the morning shakeout | issue 528
Some thoughts on effort, the importance of unplugging from our devices, a reflection on grief and gratitude, and a lot more.
Good morning! As I’ve done the past few years, I’m taking some downtime the next couple weeks to rest and recharge before ramping things back up in 2026. Consider it my holiday off-season, if you will. What follows below is one noteworthy post per month from January through June. I’ll share highlights from July through December next week, and we’ll return to fresh programming the first week of January.
OK, let’s get right to it.
Quick Splits
January, from Issue 479: I’ll preface what I’m about to write by saying that I read this recent essay by psychologist and professor Adam Grant through my coaching lens. In it he writes about effort and how, “No, you don’t get an A for effort.” (In fact, that’s the title of the piece.) His main argument is that grades, or outcomes of any sort, really, should reflect the quality of someone’s work, preparation, and mastery of the pursuit, not just the quantity of effort they put into it. In general, I don’t disagree. Effort is important, and should be both encouraged and recognized, but it alone can’t be the arbiter of success or failure. “Teachers and parents owe kids a more balanced message,’ he writes. “There’s a reason we award Olympic medals to the athletes who swim the fastest, not the ones who train the hardest. What counts is not sheer effort but the progress and performance that result.” I’d argue that if you lumped coaches and bosses in with teachers and parents in the above statement, and just owe the overall message to people in general instead of only kids, it would still hold true. It’s not just about putting in the most work, it’s what that work yields, and how your approach translates to the results you desire, which is ultimately what defines success in any context. Effort without direction or strategy can lead to burnout or wasted potential, while focused effort—guided by skill, intention, and adaptability—can produce better outcomes and more meaningful progress in general. Case in point: As a coach, it’s not uncommon to hear an athlete bemoan the fact that they didn’t win the race/hit the time/achieve the goal, as if they’re owed the result because they “put in the work.” And oftentimes in those cases the athlete will compare themselves to someone who did the thing but “didn’t want it as bad, didn’t put in as many miles, etc.” And while I understand the feeling (hey, I’ve been there myself as an athlete!), more often than not—bad luck or circumstances beyond one’s control notwithstanding—the result was commensurate with the quality, not the quantity, of the effort that went into it. Garbage in more often than not equals garbage out. If you want to consistently produce high-quality output, you first need to focus on making sure you’re getting consistently solid input. (And even then you’ll probably need to go back to the drawing board, tweak some things for the next attempt, or maybe even go in a totally different direction.)
February, from Issue 485: My former colleague and current New York City Marathon race director Ted Metellus has a saying that I think of all the time: You can’t teach care. A few years ago on the podcast he explained what he meant by that when he told me, “I can teach you how to set a course. I can teach you how to build a tent. I can teach you how to put up a structure. What I cannot teach you is if you walk past a piece of trash on the ground, you pick it up and throw it away. Or to snip the end of a zip-tie. Or slow down enough to chat with some of the participants or volunteers. That is the care. I can teach you a lot but I can’t teach you to care. And that’s the big divider between just doing your job—or JE, ‘just enough’—and that little bit more.” I recently thought about Ted’s saying while reading this rant by a guy named Grant Slatton that, while a little all over the place, is unfortunately, mostly on the money. “The world is full of stuff that could be excellent with just 1% more effort,” he writes. “But people don’t care.” I’m generally a pretty levelheaded person but as my wife or any of my running buddies will tell you, I will often get very grumpy when I’m out and about in the world and come across a lack of care, e.g., trash dropped on the ground, people not picking up after their dogs, drivers rolling through stop signs while pedestrians are in the crosswalk, weights being left on the rack at the gym, and various other acts of carelessness that also double as a lack of common courtesy toward others who are using the same space. Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this, and I’m only getting more and more fired up as I write, so I’ll stop myself here by encouraging/pleading with everyone to care about something just a little bit more today. Commit to putting in an extra one percent of effort. It will make you feel good about yourself and everyone else will be better off too.
March, from Issue 490: Episode 243 of the podcast is a nearly 90-minute conversation with Sebastian Junger, best known as the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, Fire, A Death in Belmont, War, Tribe, Freedom, and In My Time of Dying. He’s also an award-winning journalist, Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker, and just generally a pretty fascinating dude. What most people don’t know about Sebastian is that he was a hell of a distance runner back in his day, with personal bests ranging from 3:55 in the 1500 meters to 2:21 in the marathon. While I was in New York recently to support athletes at a race, I had the opportunity to sit down with Sebastian to talk about running, something that is still a huge part of his identity and has had a profound impact on how he sees and moves through the world. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about his background in the sport and how his relationship to running has evolved over the years. Sebastian told me about the lessons running has taught him, particularly the importance of not negotiating with yourself when things get hard and you want to quit. We also discussed the parallels between competitive running and being in combat — “There’s nothing like fear and exhaustion to wipe out your ego,” he explained — his journey to becoming a journalist and eventually an author, his writing process, the race he’s spent his entire life training for, and much more. This was a special one, chock full of stories and wisdom, and I couldn’t be more excited to share it. Please give it a listen wherever you get your podcasts or at this handy link. (And be sure to read the intro to Issue 490 of the newsletter to learn the entire backstory of how this conversation came to be.)
April, from Issue 491: A common issue that comes up in my coaching practice is getting athletes to detach from their devices prior to training and competition. Much of this has to do with trying to eliminate distraction, i.e. their minds are somewhere else when they should be focusing on the upcoming task at hand, but sometimes it has to do with managing stress and cognitive fatigue that results from essentially being overstimulated all the time. In his latest column for Outside, Alex Hutchinson analyzes a recent study that “demonstrated that using social media on smartphones immediately before training sessions caused mental fatigue and impaired AE in young volleyball athletes.” Now, you could take the adjectives “young volleyball” out of the previous statement and it would still hold true. Hutchinson looks back at some past studies linking social media use to well-being and performance, and while you can nitpick how much usage is too much, acute effects versus chronic ones, or if social media usage affects power and endurance outputs differently, I think all of that misses the forest for the trees: it is inarguable in 2025 that smartphone—and more specifically, social media—usage has a net negative effect on performance and performance outcomes. I’ve observed this firsthand with my own athletes over the past 10 or so years and, because I am by no means holier than thou, I’ve experienced this myself more times than I care to admit as well. Smartphones and many of the apps that are on them are designed to be addicting and intoxicating, and all that “mindless” scrolling drains the brain in ways that very few things can. So what are we to do about it? I advise staying off your phones/social media for at least the 30 minutes before your run, workout, or race (or even longer if you can get away with it). And, in the week or two (or more!) before a big race, limit or eliminate your social media usage. Remove the apps from your phone. It will feel weird and uncomfortable at first but with enough time it will reduce stress and cognitive load in general, allowing you to adequately restock those reserves before taking the start line.
May, from Issue 496: 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.
June, from Issue 502: There’s a special kind of magic that happens when a musician sits behind NPR’s Tiny Desk and this recent Wiz Khalifa concert is no exception. A reimagination of some tracks from Kush & Orange Juice, which came out 15 years ago(!), this 20-minute set is kind of mesmerizing and meant to be listened to straight through. In fact, he doesn’t acknowledge or address the gathered crowd until the very end. As he’s singing the last lyric (“It’s like that, Jack.”), you can see him start to choke up just a little bit. Then he takes a deep breath, says “G*d damn” under his breath, and the tears really start to flow. He doesn’t say exactly why but he was clearly moved by/grateful for what he felt from everyone in the audience. Incredible performance, and moment.
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I’ve been having a ton of fun ripping around in the FuelCell SuperComp Elite v5 from New Balance, their carbon-plated super shoe that’s engineered specifically for racing fast on the roads. They sent me a pair earlier this year and it was love at first stride. I’ve worn them for races, track workouts, and tempo runs and it is by far the best-fitting, best-feeling super shoe I’ve ever put on my feet. There’s enough protection underfoot to hold up to longer efforts without making it feel you’re running with a marshmallow on your feet, and a punch of pop that I appreciate when I’m running fast. In short: It’s versatile! The FuelCell SuperComp v5 is available at your favorite running speciality retail store and on newbalance.com (men’s sizes here, women’s sizes here).
Workout of the Week: The Broken Tempo Run
Tempo runs are a staple workout for many runners and with good reason: they’re very effective at improving fitness, focus, discipline, and grit. They also tend to cause some of the most confusion. In general, a tempo run is defined as maintaining a steady effort for a prolonged period of time. So how far and how fast should your tempo runs be? It depends on who you ask. For ease of creating a common understanding here, we’re going to say your tempo runs should be 15-45 minutes worth of work at your half-marathon pace, i.e. a “comfortably hard” effort. Tempo runs tend to intimidate a lot of runners because of their stop-free nature, e.g. 3-8 miles at half-marathon pace is a popular prescription and anything but an easy assignment during a heavy training week. The Broken Tempo Run, which simply breaks a traditional tempo run into smaller chunks—serves as a nice alternative, especially early in a training block when you’re just not that fit. I also find it to be a good option for runners, newbies and veterans alike, who have a hard time wrapping their heads around long workouts—taking a 30-60 second break every 5-15 minutes is usually enough time to mentally regroup without affecting the intention of the session. Here are the details.
The bottom line.
“Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood.”
— Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek philosopher and writer, in “the bottom line” from Issue 497. (I take this to mean that we should be careful with what we desire—even, and especially when, it’s good for us. If we don’t develop good self-awareness or practice restraint, and I believe this holds true whether it’s training, work, or virtually any other aspect of life, even the sweetest things can “drown” us before we realize it.)
That’s it for Issue 528. If you enjoyed it, please forward this email to a few friends and encourage them to subscribe at this link so that it lands in their inbox next Tuesday.
Thanks for reading,
Mario
Enjoy the holiday season and hope you have a healthy and happy 2026.
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukah, and a happy new year Mario! Hope you have a great holiday season. Thanks for all. you do for the running community. Much appreciated!