the morning shakeout | issue 496

Holding grief and gratitude simultaneously, "earning the right," lowering expectations, and a lot more.

Heaven on earth. (Shot on my iPhone.)

Good morning! This past Sunday was Mother’s Day, which, since 2009, has filled me with an odd mix of grief and gratitude. For those of you who don’t know, my mom passed away unexpectedly at the age of 50. I was 26 at the time and the sense of loss and heartbreak just crushed me. “Ma” was one of my rocks in life, a woman who put everyone else’s needs before her own, the first person I called when I had a question about something because she was always right about everything. She was also my biggest fan, supportive of whatever it was I tried to do, and proud of me no matter what, even and especially when I fell flat on my face. I miss her so f*cking much and there are still days that her not being here leaves me feeling sad and lost.

But as much as this “holiday” stirs up feelings of grief that will never go away, it also fills me with an enormous amount of gratitude. In last week’s issue I shared a quote from Stephen Colbert. A few years ago he told Anderson Cooper, “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.” Man, does that resonate with me. Of all the lessons my mom taught me, perhaps the biggest is that life is short: Take no day for granted. Don’t get caught up in bullshit. Be nice to people. Say thank you. Spend time with the people you love (and let them know you love them). Set a good example. Get out of your comfort zone. Take chances. Do the things you really want to do. Live without regret. Maybe I would have come to learn these things eventually but losing my mom so suddenly was the wakeup call I didn’t know I needed. It reminded me how fragile all of this is, how none of us are promised tomorrow, and how love doesn’t disappear when someone’s gone—it just changes shape.

I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this publicly but my wife, Christine, also lost her mom prematurely. It was actually our tattoos—she has a rose on her foot honoring her mom, I have a Celtic cross with a sun rising behind it on my lower left leg memorializing mine—that led to our first conversation. I’m convinced that was our moms’ way of introducing us and gifting us the incredible life that we’ve been fortunate to enjoy together for the past 14 years. It was through our shared grief that we found a new form of love.

So as I reflect on the woman who raised me and helped make me into the person I am today, I can’t help but be struck by the quiet, unexpected ways she continues to influence my life, even in her absence. (More on that later.) Try to take a minute or two for yourself and reflect on the people who’ve shaped your life: the ones that are still here, and those that have left too soon. Let their example inspire you to live more fully and with gratitude for the gift of existence, as brutal as it can be sometimes. In my experience, that’s the best way we can continue to honor them and keep their memory alive.

Quick Splits

— This was a great profile of Arianna Maida by Alison Wade of

Fast Women

. I knew nothing about Maida prior to reading about her in yesterday’s FW newsletter but count me amongst her new fans. Maida, who works as a physician assistant for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, ran a personal best of 2:42:07 to finish 56th at this year’s Boston Marathon while raising nearly $6,000 for cancer research. She’s chopped 23 minutes off her marathon best over the past two years, doing it around a demanding work schedule, in less-than-ideal weather conditions, and with a ton of support from the patients she helps treat. “I think about my patients a lot when I’m getting ready to do something hard,” she told Fast Women. “They’re going through something really hard with uncertain outcomes. So I feel like if they can do something hard, I can, too.”

— I’ve linked to Dr.

David Lipman

’s work here a few times before and his latest piece, “Earning the Right,” is one of his best yet. The short of it is that we’re in a third running boom, many runners—especially newer ones—are going too far, or trying to do too much, too soon (most of this driven by social media and/or ego), and that real progress comes from nailing the fundamentals, being smart about your training, and “earning the right” to level up in distance, workload, etc. “Simple never sells, and as such complexity is often what is used in the attention industry, resulting in people at times skipping the basics which they need,” he writes. “Specifically, it is worth noting that the best in the world are training like they are now because it is best for where they are now, at earlier stages they were using less advanced methods. If you use advanced methods too early, you rob yourself twice; once via not using the basics and the second time when you start to plateau with the advanced methods.”

As I texted David after reading the piece: “The problems you describe are a big reason I have (and will continue to have) a job.”

Case in point: I’ve coached many runners who don’t come from a formal running background. Often, they got into the sport by signing up for a half-marathon, marathon, or ultra as a way to challenge themselves and pursue a big goal. They got hooked—and have stayed hooked—on going long(er). (David calls this the “longer is better” reinforcement loop.) But over time, it’s not uncommon for performance to plateau and/or for overuse injuries to pop up. One of the first things I usually recommend in these situations is to dial things back: drop down in distance and focus on running faster for a while. In short: Work on the fundamentals of becoming a faster, more well-rounded athlete. Sometimes it takes a bit of convincing, but the benefits are always worth it:

1. They realize that training for shorter distances is just a different kind of hard. It might not look as epic on Strava or social media (or even to their own ego) but it challenges them in new ways.

2. They unlock speed they never knew they had, simply because they’d never trained for it before.

3. They raise their performance ceiling, using that newfound fitness to get even more out of their marathon or ultra training when they return to it.

This is but one example of committing to mastering the fundamentals first, an unsexy and often un-Instagrammable task in our “go big or go home” world these days. But as anyone who’s been in this game long enough will tell you: If you skip steps it will take you twice as long to get where you’re trying to go. There are no shortcuts.

— This brief post on expectations by Seth Godin is best summed up by my favorite line from the 1992 hit "Hey Jealousy" by the Gin Blossoms: “And if you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down.”

— When I was a little kid, whenever my mom would drive me somewhere—and she drove me everywhere: basketball practice, summer camp, a friend's house, wherever I needed to go—whenever the song, "Here Comes The Sun" by The Beatles would come on the radio, mom would remind me every time, without fail, that when I was a baby she would sing this song to me. "It was your favorite song," she used to say. "You loved it." At the time, I didn't know who The Beatles were, and I sure didn't remember ever liking that song, but I just took her word for it. Many years later, when I would finally develop a taste and appreciation for good music, I actually grew to love it. Fast-forward to yesterday morning: It had rained overnight, the sky was overcast, and I was in a shitty mood for reasons that had nothing to do with the aforementioned weather conditions. As I was finishing up my run, the sun popped out from behind the clouds, no doubt Mom letting me know that, “It’s alright.” Call it woo-woo if you want but I get little signs like this from her all the time. Anyway, please enjoy George Harrison performing “my favorite song” from sometime well before I was born. (Thanks, Ma.)

— As a follow-up to a piece I shared in last week’s issue from Anton Krupicka in which he wrote about finding himself increasingly “more interested in the means than the end” because “how I do something feels far more important than any end-goal objective,” I’m offering up this archived item, which appeared a year ago this week in Issue 444: One of my favorite things that I’ve shared in the 8+ years I’ve been writing this weekly email is this letter that legendary producer Steve Albini sent to Nirvana in 1992. In it, amongst other things, he told the band that “I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it's worth.” I didn’t know much about Albini prior to reading it but I appreciated the straightforward, no bullshit approach he took to his craft. Sadly, Albini died of a heart attack a week ago today at the age of 61. Upon hearing of his passing I went down the rabbit hole and came across this column Neil Steinberg wrote about him for the Chicago Sun-Times a few years ago. In it, Albini shared his definition of success, and, for my money, it belongs in the next edition of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. “I’ve always tried to see everything as a process,” he explains. “I want to do things in a certain way that I can be proud of that is sustainable and is fair and equitable to everybody that I interact with. If I can do that, then that’s a success, and success means that I get to do it again tomorrow.”

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I recently got a sneak peek at Tracksmith’s new Meridian Collection and it’s pretty dang sweet. The sleek silhouettes and cling-free comfort are made for summer and I can’t wait to put some of these new pieces through their paces. The Meridian Shorts, with their 8 pockets and subtle shirt loop on the back, are at the top of my wishlist. If you want to try something from the new Meridian Collection, or pick up anything on Tracksmith.com between now and the end of May for that matter, use the code “MarioSpring” for $20 off an order of $100 or more. (Note: the code is good for one use between now and the end of May.)

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Workout of the Week: Mile Simulation 600s

This is the exact workout I’m planning to do on Friday as I prepare to race a mile on the track a little over two weeks from now. It’s a set of 600m repeats that’s designed to mimic the get out/settle in/close hard nature of many 1-mile races. With generous recovery and a focus on controlled execution, this session is ideal for sharpening race-readiness—but only after a solid foundation of fitness is already in place. Here are the details.

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The bottom line. 

“Practice like it means everything in the world to you. Perform like you don't give a damn."

— Jascha Heifetz, widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all-time, talkin’ ’bout practice (and performance)

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That’s it for Issue 496. 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