the morning shakeout podcast

“Yeah, I’ve had moments of like, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’ And so that’s pretty cool because I think it’s really important to enjoy those moments. I feel like people are always looking to the next thing and the next goal and that’s a huge part of the sport but I also think it’s really important to sit back and be like, ‘Wow, this is happening right now.’ I think just taking it one step at a...

“I think that’s probably what my mother said about being self-destructive: that I go until it breaks. I probably could start to find this balance much before but I’m just pushing it, pushing it, pushing it until it’s too late and then, like, ‘OK, or I die, or I need to change.’ And it goes up to that point. I hope that all these chapters are closed and that now the balance is here.”Kilian Jornet i...

"You gotta go do it. Lean into the unknown. We have this term, especially when I work with football players, called contact adaptation. There’s a reason they had training camp prior to the season—it’s not just so they could squeeze in extra games, it’s so they can get used to hitting one another and what have you and that actually can decrease the risk of injury. Well, none of these coaches now ha...

“It got to the point where I was looking in the metaphorical mirror and saying to myself, ‘Alright, what am I going to do here? You’re sacrificing your job effectiveness by doing as much as you can with this podcast as often as you can and by not making a decision, you’re making a decision.’ And ultimately it came down to the fact that I just believed that I could turn this into a profession. I di...

“I think over the years I started to realize it’s more than just running. There is more to life than just running. Obviously it’s a big part of what I do but I’m starting to realize that we need to make sure our happiness intact. I try to make that a part of my life. I try to stick to my schedule, I try waking up early, I try going to bed early, just trying to be positive. I try not to feel entitl...

“Running isn’t always comfortable. It’s not always like some sort of nirvana that you’re jumping out of bed and clicking your heels to do. But having those kind of whys really kind of reframed me rather than having one why of, ‘it must be about the medal, it must be about the time.’ You have different whys…you need a pocket full of whys basically depending on the day to achieve your goals, really....

“I’ve said this many, many times. I’m 67 years old. I got busted when I was 33, got out of prison when I was 34. I spent the first 33 years of my life, Mario, everything was about Mike Rouse. Everything I did. What kind of great car can I have? How much money can I have in the bank? How big a house can I get? How can I have the prettiest girlfriend? How can I have the most success? The best title?...

“It’s kind of like what you pay attention to grows. What you’re the most aware of—if you’re focused on an area where you’re not measuring up and you’re beating yourself up about that instead of seeing yourself a certain way—Ryan puts it well, where he’s like, ‘The first step in becoming a mentally tough runner is to believe you’re a mentally tough runner.’ It kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prop...

“It was sort of like this coolness of everyone telling you [that] you can be awesome and you’re not aware of it yet, but you’re starting to believe it, you’re starting to follow in the steps of this path you think you’re destined to be on. And that—over and over—any movie with that theme, like goosebumps, I’m hooked. I remember watching an anime, Dragon Ball Z, growing up and I’m just like, ‘Man t...

“Running to me represents freedom and I don’t want to just confine myself to running to numbers, like trying to run to specific mileage on a given day or just running to specific paces every day. There’s a freedom to it and a fluidity that I think is really, really important…Not every workout has to build toward something or target a specific energy system, especially right now where there are no...

“Who do we get to see? And therefore, who do we get to believe in? Not only to understand people better, but I think to understand for younger kids especially how they get to travel through the world and what their potential could be. It’s a lot harder to imagine yourself being something if you’ve never seen anyone that looks like you doing it. And we internalize these images of who gets to be a s...

“So many of my relationships with anything or anyone in life that I care about the most is a relationship of high highs and low lows. There’s something deeply human about a relationship with anything that can offer you the greatest joy in your life and also the greatest sorrow or greatest pain. Running grounds me toward that more viscerally perhaps than anything else. It’s a reason why I keep doin...

“One of the main things too is people just kind of sticking out like a sore thumb. It’s so unbalanced that I think people of color sometimes feel uncomfortable going into this sport that is just predominantly white. I’ve never really let it be any sort of limiting factor for me and I know there a lot of people of color that still feel that trail runners and runners in general that these are my tri...

“I definitely don’t have any regrets in pursuing sport to the level that I did because I think one of the wonderful things about sport is that it’s a very simply definable thing and mostly it’s a quite healthy thing for a young person to go all-in on. I fully went all-in on sport—at one point, I lived, breathed, I must have bored people around me as a lot of us as athletes probably have done with...

“While it’s terrible that it took murder for many runners to wake up to the social injustices that we face in America, I’m excited that it ignited a group of people who know what it means to keep momentum going—because that’s what this movement needs, this movement needs momentum, and every single runner knows what that means when I say that. So, I’m excited to see a group of individuals that has...

“We really bought in—and I really bought in. Like, I really believed that we could be good, I really, truly believed that, and I got them to believe it. In fact, when we hosted our first NE-10 Championship, we had this snow squall come across the field. It was freezing, it was like blowing sidewards, and I bring the women into the sports complex, and I said, ‘Everybody, be quiet.’ I said, ‘Just li...

“I have a lot of goals in running and I have a lot of dreams in running but I feel like I love to run—period, end of sentence. And if that is kind of all I’m ever going to say about my running career from here on out, I’d maybe be a little bit disappointed, but at the end of the day, I want to run when I’m 80. I want to run with my family, I want to run with my friends, I want to run with my dog,...

“I did not enjoy the recognition. I would literally hide from newspaper reporters after races. But I was competitive and I wanted to win and I wanted to set course records and I always wanted to be the best at everything I did, so I think that was what really drove me was: I was the best, in our school, and then I wanted to be the best in the state, and then looked at being the best in the nation...

“It’s harder to stay as focused and motivated when I haven’t been running up to the standards that I’ve always set so high for myself. I haven’t necessarily been running as fast as I was hoping or winning as many races, so it’s been harder to be there 100% focused all of the time. You find yourself drifting and you’ve got to recalibrate all of the time. If anything, this situation has sort of give...

“I’m in a position where I cannot be afraid. What I do for a living, my life, my career, I have to get out there and be among the people. And if I’m not comfortable doing that, I can’t expect my runners to be comfortable doing that. But I think it’s going to be a job that every single one of us needs to take on head first and we have to figure out ‘Does this race saying they’re going to have glove...

“Just having a group of people who accepted me unconditionally, who I knew had also been through hard times, who would be there for me, getting connected through a community group every week and making church a priority and just having these things outside of running just were so, so, so vital in giving me an identity and giving me a community and helping me feel like I was part of something bigge...

“When I look at an athlete, the way I see an athlete, how they see themselves, how they feel about themselves, where they are in their lives, that’s going to show up on the track way more than the training, right? The training is only going to be in line with the athlete when those other places are in check. You can maybe fake it and get by for a little while but ultimately those things are going...

“I honestly was hobbling in and with each mile that went by I’m like, ‘I’m still in the top-10. That’s Uta Pippig who’s cheering on the side of the road over there. I just passed a hobbled Abdi Abdirahman—he’s a 2:08 marathoner. And that guy up in front of me is Meb Keflezighi.' I remember catching Meb with 800 meters to go and Meb went right back by me, and I had a moment of ‘Oh, the dream was to...

“Patience is such a tough thing to have in life, the world, in running, but it is such an important thing to have. I mean, it’s just that stacking on stacking on stacking of mileage and now in this venture, for me, it’s words. Not to say that I really love going back and looking at some of my early stories—and I think I did a good job at them—but now I’m excited about what’s coming next and some o...

“Every time I line up I don’t get as anxious anymore, I don’t feel like I’m gonna barf. It’s just, ’See what you can do. You have two healthy legs. You get to do this.’ Like, the sky is the limit. And if you don’t reach what you think you might be able to do, that’s OK too. Because I’m having fun. I’m more in the moment now, not thinking about the end goal of ‘Oh, I might not do as well’ or ‘I mig...