the morning shakeout | issue 544

A short reflection about Boston, some wisdom from coach Cael Sanderson, making the case for reducing external inputs when you run, and a lot more.

From the archives: Boston, 2008. A race that will forever hold immense meaning for me.

Good morning! It’s the most wonderful time of the year and I’m stoked to be heading home to Boston later this week. If you find yourself in the city on Saturday morning, please join me at The Trackhouse, 285 Newbury Street, at 9 AM for the shakeout that started it all. We’ll head out to the river for an easy 3-5 miles followed by coffee and casual conversation. The event is free, but please register here so that my friends from Tracksmith can plan accordingly.

This will be the 22nd Boston Marathon that I’ve attended in some way, shape, or form since 2003. As a kid growing up in Massachusetts I knew about it for at least 10 years before that. I remember watching the coverage on TV with my Mom. She wasn’t a runner or even a fan of the sport, but come the third Monday in April, names like Bill Rodgers, Rick and Dick Hoyt, Moses Tanui, and Catherine Ndereba would roll off her tongue as if she were talking about old friends. When I finally ran my first Boston in 2008, it was one of the most special days of my life. Despite running like an idiot through halfway and blowing up spectacularly in the hills, I finished 51st overall and among the top 25 Americans in the race. At the time, I was embarrassed by how badly I went backward in the second half, but she was just so, so proud of me (and told me as much for weeks afterward). Mom passed away unexpectedly less than three months later, and it was the last race she ever saw me run. I still have a lot of unresolved feelings about that, and probably will for the rest of my life, if I’m being honest, but part of my connection to the race is that it helps me feel connected to her, and for that reason, among plenty of others, there’s no place I’d rather be on the third Monday in April, whether I’m racing or not. (I’m not, for the record.)

Anyway, I’m grateful to be going back. There’s nothing else quite like marathon weekend in Boston and this event will always hold a special place in my heart. If you have your own connection to The Marathon, whether you’re running it on Monday, have run it in the past, are trying to run it someday, cheering from somewhere along the course, or just following along from afar, I’d love to hear about it. Simply reply to this email or leave a comment below this post.

Quick Splits

— One of the coolest things about writing this newsletter is that it’s connected me to amazing people like Bill Stump, who a few years ago invited me to speak to his journalism class at the University of Florida. Well, Bill’s a damn fine writer and this Men’s Health profile he wrote last fall on the famously reticent Penn State wrestling coach Cael Sanderson is one of the best things I’ve read in recent memory. Sanderson, who had an undefeated collegiate career and won an Olympic gold medal in 2004, is “a near-mythical figure in the wrestling world,” according to Stump. “He’s a hero to Penn State fans, and a nightmare for everyone else. And yet, in a sport full of fiery coaches and chest-thumping competitors, Sanderson is something of a cypher.” Stump paints a picture of someone who is extremely self-aware, never failing to recognize that the energy he brings to practice and meets is the same energy his athletes will bring with them to the mat and every other area of their lives. For Sanderson, character and culture are contagious, and resilience is something that gets built when you recognize how you do the thing is more important than the thing you do. “If you think winning nationals or the Olympics is your only shot at being happy in life it just puts this fear-based pressure on you that usually doesn’t end well,” he says. “It has to be about something bigger.” (My other favorite quote from the story was from one of Sanderson’s athletes, Mitchell Mesenbrink. “There’s no secret,” he says. “We just do the ordinary things extraordinarily well.”)

— I came across this 2006 essay from Dyske Suematsu in the comments section of a newsletter I read recently and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. “If you were not under pressure from your own expectations,” he writes, “you would enjoy your activities more, and therefore produce better work.” And while Suematsu is framing this in the professional sense, I’ve seen this play out time and time again, both for myself and athletes that I’ve coached. Let me know if this sounds familiar: You train really hard, dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, put all this pressure on yourself to perform, and then end up shitting the bed on race day. So what’s the antidote? Honestly, just chill the fuck out. But what’s the fun in that when you’ve trained so hard and put so much of yourself into this thing that you’ve decided to care about? That’s EXACTLY the fun in it, and paradoxically, you’re more likely to produce better results by letting go of expectations and immersing yourself in the enjoyment of just doing the thing.

— Steve Magness’s latest piece on the hidden costs of comfort covers a lot of ground, but I want to call particular attention to what he wrote about our collective inability to be in our own heads anymore. It made me think of the Blaise Pascal quote, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” which I half-jokingly edit sometimes to say, “Many runners’ problems stem from their inability to spend time quietly in their own head.” I’ve been running for close to 30 years now and a big part of the appeal for me has always been that it’s mostly devoid of unnatural inputs. I never listen to music or podcasts when I run. This forces me to be present and tune into my body, the environment around me, and perhaps the person or people I might be running with. As a coach, one of my biggest challenges is getting some athletes to reduce their reliance on always having something in their ears when they’re running, especially during key workouts and races, so that they can better focus on the task at hand. As Magness puts it, “Headphones are the disposable diaper for our internal monologue, or if we’re working out, our effort signals.” Yes, freeing up your ears might feel uncomfortable at first, but that’s kind of the point. “Spend time alone in your head,” Magness writes. “This is especially true on harder or longer workouts where you want to be a pro at understanding discomfort. Sure, rocking out to music might help you get through one workout a little better, but it doesn’t train the skill that will help you on race day.” Now, I’m not saying you should never listen to music or podcasts or an audiobook when you run, but you should also force yourself not to listen to anything from time to time so that you can learn to better tune into your body, understand what it’s telling you, and deal with things accordingly. This won’t just help you perform better on race day, it will make you more self-aware all the other days, too.

— Rory Linkletter will be lining up in Hopkinton on Monday and his latest video on closing out the Boston build was great. I love what he had to say about just letting things come to you in the final few weeks before race day and not chasing fitness or trying to prove to yourself that you’re ready to run X time. One of the biggest things I like to remind my own athletes about workouts in general is that we’re not doing them to prove anything, but using them as opportunities to improve. “I believe letting it come to you is the biggest thing you can do in this final phase,” Linkletter explains. “What I mean by that is don’t force any of the workouts too much. Let it come to you and go into each of them with a curiosity: How fit am I? How can I make this feel? What can I get out of this? What’s the purpose? Just be really intentional with everything, and not necessarily grasping for something like confidence for race day or proof of fitness.”

— Here’s Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame performing “Ramble On” with his current band, Saving Grace, on a recent episode of The Late Show. This is one of my favorite tunes of all-time and this mellower rendition feels less like a reimagining and more like a natural maturation. At 77, Plant’s voice is as vibrant as ever, and the background acoustics complement it quite well. All that said, the most amazing aspect of this performance might be that Colbert gave them nearly 7 minutes on stage for it!

— From the archives (Issue 492, 1 year ago this week): Austin Kleon is someone whose work has had a profound impact on my own, and I’ve linked to many of his blog posts here over the years on writing and the creative process in general. Kleon was recently profiled by Rebekah Brandes for Nice News and I loved what he had to say about being an amateur (“Being an amateur at something just means that you’re more interested in doing it for the love of the thing,” he explains, “rather than the making money of the thing.”) and the importance of showing up every day—ideas that apply as much to art as they do to running or anything else in life that’s important to you. “Just showing up over and over again is kind of my way that I get over everything,” he admits, “over my laziness, over my apathy, over my despair at what might be going on in the wider world.” (This reminded me of a line from the writer—and runner!—Haruki Murakami: “Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.”)

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Tracksmith recently dropped its Twilight Collection and it’s got a ton of great looks for spring and summer. I’ve really been digging the 5” Twilight Shorts for everyday runs the past few weeks. These are the best-fitting shorts that I own and the new woven fabric is a nice upgrade. The built-in liner is soft and odor-resistant, the exposed waistband is super comfortable and accommodating, and they move freely without bunching up. There’s also plenty of pockets for whatever you might need to carry with you. (The women’s version is 3” and has all the same great features.) If you want to pick up something from this collection for yourself (or buy anything else on Tracksmith.com for that matter), use the code “SHAKEOUT15” for $15 off an order of $75 or more.

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Workout of the Week: 3 is a Magic Number

Not only does this workout share its name with one of my favorite covers of all-time, it also happens to be one of my favorite sessions to assign my athletes. In fact, if I were only allowed to use one interval—but could manipulate the intensity, recovery, and number of reps to suit my needs and desires—it’d be 3-minute repetitions. What makes them magic? Three-minute reps are short enough to keep your attention, long enough that you can’t fake your way through a set of them, and versatile enough to achieve different objectives depending on the day. Let me explain.

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The bottom line. 

“People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will completely change everything. There is no single magic bullet. Progress is about bridging the gap between what we observe and what we can imagine—one careful step at a time.”

— Temple Grandin, animal behavior scientist, reminding us to show up and put in the unsexy but necessary work to move the needle a little bit every day.

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That’s it for Issue 544. 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