the morning shakeout | issue 521

Not negotiating with the mind monkeys, the endless parallels between running and writing, avoiding the trap of success, and a lot more.

Where’s Waldo, I mean Mario?

Good morning! While most of the running world seemed to be in (or at least keeping an eye on) New York City this past weekend, a few hundred aging weirdos, yours truly included, descended upon San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Saturday for the U.S. Masters 5K Cross Country Championships.

I’d been eyeing this one for a while, partly because it was in my backyard but mostly because the last two times I’d raced a national meet I shit the bed and felt like I’d let both my team and myself down. The race plan for this one was simple: do not negotiate with the mind monkeys. I knew I wasn’t going to be in the hunt for the win, but I thought I could score for my team and crack the top ten if I ran smart and stayed in the fight.

The race went out hot and a few packs quickly formed. My West Valley Track Club teammate Malcolm Richards was off the front with Neil McDonagh and Nicholas Kipruto, both in town from Colorado, in tow. Behind them was another group, mostly my own teammates and one or two other guys I didn’t recognize. I settled into the third pack, and we barreled downhill toward the mile mark in a tight bunch. The beauty of cross country is that it’s pure racing: place over pace. Finish times and splits are relatively useless, if not entirely meaningless. We passed the mile mark in a blur, and even without a watch to reference I knew we were hauling ass. (I later learned it was a few ticks over 5 minutes, so better that I didn’t know!)

As we made our way across the meadow, I felt the urge to ease off the throttle a bit, so I countered it by moving to the front of our pack and taking a pull. I led up the woodchip hill to the gravel track before my WVTC teammates Tom Haxton, Konrad Knutsen, and Jamey Gifford scooted past me and put the pedal to the dirt. There was no let-up. We came around the gravel track in a tight group and approached the hill at the end of the first loop, no one willing to give an inch. My breathing was ragged by this point and I just kept repeating “hang in, hang in” to myself as the elastic began to stretch.

Three of my teammates pulled away ever so slightly as we entered the final mile, and I was fighting like hell to not let them go. The course flattened out and then climbed again before rolling gradually downhill to the finish. I ran side-by-side with Jamey across the grass field, but the gap to the group ahead of us continued to expand. With about 1K to go, Jaime Heilpern of the Hoka Aggies went past us and I tried to respond, but no dice. I pulled away from Jamey and kept charging up the hill, hoping I might reel in a guy or two. (Spoiler: I did not.)

After cresting the final hill I spotted my teammate Bryce Lighthall about 50 to 60 yards ahead of me. We had maybe a quarter mile or so to go. I was riding the red line at this point and knew I had a few guys hot on my heels. It was a tense situation. As we came onto the grass with 100 or so yards to go, I pumped my arms as hard as I could, like I was trying to escape a pool of quicksand. Every stride felt like a struggle, my legs screaming at me to put an end to this stupidity. Bryce was getting a little closer with every stride, but never close enough. He held me off by two seconds to round out the top ten.

Upon crossing the line I gave Bryce a slap on the ass and bumped fists with everyone around me. I had no idea what place I finished in or where I ended up on the team, but it didn’t matter one bit. It felt good to stand my ground, race hard the entire way, contribute to the team’s cause, and finally get those damn monkeys off my back.

Quick Splits

— This episode of the How I Write podcast with award-winning non-fiction writer Susan Orlean about her process was a fantastic listen. About an hour into the conversation with host David Perell she talks about setting writing goals and analogizes her experience to when she was training for the New York City Marathon. As I’ve written here many a time before, the parallels between writing and running are endless: set reasonable goals, show up and work toward them every day, be patient and methodical in your approach, embrace the grind, keep going when you want to quit, and eventually you’ll get where you want to go. “It’s interesting how if you say to yourself, ‘I’m going to write a thousand words a day,’ that you may actually find that you’re writing a thousand words a day,” she explains. “It’s mind over matter. And I talk about running the marathon in the book because I think it’s not an accident. They are very similar. You can’t really look at the finish line or you’ll get freaked out…but at the same time, I know the pace that I can run comfortably and if I do that for a mile, and then I do that for the next mile, and I do it for the next mile, lo and behold I’m going to be at the end.”

— The New York City Marathon was this past Sunday and there’s a lot that makes the event so special, but from a competitive standpoint, it’s the head-to-head racing that helps it stand out above most of the other Majors. This year’s elite finishes were no exception. Both the men’s and women’s fields were stacked and the top athletes put on a hell of a show. Here’s the final 20 seconds of the men’s race, the closest finish in NYCM history, as Benson Kipruto and Alexander Mutiso took it all the way to the tape. In the women’s race, Hellen Obiri pulled away from Sharon Lokedi in the final mile to shatter the course-record, running 2:19:51. This is what makes the sport so interesting and exciting in the first place! Why so many people seem to get more hyped to watch someone race a clock will always be beyond me.

— A year ago this week I linked to a Lee Glandorf post for the first time and now it’s an annual thing, apparently. I nodded my head continuosly while reading her latest entry in The Sweat Lookbook, “Running Isn’t Cool,” which captures a lot of my own feelings about the current state of my favorite sport/pastime/pursuit. “It’s no secret I have mixed feelings about running’s hypey renaissance,” she writes. “One could argue I have played a small part in speeding it along. I certainly benefit from it, both professionally and personally, in the form of free gear that brands have decided I am worthy of receiving. Ultimately, my discomfort with today’s running discourse is rooted in a belief that running doesn’t need to be cool to be worth doing or worth celebrating.”

— Mike Smith, the former cross-country and track coach at Northern Arizona University who now leads a Nike-sponsored professional group based in Flagstaff, dropped a few golden nuggets on this recent episode of The Running Effect podcast. It’s a great listen for any coach, particularly if you’re leading a school team or a club where creating a strong sense of culture and camaraderie is important. Smith also talks at length about defining what success looks like and the importance of “living in the process” for outcome-oriented people. “What you want them to look back on when they wake up and they’re 40 is to be just really proud of the kid that tried to get there, right?” he says. “Like that’s what it is. It’s not really what your 5K PR [is]. ‘It was worth it if I ran 15:30, and it’s not worth it if I ran 16 minutes.’ That’s a crazy way to live to me. I think to look back and be really proud of the person that was brave enough to go for it is the whole point. So whether you are running in college or you’re running as a pro, what you want to be is really proud of the young man or young woman that gets out of bed every morning and tries to be that. That to me is the whole point.”

— If you keep reading to the end of this week’s issue, you’ll come across a quote from Julia Cameron about how the quality of our lives isn’t defined by achievement, but by our capacity to pay attention and experience wonder, gratitude, and joy in the everyday. It pairs nicely with this recent post from my friends Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness about avoiding the trap of success and remembering that true fulfillment comes from “losing yourself in meaningful pursuits, expressing your innate gifts and creativity, and walking the path with good people.”

— From the archives (Issue 469, 1 year ago this week): I’d never heard the term “happy workaholic” until reading it for the first time last week in my friend Ed Batista’s newsletter, but I found myself identifying with it right away. Here’s a short post Ed wrote about how we happy workaholics need boundaries, not balance, which, through trial and a lot of error over the years, I’ve found to be true for me. What I liked about Ed’s post is how he outlined the different types of boundaries that are important to consider—namely, temporal, physical, and cognitive—so that you don’t let time, your environment, or your own busy brain overwhelm you and put you on a path to burnout. “The concept of life/work balance isn’t that helpful for us, because there’s always more work to do, we’re eager to do it, and we wouldn’t have it any other way,” he writes. “In some cases, particularly in junior roles early in our careers, this tendency can be exploited by a dysfunctional culture or an uncaring manager, and at those times we need to protect ourselves to avoid burnout. But as we advance professionally we’re less subject to those external forces, and we need to protect ourselves primarily from our own internal drive.”

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My partners at Tracksmith recently launched their annual Fall Collection and it’s pretty sweet! I got a pair of the new Harrier Shorts, which feature a unique Merino blend, and they’re perfect for these fall days when it’s not quite cold enough for tights yet. These semi-splits feature a longer inseam and provide a little more coverage without restricting your range of motion. Plus, they don’t smell when you sweat in them! If you want to check out anything from the Fall Collection (or buy anything on Tracksmith.com for that matter) between now and the end of 2025, use the code “MARIO15” for $15 off an order of $75 or more. (Note: The code is good for one use between now and the end of the year.)

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Workout of the Week: Deek’s Quarters

I first read about this workout, made popular by former Boston winner and marathon world champion Rob De Castella of Australia, in Michael Sandrock’s Running With The Legends (one of my favorite running books of all-time, for what it’s worth) when I was in high school. I first wrote about it for Competitor, now OutsideRun, several years ago. The session’s construction is simple: 8 x 400m with a scant 200-meter float for “recovery” between repetitions. It’s efficient and effective but it ain’t easy! Here are the details.

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The bottom line. 

“My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way. I recently reread Cameron’s book and this paragraph has stuck with me. It’s a good reminder that joy isn’t found in achievement, it’s in noticing what’s happening around you. I thought of this on Saturday at the cross-country meet. The results ended up being pretty good, sure, but what put a big smile on my face was just being there with my teammates, seeing a bunch of old guys still doing the damn thing, cracking jokes with each other on the start line, encouraging one another during tough mid-race moments, and bumping fists afterward out of mutual respect and appreciation for what we’d just gone through together.

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That’s it for Issue 521. Please forward this email to a likeminded friend or two, share the web link amongst your social circles, and/or reply to me directly at your own risk.

Thanks for reading,

Mario