What does it take to finish the Leadville 100, climb frozen waterfalls, and help make endurance sports more welcoming?

In Episode 55 of Beyond The Finish Line, host Joe Hardin sits down with ultrarunner, ice climber, and community builder Ory Frazier to explore a life shaped by adventure, endurance, and connection.

Ory shares their journey from running for fitness to completing multiple 100-mile ultramarathons, including the legendary Leadville Trail 100. They discuss the mental side of ultrarunning, the importance of crews and pacers, and why the people surrounding an athlete can matter more than a finish time.

The conversation also explores ice climbing, living a semi-nomadic lifestyle, and discovering welcoming communities through outdoor adventure.

Ory introduces Medaling with Friends, a project designed to help runners find races, connect with friends, and discover events that align with their values, including inclusive race policies and support for adaptive athletes.

Are you preparing for your first ultramarathon, curious about ice climbing, or looking for a stronger sense of belonging in endurance sports? This episode is about finding adventure and the people who make it worthwhile.

Listen to Beyond The Finish Line on the Everyday Athlete Podcast Network.

In this episode:

• The Leadville 100 experience and ultrarunning mindset

• Building friendships through trail running

• Ice climbing and outdoor adventure

• Nomadic living and pursuing meaningful experiences

• Inclusive running events and Medaling with Friends

Follow the show and share this episode with someone who makes your endurance journey better.

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Lucy Schodell knows what it means to choose something difficult.

She's taken on The Speed Project solo, raced 100 miles, crossed 240 miles of the Gobi Desert and continues searching for adventures that make her nervous enough to wonder whether she can pull them off.

But Lucy doesn't see endurance as an individual pursuit.

In this episode of Enduring Minds, Lucy joins Evan Birch and Jason Bahamundi to talk about confidence, discomfort, motherhood, human connection and why she believes running, and life, are team sports.

Lucy shares how sports helped build her belief that she can take on difficult things, why being told she can't do something tends to make her want to do it even more, and why the people around us sometimes need to carry our confidence when ours disappears.

The conversation also goes beyond running.

Lucy discusses creating Watch Women's Sports IRL, a platform designed to make women's sporting events easier to discover and attend. What began partly from wanting her daughter to grow up watching women compete became another example of Lucy seeing a problem and deciding to do something about it.

There are also French fries, crying at an airport restaurant after a 100-miler, two exhausted runners weeping at a water stop in the Gobi Desert, and a discussion about what Evan calls “ultra feelings.” Because this is Enduring Minds and eventually somebody is going to cry.

This isn't a conversation about how to run hundreds of miles.

It's about what we discover about ourselves, and each other, when we do hard things together.

Enduring Minds: Going the distance. Breaking the silence.

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What happens when the goal you've spent years chasing no longer makes sense?

Jeff Seckendorf is 71, although he prefers Jeff version 7.1. He's a masters cyclist, coach, and record-setting competitor who has spent decades moving between careers, challenges, and ways of defining success.

After a shoulder injury disrupted his cycling plans, Jeff began exploring a different approach to racing. But the physical change raised a bigger question: Was he giving up, or simply changing direction?

Jason and Jeff discuss athletic identity, perseverance, aging, competition, injury, and the pressure we put on ourselves to finish what we started.

Jeff also shares how his experiences in filmmaking, scuba education, and cycling have shaped his approach to purpose and reinvention.

This conversation isn't about becoming Jeff. It's about figuring out what matters to you and having the willingness to pursue it, even when the original plan changes.

And yes, there's coffee and lemon cake.

Learn more at jeffscoaching.com and find Jeff's book, Diving Into Purpose.

Listen, then tell us: What's something you stopped doing that made room for something better?

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Can you dislike Drake and still give him credit?

Jason Bahamundi and Santino Williams debate the kings of music, choose baseball walk-up songs, and revisit movie soundtracks that stick with us. P

lus, Jason shares how an Any Given Sunday speech helped lift Aum’s spirits at Tahoe 200.

Who makes your list and why?

Join us on What’s in Your Earbuds.

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What does 100% look like today?

For ultrarunner and coach Sofie Schunk, that answer isn't always the same.

Sofie lives and races with Type 1 diabetes, which adds blood sugar, insulin, fueling and a shitload of extra decisions to everything an endurance athlete already manages. But our conversation went beyond diabetes.

We talk about diabetes burnout, decision fatigue, asking for help, sleep, fueling, listening to your body and learning when today's 100% isn't yesterday's 100%.

Sometimes Sofie's running five-minute miles. Sometimes she's taking the dog out at nine- or ten-minute pace.

It all counts.

After four weeks of Coach's Minute conversations, this is the deeper conversation I wanted to have with Sofie about the athlete behind all that data.

Because we're athletes. We're also people.

And the training plan doesn't get to pretend otherwise.

Sofie also explains that the additional decisions aren't theoretical: during racing she can be processing pump and CGM data while simultaneously wanting the freedom to simply run.

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What happens when you accomplish the goal and immediately wonder if you aimed too low?

Eric Davis went from treating running as something that supported other sports to progressing from a 50K to 50 miles, 100K and eventually 100 miles in roughly one year.

After targeting 17 hours for his first 100-miler and finishing in about 16:49, Eric found himself asking a different question: What could happen if he stopped limiting what he believed was possible?

On this episode of Beyond The Finish Line, Joe Hardin talks with Eric about ultrarunning, trail running, racing in Europe, living abroad, fatherhood, teaching, family adventures and the desire to keep discovering what his body and mind are capable of.

Eric also shares how racing became part of exploring the world with his family, why he loves running through the night, and how a race on the calendar keeps him accountable, active and happier.

This isn't simply a conversation about running farther.

It's about setting a target, reaching it and having the courage to move the target again.

Beyond The Finish Line is part of the Everyday Athlete Podcast Network.

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Brian Reynolds returned to the Leadville Trail 100 for a fourth attempt after three years without a finish. Following the third, he was not even sure another attempt was possible. His crew helped him reconsider.

Brian talks with Evan Birch and Jason Bahamundi about the mental weight of racing with prosthetics, the changes that helped his crew work with him, and the 19 people who shared the finish. He also talks about raising three kids and what he hopes they learn from seeing him struggle, adapt, and keep going.

What does a finish mean when the years before it gave you a community you would never have met otherwise?

That is the heart of this Enduring Minds conversation, from the Everyday Athlete Podcast Network.

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Julie Wolpers started swimming consistently later in life.

Then 500 yards became thousands, and thousands became 10 million.

Julie joins Jason to talk about aging, consistency, cancer recovery, swimming as sanctuary, and learning that your version of sport doesn't have to look like anybody else's.

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