the morning shakeout podcast

“Both disciplines attract that type of person, who can chase down specific goals, who is competitive, not necessarily with other people, but with themselves. I think that’s a big thing you see in dance and it’s a big thing you see in running—yeah, you’re competing for the top spot, you’re competing for the spot in the company, you’re competing for the lead role on Broadway, if you’re in high schoo...

“For me, I actually like being in the corner with my back up against the wall because it forces me to figure a way out. And I’m not feeling that just yet, or at least to a degree where I feel like I’m in trouble, but if I do, I’m going to figure a way out out of it. I don’t know what that is right now but you get creative with it.”We are back with the first Ask Mario Anything episode of 2020, feat...

“I’m obsessed with everything I pick. Whatever it is, I don’t really question it. Most of the time, my obsessions, I don’t know what’s happening when they start. I just tug on a thread a little bit and then just full on yank on it and connect it to a bus and drive it out of town...The idea of exploring and learning and my mind just exploded at university. Exposed to psychology for the first time,...

“The day that Kobe Bryant passed away, something snapped in me. I realized how short life can be—and I never met him, and I didn’t even know him much, but the things that people were writing about him, there was just something that made me snap out of it. I realized that I hadn’t seen my family for over 3 years. Why had I not seen them? I had not seen them because I was making excuses that I was w...

“I see coaching as an art form—and it’s the science [that] gives you the tools that you need—but just like we found out that you tie two strings together and you pluck it, it reverberates and it makes a noise, it doesn’t mean you can play Little Wing on the guitar. So we know what physiology looks like, what blood flow looks like, what muscle function looks like, but taking that and putting it int...

“Coaching, I would argue, is the least about the workouts. In fact, if you’re a coach, you should have phenomenal workouts. You should have a progression that takes a child, an adult, anyone—in four years, of course they’re going to get better, you just have to write it out properly. It’s written in every book, you can pick up any book, anyone can be a 'give workout' person. What isn’t easy, unles...

“I think I’ve just learned that whether you’re running a 5-hour marathon, a 4-hour marathon, a 2-hour marathon, we all go through the same struggles in training—whether it’s mental, whether it’s physical—and [my athletes] are always telling me, ‘Oh my gosh, we look up to you because you’re running 2 whatever hours,’ and I’m like, ‘No, I’m looking up to you because your training runs for your long...

“As long as I can come across the finish line—whatever chosen distance, and I’ve raced them all—knowing that I couldn’t possibly have run one iota faster, that to me, that’s satisfying. I like being in that position, I like being under the pressure, I like finding myself in a state of uncomfortability. I like being in that space and I like really engaging in the self-talk, so for me, that’s my dru...

"Obviously I’d love to be a world-class runner—like I’d love it, that’d be awesome—but I know there’s so much more in my life and so many more things I can do and my life isn’t just running. Obviously I knew I missed running, I will try to admit that, but I really did feel content. But I still had this feeling and I’m like, 'Well, it’s over now. It’s officially over. I’m done.' I’m running like 40...

“It’s difficult for runners to communicate, ‘Why do you do this?’… ‘Do you want to be skinny?’ ‘Do you want to be healthy?’ It’s like, well, that’s nice but ultimately it was challenging myself, working hard toward a goal, being able to do something I couldn’t do before. I really liked that. I was telling somebody the other day [that] I’m still chasing that high school [runner]. I still chase high...

“Running is something that I was always good at, something that I would do no matter what, it was always my little escape in some way. Whatever was happening at home, running would just make me feel a little better when I got to go out. It was just my escape and I needed it—I need it to this day. It’s the only time that I feel that nothing negative could touch me.”Fernando Cabada is a former profe...

“I think it’s a release—it’s easier when you’re able to go all-in. If you have that second thing, that second chance, you have to constantly be deciding whether or not you’re gonna do it today, you’re gonna do it then—it’s way easier to be like, ‘This is happening now. I’m going all in and I’m going to either die or crush it today. And that for me is the key to success in so many things. The thing...

This week’s episode of the podcast is a “greatest hits” compilation of sorts to round out 2019. I’ve gone through and culled clips from nine of the most impactful exchanges I’ve had over the past year with some of the top athletes, coaches, and personalities in the sport of running. Why only nine? One, putting constraints in place forces me to think more critically about the choices I’m making and...

“I am camped out in that third category of the emotions of the experience. I get a lot of messages from other dads who have jobs and have kids and have families—I sense in their writing to me that they’re almost saying, ‘Thank you for giving me permission to care about something that is totally superfluous but matters to me and that fuels my passion for the rest of life.' Because I just get the se...

“Many times I’ve woken up and thought, ‘Oh, what can I do to get out of this? Can I fake an injury?’ And then I realize it’s just me. The only person I’m faking is me. The only person I’m lying to is me if I do if I do that. And the same thing with not finishing a race: I’m the only person that I have to answer to. One of the things that Teddy Atlas talks about on our podcast is being a game quitt...

"The first thing I tell athletes who are injured is: Let’s focus on what you can do, not what you can’t. You can’t run, and oftentimes when we’re injured that’s the thing that we focus on, 'God, I can’t run. This is awful. It sucks.' And yes, it absolutely does but you can do something in most cases. Ninety-nine percent of people who are injured can do something, so if you can do any of those thin...

“I think, for me, it’s just if I can help people along the way, that’s great. There isn’t any big thing that I hope to accomplish or be remembered for. A good friend of mine pointed out, ‘When you help someone, you don’t know the ripple effect of that.’ So, if I can help someone, and that helps them do something else that affects a large amount of people, I think I would be happy with that. I thin...

“So, the cool thing is a lot of my friends in Boulder were trail runners, so they’re like, ‘Hey, maybe you should just try trail running. You don’t even have to be fast at it—you could just try it.’ And I was like, ‘I guess I could but if I’m going to do it, I want to do it well.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, you’ll see, it’s going to be different.’ I mean, the first trail run I ever went on I w...

"One thing that has been really amazing about reporting on this industry is that I actually am really inspired by it and get really motivated by it and I’m just so motivated by all the amazing women that are balancing running with jobs and also families. I think every single woman that’s qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials right now, and all the women behind them too—sometimes it just comes...

"Tapping into the side of you that has that internal drive is super important because discipline’s a really hard thing, right? Cadence and consistency to me matters, and when I know I’m off loop is when I don’t have that consistency or cadence. If you take any successful business, any successful athlete, the reality is what makes them most successful is some sort of cadence and consistency."Excite...

“I had a breakthrough race in Boston and training for New York has been every bit as good as the training leading into Boston and even better in some aspects, so what I’d really like to do is, I think it would be successful if I validated that performance in Boston…and say, ‘yes, this is where I am and I belong.’ You know, I ran 20 miles with the leaders in Boston and that was the first time runni...

“If you go into the race knowing it’s going to hurt and you’re OK with it, you’re stronger than most of the people out there—and I just latched onto that: this idea that if I knew it was going to hurt and I was ready for it and I could revel in it and embrace it and be like ‘OK, lets do this’ type of deal with the pain or with the discomfort, that made racing so much easier, and that makes a lot o...

“Their phrase they have at the Bird-In-Hand Half Marathon is, ‘The joy of running in community,’ and it’s on all their t-shirts, it's on all their signs: the joy of running in community. And that’s why I struggle with this idea of competition because these guys are very hardcore runners: they’re fast, they’re strong, they do Ragnars, they do sub-3 hour marathons, but always as a gang, as a team, l...

“Anybody that’s in this industry, especially somebody that was in my former position, you sit around all the time and complain about what’s wrong with track and field. I’m one of the biggest talkers when it comes to that, I always complain about what’s wrong. And I feel like I have a chance to potentially work towards one piece of the solution, which is an events series in the U.S., after USAs, no...

"That’s how my whole career, my whole running career went—it was always trying to beat the guy in front of me, always trying to catch the guy in front of me. And that helped me—not just the training, it wasn’t just the training, it was that attitude going into races. And like I said, when I started winning races, I didn’t want to win them by one second—I wanted to win them by 90 seconds or 2 minut...