Welcome to the Pain Cave

Formerly known as Running Through Life’s Hurdles, the podcast returns for its second season with a new name and deeper purpose — Pain Cave to Power.

In this reimagined season, hosts Melissa Londry — therapist, ultrarunner, and race director — and Brandy Krisher — ultrarunner, massage therapist, coach, and advocate — invite you into the heart of Pain Cave to Power: a space where endurance meets emotion and where we explore both the pain we choose and the pain we never asked for.

Together, Melissa and Brandy unpack the meaning behind “the pain cave”, that raw, transformative space runners know all too well, and how it mirrors life’s hardest moments: trauma, grief, heartbreak, betrayal, and healing.

This conversation sets the tone for what’s ahead... honest, unfiltered discussions about how running can be both refuge and reckoning. Because sometimes the trails we run reflect the emotional terrain we’re still learning to navigate.

In this episode:

• The story behind Pain Cave to Power
• A discussion of the newly published ATRA article: “Running Toward Safety: How Trail Running Is Confronting Harassment and Building Trauma-Informed Communities”
• Why endurance and healing share the same language
• What listeners can expect in future episodes from personal stories to community conversations on trauma, safety, and transformation

Subscribe, share, and step into the cave, because this is where strength begins.