Run Your Story Podcast · Allison Gaillard

Jared Beasley (Author: The Endurance Artist) - "There's always going to be a huge backstory to everybody's story."

·58 min·3 clips

Jared opens 37 country boxes on Zoom as the Backyard Ultra World Team Championship starts worldwide.

1. Run Your Story Podcast centers this conversation on Jared Beasley and his book The Endurance Artist, which focuses on Lazarus Lake, Barkley, and The Race with No End. 2. Allison Gillyard introduces Beasley as a runner and author, while Gray steps in to ask the questions because Allison had lost her voice that week. 3. The episode asks what Beasley's run story says about how writing, endurance, and Laz's races connect. 4. Beasley says leaving Tuscaloosa for New York City began his running journey indirectly because the move forced a major life reset. 5. He describes living in an 80-square-foot room with a shared bathroom and meeting a roommate from the Amazon who told him to "run." 6. That first New York run happened on a 200-meter cinder track, where Beasley could not keep pace and could not do a mile. 7. Beasley says running did not cure everything, but it gave him a floor under him during the adjustment from Alabama to Manhattan. 8. He later ran races in Central Park and the New York City Marathon before being sent toward Al Howey through the same roommate connection. 9. Beasley found Howey in a care home in British Columbia and learned about a runner who had done things like run hundreds of miles to marathons and back again. 10. He cites Howey's 72-day run across Canada, which he says stood as a world record for 31 years until Dave Proctor. 11. Beasley also describes Howey entering a 1,300-mile Sri Chinmoy race two weeks after that Canada run and finishing it in 16 days. 12. He says writing about Howey opened the door to Runner's World, Ultra Running Mag, and eventually larger newspapers. 13. Beasley explains that he has always been drawn to people on the outside of things, both in writing and in his own life. 14. He connects that outsider perspective to acting in Tuscaloosa, where he did 27 plays and learned quickly after auditioning for a role without having seen a play before. 15. The same learning pattern repeated in Manhattan, where he had to adapt fast to waiting tables and learn what pre-theater service meant. 16. Beasley argues that Laz's races are built around uncertainty, which is also why the book reaches beyond running readers. 17. He says ultramarathons delay gratification for long periods, and that runners often finish saying, "I'm never going to do that again." 18. He notes that ultramarathons are up 1,600% over the last 20 years, while marathons have plateaued and 5Ks and 10Ks have declined in participation. 19. The interview style stays conversational and collaborative, with Gray and Jared trading examples about pain, confidence, and short-term goals like "make the next light pole." 20. Readers who like ultrarunning, memoir, or stories about impossible-seeming endurance challenges would get the most from this episode, while listeners wanting a short, race-results-only summary may skip it.

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