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01 Overview

Beyond the Miles is GU Energy Labs’ athlete film series and our longest-running brand partnership: two seasons and four athlete films produced in the lead-up to the Western States 100, where GU serves as a title sponsor. For the 2026 season, GU tapped us again to tell the stories of Tuvshin Sukhbaatar and Cristina Regalado, two runners whose journeys stretch far beyond the start and finish lines, spotlighting the values and inclusivity at the heart of GU’s mission in endurance sports.

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02 Challenges & Approach

Each season runs on a tight window: two days of filming at the WSER training camp, then a fast post sprint to deliver before race week. We developed each film through pre-interviews and voiceover scripting, including narration built from Tuvshin’s own words in Mongolian, and shaped interviews, training footage, and archival material into cinematic, chaptered narratives. Every delivery shipped as a complete package: 16:9 hero films, 9:16 social cutdowns, custom thumbnails, and titling designed for YouTube.

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03 The Result

Two years in, the series has become a cornerstone of GU’s Western States presence, premiering through the WSER livestream and rolling out across GU’s channels each race week. The 2026 films took it to another level: Tuvshin’s story reached 225K views on Instagram alone, bringing the series past 250,000 combined views across platforms. The partnership keeps compounding, growing from athlete films into full race-weekend coverage at Western States.