the morning shakeout | issue 549
Training with an injury versus training through one, useful and practical information about marathon fueling, appreciating what a fucking miracle this all is, and a lot more.
Good morning! I’m working on something a little longer for next Tuesday’s issue so we’re skipping straight to the Quick Splits this week. Let’s get right to it.
Quick Splits
— This 60 Minutes feature on 18-year-old Australian sprinter Gout Gout, and his relationship with his coach, Di Sheppard (whom I shared more about in Issue 495), is a must-watch this week for any parent or coach of young athletes. Gout, who earlier this year ran 19.67 for 200 meters, is the fastest teenager in history. He is also as humble as he is talented, careful not to let the attention get to his head. (“Me personally, I don’t call it fame,” he explains. “I like to call it ‘well known in the wider community.’”) And Sheppard, true to her name, has been careful to bring him along gradually in training, making sure they’re not getting greedy and skipping steps despite the fact that he’s competing with, and capable of beating, the best sprinters in the world. He is, as she explains, still a kid, after all. “If I tried to make him super quick now, I’d break him,” she admits. “He’s got so much more physical development. Like he only really hit puberty in the last 12 to 18 months, basically. I’ve had to deal with a lot of growth issues with Gout. When I met Gout he walked right up on his toes. It took me six months to get the heel down, and it wasn’t all the way down.”
— Robert Wilson, whose work on performance I’ve linked to here many times over the past couple years, is training with a rib injury he recently sustained while grappling. That choice of words, as Wilson writes in this post, is intentional: there’s a big difference, he argues, between training through an injury and training with one. In my experience, runners are particularly bad at accepting this distinction. For many of us, the instinct is to push through, ignore, and/or outright deny an injury. Wilson, however, makes a compelling case that leaning into the constraints of an injury, understanding what you can and can’t do, and continuing to train with purpose (even if it looks different from what you want it to look like) can leave you better off in the long run. In his case, which any runner who’s ever been scared shitless of “losing fitness” can learn from, the goal isn’t just to preserve his general physical capacities, but to protect his mental and emotional ones too. “If I gain muscle mass, great,” he writes of his current situation. “If my muscular endurance improves, I’ll happily accept the gains. But the larger purpose of the approach is to keep me connected to the larger game while my focus is forced to shift for the time being.”
— I recently read this piece from professional runner Drew Hunter about rethinking his entire running career and, with all due respect to him, I was somewhat shocked that he’s just now figuring out that there’s more opportunity, money, exposure, and fun to be had on the roads versus solely chasing fast times and teams on the track. The 28-year-old Hunter, who turned pro ten years ago right out of high school, just won the USATF 5K championships on the roads, broke the tape at the Carlsbad 5000, and placed third at the USATF 1 Mile Road Championships. He was fourth in the 5000 at last summer’s U.S. outdoor track championships and fourth at the Olympic Trials 10,000 in 2024, and while finishing a spot higher and making one of those teams no doubt would have been career highlights, I think his newfound affinity for the roads is going to open more doors for him in the next ten years than the track ever did over the past decade. “I still have unfinished business on the track the next 2 years but this break up of road races has been invigorating and inspiring to challenge my old ideas of what makes a successful running career,” he writes.
— For all my ranting against optimization and exactness and formulas in last week’s issue, here are two useful pieces about fueling that every runner should read: the first, written by Brady Holmer, is a comprehensive and balanced take on how many carbs runners actually need based not only on research, but also practicality. (n.b. It requires a subscription to read the whole thing.) The second, written by Alex Ostberg, dives deep into some of the same research Holmer cites, while also offering a few practical takeaways for those of us who aren’t racing marathons in under two hours (i.e. most of us). Ostberg says (rightly, I believe) that most amateur runners probably don’t need to exceed 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, while Holmer writes that, “for some runners, 90–120 grams per hour may be useful. For others, 60–75 grams per hour may be enough. And for many recreational runners, the biggest win is simply moving from underfueling to consistently fueling at all.” My two biggest takeaways from both pieces: 1. More research about fueling needs, especially among women, across the speed spectrum, and in real-world situations, is necessary. 2. Just be sensible and intentional with your approach and you will probably be fine.
— Over the weekend I finished Cameron Crowe’s memoir, The Uncool. I enjoyed reading about some of his escapades as a young music journalist in the 70s, like moving in with Glenn Frey and Don Henley of the Eagles for a short time while profiling them for Rolling Stone. Crowe describes how he was in the room when they wrote “One of These Nights” and “Lyin’ Eyes,” which, of course, sent me down a YouTube rabbit hole, leading me to some incredible renditions of both the former and the latter from a performance at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland in 1977. Watching them made me think of my Mom, whose love for the Eagles and Don Henley in particular I grew up around. (Bonus: Here’s “Hotel California” from the same show.)
— From the archives (Issue 444, 2 years ago this week): This past Saturday my wife Christine and I were driving east on I-80 toward Folsom, outside Sacramento, where she was competing in a race. Shortly after 5 AM the lower horizon of the sky began to illuminate in a magnificent glow. I’ve seen plenty of sunrises over the years but this particular one sent me straight into a moment of deep awe and contemplation while I sat there in the passenger’s seat. The main thought that came to me, which I shared excitedly with Christine, who nodded along in the “uh huh, that’s great, whatever you say honey” way that spouses do, was what a fucking miracle this all is. I experience moments of wonder like this every so often, but this one hit me in a very visceral way when I didn’t expect it. (Maybe the coffee was starting to kick in, who knows.) It’s easier than ever these days to get stressed about this or that, or make a mountain out of a molehill—and I’d be full of shit if I told you I hadn’t been in both of these boats myself in recent weeks—but it can be a literal and figurative eye-opener when you take the time to pause every once in a while and appreciate how incredible it is that we even exist in the first place, that we have this beautiful planet to explore and inhabit, and that we get to spend time with people we’ve grown to know and love. Now, appreciating the mere fact of our miraculous existence doesn’t diminish the very real problems we individually experience and collectively share—my hope, however, is that doing so has the exact opposite effect: that it helps us have more empathy for others, that it encourages us to practice kindness more regularly, that it spurs us to take better care of our environment, and that it makes us want to spend more time with the people we love. These opportunities are available to everyone. It’d be a shame not to make good on them while we’re here.
I have been living in Tracksmith’s 5” Twilight Shorts this spring and they are hands down the best-fitting shorts that I own. 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 keys, gels, or whatever else you might need to carry. What more could you want or need?!? (The women’s version is 3” and has all the same great features.) If you want to pick up something from the Twilight Collection for yourself (or buy anything else on Tracksmith.com for that matter), use the code “MARIOMAY15” this month for $15 off an order of $75 or more.
Workout of the Week: The In-n-Out Tempo Run
Let’s face it: Training for a marathon or half-marathon can get monotonous. Both programs involve lots of sustained running at or around goal race pace. This is part of the deal, of course, and an important component for developing fitness, dialing in pacing, practicing fueling, and more. That said, it gets repetitive, if not boring, and a lot of people tend to lock in to a set pace and then zone out until it’s time to stop. Racing, however, requires you to pay attention, listen to your body, and make adjustments on the fly, which is why I love to assign the In-n-Out Tempo Run from time to time. Not to mention, it’s much more interesting than its classically constructed cousin! Here are the details.
The bottom line.
“In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is no possibility, in me at least, of saying, “I’ll do it if I feel like it.” One never feels like awaking day after day. In fact, given the smallest excuse, one will not work at all. The rest is nonsense. Perhaps there are people who can work that way, but I cannot. I must get my words down every day whether they are any good or not.”
— John Steinbeck on developing self-discipline. (And while he’s talking specifically about writing, the same also applies to running, working, or any other worthwhile pursuit. No one is motivated or inspired all the time. This reminds me of something my friend and mentor Don Swartz used to say all the time: You don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to get it going. Many (if not most) of us—myself included—have a tendency to paralyze ourselves with various forms of perfection, e.g., not wanting to race until we’re “fit enough” or feeling good, waiting for an optimal readiness score before we do a hard workout, or putting off dialing in X/Y/Z until next week when we think we’ll have more time. But perfection and optimization are two of life’s biggest illusions, and chasing them is one of the surest ways to stay stuck. Just take the first step. Or the next one. Wherever you’re trying to go, you’ll get there. I promise.)
That’s it for Issue 549. If you enjoyed it, please forward this email to a few likeminded friends and encourage them to subscribe at this link so the next issue goes straight to their inbox.
Thanks for reading,
Mario
Ooh, in-n-out tempo sounds challenging. I like!
Thanks as always Mario. Tuesdays are my favorite reading morning as that's when the newsletter drops! Looking forward to your longer piece next week. Take care!