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Good morning! My wife and I are heading out on vacation tomorrow and I’ve got a serious case of what can only be described as an adult strain of senioritis. The motivation to write is waning by the minute and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m doing just enough to give myself a “passing grade” before we leave. So, let’s get right to it.

Note: The newsletter will arrive on schedule next week but it will be a collection of archived posts. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming the following Tuesday.

Quick Splits

— I’ve been a fan of coach Ed Eyestone for as long as I’ve been a runner, going on nearly 27 years now. A two-time Olympian, I first heard about him for his running exploits, but as a young student of the sport, I devoured his monthly columns in Runner’s World magazine, most of which you can still read online. Long story short, Eyestone is an American distance-running legend and his contributions to the sport, particularly as a coach, are significant. He was recently profiled by Deseret News as “builder of champions” and it’s a great read about his career that also shines a light on his personality. It pairs well with this 2015 interview he did with Gary Cohen, which, if you can get past the ancient web architecture and tiny font, is a rather insightful read. (I literally laughed out loud at Eyestone’s answer to a question about his favorite meal. He responded, “Meat and potatoes. I’m old school that way,” which is exactly what you could say about his training philosophy.) “[My athletes] know they can come to me with their concerns,” he told Deseret News. “They might say, ‘Can I do more of this (a particular workout),’ or, ‘I don’t understand why we’re doing this.’ Most of the time if it’s what they believe is really good for them, then it probably is, and so we’ll try it. It’s not my way or the highway. Distance and middle-distance running are hard enough without making them more difficult by being a dictator…I guess that’s why they call me Easy E.”

— I am unsure if you will need a subscription to The Athletic and/or The New York Times to read this profile of the golden couple, Hunter Woodhall and Tara Davis-Woodhall, but Marcus Thompson II makes you feel all the feels in the telling of their story, from how they met to their medal-collecting mission in Paris this summer. Beautiful story, wonderful writing. “In 2017, at a track meet in Idaho, Tara Davis walked up to Hunter Woodhall, a man she didn’t know, and offered him a hug. Because he looked like he needed one,” he writes. “The meeting turned into more. Woodhall had on sweats when they first met. It wasn’t until later she would learn he was a double amputee. Some women have declared on social media how a first date at The Cheesecake Factory was a deal-breaker. Yet, Tara was undeterred.”

— Volleying off the Clay Skipper article I linked to in the photo caption at the top of this newsletter, be sure to check out Farewell, a show that can be best described as the “no-bullshit performance podcast.” It’s one of my favorite regular listens and each week Clay does a few different (but related) things: 1. Conducts longer-form interviews with people who practice or study performance at the highest level: I’ve learned just as much from athletes such as Courtney Dawaulter, Damian Warner, and Chelsea Sodaro as I have from world-class writers and musicians such as Katherine May and Hilary Hahn. 2. Partners up with his Growth Equation colleagues Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness for a conversation about news and topics related to performance, health, and wellness. 3. Talks to a coach for “The Coach Up,” which is essentially a 10-15 minute coaching session about a performance tool that you can make use of in your own life or practice. Clay is a great host and a skilled interviewer (but not the best marketer!) and I’ve personally extracted a ton of value from his excellent work the past several months, which is why I'm telling you about it. Check out Farewell wherever you get your podcasts or at this handy link.

— Here’s a great unplugged version of The Wallflowers’ One Headlight that I discovered last Friday while looking for a version to accompany the workout I posted to Strava that day. (For context, each of the past few months I’ve undertaken a new creative challenge when it comes to titling my runs on Strava: Last month was two-word titles, the month before that was four words, separated by a comma in the middle, and this month it’s a song lyric. The catch is that it has to serve as a descriptor for that activity. This may sound silly and pointless to you, but it’s a fun way for me to give my creative muscles a little workout every day.) Anyway, last Friday I was doing some short intervals and the pace I was running didn’t match the effort I felt like I was putting out, leading me to think of the line from One Headlight: "I turn the engine but the engine doesn't turn."

— From the archives (Issue 96, 7 years ago this week): It’s fair to say that writing and running play important roles in my life and have each influenced me in profound and unique ways. The two activities share many parallels, and even connect and overlap with one another from time to time. Running and writing both take some degree of desire, diligence, discipline and planning for it to go well; occasionally, however, I’ll fly off the cuff and go with the flow, sometimes resulting in a pretty special outcome (and sometimes not!). At times, both activities will fill me with feelings of dread and drudgery but I almost always feel better after a finishing a run or wrapping up a writing session. Writing, like running, can be chock full of unexpected hurdles and frustrations, and there's struggle and sacrifice inherent in both activities, but you learn to stick it out and work through your problems even when the process isn't enjoyable. I don’t have a set time to run or write each day, but generally prefer to run early and write late (it’s nearly 11 PM as I type these words); more often than not, however, I get going when the schedule dictates or the mood strikes. Writing is an activity I always partake in alone, even if the finished product gets read by thousands of people. When I write, I prefer for no one else to be around so I can get in tune with what I’m trying to feel, learn, discover or understand. Running, on the other hand, always goes one of two ways: I can share the miles with others or I can have them all to myself, depending on what I want to get out of it that day. There’s a time for camaraderie and a time for independence, and I like that I can usually choose between the two. So where am I going with this? No idea if I'm being honest, but I was inspired by this short piece from Outside and decided to see what I could catch from my little stream of consciousness. Hope you enjoyed it. For what it’s worth, I think Haruki Marukami said it best: “Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—and for me, for writing as well.”

— Many thanks to my partners at New Balance for supporting my work this month (and throughout 2024). My go-to shoe for speed workouts the past few years has been the FuelCell Rebel and the latest iteration, v4, has continued to hold down that spot in the rotation in 2024. (I’m already on my second pair.) As fast and fun as carbon-plated shoes can be, it’s important not to be overly reliant on them for all your track sessions, fartleks, hills, and tempo runs. The Rebel v4s allow your feet to do what they want to do while providing plenty of protection underfoot when you’re putting a lot of extra force into the ground. They offer a responsive ride in a flexible, lightweight package that will fit a variety of foot types (n.b. my wider-than-average forefoot really appreciates them!). The FuelCell Rebel v4 is available at your favorite run specialty store or at newbalance.com (men’s sizes here, women’s sizes here).

Workout of the Week: Sit-n-Kick Ks

One-kilometer repeats are a pretty standard workout for many runners training for the mile all the way up to the marathon, and no matter how you slice ’em, they tend to make for a tough session. You can do a handful of them at a really hard effort with a generous amount of recovery between intervals to blow out the tubes or rack up a lot of reps on short rest to build specific strength for longer distances. Either way, a kilometer is long enough to demand your full focus and it’s hard to fake your way through a set, whether you’re doing two reps or twenty. One of my favorite variations of this workout is to run most of the interval at 5K or 10K pace and “kick” the final 200-400 meters to simulate the end of a race. Here are the details.

The bottom line.

“Courage is a defining factor in the life of any artist. The courage to bare your innermost feelings, to reveal your true voice, or to stand in front of an audience and lay it out there for the world to see. The emotional vulnerability that is often necessary to summon a great song can also work against you when sharing your song for the world to hear. This is the paralyzing conflict of any sensitive artist.”

—Dave Grohl, The Storyteller

That's it for Issue 461. If you enjoyed it, please forward this email to a few friends and encourage them to subscribe at this link so that it lands in their inbox next Tuesday.

Thanks for reading,

Mario

P.S. If you prefer reading your newsletters on Substack (or know someone who might), I’ll be reposting the morning shakeout on that platform moving forward at themorningshakeout.substack.com. Spread the word, Substackers!

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