the morning shakeout | issue 510

Noticing subtle change, digging into the creative process, pursuing sport from a place of possibility, and a lot more.

Aug 19, 2025

This is fellow Massachusetts native and West Valley Track Club Masters teammate Jonah Backstrom en route to his umpteenth national title this past Saturday at the U.S. 50K trail championships. He won the 50-54 age-group in 4:02 and some change. (Shot on my iPhone.)

Good morning! Most days I’m up between 5 and 6 AM. It’s my favorite hour because nobody bothers me. The routine is almost always the same: I come downstairs, open the windows, get the coffee going, feed the dog, move my body for five minutes while the coffee finishes brewing, and then enjoy a few moments of peace, quiet, and reflection before I head out to run. Over the past couple of weeks it’s been hard not to notice that every morning is just a touch darker than the one before it. I’ve been thinking about how this subtle shifting of the seasons serves as a good reminder that change of any sort, whether it’s in training, your career, or some other area of life, usually isn’t all that dramatic. It’s unfolding gradually and often imperceptibly in the background until one day you wake up and realize that you’re not where you were a few weeks or months or even years ago. This can be good or bad (or maybe even a little of both!) depending on the situation. The key is to be present and aware. Notice what’s different than yesterday. Or a week ago. Or a year ago. (Journaling helps here!) Check in with yourself regularly and make sure the changes you’re noticing in your life are bringing you closer to where you want to go. If they’re not, do something about it: shift your mindset, adopt a new approach, or take a small but deliberate action that helps point you in the right direction. Life’s changing all the time whether we notice it or not, but unlike the seasons, we have some ability to influence it.

Quick Splits

— Jakob Ingebrigtsen and his brothers Henrik and Filip are largely to thank for the interest and hype around double-threshold training (i.e. doing two threshold workouts in one day) in recent years, which makes this deep dive on their older brother Kristoffer’s single-threshold approach as a family man with a full-time job such a refreshing read. Pulled together by the always excellent John Davis of RunningWritings, this transcript and analysis of an interview Kristoffer gave in 2021 to a Norwegian running podcast is chock full of sound advice that’s approachable and applicable for folks who have a lot going on in their lives and one window a day (at most!) to train. Say what you want about the “Ingebrigtsen advantage,” or whatever you might want to call it—Henrik did write Kristoffer’s program, after all—but a sub-33 minute 10K and 72-minute half-marathon on 55-60 miles a week is pretty damn impressive. “There's no point, in my opinion, in running too hard,” Kristoffer explains. “Better to run a few more repetitions. And instead of running hard, hold back a bit on the pace.”

— I didn’t realize that Olympian Alexi Pappas had a podcast until the other day when I stumbled upon this excellent conversation with Keira D’Amato. It felt like being a fly on the wall while two friends were catching up in a coffee shop and the hour flew by. My favorite part of the episode came near the end when D’Amato was describing what it felt like when she was trying to break the American record in the marathon. Her head was full of doubts. The effort felt harder than she anticipated and she wanted to step off the course. But her pacer, Calum Neff, turned to her and said, “This is what it feels like.” In other words: hard things feel hard for a reason. It was exactly the reminder D’Amato needed at that moment. She was trying to do something no one had ever done before, and if she could work through the temporary discomfort of what she was going through, she’d eventually come out the other side. I can’t think of a better reminder for both running and life.

— Clay Skipper, one of the best interviewers in the game, recently shared this three-year-old exchange with the author George Saunders and it’s a fascinating read on all manner of topics from success to ambition to marriage to experiencing anxiety, writing as a practice, detaching from your ego, and a lot more. Skipper serves up a series of intriguing questions and Saunders drops wisdom in a range of unexpected ways. “You’re 63 now. What are the big questions you’re asking yourself at this stage?” Skipper asks. “I’m noticing that I have a lot of different modes I can be in. I can be affectionate or present or grumpy, and that’s not a choice,” Saunders admits. “It’s not a matter of willpower to say, ‘Hey, let’s be loving today.’ …So the biggest question in my mind is, after the tour, how do I wanna arrange my life so that that more affectionate person is reliably present? It seems to me like almost every other question is subsumed in that one, because if you’re at 85 percent present and affectionate, or you’re at 40 percent present and affectionate, those are two different universes. So I think that’s what I’m thinking about most: I’ve got x number of years. I can choose right now to start doing things that make me more affectionate towards the world. I oughta do that.”

— My buddy and occasional creative co-conspirator Brendan Leonard put out this two-minute video on the creative process (officially titled “The Creative Process #1”) and it resonated in a deep way. (Which makes sense, since Brendan says this process involves digging a bunch of holes and/or the occasional trench.) I spend sizable chunks of my day doing mindless shit, which looks unproductive from the outside (just ask my wife!), but that’s when I get my best ideas, connect dots, and generally figure shit out. Then I go grab my shovel and get to work.

— Tip of the hat to my good friend and former college teammate Pat, who knew that I’d appreciate this cover of Neil Young’s “Old Man” from the female pop band Trousdale (who I hadn’t heard of prior to Pat sending this YouTube link to me). Their rendition is quite a contrast to Neil’s raspy voice and pretty much every other dude that’s ever tried to cover this song, but I dug it. Stunning version.

— From the archives (Issue 353, 3 years ago this week): The writer Anne Helen Peterson and I have very different athletic backgrounds and goals, but as a fellow athlete in his early 40s I found myself nodding my head at nearly every part of this essay about the quiet glory of aging into athleticism. “How is it, at age 41, that I feel like my body can do more — and that I can take more joy in it — than ever before?” she wonders. “I’m not faster, but I’m more resilient. I’m not doing as many overall miles, but I feel stronger. I love it more, and more feels possible….Exercise just generally no longer feels punitive or disciplinary. Instead, I feel something far more akin to curiosity.” I share similar sentiments about my own pursuit of competitive running these days. At the age of 40 I’m enjoying it more than ever before. This is one of the great mysteries of my life right now and it’s a fun thing to contemplate. I’m not running as fast, or nearly as much, as I did five, ten, or fifteen years ago, but I’m more curious than ever to see what’s possible given the amount of time and effort I’m willing to put into it. Why? I don’t know for sure but I suspect it has something to do with being able to let go of a set of expectations I’d locked myself into long ago, i.e., that in order to be considered worthy as a runner I needed to run this time or finish in that place or run a certain amount of miles per week. Instead of being driven by curiosity, I was fueled by a need to prove something: to myself, or other people, or some mysterious running god in the sky that kept an eye on my training log, I don’t know. It only took me nearly 25 years to learn that pursuing the sport from a place of possibility, and not necessity, is how you begin to age well in it. [Ed. note: Three years later, this still holds up!]

I’ve been hitting the trails recently with the Eliot Range, Tracksmith’s first trail shoe, and also tested a few pieces from the new Overland Collection, and to say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement. Tracksmith, as the name sorta implies, isn’t really well known for their attention to off-road running but the Overland Collection changes that in a big way. I’d put the Range, with its responsive midsole and Vibram outsole, right up there with any other versatile trainer that’s going to touch a mix of dirt, rock, roots, and maybe even a little pavement. It’s sturdy but energetic, and has some nice bite to it. If you want to try the Eliot Range or one of the thoughtfully designed pieces from the Overland Collection (or whatever else you might need on Tracksmith.com between now and the end of August for that matter), use the code “MORNINGSHAKEOUT20” for $20 off an order of $100 or more. (Note: The code is good for one use between now and the end of August.)

Workout of the Week: The Tempo Sandwich

I’ve always believed that to run your best half-marathon you should be in really good 10K shape—and if you’re in ripping 10K shape, you should be able to run a pretty solid half-marathon. There’s a lot of overlap in the type of work required for success in both, specifically when it comes to longer intervals and tempo runs. This workout, which is designed to be repeated a few times over the course of a training block, combines these two essential training elements and can be manipulated any number of ways depending on what you want to get out of it. Here are the details.

The bottom line.

“If you’re not enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it.”

— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (n.b. Lamott has been one of the most quoted people in this newsletter over the years. See also: Issue 172, Issue 284, Issue 429.)

That’s it for Issue 510. 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