the morning shakeout | issue 525

Interrogating running culture, winning at all costs in the NCAA, learning how to dance with fatigue, and a lot more.

“That tree looks like it’s been through some shit,” I remarked to my friend Ed while hiking past this weathered but resilient eucalyptus on Sunday. (Shot on my iPhone.)

Good morning! Every few weeks I get a note from a well-meaning reader along the lines of, “I can’t believe you didn’t write about…” It’s a sentiment that always gives me pause. On one hand, the people pleaser in me wants to apologize for not meeting their expectations. On the other, I’m reminded that whenever I’ve found myself caught in that trap, I end up losing sight of what makes this project fun for me in the first place: writing about the things that genuinely interest me.

I was thinking about this recently while reading the latest installment of Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter on the importance of following your own curiosity, which really hit home. Over the past 10 years of writing the shakeout, the only times I’ve lost enthusiasm for it or felt burnt out have been when I tried to write about what I thought other people wanted to read, rather than what I found interesting, intriguing, inspiring, or entertaining. “For one thing, if I’m not exploring my true interests, I’m not sure why I’m doing any of this in the first place,” Burkeman writes. “But also because, time after time, this is the approach that actually seems to work. Navigating according to my own interest reliably has the effect of generating the most useful, appealing or relevant writing I’m capable of producing.”

When this newsletter is at its best, it’s because whatever I’m writing about has sparked something in me, which is, hopefully, as Burkeman puts it, “enough to evoke interest in others.” And while it’s impossible to include every little thing that catches my attention each week, what I don’t write about sometimes says a lot, too.

On that note, let’s get right to it.

Quick Splits

— This is a solid profile of Raziq Rauf, whose Running Sucks newsletter has been one of my favorite discoveries of 2025. I appreciate Raz’s weekly takes on various running-related topics, and I’m especially drawn to how he interrogates “running culture” with both curiosity and candor, a mix that has managed to strike a nerve or two across the interwebs. “Running culture cannot ‘peak,’” he told Dylan Rainforth for the aforementioned feature in Tempo Journal, “because running culture is just a way of describing how runners interact with the running world.” This line in particular resonated deeply with me. As I expressed to Like the Wind co-founder Simon Freeman in this conversation we had six months ago, “peak running” is a very individual thing that’s shaped by the interests, actions, and choices that bring us feelings of fulfillment. It’s not, as Raz explains, which brand can pull off the biggest activation on a race weekend or whether you’re first in line for so-and-so’s limited-edition apparel drop. “It’s not that brands don’t form culture,” he says. “But the resolute focus on brands, and brands only, pissed me off.” [Raz has his first book coming out next year and at some point we’re going to sit down and talk about it, so stay tuned.]

— I appreciated this recent discussion for the excellence, actually podcast in which Steve Magness, Brad Stulberg, and Clay Skipper explored the mental side of acute fatigue. I don’t think they were trying to make this episode about the marathon or endurance sports specifically, but that’s where most of the conversation was focused and there’s a ton of great information in it about how to dance with fatigue, whether you’re in the last few miles of a long race or deep in the throes of a creative project. “If you tell your brain, ‘I’m going to feel great at mile 10,’ and then it suddenly feels way harder than you expected, your perception of effort goes through the roof,” Magness explains. “Your brain goes, ‘Hey, this was supposed to be easy. It feels difficult, so I’m going to hit the panic button,’ and that messes up the calculus. Your motivational drive drops as well. A lot of this work begins with setting appropriate expectations: Here’s how I expect to feel, here’s how hard it’s going to be, and here’s what my legs, breathing, or whatever else might be doing at different points in the effort. Sometimes you set yourself up to be pleasantly surprised, but most of the time you want to be cautiously realistic—not pessimistic, just honest about the fact that it’s going to hurt at some point and you need to be ready for that.”

— Here’s a long and balanced look from Jeff Hollobaugh of Track & Field News at the increased number of non-American athletes competing in cross country at the NCAA Division I level. The short of it is that for a variety of reasons, including rule changes, NIL money, super conferences, recruiting services, and other factors, there are more international athletes than ever competing in the NCAA and impacting results in a not-insignificant way.

“At Nationals, the top 40 individuals get All-America recognition,” he writes. “In ’15, 30% of those men were foreign, and 32.5% of the women. This fall, those numbers exploded to 72.5% for men (29 of the 40) and 62.5% for women (25).”

I’m not going to argue whether this trend of more foreign athletes in the NCAA is good or bad on its own because I think that misses the forest for the trees. But what I will do is reiterate what I wrote here almost exactly a year ago: “Money is ruining sports (at all levels) and shifting priorities in the wrong direction.”

My major takeaway from this article is that since cross-country and track are non-revenue sports, coaches feel more pressure than ever to win (and win now!) in order to not lose their jobs and keep their programs alive (n.b. roster sizes are shrinking across the board and Olympic sports in general are vulnerable). As such, they’re increasingly incentivized to stack the decks with top talent rather than take a chance on developing athletes that might not make a significant impact until a few years down the road. On the athlete side of things, age and eligibility requirements are more lax than ever, there’s no shortage of opportunities to make some extra cash, and it’s easier than ever to transfer schools for almost any reason without having to sit out a season or two. And then you’ve got recruiting services exploiting this wild west of a situation and raking in shitloads of money by brokering foreign talent. The problem in the NCAA isn’t an influx of international athletes; the problem is that the system is broken and the incentives are out of alignment. When you need to win at all costs, coaches will chase short-term solutions to achieve that end, athletes will take advantage of the best opportunities available to them, and the sport inevitably becomes more transactional than developmental, which is the antithesis of what the NCAA is supposed to be about.

— In case you missed it, last week I wrote about preserving bandwidth, training as a hopeful act, and the physical consequences of psychological overload. There’s also a new episode of the podcast about when to push hard and when to pull back, a cute picture of my dog, and a few other holiday treats.

— I couldn’t tell you who won the Lions-Packers game on Thanksgiving but I’d be willing to bet the best 7-½ minutes of the broadcast was Jack White and surprise special guest Eminem sending the stadium into a tizzy during the halftime show. Hot damn, this was really good.

— From the archives (Issue 421, 2 years ago this week): Should you train by RPE or heart rate? This article by Cliff Pittman for Trailrunner is geared toward ultrarunners but most of the takeaways apply across the running/endurance sports spectrum. The title is intentionally suspenseful but the article reinforces what has already been tried and validated by coaches and athletes: “RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) RPE provides a versatile and adaptable means for individuals to self-regulate their exercise intensity, particularly when other monitoring tools, such as heart rate or power meters, may be less feasible or precise.” In short: Learning to listen to your body is an essential skill to develop as an athlete. As a coach, I think it’s important to strike a balance between subjective and objective measures when it comes to intensity. I’ll often prescribe training by RPE or an effort level (i.e. marathon effort, 5K effort, etc.) and then give 1-2 points of reference for the athlete (usually pace for my non-trail runners and/or HR) to help keep them in the right ballpark. Afterward, we’ll take into account subjective feedback as well as objective data to develop a better understanding if we achieved what we set out to do in a given session and/or how to make adjustments the next time out.

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Today is Giving Tuesday. Five percent of all Tracksmith’s sales today, and 100% of proceeds from Save Track Tees (today and every day), will go to support the Tracksmith Foundation. The Foundation’s mission is simple and straightforward: to give more people the opportunity to participate in Track & Field, especially kids in under-resourced areas who lack access to quality coaching, equipment, and/or facilities. So, if you’re in the market for some new winter gear or need to knock out some holiday shopping, please consider supporting an organization that’s actively trying to open doors for young athletes who need it most. (You can also donate directly to the Tracksmith Foundation here.)

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Workout of the Week: Hills and Twos

This is a staple early season session for a number of top high school, collegiate, and professional programs that combines a set of short, hard hill repeats with a set of short, fast intervals. It’s a great go-to when you’re building volume and/or are just starting to reintroduce some faster workouts into the mix. I’ve been doing some version of this workout since college, a top pro group has their own take on it, and a couple of Georgetown runners even named their podcast after it. Here are the details.

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The bottom line. 

“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.”

— Marie Curie, two-time Nobel Prize-winning scientist. (This quote reminds me of many a post-race conversation I’ve had with athletes I coach who are beating themselves up for what they didn’t do or accomplish, and/or already looking ahead to the next thing, without really taking the time to appreciate what they’ve achieved or how far they’ve come. Remember: It’s important to do both!)

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That’s it for Issue 525. 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