the morning shakeout | issue 536

Some words of gratitude, a reflective essay about an unremarkable hill, the case for creating desirable difficulties, and a lot more.

Feb 17, 2026

*Not the first time I’ve shared a photo of a wet track in February. This one is from last Wednesday night in San Francisco. (Shot on my iPhone.)*

Good morning! I first want to thank everyone who responded to last week’s issue. It’s going to take me some time to get back to all of you, but know that both my wife and I are incredibly grateful for your condolences and kind words about our coach and mentor, Don Swartz. Navigating loss is hard, even more so when it’s unexpected, but feeling supported helps to soften the blow a little bit. One of the things Don talked about often was not letting the highs get too high or the lows get too low, and while the latter feels like an impossible task right now, I am trying to pull myself up by bringing enthusiasm to the people and pursuits that matter most to me. It’s the best way I know to keep his spirit alive.

Next, what follows here is a reflective essay that I first shared with paid supporters a couple weeks ago. I hope you enjoy it or that it resonates in some way. Let me know what you think by replying to this email or leaving a comment below this post.

OK, let’s get right to it.

The Hill

There’s an unremarkable hill less than two miles from our house. It’s a little ways down a street that has no name. The road itself is pretty rough, a mix of uneven pavement, patches, and potholes, a thin layer of sand coating its surface. Telephone poles line it all the way up on the left, trees and the hillside provide shade along the right. Truth and meaning are found on the incline in between.

I do a lot of workouts on this hill. The ritual is always the same: drills, a few strides, tip-toe over the cattle grate in the road, as if I’m crossing a threshold into another realm. The second fence post on my right, the one with the small dirt pile in front of it, marks my starting point. It’s 200 meters or so to the third telephone pole on the left. The grade averages 6 percent or so. The first few reps, which take me roughly 38 seconds to complete, are bearable. After each one, I stop for a second or two to try and catch my breath before beginning the slow shuffle back down to the dirt pile. I repeat this process between 4 and 10 times, depending on the day. On the good days, 38 seconds gradually becomes 36, and maybe 35 or 34 if I’m really feeling it.

Finishing up the last few reps, my hands fall to my knees out of exhaustion. My heart races and my legs scream. My head is cloudy from the lack of oxygen, but with that comes momentary clarity: This is why I’m here. This is what it’s about. Life, like this hill, is up and down. It’s periods of intensity interspersed with moments of rest. Both will challenge you, but you can’t back down. You take things one rep, or day, at a time and give it what you’ve got. Control what you can control, accept what you can’t, make adjustments if necessary.

My relationship with this hill mirrors my relationship with the rest of my life. The meaning you find here is the meaning you bring to it. And the truth? Show up enough times and it will reveal itself to you.

Quick Splits

— Cole Hocker ran an American record of 3:45.94 in the mile at the ASICS Sound Invite in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on Saturday, winning the race by nearly five seconds over his training partner, Cooper Teare, and showing that yes, he can indeed push the pace from gun to tape. Here’s the race in its entirety. Record aside, the biggest thing that jumped out at me from this one was a contrast in experience: Hocker, at 24 years old, is the reigning Olympic gold medalist. He’s as savvy a racer as you’ll ever see, known for his ability to find daylight in the final straight and finish with a flurry. On Saturday, however, winning wasn’t his only objective. Hocker was in Winston-Salem to run fast, and as such, he asserted himself from the get-go, getting right behind the pacers and running unencumbered on the rail. Behind him a formidable field of athletes jockeyed for position. One of those guys was Sam Ruthe, the 16-year-old from New Zealand who turned a lot of heads with his 3:48.88 win at BU a couple weeks ago. He tried a couple times to slide past Teare and Vincent Ciattei onto the rail and got denied on both occasions. Ruthe looked a bit flustered and ended up stuck in Lane 2 for most of the first three laps. None of this mattered to Hocker, however, who was never seriously challenged and ran 27.48 and 27.34 for his last two laps to finish eight-tenths of a second off Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s indoor world record. To Ruthe’s credit, he eventually moved himself into third with two to go before fading to a 3:52.46 seventh-place finish. And while his lack of tactical experience was hard to ignore, he still ran a time that just two weeks ago would have been a massive personal best. Methinks he’ll be a fun one to watch for many years to come.

— Here’s a packed 15-minute video from author David Epstein about how creating “desirable difficulties” helps to supercharge learning in whatever form it may take. His core idea is simple but counterintuitive at first glance. “So when practice feels too smooth, mix the examples,” he explains. “Make your brain pick the right response, not just repeat the last one. And remember, difficulty isn’t a sign that you aren’t learning, but ease is. The best learning might not feel great in the short term, but your comfort isn’t the goal. Your improvement is. That’s the message of desirable difficulties.” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this approach mirrors what we do in running: when things start to feel too easy, or your performance has plateaued, it’s time to switch up the stimulus. This might mean training for a different distance, varying the terrain you run on, or introducing some other “desirable difficulty” that will help to spur new adaptations.

— This profile of American cross-country skier Jessie Diggins is a must-read, as much for the insights and examples of what makes her one of the best in the world at her craft, as for the reminder that the same drive that defines many of us as distance runners (i.e., the drive to train hard, the ability to push through pain, the refusal to back down) can also get us into serious trouble if we’re not careful. As many of us have experienced in our own ways, Diggins has had to learn how to control her ambitions, surrender to things outside of her control, and be kinder to herself in general. “Just because I’m very good at being in pain doesn’t mean I should be in pain,” she says. “In sport, with guidelines and a medical team and a defined finish line, that’s great. But in life, you can’t just push yourself through pain indefinitely. There’s a big difference between challenging your body and pushing hard because you want to and you’re excited to see what’s at the bottom of the well and at the back of the pain cave — that is different than punishing yourself.”

— You know, sometimes the algorithms are alright. YouTube served me up this cover of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” by Dwayne Gretzky last week and it put a big smile on my face. This is one of those songs that was always on the radio when I was a kid, and listening to it for the first time in a while brought back some good memories. (As did watching the video. The band’s studio reminds me of my parents’ basement, all the way down to the faux-wood paneling that’s still there.) Anyway, the Gretzky crew’s version is a dead ringer for the original—I thought it was Paul Simon at first—and they looked like they were having a lot of fun performing it.

— From the archives (Issue 119, 7 years ago this week): Lindsey Vonn on goal-setting and grit. This was a great interview and paints a pretty good picture of what gets Vonn fired up to compete. “I just kind of learned as a kid that there are no excuses,” Vonn told Adam Grant for Esquire. “You put your head down and you work. You don’t complain. Get the job done and keep working until the job is done right. I think that’s a reason why I’ve been so good at coming back from injury.”

I’ve been putting a lot of miles on the new 1080v15 from New Balance over the past couple of months 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: Fartlek

Fartlek, in its purest form, is unstructured speed work. “Speed play” (n.b. emphasis on “play” is mine) is its literal translation from Swedish. Now, I’m as guilty as anyone else who has ever called a structured interval workout done off the track a “fartlek” session, but if we’re being honest that’s not fartlek: it’s just an interval workout. A fartlek is simply a series of faster pickups with a recovery walk or jog in between. It’s technically an interval workout, yes, but the length and speed of the pickups, as well as the recovery periods in between, are not pre-planned and totally up to you in the moment. Fartlek is my favorite “no pressure” workout that allows you to get some solid work in without feeling like you need to hit a specific pace or stretch yourself further than you’re ready to go. Here are the details.

The bottom line.

“The outcome was a reflection of the process that created it.”

— John Moreland in Brad Stulberg’s new book, The Way of Excellence, talking about his most recent album, Visitor, an intimate collection of songs he recorded in his own home after months of working on it without distraction. As I wrote here in Issue 533, it’s my favorite album of the past few years, and a major reason for that is that there’s no fluff to it: the lyrics are honest, the tracks are tight (37 minutes start to finish), and the production isn’t overdone. Translating this same approach to running, how you compete usually mirrors how you showed up day after day in training: having a “good” race isn’t just a matter of checking off all the key workouts for the 12 weeks leading up to race day, but it’s a reflection of the presence, intention, and discipline you brought to each session.

That’s it for Issue 536. If you’re enjoying my weekly missive, please forward this email to a likeminded friend and encourage them to subscribe at this link so the next issue goes straight to their inbox.

Thanks for reading,

Mario