the morning shakeout | issue 495

Your questions answered, acerbic coaches, pausing for performance, and a lot more.

I’ve run at least a thousand miles along this stretch of path near my house, so you can probably blame me for a few of the cracks in the pavement. (Shot on my iPhone)

Good morning! In last week’s issue I solicited questions for an Ask Mario Anything episode of the podcast and the response was wild with over two dozen submissions. Thank you to everyone who sent one (or in some cases, more than one) in. My right-hand man Chris Douglas and I whittled them down and I answered as many as possible in the hour or so we had to record this one. This round of questions was a lot of fun to work through with topics ranging from dream podcast guests to training ideas I have and haven’t changed my mind about, the impact of AI on coaching to best mindset practices for training and racing, and a lot more. There’s even a good rant from me on running while sick/injured that I hope folks will appreciate and take to heart. You can listen to the episode wherever you subscribe to podcasts (just search for “the morning shakeout”) or at this handy link.

Quick Splits

— Gregg Popovich is one of the greatest coaches of all-time—full stop. His record speaks for itself: five NBA titles, the winningest coach in NBA history, and 29 years as the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, which is virtually unheard of in professional sports. But, as Anton Krupicka notes in a point I echo later in this newsletter, how Popovich achieved that success is far more meaningful than the accomplishments themselves. “Pop,” who retired from coaching a few days ago at the age of 76, built his legacy not just through winning games and championships, but through creating a culture of trust, accountability, and genuine care amongst the athletes he worked with. He did things his way, coaching with empathy as well as an adaptable approach, challenging his charges with purpose, and always putting people first—values that extend far beyond the basketball court. Vincent Goodwill touched on all these things recently for Yahoo! Sports and it’s a good read. “There is no signature style, no ‘Showtime’ to his name,” Goodwill writes. “The beauty in Popovich entering this pantheon is the adaptability of his approach…Popovich found a way to not only work within the system but to borrow from it, beat teams who did things better and win with Duncan as the unmovable anchor. Popovich's gift was seemingly having the clarity in knowing exactly how to build a team and coach one that could compete yearly, even through the confusion. His acerbic nature, curt with reporters both on television (with the late Craig Sager) and elsewhere, belied his ability to be the ultimate learner, and thus, the ultimate leader.”

— This profile of Australian athletics coach Di Sheppard by Jack Snape for The Guardian was oddly…refreshing, if I had to choose one word to describe it. The 60-year-old, who is best known for her work with junior athletes, including her latest protégé, 17-year-old sprint sensation Gout Gout—who is already outpacing Usain Bolt at the same age—is often seen as a gruff, somewhat reclusive figure in a sport that typically celebrates polish and charisma. (Snape says that she “has a reputation for a frosty exterior” and Sheppard herself commented to her son, after people around Brisbane began to recognize her, that, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I think my fuck-off aura is dropping.”) But for Sheppard, helping her athletes achieve success—not winning popularity contests or making small talk with other coaches—has always been the main priority. “Most people would probably say I’m unapproachable, not pleasant,” she admits. “But I didn’t really care what people thought. When I go to a meet, I might have eight to fifteen athletes competing. I’m there to do my job—not to socialize or make small talk.” (n.b. This sounds similar to how Popovich was described in the profile I shared above. In short, the best don’t have time for bullshit.)

— Anton Krupicka and I are about the same age. I’ve been a big fan of his going on twenty-plus years now—for his ultrarunning accomplishments, yes, but perhaps even more so for his writing about running, training, lifestyle, process, philosophy, and more, which I’ve always found interesting, thought-provoking, and insightful. He doesn’t race or write as much as he used to, but when he does either these days, it’s worth paying attention to. His latest post, “Snow Shovels and Singlespeeds,” has nothing to do with running specifically but everything to do with honesty, simplicity, intention, and effort that you could extrapolate out to so many different areas of life. (And it also speaks to how apples usually don’t fall too far from the tree.) “A decade ago I probably cared more about optimization, maximization, efficiency and outcomes,” he writes. “Carbon bikes, fast times, race results. Now as a middle-aged athlete and human, I find myself increasingly more interested in the means than the end. That might sound like a cop-out in response to my waning peak physical abilities. But I think such an attitude is also just the result of a natural maturation as one goes through life. It’s fine—maybe even appropriate—to not have this perspective in one’s 20s and 30s. I certainly didn’t. But, more and more, it’s becoming obvious to me that life is in the doing, not in the being done. How I do something feels far more important than any end-goal objective.”

— Hosts Zoë Rom and Brendan Leonard recently asked me to join them on The Trailhead podcast to answer a wide range of trail and ultrarunning-related questions, some of them serious, a few of them a little less so, and even a couple that were existential in nature. As they wrote in the show notes, “Come for the laughs, stay for Mario's wisdom, and find out why running might just be a Sisyphean project we willingly signed up for.” This one was a lot of fun, and maybe even somewhat insightful, and you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or by streaming it right here.

— Performance is performance, it doesn’t matter if it’s sports, music, business, or some other field. The main principles of getting better at, and eventually doing something pretty well, are universal: work appropriately hard, recover adequately, repeat. This happens on the micro (day-to-day), meso (week-to-week/month-to-month), and macro (season-to-season/year-to-year) levels. Employ these principles for a long time and you’ll get pretty good at whatever you’re trying to do. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. But as hard-charging Type-A strivers, pushing hard isn’t the problem—the real challenge is in forcing yourself to go easy, rest, and take breaks from time to time. Longtime shakeout reader and supporter Henrik Wist recently shared this short post from Viktor Nyblom about “pushing and pausing” in the context of business and it’s a worthwhile read. “For two years straight, the tech department pushed harder and harder,” he writes. “No time to catch their breath. No time to celebrate wins. Just constant push. At first, the tempo seemed fine. Features were being shipped and the few partners we had were happy. But as more partners where onboarded, cracks started to appear…Within three months, they lost 25% of their engineering team, which in turn made all projects get seriously delayed. The very thing that made them successful - their ability to ship features quickly - had become their downfall. All because they failed to pause to take a breath.”

— I’ve been writing down quotes, song lyrics, and other random collections of words that meant something to me since sometime back in high school. One of the first songs that ended up in one of those early notebooks was “Name” by the Goo Goo Dolls, specifically this verse:

“And scars are souvenirs you never lose / The past is never far / Did you lose yourself somewhere out there / Did you get to be a star? / And don't it make you sad to know that life / Is more than who we are?”

Why I scribbled those particular lines down, I honestly can’t remember—it was probably something stupid, like thinking about the scars on my shins from getting spiked during a track meet—but every time the song pops up it immediately puts me in a reflective mood. The latest such instance of this was just a few days ago when YouTube recommended this video of the Goo Goo Dolls recently performing "Name" live at Stagecoach. Anyway, I had no idea the band was even touring anymore, but damn, John Rzeznik still sounds really good.

— From the archives (Issue 390, 2 years ago this week): I really enjoyed this Runner’s World UK interview with 25-year-old Emile Cairess, who debuted in the marathon two weekends ago with a 2:08:07 sixth-place finish in London. Cairess is talented, no doubt, but he’s also got a refreshing perspective on the sport and an appreciation for running as more than a competitive pursuit. “A lot of people get too tied up in the exact pace of an easy run, a steady run,” he explains, “when all that really matters is that it’s easy or steady. I have my routes and I know how far they are, so I do know my pace in the end, but while I’m running I’ve not really got any idea of the pace. I think it’s good for you mentally to be a bit disengaged sometimes, rather than feeling stressed about things that don’t need to be stressed about.”

---

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.

---

Workout of the Week: The Tired Tempo Run

A spin on the “Tempo Plus” and “Hills and a Steady Chill” workouts, this session starts with a set of shorter, quicker intervals and finishes with a tempo run at a steadier effort. It’s a great way for marathoners to keep a little turnover in the mix while also practicing some race-pace running on not-fresh legs. Here are the details.

---

The bottom line. 

“It's a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that. But if you are grateful for your life. Then you have to be grateful for all of it.”

— Stephen Colbert in conversation with Anderson Cooper a few years ago

---

That’s it for Issue 495. If it made you smile, think for a second, or reflect upon something you hadn’t considered, and you know someone else who might like to do the same, please forward this email to a friend (or five!) and encourage them to subscribe at this link so that it lands in their inbox next Tuesday.

Thanks for reading,

Mario