out, the rookie year he spent three days swearing he'd never come back, and the woman he met on the road who told him he was signing up again. He talks about the last fifteen miles, the naps in the briars, and the cliff a quarter mile from the finish. He explains the mental arithmetic that breaks people long before their legs give out — and why the Barkley Fall Classic, a 50K, has beaten him four times when three hundred and fifty miles has not. He's joined by Tim Hardy, returning to the show for a third time. Eighteen years of an unbroken daily run streak, five Vol State finishes, three at the Heart of the South, and a pack carrying more cigars than food — which he uses to stay awake in the small hours and to run off loose dogs. Tim is the reason this series exists. He started making calls to people over sixty who are out there doing these races, and the calls turned into a series. "Don't mistake my enthusiasm for my ability. Because I just barely get by in everything I do." A few days after this episode drops, Will Cooper stands on another start line — the Last Annual Third Circle of Hell. Four hundred and twenty miles. Thirty-four entrants. Eight of them over sixty. For the full video conversation, head to the Run Long After 60 YouTube channel and subscribe.

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  Episode #39

  Episode 39 - Ann Trason | Incurable. Unstoppable. Champion.

  Jul 26, 20261h 27mS2

  Ann Trason is widely considered the greatest female ultrarunner of all time — 14 Western States wins, 20 world records, a career that rewrote what was possible. But this episode isn't about any of that. It's about who Ann is at 65. With rheumatoid arthritis attacking her joints. Using a walker. Refusing surgery after spiral fractures. And training right now to climb Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, by December 2027. Ann joined Mark Vega on Run Long After 60 for a rare on-camera conversation — warm, funny, honest, and deeply human. She talks about patience and acceptance as the tools that actually get you through hard things. She talks about living in the now moment — not as a philosophy, but as the only practical way to manage a body that's fighting itself. And she talks about why, after years away from the spotlight, she's back — on her own terms, with her walker, her Crazy Ladies Running Club, and her bucket list very much alive. This one will stay with you. In this episode: What rheumatoid arthritis actually feels like — and why Ann says her body (and her walker and trekking poles) are just tools to get her where she wants to go The now moment: what ultrarunning taught her, and how it applies to the hardest chapters of life Her return at Across the Years — 112 miles with a walker, a turtle night light, and Ken Michaels blowing her cover on Facebook The spicy decision — refusing surgery for spiral fractures while wearing a plunger hat Hiring her first coach ever at 65: watching Ryan Mitchell climb Everest at 19 on YouTube, tracking down coach Alan Arnette, and two Zoom calls in two days Aconcagua: the dream, the team, the porter(s), the 100 mph winds, and why this isn't about the summit The Crazy Ladies Running Club — how a walker stuck in a creek started something wonderful Dick Collins, Roger Daniels, Gard Leighton — the legends who shaped Ann and why their stories deserve to be told What she'd say to anyone in their 60s who thinks their best days are behind them The unicorn emoji — what it actually means "I'm not magical. But I believe in magic. When I send that emoji, I'm saying — still believe in magic. Still reach for that rainbow." Run Long After 60 is hosted by Mark Vega and celebrates athletes over 60 who refuse to stop, slow down, or be defined by their age. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen. Follow on YouTube for the full video interview.

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  Episode #38

  Episode 38 - Mark Vega | 37 Episodes. One Race. Everything Changed.

  Jul 19, 202646 minS2

  It didn't take more than half a second to say yes. Paul James Johnson had just finished telling Mark about his fourth Cocodona 250 finish — four belt buckles, a thousand miles at that distance — and right there, mid-interview, invited him out to crew and pace. Mark showed up the day the race started. He didn't leave until everyone packed up and went home. Six days. Forty-four miles as pacer, from mile 190 to mile 234, in the dark, in the Arizona desert, with a man who already had 190 miles on his legs. Something shifted out there. And this episode is what came out of it. Episode 38 of Run Long After 60 is the first-ever self-supported episode — no guest, just Mark Vega: U.S. Army veteran, attorney, two-time stroke survivor, and ultrarunner. He reflects on what 37 extraordinary guests actually taught him, what he's changing about the show and his race calendar, and six lessons that kept showing up whether he was looking for them or not. In this episode: why community isn't just the finish line — it's the six days around it; the trash we're leaving on our sacred ground and what we're going to do about it; the evolving why that took Mark from "can I do this after two strokes?" to something quieter and more durable; DNF as Data Not Failure and the five-lens framework he built after four of them; what Ray Mena's question about identity and Jim Glenn's Guinness World Record taught him about reinvention; and why Lion Caldwell, Bobby Keogh, and Pete Livingstone are proof that it is genuinely not too late. Plus: the referral network that built this show, a full roll call of all 37 guests who made it possible, and a brief tease of something new coming out of the endurance community. This is a transition episode. The show is changing. So is Mark. Watch the full video episode on YouTube — search Run Long After 60. New episodes every Sunday. Audio at 5:00 AM. Video at 12:00 PM Pacific.

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