Run Long After 60

Mark Vega
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Health & Fitness

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. Run Long After 60 is for anyone who believes that endurance doesn’t expire — it evolves. 🎙 New episodes weekly 📍 Hosted by Mark Vega

  1. 3d ago

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

    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.

  2. Aug 9

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

    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 1970sLosing her father to diabetes and a sister to cancer — and what that does to how you eatThe food sensitivity work that finally moved the weight after decades of failed dietsEight hours down to Phantom Ranch in 2016 on knees she thought were finishedRim to rim at 60, seventeen miles, and the difference a hundred pounds makesWhy she rejects "chronic cardio" and rarely trains for the races she entersProtein synthesis after 60, and why she thinks most older runners are under-fueling itHanding salt to strangers half her age on the Grand Canyon switchbacksTim Noakes reversing his own position on carbohydrateTwo weeks on the road with her 87-year-old mother, and a truck tent at Bryce CanyonThe 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

  3. Aug 2

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

    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.

  4. Jul 26

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

    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 goThe now moment: what ultrarunning taught her, and how it applies to the hardest chapters of lifeHer return at Across the Years — 112 miles with a walker, a turtle night light, and Ken Michaels blowing her cover on FacebookThe spicy decision — refusing surgery for spiral fractures while wearing a plunger hatHiring 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 daysAconcagua: the dream, the team, the porter(s), the 100 mph winds, and why this isn't about the summitThe Crazy Ladies Running Club — how a walker stuck in a creek started something wonderfulDick Collins, Roger Daniels, Gard Leighton — the legends who shaped Ann and why their stories deserve to be toldWhat she'd say to anyone in their 60s who thinks their best days are behind themThe 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.

  5. Jul 19

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

    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.

  6. Jul 5

    Episode 37 - Bobby Keogh | 45 Years Running. 108 Hundreds. Still Racing at 77.

    There are fewer than 40 people on earth who have finished 100 or more races at the 100-mile distance or longer. Bobby Keogh is one of them. He has 108 official hundred-mile finishes — closer to 140 when you factor in his multi-day mileage across 6-day and 10-day events. He ran his first trail race at 32. He is 77 years old. He has been at this for 45 years and he is not slowing down — he is registered for a 100-hour race, a 140-mile crewed run along Route 66, and a 72-hour race. This year. Bobby Keogh almost never gives interviews. He doesn't own a computer, a television, or a microwave. He borrowed a computer to record this episode. And for two and a half hours, he talked. He talked about what made the early Leadville Trail 100 and Rocky Raccoon so special — when the whole town showed up, local restaurants competed for best aid station food, and runners were treated like family. And he talked about exactly what got lost when the money arrived. He described guiding six heat-exhausted runners to safety during a race that had run out of water — then nearly missing the cutoff himself. He made the case for mandatory trail maintenance as a condition of race entry. He explained, quietly and without drama, why ultrarunners are fundamentally different from every other endurance athlete, and what the sport owes the land it borrows. He ran the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning twice. He finished Nolan's 14 on a torn adductor tendon. And in the final minutes of this conversation, he described what happened on that rock face in the dark — guided across by seven cherubs he could smell, feel, and see. "The most amazing thing that has ever happened to me in my life." Bobby Keogh is the third guest in 37 episodes of Run Long After 60 who belongs to the sub-40 club of runners with 100+ hundred-mile finishes. Catra Corbett was the first. Ed Ettinghausen was the second. That is not a coincidence. That is the mission. If you want to see the full unedited video conversation — the laughter, the pauses, all of it — head to the Run Long After 60 YouTube channel and subscribe. If you know someone who belongs on this podcast — someone doing hard things in the second half of their life, with stories that haven't been told — send a guest suggestion to guestinvite@runlongafter60.com. Thank you to Christopher Neil Johnson for the music and the team at @MurphyOtter for the animation and graphics that make this show what it is. The Hippo Avatar is here to stay. LIVE STRONG. RUN LONG. AFTER 60.

  7. Jun 29

    Episode 36 - Mark Werkmeister | 58 Races. 5 Hundreds. 65 Years Old. No Rush.

    In this episode of Run Long After 60, I sit down with Mark Werkmeister — a 65-year-old ultrarunner from New Mexico who retired at 53 after a 25-year career as an engineer at Intel, started running ultras in his late 40s, and hasn't stopped since. Mark is grounded, humble, funny, deliberate. A guy you'd love to have crew you or pace you or just hang out. He didn't start desperate. He didn't start chasing records. He started late, built deliberately, and just kept showing up — race after race, year after year. 58 races on UltraSignup. Five 100-mile finishes: The Bear, Rio Del Lago, Run Rabbit Run, Wasatch, and Javelina. One DNF in 58 starts. He stopped at mile 84 at Zion 100 because he was injured and stopping was the smart call. We talk about: Going from 40 pounds overweight to 17 Colorado fourteeners in a single summerWatching the Imogene Pass Run from a motorcycle at 13,000 feet — and deciding to race itLosing his first wife unexpectedly and raising a teenage daughter aloneThe engineer's approach to 100-mile racing: eliminate the variables, plan for chaosWasatch 100 — still the hardest thing he's ever done, and the dark moment at mile 50Prostate cancer, two hernias, plantar fascia — and why none of it has him stoppingHis past work with the New Mexico Off Highway Vehicle Alliance and what it means to steward the trails you runCascade Crest 100, coming up one week after he paces at Hardrock. No real taper.The 200-mile question — and why he hasn't signed up yetWhat he says to someone in their 60s who thinks it might be too late Mark is the everyman ultrarunner in his 60s. Not desperate. Not in a rush. Just deliberate. Just showing up. At the end of this conversation I told him — I finally feel like I know the pace I need to take. Not a rush. Just get there. 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

  8. Jun 21

    Episode 35 — Andy Jones-Wilkins (AJW) | 58 Years Old, Two New Hips, Zero Plans to Stop

    In this episode of Run Long After 60, I sat down with Andy Jones-Wilkins — known throughout the trail and ultrarunning world simply as AJW — for a conversation rooted in the history of ultrarunning, the growth of the sport, and what it really means to evolve with it. AJW is a ten-time Western States finisher with seven top-ten finishes. He has written AJW's Taproom, a weekly column at iRunFar.com, every Friday for 16 years. He hosts the Crack a Brew with AJW podcast. He spent 34 years as an educator before stepping away. He coaches senior-level athletes at CTS. And in 2023, at 57 years old, he had both hips replaced with ceramic implants — and went right back to running 3,000 miles a year. But what makes AJW genuinely rare isn't the résumé. It's that after 30 years in and around this sport — as a competitor, a writer, a commentator, a coach, and a volunteer — he remains one of the few people willing to say out loud: I had a strong opinion, and I changed my mind. In this conversation: • How the Phoenix desert trail community in the mid-90s gave him his foundation — and why community has always mattered more to him than competition • Western States at 53: the race as living history, what it looks like from inside the ropes and outside them, and why showing up for 26 years as a regular person has taught him more than racing ever did • The DNF debate: 20 years of strong opinions on paper, and what finally shifted • Both hips replaced at 57 — and the patience and acceptance that brought him back stronger • What the runners who keep going into their 60s have in common • Walking away from 34 years in education, managing a running store, and rebuilding a life around the things that matter • The question a friend asked on a long training run in the Oakland hills — and why AJW's answer is exactly the same today as it was 20 years ago • What running into his 60s actually looks like: not a comeback, not a slowdown — just the next chapter This is a conversation about knowing when to hold your ground, knowing when to let go, and understanding that the wisest people in any community are usually the ones most willing to do both. If you'd like to watch the full conversation, it's available now 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 #RunLongAfter60 #AndyJonesWilkins #AJW #WesternStates100 #Ultrarunning #TrailRunning #MastersRunning #Over60Running #CrackABrew #iRunFar #AJWsTaproom #UltraMarathon #RunningPodcast #RunnersOver60 #Longevity #RunningCoach #TrailRunningPodcast #UltraRunningCommunity #AgingAthletes #RunningLife

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

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. Run Long After 60 is for anyone who believes that endurance doesn’t expire — it evolves. 🎙 New episodes weekly 📍 Hosted by Mark Vega

Information

  • Creator
    Mark Vega
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    42
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Mark Vega