the morning shakeout | issue 539

Losing track of time, an incredible ending and an unfortunate situation, Harry Styles and Haruki Murakami talking about running and creativity, and a lot more.

This is my friend Phil Shin, who I got to spend a few hours with on Saturday in Los Angeles. Four years ago we had a conversation for my podcast that is one of the most meaningful and impactful exchanges I’ve ever had in my life. We’d never spoken before I hit record on that episode, but ended up talking for over two hours and have been tight ever since. Phil’s story is incredible, his message is inspiring, and everyone should listen to it.

Good morning! I was in L.A. for a hot minute over the weekend helping my partners from New Balance with the launch of the Ellipse v1, a new shoe I’ll tell you more about later in this issue. The marketing around it encourages runners to “lose track of time,” meaning, try to disconnect from your devices and data so that you can connect on an intimate level with yourself and the people you share your miles with. It’s a message that resonates deeply with me. As I’ve written here countless times before, we are not programmable robots. Yes, our devices can be an important tool and some of the data they supply us with can help us make better training decisions, but what makes running so appealing is that it’s an intensely human activity that can help us learn more about ourselves, our training partners, and the environments we frequent. In recent years it seems many people have lost sight of that. It’s become more about training zones and lactate levels and recovery scores and all this stuff that can be helpful when you keep it in perspective, but becomes detrimental when you let it define your experience.

Look, I am neither a luddite nor anti-data. But when I started running in the late 1990s I never wore a watch. I ran whatever loop the team was doing that day, our coach timed the workouts, and I competed against other people, not the clock. It taught me how to be present, pay attention to my environment, read the signs my body was giving me, and make adjustments when necessary. It was a lot of fun, all curiosity and exploration.

Eventually I got a Timex Ironman watch and could record time on my own. It proved to be a helpful tool. I also started writing the details of my runs and workouts in a notebook: times and splits and (estimated) mileage, yes, but also how I felt, what I noticed, who I ran with, and what I learned. The physical act of writing forced me to spend time processing the run rather than just filing it away.

Fast-forward nearly 30 years and a few things have changed but a lot has remained the same. I’ve been running with a GPS watch since 2014 but I’ve customized it so my main activity screen resembles an old-school Timex Ironman. I can only see total time and lap time when I’m running, meaning I’m not distracted by real-time pace, distance, heart rate, power, or some other measurement that messes with my head in the moment. I still get to make sense of all the data it collects afterward, but when I’m out there it’s just me and the run. I never listen to music or podcasts and will only take my phone with me if I know I want to take photos that day. At least once a week I try to run with no watch at all, bringing it back to what appealed to me about all this in the first place. And yes, I still log all of my runs in a handwritten notebook in addition to letting my data seamlessly sync to Strava. Why? Putting pen to paper is a more intimate exercise than uploading to an app. It invites deeper reflection that I can look back on, learn from, and return to when I need a reminder of why I do this and what I want to get from it.

I share all of this not to suggest my way is the right way or the only way, but because I think a lot of us have drifted further from the experience of running than we might realize. There’s a version of this pursuit where the point isn’t optimization and precision and certainty all the time. It’s about the experience and how it changes you. It’s about showing up, paying attention, staying curious, and being open to whatever might happen that day. It’s about the people you share the road, trail, and track (as well as some of your best and worst days) with. This version is still available to everyone, even with all the devices and data and optimization culture everywhere you look.

A few small adjustments can go a long way toward rediscovering—or maybe discovering for the first time—what this sport is really about. If any of this resonates, here’s where I’d start: Rearrange your watch face so it’s less distracting on the run. Or even take it a step further by ditching your device altogether at least once a week. If you typically listen to music or podcasts, try doing it less and spend more time in your own head. If you run with your phone for safety or navigation, turn off all the distracting notifications and only use the device if it’s absolutely necessary. And lastly, don’t ditch Strava, but keep a physical training log because no app is going to write your running story the way you can.

In short: Keep track of time if you must, but remember to lose yourself in the experience, not the data.

Quick Splits

— The finish of the men’s race at Sunday’s L.A. Marathon might be the closest you see this year, if not ever, as American Nathan Martin kicked like a middle-distance runner down the stretch to break the tape in 2:11:16.50, just a hundredth of a second ahead of Kenyan Michael Kamau. Kamau, who was clearly struggling in the final meters, fell across the line as a surging Martin blew through the tape. (Longtime listeners of the morning shakeout podcast may remember Martin’s appearance on the show five years ago, during which he said, “You know, when it comes down to the last little bit of the race, if I have something in me, I’m going to push hard and I’m going to try and dig as deep as I can to finish.”) It was both an incredible ending and an unfortunate situation. Kamau was led slightly off course in the 26th mile, disrupting his momentum and costing him 7-8 seconds and several thousand dollars when all was said and done. Not to take anything away from Martin at all, but I think he runs out of real estate if Kamau doesn’t get led astray. The maths ain’t mathing for him in that situation.

— I recently sat down with my good friend and frequent podcast guest Simon Freeman, the co-founder and publisher of my favorite running magazine, Like The Wind, for our first quarterly conversation of 2026, which you can listen to wherever you get the morning shakeout podcast. An excerpt of this exchange can be found in Issue #48 of LtW, which is out now. (You can buy a copy or subscribe here.) In this episode, we discuss the launch of the U.S. edition of LtW U.S., fresh starts, various cultural differences in running, and a lot more. Check it out and let us know what you think!

— If this 49-minute film on Conner Mantz’s pursuit of the American record at last fall’s Chicago Marathon doesn’t have you champing at the bit to aim high and go after some big goal in your own life then I don’t know what to tell you. Holy shit. It’s really, really good. The level of candor from everyone involved—Mantz, his wife Kylie, his coach Ed Eyestone, his parents, his training partners, and others—is not something you usually get in a feature like this. It paints a picture of how abnormally driven and competitive Mantz is, the dynamics of Eyestone’s expanding post-collegiate group, and how Mantz navigates various little bumps in the training block. “I know a lot of runners go into races with, like, ‘this is my why,’” Kylie explains. “Conner really doesn’t have that. I think he’s purely just out there [thinking], ‘I want to compete. I want to beat you. I want to be the fastest person out here.’ It’s not some deep meaning. I think it’s pretty [much] just, ‘I want to beat you and I want to run fast.’” Mantz, who ended up breaking Khalid Khannouci’s 23-year-old record with a 2:04:43 fourth-place clocking, also talks through his pre-race nerves, provides a peek into his race-day mindset, and a lot more. I loved the camera work throughout this one and being able to see the effort on Mantz’s face—as well as hear his breathing—when he’s in the depths of a hard workout. It’s the perfect companion to a spring marathon build, or whatever you might be getting ready for right now.

— I didn’t have Harry Styles and Haruki Murakami talking about running and creativity on my 2026 bingo card but the transcript of their conversation for Runner’s World was a delight to read. I love Styles’ admiration for Murakami and appreciate how clearly he articulates the way running has sharpened him in ways that spill over into other areas of his life. “The thing that I’ve found, in the rest of my life but particularly in running, is the idea of trusting myself to do exactly what I say I’m going to do,” Styles says. “To say to myself, I know that you can do something difficult, and that you can get up and train when you don’t want to train, and that you’re able to push through hard things. Having that kind of self-integrity—no one can run a marathon for you. Whereas there are a lot of people who help me make music, put the music out, put on a show and make me look good at it! But running is a conversation with myself.”

— Mike Posner is best known for his 2016 hit “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” which cracked the top-10 in 27 countries and peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. He’s been relatively quiet musically in recent years, but I’ve shared some acoustic versions of his songs in this newsletter and have quoted him in “the bottom line” three times (Issue 177, Issue 211, Issue 316). Posner’s a gifted songwriter and his lyrics are raw, thoughtful, and beautifully written. Last week he released “I Went Back To Ibiza,” which feels like an updated journal entry from the other side of the life he used to want, chronicling the shift from chasing fame and fortune to living simply and focusing on what’s important. The whole thing, all the way down to the music video, is just really well done. “But now I really wanna live my life, wow I really wanna shine my light,” he sings. “You know I just wanna give what I got to the world, and then go back home.”

— From the archives (Issue 487, 1 year ago this week): I’ve written here previously about the trap of certainty that I believe paralyzes many athletes and coaches, perhaps more so now than ever before. We live in an age of precision, optimization, and a need to know exactly what’s coming, as if we’re trying to engineer our lives toward some unscathed ideal. This, of course, spills into running and training, where athletes and coaches are more obsessed than ever with trying to make sure everything is neat and linear and predictable. Test, track, test some more, take the guesswork out of it. More often than not, this approach just ends up driving people crazy. Why? Because that’s not how training and coaching works. Heck, it’s not how life works. Yes, we need useful information so that we can make the best decisions possible in a situation. But guess what? Even if you have mounds of data and optimize your approach to the gills, it still might not work out. And that’s where good coaching and having the ability to zoom out and take a non-mechanical view of training and racing comes into play, as world-class sprint coach and previous podcast guest Stu McMillan explains in a recent issue of How We Move. He argues that we should think like a biologist, advocating that we take a flexible approach, based on a recognition that we, as human beings, are complex organisms, and not programmable robots, as I like to say. When we’re thinking about training, it can’t just be about writing the perfect workout(s) with precise paces and optimal lactate levels and heart rates and carbohydrate targets and recovery scores and so on and so forth. Yes, those are all details that may need to be considered at some point, but a few of the more important questions to ask first are: How does this session fit into the greater scheme of the week or of the season? Is the athlete’s sleep, nutrition, and mental state in a good enough place to handle what you’re throwing at them right now? If not, why, and how do you adapt? How has the athlete responded to this kind of work in the past and what adjustments might we have to make based on that information? (And the list goes on.) Taking a purely mechanical view of training will miss the forest for the trees, so to speak. As Stu writes, “if we don’t consider adaptation as a dynamic, system-wide process—then training is just a collection of exercises, not a meaningful intervention.”

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I’ve been running in the Ellipse v1 for a couple weeks 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. There’s some good giddy-up to it, too. 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 is now available at your favorite running speciality retail store and on newbalance.com (men’s sizes here, women’s sizes here).

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Workout of the Week: DIY Threshold Session

No matter what you’re training for, there’s a place in your program for a threshold run. This workout, for simplicity’s sake, can be boiled down to maintaining a steady effort (think: half-marathon pace) for a prolonged period of time, usually between 20-40 minutes. It’s effective at helping to strengthen your aerobic base, dialing in race pace if you’re training for longer distances, and improving focus and confidence in general. But it’s not easy! That’s why early in a training cycle, or if an athlete just isn’t that fit and/or motivated yet, I’ll let them “make their own” threshold run, i.e. breaking up the 20-40 minutes of work however they’d like with a short break to reset between repetitions. Here are the details.

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The bottom line. 

“You’re doing nothing when you walk, nothing but walking. But having nothing to do but walk makes it possible to recover the pure sensation of being, to rediscover the simple joy of existing, the joy that permeates the whole of childhood. So that walking, by unburdening us, prising us from the obsession with doing, puts us in touch with that childhood eternity once again. I mean that walking is so to speak child’s play. To marvel at the beauty of the day, the brightness of the sun, the grandeur of the trees, the blue of the sky: to do that takes no experience, no ability.”

— Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking, which I’ve really been enjoying since my right-hand man Chris Douglas lent me his copy a little over a week ago. Substitute run/running for walk/walking in the above excerpt (and anywhere throughout the book, really) and this all still holds true.

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That’s it for Issue 539. 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