the morning shakeout | issue 538
Commit and concentrate, Jeff Galloway's lasting legacy, managing our aspirations, and a lot more.
Good morning! If this newsletter were an actual run, there’d be no time for pre-shakeout pleasantries this week. Let’s get right to it.
Quick Splits
— Twenty-four years ago today, Jolana Čeplak set the 800m indoor world record, running 1:55.82 at the European Championships in Vienna. On that same day, Keely Hodgkinson was born in England. Well, a couple weeks ago in Liévin, France, Hodgkinson shattered Čeplak’s mark, running 1:54.87, a full-circle moment if there ever was one. This short behind-the-scenes documentary on Hodgkinson’s recent world-record run is really well done. It provides an intimate look into the significance of her attempt as well as the mindset required to do something that’s never been done before. Of course, it’s produced and edited, so who knows what was left on the cutting room floor, but it’s hard not to appreciate how clear-eyed and locked in she is before the race. Hodgkinson had no contingency plan. “There’s no option of failure here,” she declares. “I want to run an outright PB—but I need to commit, not be scared of the pain or the pace, and just concentrate.”
— Jeff Galloway, best known for popularizing the run-walk-run method of training, passed away last week at the age of 80 following complications from a stroke. I’ve seen a few articles making the rounds but this one from his Wesleyan College teammate Amby Burfoot paints the best picture of the impact he’s had on the running world over the past 50 or so years. “Jeff was like this powerful southern preacher of running,” said Bill Rodgers, who was also a teammate of Galloway’s at Wesleyan. “I can’t think of another Olympic runner who downshifted the way Jeff did so he could reach so many average people.” Galloway, who ran the 10,000 for the U.S. at the ’72 Games in Munich, was one of the running industry’s earliest movers and shakers. He directed races, owned and operated a franchise of running stores, hosted running retreats, and, most impactfully, knocked down the barrier to entry for many recreational runners with his run-walk-run method (more commonly known as Gallo-walking, or Jeffing). His influence on the sport and industry is virtually unmatched, but the belief he instilled in ordinary people who didn’t think “runner” would ever be a part of their identity will forever remain his legacy. “I have always supported midpack runners, as Jeff did, but truth to tell I hadn’t met a lot at the back of the midpack. In Honolulu, I did,” Burfoot wrote. “That evening…I went to a celebration party of Galloway runners who had traveled to Honolulu even when Jeff couldn’t. Many had finished in 7 hours, give or take 30 minutes. I expected to hear tales of misery. That isn’t what I found. Almost all seemed pleased and excited with their day’s efforts. I was particularly struck by one woman in her 70s who had run the entire marathon with a Holter monitor due to her recent heart problems. The monitor didn’t survive the wind and rain. The runner did. She just kept plugging along even after she realized her heart-protection device had shorted out. Jeff had that kind of effect on people. He made them believers.”
— While we’re on the topic of well-known Wesleyan running alumni, Sebastian Junger—whose podcast episode from nearly a year ago is one of the most popular I’ve ever released—recently started a newsletter called TRIBE and it’s a must-read. I became a paid supporter right away. Junger doesn’t write about running (or at least hasn’t yet), but his posts on how human touch helps us survive and how our society slowly but steadily gave up on the idea of being human are great places to start. Sharp, thoughtful, and deeply human, his writing reflects a career spent studying what holds us together and what tears us apart. “The costs of mass addiction are well-known and will lead to one final abandonment: That of the Self by the Self,” he writes in his most recent post. “Without silence, we can’t appreciate sound. Without solitude we can’t appreciate others. Without a clear and uncluttered relationship with our mind, we can’t possibly understand who we are and what we’re doing here. There is a saying in trauma therapy: What you do to me, I do to me. Indeed. But then there’s this: Several years ago, I asked my youngest daughter if she knew what the word love meant. ‘Love means, Stay here,’ she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. And I thought, ‘If a three-year-old knows that, everyone does. If a three-year-old knows that, there will never not be hope.’”
— Let me know if this sounds familiar: You hit the marathon PR you’ve been targeting for three years and the next day you’re already scheming how and when you can try to go faster. You have a breakthrough workout and after scrolling your Strava feed for five minutes are convinced it wasn’t fast enough. You get complimented on your work and by the end of the day you’re worried the next project won’t be as good. My friend Ed Batista wrote this piece nearly a decade ago, and its central idea, which is something one of his former executive coaching clients told him, is a problem that has stood the test of time: trying to be “good enough” by “getting better” just doesn’t work. The reasons for this, he writes, are threefold: Hedonic Adaptation, Goal Pursuit, and Social Comparison. This is what causes the goal posts to always be 10 yards down the field, whether it’s running, work, or some other area of your life. So what do we do to combat this urge to get better when we don’t feel like we’re good enough? Ed outlines three steps: 1. Cultivate gratitude; 2. Set goals wisely; 3. Live our values. It’s not that we shouldn’t strive to improve, but it’s important that we manage our aspirations or risk feeling perpetually unfulfilled. “The problem in this context is that we generally view ‘getting better’ as ‘not there yet,’” he writes, “so we fixate on the goal and our distance from it, rather than on the process and the most recent step we’ve taken.”
— X Ambassadors frontman Sam Harris’s acoustic cover of The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” is arrestingly beautiful. The original version has an uptempo energy to it that Harris manages to skillfully strip away, slowing the song down to a contemplative crawl. I swear you can hear every pluck of the guitar between each word that comes out of his mouth. Dare I say it’s even better than the original.
— From the archives (Issue 486, 1 year ago this week): Bestselling author James Clear has a goldmine of articles on his website about self-improvement, developing better habits, decision making, motivation, and other related topics. One of my favorites is also one of his personal: what he learned from squatting 400 pounds, which, at the time he wrote it, was the most he’d ever done. What I love about the piece is that if you substitute “running a personal best” for “squatting 400 pounds” all ten of his lessons would still hold true. Sure, while the X’s and O’s of running fast and lifting heavy aren’t exactly the same, the fundamentals that form the foundation for getting better at just about anything are, whether it’s running, writing, music, or some other pursuit that’s meaningful to you. Case in point: “2. Don’t miss workouts. Here’s the recipe for squatting 400 pounds: Squat two or three times per week. Increase by about 5 pounds every week or two. Don’t miss a workout for two years. I would wager to say that most young, healthy men could squat double bodyweight if they followed that simple program. That said, the exact numbers aren’t the point. The point is that it doesn’t matter what program you do, how smart you think you are, or what genes you were or weren’t born with. Unless you fall in love with boredom and do the work consistently, everything else is irrelevant.” This made me think of something I’ve shared here before from world 1500m champion and multiple Olympic medalist Josh Kerr, who was asked the secret to his success the past few years. “I don’t do crazy workouts or crazy mileage,” he told Athletics Weekly. “I just don’t miss days.”
I’ve been running in the Ellipse v1 for a little over a week now and it’s already secured a spot in my regular shoe rotation. This sweet new ride is built on a Fresh Foam X midsole and it’s super smooth underfoot. It’s solidly built, fits true to size, feels refreshingly familiar, and is aesthetically slick. My only worry is that my tried-and-true 1080s might get a little jealous that I like them so much! The new Ellipse v1 will available on March 5 at your favorite running speciality retail store and on newbalance.com (men’s sizes here, women’s sizes here).
Do you live in Los Angeles or will you be there this weekend? Join me and the Hermosa Run Club this Saturday, March 7, at the New Balance pop-up, 1220 Abbot Kinney Blvd., in Venice, at 9:30 AM for a community shakeout and post-run reflection session. I’ll also lead a short pre-run clinic on running by feel, there will be shoes to demo, and plenty of post-run refreshments. Register here and lose track of time with us!
Workout of the Week: Mile Simulation 600s
The mile, or its metric equivalent, the 1500m, like many races, tends to unfold in one of three ways: Sometimes it’s fast from the gun; other times it goes out kind of slow and finishes at breakneck speed. More often than not, though, it starts pretty quick, settles into a steady rhythm for a good chunk of the race, and finishes in a final flurry.
This workout is designed to mimic the latter scenario, breaking 600m reps into three distinct pieces so that you can practice the specific physical and mental demands of such a situation. With generous recovery and a focus on controlled execution, this session is ideal for sharpening race-readiness in the final weeks before competition—but only after a solid foundation of fitness is already in place. Here are the details.
The bottom line.
“Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Half effort does not produce half results. It produces no results. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way to accomplish results that last.”
— Hamilton Holt, American educator, with the only life hack you’ll ever need.
That’s it for Issue 538. If you enjoyed it, 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
That x ambassadors cover is so good!
Love to hear your pre-race clinic on running by feel.