RunThrough Trails

RunThrough Trails is a trail and ultra running podcast built around long conversations with guests. James Tilley hosts, introducing himself as being from Run Through and Run Through Trails, and Lewis Moses of New Levels Coaching sits alongside as regular co-host. The two have an easy rapport. Episodes tend to start with a minute of catching up: Lewis looking forward to a weekend in the Lake District, James back from a RunThrough Trails event in Girona, or a shared complaint about a British summer that has turned freezing again. Then the guest comes in. The recent run of guests skews toward runners who have done something enormous. David Kilgore appears on an episode billed around seven marathons on seven continents and talks about winning the Great World Race, which the hosts frame as a multi-day stage race of an unusual kind. Scott Jenkins, introduced as a Welsh ultra runner with a long list of achievements, discusses a 300-mile race across Arizona and mentions Badwater among the tough ones. Holly Stables talks through her solo Speed Project run of more than 300 miles from LA to Las Vegas, and the earlier race that became a turning point after a career shadowed by stress fractures. What separates the show from a simple highlight reel is where the questions go. The hosts say outright that the headline distance grabs attention, but they want the factors underneath it: elevation, altitude, temperature, fuelling, sleep. They ask Scott which race stood out as hardest and why, and they get David talking about a race whose tactics involve 400-metre efforts and jumping in and out of a minibus. Lewis listens as a coach. He tells Holly that the performances people learn the most from are not always the fastest, and calls her mindset a dream scenario for someone in his line of work. Not every episode is about elite results. The conversation with Ian Morgan and Fran Ibar turns on the moment a person decides to change, with one speaker recalling a mid-20s slide into poor health despite a sporty childhood and another describing losing 30 kilograms after choosing the gym over another cigarette. The Tommy Leiws episode spends time on a training app under construction, deload weeks and how to fit strength work into a plan when a runner keeps cramping or running out of legs. One of the hosts is candid about his own version of that, admitting he finished his first 50ks and first road marathon with plenty of aerobic fitness and not enough strength. Episodes sign off by pointing forward, whether to a race preview with Lewis ahead of a British championships field or a possible interview with a Western States champion days after the race. The tone stays warm and friendly throughout. It suits a listener who wants to hear how people prepare for 200, 240 or 300 miles, or simply how a runner describes the day everything changed.