the morning shakeout podcast

“Talent is an interesting question. What is it really? It means, can you avoid injuries? It means, can you back off? When you get crushed, will you come back? I didn’t like that part. I think it’s a lot of different things. It’s not maybe a physical thing, but it’s a mental thing. When you see a lot of these athletes—a lot of you are here because you have that wherewithal. And maybe you got beat u...

“I mean, the work’s done at this point. I can’t gain any appreciable fitness between now and race day. I could screw up a lot if I’m not careful and that’s the biggest thing I’m trying to keep an eye on at this point, is when I have those moments where doubt sets in—because it happens to all of us, even if we’re really well prepared—where you’re like, ‘Should I do another mile or two?’ or ‘Should...

“If all that mattered to me was [to run] the best time possible in two weeks then yes, I’d probably go into the other field and just run with some people who I know are right around my fitness level, but luckily I’ve had fun at Boston a couple times and I realize that’s not all there is. It’s not only about squeaking out every second, it’s about having an awesome experience and I’m pretty pumped t...

“It’s really inspiring to see someone push themselves and challenge themselves…Bringing out the achievements of people who are fighting the odds, and really putting into context today’s race, even for a pro, because even a pro is overcoming something tremendous each race they do—it’s never rosy. And understanding that hardship, I think, will give people context into the meaning of a particular rac...

“My goal with coaching people is to teach them and have them understand why we’re doing what we’re doing so if I ever stop coaching them, or for whatever reason we part ways, that they are basically able to coach themselves the same way I was coaching them previously. My job is to eliminate my own job, I guess.” Jon Green is the 26-year-old coach of Olympic marathon bronze medalist Molly Seidel. H...

“So in the classical tradition they often ask the question of what role athletics can play in the good life. And typically the way it is described is that it has a role in character development in sort of helping us to be more well-ordered such that we can flourish longterm. But they also express a concern that if you are having an outsized focus on athletics that it can be bad, both physically fo...

“So much of groundedness is about building a life that you want to live in right now and those things are often in opposition to striving, because when you’re striving, when you’re really going toward something, it’s very easy to forget about watering the roots, tending to the base, whatever it is. But when you accomplish or you fail to do that thing, if you haven’t been taking care of all this ot...

“I think for me it ties back to seeing myself as more than just a runner but [as] a complete person in mind, body, soul. I’ve just found that when all the parts of who I am are aligned and enjoying everything then really the results, they’re going to come and you’re more patient for them—you’re not dependent on them to have this joy and this fun time being out there putting in the work. In my opin...

“The hardest step in anything is to start—that’s the hardest step. The second hardest thing is to stay with it. That sounds really obvious but I think keeping those two things in mind—you can’t stay with it until you start, so 1. Just get started, and then 2. When you stay with it, you’ll have days when you want to quit, and you’re like, ‘Is this worth it?’ whether it’s podcasting, whether it’s co...

“A lot of athletes—especially when things are going really well—the last thing they want to do is take a break, even if their goal race is in the rearview. Trust me on this: You want to take your breaks as seriously as your training. It’s much better to take a planned break and be a little grumpy about it at the beginning than be forced to take a break sometime down the road because you’re injured...

“I think it’s because we’re always measuring ourselves—everything we do is measured. You go out for an easy run, you see your pace, you compare it to how fast you ran yesterday. You go to a race, you finish 10th, or you’re a minute off your PB—or you PB by a minute and you’re ecstatic. You’re always comparing yourself to who you were yesterday and who you want to be in the future. And then while y...

“If you get me talking about things that happened in college or I think about races in college I can just spiral in my own head and get frustrated and kind of disappointed with myself in the way things turned out. It’s definitely in the back of my mind. I would like to prove to myself that I do belong, whether it be at the NCAA level or the professional level, I just believe inherently that I am t...

“What the marathon experience—that first marathon experience—did for me, was it gave me a perspective shift on life, which, wow, that sounds really lofty hearing myself say it back, but truly, everything was like so muddied and I couldn’t pull myself out. I had gone to really good schools and done all of the things I was supposed to do but I couldn’t pull myself out of feeling terrible and feeling...

“One day we had a bad basketball practice. The coach was pissed off at us. He literally made us run the cross-country course as punishment. I was the worst player on the JV basketball team but I came back first when we had to run 3 miles in cross country and I just said, ‘Hey, maybe I should switch sports instead of fighting to be bad.’ And so I switched to running and running seemed to be a place...

“When I was out there, baking along the lake where it was really hot, all I was really trying to do was just keep moving forward, and whatever that entailed. So I was just looking ahead to the next aid station—like, what can I do to keep moving forward? It really became that simple, which, for as busy as my brain can be sometimes with thinking, is surprising because I really didn’t think much beyo...

“It's not just one workout that's going to make you have a good race. That's pretty simple. I've more come to the conclusion that I'd rather do 20 B+ workouts over 10 weeks instead of having four A+ workouts and then just go into a race. I think if I can get the consistency of this B+ type workout—when I do those, I feel like we're not stressing the body so hard that we're going to get injured—I f...

“When I was doing triathlon I would get a workout and I’m like, ‘Oh, I can’t do that. That’s too hard. No way.’ Now Tom tells me this workout and I’m like, ‘You’re crazy, but let’s go for it. Let’s try it.’ Because I don’t care. I don’t care if I fail. So I think that’s a huge thing for people. It’s like as soon as you step away from that fear of failing you open yourself up to so many things—and...

“Running has been a big factor in my life. Running made me start my own business, I met my wife because of running—that’s how I ended up here. So running has always been a big factor in my life. I think that’s why I still enjoy running at my age versus just being done with it. I know so many guys who were really fast and they’re like, ‘I’m done, I don’t wanna run anymore. Why are you still running...

“People know me as Abdi the distance runner, the funny guy, just outgoing, and that's all good, but they don't know the reason I came to the U.S.—how did I end up here, what was my choice, that struggle behind me getting here, at the end of the day, your parents, your family, what they've been through to get here. And that's the difficult part of the book, because that just brings back some memori...

“What we're doing, it's for the culture. It's not ultimately about trying to get money. We want to push the track and field culture forward. We want it to be more entertaining, we want it to be more fun. We're doing this for the athletes. And with both of us being athletes before, we understand those struggles and, I don't know, I'm really big on believing that track and field is a stage, it's an...

“All of this adversity that we've been dealing with, you know, adversity is nothing new to me. I'm officially claiming that I'm the dean of Adversity University. As an immigrant, as a brown-skinned man, as someone—who, Spanish is my first language—having to always assimilate, having to always adapt, having always to comfort others with the comfort of who you are, those are just daily adversity sit...

“Over the last years, the main thing to me when I get into a race, I think what kind of changed my trajectory at least in the road stuff, was that I don’t want to look at times anymore—that was the big thing in the roads: I don’t want to look at times, I just want to compete. People would ask, ‘What are you shooting for?’ I’m like, ‘I just want to compete.’ And that’s kind of been my answer for ev...

“I don’t shy away from the hard stuff anymore. I know I enjoy hard things from a training perspective, [and] like super-challenging races, but that also goes emotionally—I can’t expect to be a better person unless I can work through those things as well, so I’m happy to talk about hard subjects.” Hillary Allen is a professional athlete, coach, teacher, and author of the new book, Out and Back: A R...

“When I talk to the athletes that I coach, the number one thing that I'm trying to pay attention to throughout the course of our relationship is seeing and understanding how this pursuit of running fits into their life and everything else that they've got going on from family to work to hobbies—and yes, you can have other hobbies besides running—and also, how those things are affecting their pursu...

“Most of my life was spent chasing times, mainly because I ran really fast in high school—a 4:01 as you mentioned—and when you un 4:01, you know, it’s always in your head that, ‘Oh man, there’s a second and change that I can get out of my body to get in that elusive, venerated sub-4 club,’ so you think and you obsess over times and I certainly did to an unhealthy degree in my college and a little...