the morning shakeout | issue 494

Sage advice from Des Linden, the Norwegian model revisited, the perfect pour-over, and a lot more.

Towing my good buddy Shane through the first few laps of his birthday mile this past Saturday. I made it exactly 1100 meters before he told me to “move!” He closed in 68 seconds to run 4:36 and looked great doing it. His goal, which he’s been working toward since January, was to get under 4:39 for his 39th birthday. Photo: Marisa LaValette (Shane’s wife)

Good morning! Later this week I’m going to record an Ask Mario Anything episode of the podcast. If you have any questions regarding training, coaching, writing, podcasting, the running industry, the professional side of the sport, my hot takes—it’s all fair game, really!—simply reply to this email or leave a comment below this post and I’ll do my best to answer your inquiry. These AMA episodes tend to be quite popular and they’re also a lot of fun for me as I get a chance to connect with some of you more directly and dive deeper into topics I might just skim the surface of otherwise. So, don’t be shy. I’m excited to see what kind of questions get thrown my way! (And tell you what, if I answer yours on the podcast, I’ll mail you a morning shakeout sticker—it looks just like the logo at the top of this email.)

OK, I’ve got a solid-sized serving of smaller bites to share with you this week. Let’s dive right in.

Quick Splits

— If I’m being honest I was a little worried about Clayton Young’s chances at the Boston Marathon after watching the first several episodes of his YouTube series. He looked a bit more haggard than usual in training and hadn’t really raced well in the buildup. On the flipside, his training partner, Conner Mantz, was on fire, setting an American record in the half-marathon (59:17) in January and then running two seconds faster on a tougher point-to-point course in March. That doesn’t always bode well in a marathon block, either, but it all worked out just fine for everyone involved, as Mantz ran a personal best of 2:05:08 to finish fourth at Boston, while Young was three places and a little less than two minutes back in a PB of his own. Episode 7 of Young’s YouTube series dropped a few days ago and it provides a nice look into what he was doing and how he was feeling leading into the race, as well as some immediate relfections on the race itself. My favorite part was his pre-race conversation with coach Ed Eyestone, which made me reflect on some of the pre-race chats I had with my own athletes, and the shared similarities in how to manage effort and energy levels in the first 6 miles of the race, which are downhill and typically pretty quick. Eyestone told Young to be “almost comatose,” while I instructed my own athletes to “be bored,” a necessary state of mind as you try to manage not getting too caught up in the excitement on and along the course. Whether you’re trying to run yourself onto the podium, as Young was, or just trying not to fall apart after Heartbreak Hill, managing your emotions and energy early on is a huge key to setting yourself up for a strong second-half finish.

— There’s a lot to admire about Des Linden’s professional running career but results aside, I think what’s impressed me most is that she’s always done things her way. A two-time Olympian, 2018 Boston Marathon champion, and two-time guest of the morning shakeout podcast, Linden has held her own for nearly two decades with a record not many can match. The 41-year-old capped off a long and successful run in the marathon last Monday with a 17th-place, 2:26:19 finish—and the Masters win to boot. “I think I’ve gotten everything out of this,” she said immediately after the race. “I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t the person people picked to be a pro, to win a Major, to make an Olympic team, any of these things. But I believed in myself, I surrounded myself with good people, and I always had fun with it…It’s never felt like a job or a chore and I think that’s allowed me to do it for a really long time.” Sage advice for any runner, whether it’s your career or not.

+ If you missed them the first time around, or just need to fill your ears with a couple hours worth of insight and/or inspiration, check out Linden on episodes 3 and 40 of the podcast, which you can listen to here and here, respectively. I’ve always enjoyed talking to Linden. She’s funny but she doesn’t bullshit, which makes every conversation with her refreshingly candid and interesting. (And if you’re wondering when the seeds for an eventual move to ultrarunning were planted, Episode 40 is for you.)

— As an adjunct to his magnum opus on the Norwegian model of lactate threshold training (which I’ve shared and commented on in Issues 325 and 464 of this newsletter), Marius Bakken recently published this chronological reflection, along with some reflections on how to adapt the model for summer training (i.e. racing season) that is packed with valuable takeaways and nuanced perspective. What I appreciate most about this post, and the one that preceded it, is the madness behind the method, so to speak, i.e., the different coaches and various elements that contributed to it, as well as the stages of trial and error (mostly by Bakken himself) that eventually led to the Norwegian blueprint of training as it’s understood and implemented today. “While continuous efforts have their place, intervals offer a higher return relative to muscular load—a key insight that stayed with me,” he writes. “That principle stuck with me for the rest of my career—and eventually became central to the model. It also taught me to consider the cost of a session, not just its minutes of intensity. That perspective led me to prioritize intervals, particularly through double threshold sessions, to push the training ceiling without compromising the muscular system and wearing it down.”

— The powers that be willing, I hope this is me in 40 years. Most people move up in distance as they age but I’m just going to keep on dropping down. (I’ll start working on the beard, as well as my block starts, now.)

— I’m no scientist but I love experimenting with different coffee brewing methods and by far the one I enjoy the most is the pour-over, which involves pouring boiling hot water over a bed of grounds until the pot below is filled. Part of what I enjoy about it, aside from the fact that it makes a tasty cup of coffee, is that it’s something of a meditative exercise for me: it takes time to grind the beans, boil the water, and then brew the coffee. It’s intentionally inefficient and in my experimenting over the years I’ve found ways to extract even more time out of the process, mostly by going high with the kettle (i.e., eye level or so) and varying the flow of water into the mouth of the Chemex. My initial pour is right down the middle until I get a sizable bloom, and once the water works its way through the grounds, I go to work on knocking down the resulting residue on the sides of the filter. It’s not exactly the perfect approach, but turns out it’s pretty damn close. “[Researchers] found that more coffee particles remained when they had poured slowly, which increased the time the water was in contact with the grounds,” Katrina Miller writes for The New York Times. “Holding the kettle higher helped with the mixing, preventing the water from draining along the sides, between the grounds and the filter. This type of flow caused what the researchers described as an avalanche effect. The water eroded the center of the pile of coffee grounds, thus suspending some of the grains, which settled and built up on the sides. Eventually, the sides collapsed inward and the process started again. This increased the flavor extracted from the coffee grounds, but only as long as the water was allowed to flow continuously.”

— In Issue 486 I shared a research study that theorized Faith Kipyegon of Kenya could possibly run 3:59.37 in the mile—as early as this year—with the help of pacemakers to reduce drag and overall energy cost. Turns out the attempt will be a go on June 26 in Paris. Kipyegon, who holds the current world-record of 4:07.64 (as well as 3:49.04 in the 1500m), will need to take two seconds a lap off her current mark to become the first woman ever to run under 4 minutes. Spoiler alert: This is highly unlikely to happen at the end of June. If you’ve been in this game long enough and understand how thin the margins are at these speeds, you know that it's way too big a jump to make all at once. That said, I’m stoked for it! Why? Nike has one of the best marketing engines in the world and they will do a good job of building hype around not only the attempt, but Faith Kipyegon herself, one of the best and arguably most underappreciated athletes in the world. Whether the 31-year-old breaks 4 minutes or not in Paris hardly matters, in my opinion—the win here is that the world gets to witness a generational talent chase the edge of what’s possible in an event that is easy to understand and has long captured peoples’ attention (inside and outside of running). Not to mention the fact that Kipyegon’s attempt is sure to inspire athletes, especially women, across all levels of the sport to dream bigger and aim higher—just as her teammate Eliud Kipchoge did with his groundbreaking sub-2-hour marathon efforts at Monza and Vienna in 2017 and 2019, respectively. The marathon game, at the tip of the pyramid all the way down to the base, hasn’t been the same since. Along these lines, I can’t recommend this National Geographic profile by Christopher Solomon enough. It’s an incredibly well-written look at Kipyegon: the athlete, the mother, the person, the hero. “When Kipchoge thinks of all the reverberations a record run by Kipyegon could have,” Solomon writes, “he smiles. Yes, his friend’s success will change women’s running, he says. More than that, though, the feat will tell women everywhere that they can tackle whatever they want. ‘I’m trusting that it will change the world.’”

— I love a nice surprise so you can imagine my delight when Apple Music served me up this fresh Lumineers’ cover of Neil Young’s “Sugar Mountain” over the weekend. Nostalgic and reflective, this is a timeless tune and Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites do an amazing job putting their own acoustic spin on it. (Bonus: Here’s Young singing it at Farm Aid in 1995, thirty-ish years after it was first released.)

— From the archives (Issue 285, 4 years ago this week): Alex Hutchinson, my guest on Episode 140 of the podcast, recently shared some thoughts on a new study that analyzed the power profiles of a group of elite and near-elite professional cyclists in a five-day stage race. “The best predictor of race performance, competitive level, and event specialty wasn’t the raw power or heart-rate data,” Hutchinson writes in his column for Outside. “It was, once again, fatigue resistance.” Fatigue resistance, which researchers from Nike’s Breaking2 Project defined as “the extent of the deterioration of [VO2 max, lactate threshold, running economy] over time,” is not easily quantifiable, nor is it all that well understood, but it seems obvious that the best endurance athletes are going to be those who can maintain a high level of effort when they’ve already been working at a high level of effort for a long time. Or, as I like to say, there’s a big difference between running fast when you’re fresh and running fast when you’re fatigued. I think a lot about this when designing training programs and specific workouts for the athletes I coach, e.g., putting them in what I call a compromised state for some of their key sessions, meaning they’re not super fresh physically, mentally, or emotionally when it’s time to work hard, all of which helps improve their ability to perform at a high level when they’re really tired. The gains from these types of sessions—which are to be used cautiously and sparingly, to be sure—are as much (or maybe even more) psychological as they are physiological.

— I’ve been using Final Surge to run my coaching business since 2017 and I can’t say enough good things about the platform. One of my favorite features allows athletes with Premium accounts to be able to upload photos to their workout comments—and for me to reply back with one, if/when necessary. I’ve been taking advantage of this feature quite a bit and have found it super helpful when an athlete is trying to describe an injury location, or if they want me to take a look at something form-related, or to simply get something visual across (e.g. what a particular training environment looks like) when words alone won’t suffice. There’s more coming that I’m excited about and will share with you in the next month or two. (More on Athlete Premium here, including how to start a free trial.) 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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I’ve been fortunate to be in partnership with New Balance since 2020 (and have been running in their shoes a lot longer than that). In any given week I run in 3-4 different types of shoes, which is a privilege I don’t take for granted. Even if that’s not possible for you, having at least two pairs in your rotation—one for general mileage and one for speed workouts/races—can help each shoe last you a little longer, lessen the likelihood of injuries, and optimize performance and recovery. Here’s a detailed roundup of the different models of New Balance shoes I use for various types of runs throughout the week: the Fresh Foam X 1080v14, the FuelCell Rebel v4, FuelCell SuperComp Elite v4, and the Fresh Foam X Hierro v9.

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Workout of the Week: The Halftime Cutdown

Looking for a stimulating but not-too-hard workout to knock out before your next race? Look no further than the Halftime Cutdown. It starts fast and finishes even faster but it will be over before it really starts to grind your gears down. Here are the details.

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The bottom line. 

Love, love, love, says Percy.

And hurry as fast as you can

along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.

Give up your body heat, your beating heart.

Then, trust.

— Mary Oliver, “I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life” [n.b. Percy is her dog—pretty hard to argue with his advice.]

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That’s it for Issue 494. 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