Early birds get the trail. (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! Let's get right to it. Quick Splits — The zeitgeist’s current obsession with the importance of protein intake over the other macronutrients has always struck me as a bit exaggerated, if not over-the-top, so it was a relief to read Brady Holmer’s most recent post telling everyone to essentially chill out. “There are several nutrient deficiencies that we actually need to be worrying about,” he writes, “but protein is certainly not one...
10 days ago • 7 min read
Doing my best Ansel Adams impersonation in Mammoth Lakes a couple weekends ago. (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! I’ve got a couple exciting announcements to kick things off this week: 1. The podcast is making a return! I’m going to experiment with a quarterly rotation consisting of one new episode (and one episode only) each month from now through at least the end of the year (and throughout 2025 if all goes well): The first month will be an AMA (Ask Mario Anything) and the next one of these...
17 days ago • 9 min read
Tim Tollefson in his element. Photo: Sarah Attar (courtesy of Mammoth Trailfest.) Good morning! We got back from vacation a week ago and a couple days later I took off to Mammoth Lakes for the weekend to support a couple of my athletes at the Mammoth Trailfest, Paddy O’Leary, who raced in the 26K on Sunday, and Tim Tollefson, who hosted the three-day mountain party for a few thousand people. It’s been nothing short of incredible to watch this event grow over the past few years and I couldn’t...
24 days ago • 7 min read
Out of office. Good morning! I’m still on island time (for a little while longer, anyway), so here are some old favorites from years past to hold you over until next week. Let’s get right to it. Quick Splits — From Issue 45, 8 years ago this week: I generally dislike top-10 lists but sometimes the information contained therein can actually be pretty informative, perhaps even useful. These tips on how to be a writer from author Rebecca Solnit caught my attention last week because they were so...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
This is John Moreland playing at The Chapel in San Francisco on Saturday night. It was my first time seeing him live. I was introduced to John’s music earlier this year and connected to it right away. His songs are intensely emotional and deeply personal but universally relatable. When he stepped onto the stage everyone clapped briefly and then the place fell silent as he took his seat. His presence was arresting and he hadn’t even so much as said a word yet. A few years ago Clay Skipper...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Good morning! I recently sat down with my good friend and frequent podcast coconspirator Simon Freeman, the co-founder, editor, and publisher of my favorite running magazine, Like The Wind, for our third quarterly conversation of 2024, which you can listen to wherever you get the morning shakeout podcast, or at this handy link. An excerpt of this exchange can be found in Issue #42 of LtW, which comes out this week. (You can buy a copy or subscribe here.) In this episode, which was recorded in...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Giving chase on the trails a few weeks ago. I recently started ramping my training back up in preparation for the fall cross country season. You can follow it all on Strava if you're interested in seeing what I'm up to these days. Good morning! It’s rare these days that I kick things off with commentary on current events but every once in a while I like to throw a curveball. Yesterday, Northern Arizona University announced that Mike Smith, director of cross country and track and field, and...
about 2 months ago • 9 min read
Enchanted forest. (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! I got a little wordy this week. Let’s get right to it. Quick Splits — Hats off to Conner Mantz and Clayton Young, not only on their 8th and 9th place finishes, respectively, at the recent Olympic Marathon in Paris, but for being refreshingly open about sharing so much of their journeys with their followers and fans of the sport in general. I’ve linked to Clayton’s fantastic YouTube series in a previous issue, but if you missed it, here’s the...
about 2 months ago • 9 min read
Lock step. (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! I didn’t have any time to write a thoughtful intro this week. Let’s get right to it. Quick Splits — Let’s all take a few minutes and re-watch the men’s 1500m final, shall we? At risk of sounding like a total homer, which I am, pay particular attention to Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse in the last lap of the race. Hocker, who didn’t go with the white hot pace early on, really began moving up with about 300 meters to go. In the span of a hundred...
2 months ago • 8 min read