the morning shakeout | issue 532
A speck of hope, Kílian Jornet's masochistic tendencies, an ode to American possibility, and a lot more.
Good morning! Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day here in the U.S. and taking 15 minutes to listen to his “I Have a Dream” speech felt like an appropriate use of my time. It’s a powerful and layered sermon, its most memorable passages oft-quoted and appropriately celebrated. But as I was following along with the transcript while listening, it was a less familiar line that stuck with me most.
“With this faith,” he declared, “we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. As I’m apt to do, I became fixated on this particular string of words. It felt especially relevant as I replayed the line over and over and over again. There have been a million muddled thoughts swirling around in my head these past several months and many of them are not great, if I’m being totally honest. These are dark times we are living through right now. And darkness, by its very nature, is scary. When you’re stuck in the dark it’s easy to feel helpless if not desperate because you can’t see a way out. And yet, just as Dr. King says we’ll be able to chip a stone of hope out of the mountain of despair, we have to believe that we’ll find a way out of the darkness.
I found myself quietly reworking Dr. King’s words a bit and here’s where I landed: Out of the depths of darkness, a speck of hope. Not overhead lighting or even an LED flashlight, but just enough brightness to inspire the belief that there’s still a way forward, even if you can’t see what’s in front of you.
So where am I going with all this? I’m not totally sure, but I believe it’s on each of us to be a speck of hope for one another in these dark times. Check in with your people. Watch out for your neighbors. Rally around your community. Volunteer your time. Use your voice. Practice kindness. Show up where and when you can. Make someone laugh or smile. Provide encouragement. Hope doesn’t have to illuminate the whole room. It just needs to provide enough light to keep us going in the right direction.
Quick Splits
— This interview Kílian Jornet recently sat down for with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times is phenomenal. Jornet, who I spoke with for Episode 129 of the podcast back in 2020, is one of the most unique and fascinating human beings on the planet and that really came across in this conversation. He’s the epitome of someone who does things his way, has zero desire to follow convention, and is able to find intense pleasure in his pursuits. When I spoke with him a little over five years ago we dissected his propensity toward self-destruction and pushing the boundaries of pain and suffering, a topic which Gacia Navarro followed up on in this interview when she asked him about his “masochistic tendencies.” In my favorite line of their exchange, which I think says a lot about how the man is wired, Jornet tells her: “My dream was an uphill that never ended.”
— My right-hand man Chris Douglas, who some of you may recognize as my co-host from the introduction to the podcast, is one of my best friends, biggest cheerleaders, and most trusted sounding boards. He spends a majority of his working time coaching knowledge workers, executives, attorneys, students, entrepreneurs, and athletes on their performance and well-being. Last week he launched his bi-weekly newsletter called Rhetorical Exercise and the first installment on what pudding can teach us about human connection is off to a good start. “We’re luckily on the other side of a global pandemic but we’re still stuck in patterns of behavior that keep us just as disconnected in the service of productivity,” he writes. “We’re not social distancing at home anymore out of fear for our health. Instead, we are distancing ourselves from human connection through our self-inflected patterns around busyness….We know it’s essential and worth finding the moments to foster it in our busy lives and yet we can’t seem to get out of our own heads.”
— As a kid growing up in Massachusetts, one of my favorite sources of excitement was waking up on a winter morning, turning on the TV, and waiting to see if the local news anchor said “Worcester” while rattling off the names of cities and towns where school would be canceled that day due to a snowstorm. So, you can imagine my giddiness last week when Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Jimmy Fallon rattled off every town and city in Massachusetts for this segment of The Tonight Show. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. Even my Missouri-born-and-raised wife got a kick out of it. (And while the non-native Fallon can be forgiven for some of his mispronunciations, Affleck butchering “Haverhill” is inexcusable. Also, Damon’s transition from Manchester-by-the-Sea to Mansfield is *chef’s kiss*.)
— This is a good profile on Olympic Marathon bronze medalist Molly Seidel, who’s turning her attention to ultrarunning for the foreseeable future. The 31-year-old, who won the Bandera 50K outright a little over a week ago while shattering the women’s course record, will line up for the uber-competitive Black Canyon 100K a few weeks from now. She told Eszter Horanyi of iRunFar that she’s having a lot of fun on the trails and “even if I don’t prove to be all that successful on trail, I think I just get to honor the fact that I do love getting to do this and I genuinely love the training.” I was very happy to read that, and I have no doubt that her sentiments are sincere, but for those who haven’t followed her career for all that long, it’s worth noting that this woman is a competitor with few contemporaries. Seidel was a national cross-country champion in high school, a four-time NCAA champion at Notre Dame, and quickly rose through the professional ranks to become one of the best marathoners in the world. The learning curve in ultrarunning can sometimes be a steep one, but I would not be surprised to see her eventually rolling over it with everyone else in the rearview.
— Here’s Bruce Springsteen this past Saturday in his home state of New Jersey, joined by special guest Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls, performing “The Promised Land,” which he calls an ode to American possibility. “The Boss” released this song in 1978, but its message to remain resilient while pushing forward in the face of uncertainty feels just as relevant nearly 50 years later. “Well there’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor,” he sings. “I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm.”
— From the archives (Issue 480, 1 year ago this week): There’s a quote from French writer André Gide that I love in which he says, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” I thought of it while reading this recent Outside column by Alex Hutchinson about new data from this study in Sports Medicine that shows faster marathoners run more than slower ones with the main difference being the amount of easy running they do (since the volume of “threshold” or “hard” running was virtually identical). The study analyzed 16 weeks of training data from 120,000 runners who logged their workouts on Strava in the lead-up to a marathon. The main takeaway? If you’re trying to go faster in the marathon by running harder and harder workouts, dial back the intensity a bit and instead try to run a little more. To quote the great Frank Shorter from Michael Sandrock’s Running With The Legends, “I’ve always had a simple view of training for distance running: two hard interval sessions a week and one long run—20 miles or two hours, whichever comes first. Every other run is aerobic, and you do as much of that for volume as you can handle. Do this for two or three years, and you’ll get good.” (Also from Shorter, when you’re running with other people, “You go as slow as the slowest person you’re running with. If someone doesn’t like that, they should find another group.”)
I’ve been putting a lot of miles on the new 1080v15 from New Balance over the past month or so and I’m stoked to share that they’re now available at your favorite running specialty store or on newbalance.com! This shoe has been the workhorse in my stable for a decade now and the latest version, which features a new midsole called Infinion, has proven up to the task of handling a bulk of my weekly miles. It fits similarly to previous models, feels incredible underfoot, and rides just as smoothly at 300 miles as it did at three. At this stage of my running life I value responsive cushioning in a lightweight package and the 1080v15 more than delivers on that promise. The new 1080v15 is now 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 4 x 4
Seeing a handful of mid-range repeats at a hard effort on the training schedule is the type of workout that will keep some runners up at night—and for good reason! The hard truth is these types of sessions really sting and you can’t fake your way through ’em. (n.b. This was me in college when we had repeat Ks or 1200s on tap!) If you’re doing them right, they’ll set your legs and lungs on fire, make you breathe rather erratically, and leave you bent over with your hands on your knees when you’re finished. (If this sounds terrible, the good news is you don’t have to do this type of workout more than once a week, or even every other week, to reap the benefits.) The 4 x 4 is a simple and straightforward workout that will launch your fitness to a new level, but you will have to earn it. Here are the details.
The bottom line.
“He who is everywhere is nowhere.”
— Seneca with advice I remind myself of often, especially when I’m feeling spread thin.
That’s it for Issue 532. Please forward this email along, pass the web link around, or reply to me directly at your own risk.
Thanks for reading,
Mario
Thanks for this beautiful reminder. "Hope doesn’t have to illuminate the whole room. It just needs to provide enough light to keep us going in the right direction."
Out of the darkness, a ray of hope. Ah, much better.