the morning shakeout | issue 484
A live chat with Sam Robinson, all things LT, 50 years of travel tips, and a lot more.
Good morning! Quick and timely announcement off the top this week: Later today, at 1:30 PM PST/4:30 PM EST, my friend and fellow writer of running-themed things, Sam Robinson, and I are going live on Substack to rap about running, writing, and the shifting landscape of the sport and industry. We’ll hit on the parade of fast times and falling records from across the running world of late, discuss recent trends in both the industry and sport, wax philosophical about the history and evolution of writing about running on the internet, and let the conversation go wherever else it may lead. There will also be some time for audience Q&A at the end. I’ve been a fan of Sam’s writing for a long time, have linked to his work numerous times in this newsletter, and just really appreciate his perspective on the myriad ways that endurance, ideas, and culture intersect. (n.b. If you’re not subscribed to his footnotes newsletter, you can do so right here.) We’ve never done anything like this before but we’re both excited to see how it shakes out (ba-dum-ching). To watch the stream in real time: 1. Make sure you’re subscribed to either the morning shakeout and/or footnotes on Substack. (If you’re not, no worries, we’ll share a recording of the conversation with everyone next week.) 2. Join the live video via the push or email notification Substack sends immediately after we get started, or check your reading queue on the Substack app or homepage. Admittedly, this Substack-only setup is somewhat limiting, so I’ll be actively looking for alternative solutions to make these types of conversations more accessible moving forward.
OK, let’s get right to it.
Quick Splits
— To piggyback off what I wrote in my opening paragraph last week, a bunch more records went by the wayside in the past seven days, namely the men’s indoor mile WR (yes, again), the men’s indoor 5000m WR, the women’s collegiate indoor mile, and the men’s half-marathon WR on the roads. Here in the U.S., at least 127 collegiate men (from what I can tell) have gone sub-4 in the mile this season, while 197 have run under 8 minutes for 3K; on the women’s side, no less than 112 collegians have gone sub-4:40 in the mile. Once again, the bars for what’s considered fast, whether it’s on the track, road, or even trails, at the high school, collegiate, domestic, and/or international level, are being raised and reset at a dizzying frequency. But even though it might feel like these performances coming out of nowhere, they’re not unprecedented. I stand by almost everything I wrote here four years ago when track records in particular were falling at an unusually rapid rate: “It’s too reductionist to say that the fast times we’ve been seeing are all due to the spikes or any other factor that’s acting alone. I’m just going with ‘all of the above’ for now and will leave it at that until someone convinces me otherwise.” That said, if I were to update that post today and add anything it’d be this, in no particular order: 1. At the collegiate level in particular, but even professionally (especially here in the U.S.), there’s been more of an emphasis on indoor track than ever, most likely because it’s a more controlled environment and in many cases the opportunity to hit a fast time is just better than in a less predictable outdoor environment. (Not to mention the tracks themselves might be faster.) 2. Bicarb. From a fueling standpoint, especially for distances from 800 to 5000m, the use of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda, essentially) to help reduce muscle acidity during intense exercise has become fairly widespread. How much of a difference it’s making I’m not totally sure, but I know it’s being more widely used now than it was even just a few years ago. 3. To double down on a point I first made in 2021, I believe the lighter fluid that’s being tossed on all of this is the effect of seeing your competitors/peers/teammates/training partners taking their games to a new level and knowing you have to up yours too, otherwise you’ll literally get left behind.
— Although his reign as the fastest indoor miler in history lasted less than a week, this is still a great profile of Yared Nuguse by Euan Crumley for Athletics Weekly. (To be fair, it was published before Nuguse ran 3:46.62 at the Millrose Games on February 8.) Nuguse is just one of those athletes who’s hard not to root for: he always puts himself in it, he sometimes comes out on top, and he’s humble almost to a fault after crossing the finish line (but not before, if this week’s bottom line—see below—is to be believed). In the article, Crumley gets The Goose to open up about learning how to be more authentic, forthcoming, and unapologetic as he establishes himself as a consistent contender on the global stage. It’s not something that comes easy to the 25-year-old, who describes himself as “silly” and reserved by nature. “A lot of the time I can hide a little bit or I’m not quite as forthcoming with who I really am, just because I was always nervous about what people would think,” he says. “But over the last couple of years, and especially this year, I really want to focus on being unapologetically myself, doing the stuff I want to do, not caring what people think about it and always being me because I’m the only person who can be me.”
— John Davis over at Running Writings has recently published a series of great articles on all things LT1 and LT2, the first and second lactate thresholds, respectively. This one looks at LT1, LT2, and the scientific basis of heart rate zones for runners, while this follow-up dives deeper into individual variation in heart rates at LT1 and LT2 (and the implications for zone training), while the most recent is kind of a complete guide to everything LT1. I’ve never met John but I’ve learned a lot from him and his site over the years because he—as an athlete, coach, and, most importantly, PhD in human performance—has an incredible skill for making dense scientific research on physiology understandable to humble idiots like me. His posts are detailed but accessible and I just want to thank him publicly for his work (and encourage you to check out his website if you haven’t already).
— I’ve linked to Kevin Kelly’s work a few times here over the years—1000 True Fans and 68 Pieces of Unsolicited Advice (which is now a book) are both personal and fan favorites—and today I’m sharing his 50 years of Travel Tips, which I believe is a new post. (If it’s not, I just read it for the first time last week.) Kelly’s an interesting dude who helped co-found Wired magazine decades ago, and while I don’t think all of his travel tips are helpful or universally applicable, many of them are practical and worth remembering the next time you’re hitting the road/skies/sea to go somewhere. My favorite from this collection is one that has personally saved me a lot of headaches and generally just helped to make travel of any type more enjoyable over the years: Don’t check if you can help it. “Your enjoyment of a trip will be inversely related to the weight of your luggage,” he writes. “Counterintuitively, the longer your trip, the less stuff you should haul. Travelers still happy on a 6-week trip will only have carry-on luggage. That maximizes your flexibility, enabling you to lug luggage up stairs when there is no elevator, or to share a tuk-tuk, to pack and unpack efficiently, and to not lose stuff. Furthermore, when you go light you intentionally reduce what you take in order to increase your experience of living. And the reality of today is that you can almost certainly buy whatever you are missing on the road.”
— The musical performances at the recent SNL50 concert at Radio City Music Hall kicked ass, but the stuff I really want to share isn’t online yet, so I’ll sit tight a little longer and offer up this blast-from-the-past instead: Nirvana playing SNL in 1992 at the height of their stardom. This is probably the best live performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” ever done and part of what makes it special, a moment I read about in Dave Grohl’s book, The Storyteller, is when Grohl’s drumstick broke at the beginning of the set, but he didn’t let it faze him, grabbed another one during a break in the song, and kept banging away on the drums as only he can. Just legendary (on a few levels!).
— From the archives (Issue 379, 2 years ago this week): Say it with me now: We can’t get no…satisfaction. Whether you’re an athlete, entrepreneur, executive, or some other kind of high achiever, many successful people struggle to enjoy their accomplishments. Ron Carucci looked at this phenomenon recently for the Harvard Business Review and outlined some ways to reexamine our relationship with achievement and reconfigure how we measure satisfaction. “To be clear, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with money, achievement, or recognition,” he writes. “They can bring good things to our lives and those around us. But when our satisfaction depends on them, we’ve tarnished their good and turned them against ourselves. No matter how much money, achievement, or recognition we garner, the satisfaction they deliver will be short lived, keeping us on an unending “hedonic treadmill."
— A big thank you to my friends at Precision Fuel and Hydration for their continued support of my work in 2025. One of the aspects of the brand I find most appealing, aside from their best-in-class line of fueling and hydration products, is that they regularly produce engaging, informative, and sometimes just plain entertaining content. Their latest YouTube video is no exception. In it, Ant, a pretty stout amateur triathlete who works on their marketing team, tried to keep up with some of the best cyclists on the planet from the Lotto Cycling Team and, without ruining it for you, it’s everything I just described and worth a half hour of your day to watch sometime this week. “That was an 8-second sprint, he gave me a 4-second head start,” Ant says during one of the team’s sprint sessions. “And he still beat me by about 4 seconds. That was insane.” (And if you’re interested in trying PF&H products for yourself, check out this link and save 15% off your first order.)
Thank you to Tracksmith for supporting my work throughout 2025. The upgraded Harrier Long Sleeve (men’s here, women’s here) just dropped and it’s pretty freaking sweet. This top is perfect for colder conditions, either on its own or as a base layer, and features a heavier Merino knit that will keep you warm the rest of winter and even into early spring. The sleeves allow for an effortless range of motion and added thumbholes provide even more comfort and coverage for your hands. 11/10 recommend. If you pick up a new Harrier, or buy anything on Tracksmith.com for that matter, and you’re doing so for the first time, use the code MarioNEW to save $15 on your order of $75 or more. If you’re already a Tracksmith customer, use the code MarioGIVE and you can get free shipping on your next order (and 5% of your purchase will go to support the Friendly House in Worcester, Massachusetts, an organization that is near and dear to me).
Workout of the Week: The Sisyphus Session
I first wrote about this hill workout several years ago for Competitor (now Outside Run) and you can dig into its background and some of its variations here. Inspired by Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, this is one of my favorite sessions. I use some version of its short-medium-long format with all of my athletes, manipulating the specifics for who they are, what they’re training for, and where they are in a training block. Why? Running up and down a hill, for my money, gives you the most bang for your training buck: power, strength, endurance, and speed — all wrapped into one workout. This session is as much a mental challenge as it is a physical one and there’s probably a place for it in your program. Here are the details.
The bottom line.
“So do not be too humble, gentlemen. Be humble after but not during the action.”
— Ernest Hemingway in this essay about the art of the short story
That’s it for Issue 484. Please forward this email to a friend, share the web link on social media and/or in your group chats, or reply to me directly at your own risk.
Thanks for reading,
Mario