the morning shakeout | issue 485

Epic 800s, racing over pacing, you can't teach care, and a lot more.

I got whacked pretty hard late last week with a fever, body aches, and chills, and have spent the past few days resting, recovering, and generally just laying low with this gentle giant quite literally attached to my hip the entire time.

Good morning! I’m excited to share that beginning next week this newsletter will be hosted entirely on Substack. What does this mean for longtime subscribers? Hopefully nothing at all. If everything goes according to plan, the morning shakeout will land in your inbox next Tuesday exactly as it has for nearly 10 years now. (Please note: The newsletter will come from themorningshakeout@substack.com moving forward, however, so you may need to add this email address to your contact list. If you have Gmail and don’t receive the newsletter next week as you usually do, check your Promotions tab and move it to your Primary inbox. For more troubleshooting tips, go here.)

So why Substack? (And before anyone asks, no, Substack is not paying me to move the morning shakeout over there.) I’ve been reposting this weekly missive and soliciting new subscriptions at themorningshakeout.substack.com for the past 6 months and have immensely enjoyed my experience on the platform. Simple as that. The publishing tools are top-notch and allow me to maintain private 1-on-1 interactions with readers via email—all you have to do is hit reply and it goes right to my inbox!—while also offering an option for public engagement via the website and/or Substack app that has helped create the type of connection and community that email alone (or any form of social media, for that matter) just can’t. It really is the best of both worlds.

Now, Substack as a platform isn’t without its issues but I’ve experienced nothing but good vibes so far over in that little corner of the internet. It’s full of talented people doing interesting things in a supportive and sometimes collaborative environment. “Running Substack” (here’s a directory of running-themed Substack newsletters compiled by Jenn Woltjen that’s pretty big and getting bigger!) reminds me a lot of the running blog days of 20 or so years ago, but with the added benefits of a modern, interactive platform that’s full of potential for creating different types of content and fostering deeper connections with subscribers, both of which are things I’m really excited to explore. Also, just to be clear: the morning shakeout’s weekly newsletter will always be free, but if you do choose to become a paying supporter via Substack (as it may prompt you to do from time-to-time), know that: 1. It’s completely unnecessary but greatly appreciated just the same. 2. I may occasionally surprise you with sneak peeks and/or exclusive content.

As always, your feedback as a subscriber is important to me. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, simply reply to this email, or comment below this post if you’re reading online, and I’ll get back to you.

OK, let’s get right to it.

Quick Splits

— While I was laid up on the couch this past weekend I did catch a fair amount of the U.S. Indoor Track and Field Championships, and while there was a ton of excitement on the more distance-y side of things—namely, Hobbs Kessler and Nikki Hiltz both claiming double victories in the 1500m and 3000m—it was the 800m finals that stole the show for me. Watch here as Nia Akins weaves her way from third to first over the final 75 meters to take the win in a personal best 1:59.31. The “oh sh*t!” look on the face of her former Brooks Beasts teammate Valery Tobias when Akins blew past her on the right with about 50 meters to go was such a great moment. In the men’s race, Josh Hoey, who’s been racing like a man possessed since narrowly missing the Olympic team last summer, continued his undefeated indoor season by going wire-to-wire in spectacular fashion to lower the American record he already broke earlier this month at the Millrose Games. He was on one from the gun and, if you watch closely, seemed intent to step on the gas a little harder every 100m or so en route to finishing in an incredible 1:43.24.

— Speaking of the collaborative elements of Substack, last Tuesday my friend and fellow running scribe Sam Robinson and I went live and spoke for an hour about why everyone seems to be running so fast these days, running’s “third boom” and what’s behind it, how writing about running on the internet has evolved over the years, the explosion of brands in the space, and more. This was a ton of fun, the time flew by, and we hope to do it again sometime soon. You can watch and/or listen to the entire exchange right here.

— Here’s a recent study on competitive 10K runners that confirms what most athletes and coaches who’ve been around the block (or track) enough times already know to be true: You’re more likely to have one of your best performances when you focus on racing other people versus trying to pace yourself to a fast time. As an athlete, this was hammered into my head by my college coach, Karen Boen, who told me to “just compete and the time will eventually take care of itself.” As a coach, this is something I preach to my own athletes: find your race within the race, be aware and stay engaged, take calculated risks, and try to beat as many people as possible along the way. Easy enough, right? Not so fast. Learning how to compete is a skill that must be honed. As such, you’ll screw it up from time to time. This is OK. It’s part of the learning process that will set you up for a future breakthrough performance.

— My former colleague and current New York City Marathon race director Ted Metellus has a saying that I think of all the time: You can’t teach care. A few years ago on the podcast he explained what he meant by that when he told me, “I can teach you how to set a course. I can teach you how to build a tent. I can teach you how to put up a structure. What I cannot teach you is if you walk past a piece of trash on the ground, you pick it up and throw it away. Or to snip the end of a zip-tie. Or slow down enough to chat with some of the participants or volunteers. That is the care. I can teach you a lot but I can’t teach you to care. And that’s the big divider between just doing your job—or JE, ‘just enough’—and that little bit more.” I recently thought about Ted’s saying while reading this rant by a guy named Grant Slatton that, while a little all over the place, is unfortunately, mostly on the money. “The world is full of stuff that could be excellent with just 1% more effort,” he writes. “But people don't care.” I’m generally a pretty levelheaded person but as my wife or any of my running buddies will tell you, I will often get very grumpy when I’m out and about in the world and come across a lack of care, e.g., trash dropped on the ground, people not picking up after their dogs, drivers rolling through stop signs while pedestrians are in the crosswalk, weights being left on the rack at the gym, and various other acts of carelessness that also double as a lack of common courtesy toward others who are using the same space. Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this, and I’m only getting more and more fired up as I write, so I’ll stop myself here by encouraging/pleading with everyone to care about something just a little bit more today. Commit to putting in an extra one percent of effort. It will make you feel good about yourself and everyone else will be better off too.

— I was in junior high when I first heard “Killing Me Softly With His Song” from The Fugees, only to learn many years later that it was written by a woman named Lori Lieberman and first popularized by the great Roberta Flack, who passed away yesterday at the age of 88. Here’s an awesome undated performance of the song from The Fugees, with an assist from Flack, and it’s super cool to watch her and Lauryn Hill trade off lines toward the end.

— From the archives (Issue 381, 2 years ago this week): Everyone wants to train like a Norwegian these days and double-threshold workouts are very much en vogue right now, even amongst age-group athletes. In his latest column for Outside, Alex Hutchinson looks at a new review paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health entitled, “Does Lactate-Guided Threshold Interval Training within a High-Volume Low-Intensity Approach Represent the “Next Step” in the Evolution of Distance Running Training?” The answer to that question isn’t exactly definitive and, as Hutchinson notes, “The wheel gets reinvented on a regular basis, but it’s still a wheel.” While a number of elite-level athletes have made double-threshold training work for them in recent years, I personally believe it’s overrated, if not dangerous, for most age-group runners to try and implement into their programs. Why? Because most age-groupers run their workouts too hard and don’t recover well enough between sessions and the whole point of lactate-guided threshold training is intensity control. If there’s a secret to double-threshold training it’s that it discourages athletes from running too hard because the workload is so high and it requires you to really prioritize recovery and go stupid easy between quality sessions. Most age-groupers don’t need double-threshold workouts and/or lactate monitors as much as they need to stay healthy for long periods of time, run a lot more (easy) miles, and slow down most of their “quality” workouts to an effort that’s not too hard, not too easy. So, unless (or until) they’ve really nailed that, no matter what level you’re at, the risk of adding double-threshold days into the program outweighs the potential reward.

— I’ve been using Final Surge to run my coaching business since 2017 and I can’t say enough good things about the platform. They just launched a new Attendance Roster feature that will make check-ins for team practices and group runs seamless for coaches and athletes alike. It’s perfect if you coach a school team or a running club that meets in person and will make tracking attendance, rewarding athletes for being there, and gathering valuable insights really easy. Coaches can create an event and include it in their athletes’ calendars, set a designated meeting spot, message attendees, and check athletes in manually or automatically. You can read all about the feature’s capabilities in this post. (And fellow coaches: Head over to finalsurge.com and take advantage of a free 14-day coaching trial today. Use the code MORNINGSHAKEOUT when you check out to take 10% off your first purchase. Any questions? Just reply to this email and send ’em my way!)

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A big thank you to my partners at New Balance for their continued support of my work in 2025. Later this week the new Fresh Foam X Hierro v9 drops and I couldn’t be more excited to take them for a spin on my backyard trails. I’ve long loved the Hierro because they provide incredible grip and protection underfoot to help you navigate the trickiest of terrain, but they’re also light and nimble enough to really let it rip down a smooth patch of dirt. The Fresh Foam X midsole provides the perfect amount of cushioning without sacrificing proprioception and the Vibram outsole with 6mm lungs will provide you all the traction you’ll ever need. The Fresh Foam X Hierro v9 will be available later this week on newbalance.com (men’s sizes here, women’s sizes here) and at your favorite local run specialty retail store.

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Workout of the Week: The Sev Special

If the snow’s starting to clear in your neck of the woods and you’re planning to hit the track a little more regularly for speedwork from here on out, a great introductory session for getting back on the oval is one that I learned from the legendary coach Bob “Sev” Sevene twenty years ago when I spent a week with him and his Team USA-Monterey Bay athletes in California. (n.b. I still utilize this workout with all of my athletes today, no matter their experience level.) It consists of sets of 400 and 800m repeats at a hard-but-not–too-hard effort and will benefit you whether you’re focused on the mile, marathon, or anything in between. Here are the details.

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The bottom line. 

“Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.”

— Rosa Parks with a necessary reminder, especially for this day and age

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That’s it for Issue 485. If you’d like to support the shakeout, please forward this email to someone who might enjoy it or post the web link in a high traffic area of the internet where others can check it out. (And if you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time and want to receive it for yourself first thing every Tuesday morning, you can subscribe right here.)

Thanks for reading,

Mario