THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST

Nobody hands you anything in the Bowerman Mile—not even on your first day. Two days after his professional debut at the Prefontaine Classic, Gary Martin joined the show to break down a lifetime-best 3:48.76 in the deepest mile field ever assembled, and why he walked away wishing he'd been more aggressive.  The newest Brooks Beast member takes us inside the shock of going out in 1:53 after a colleg...

Reese Sanders ran a 57.3 and realized she wasn't done. Coming off her final season at Notre Dame, Sanders—a four-time Indiana state champion and one of the top 400m hurdlers in Fighting Irish history—was closer to walking away from the sport than sticking with it long term. What changed wasn't a grand plan. It was momentum: a fast race at ACCs, another personal best at regionals, and a qui...

Doug Soles just walked away from the most dominant program in the country, and he's not done building. The two-time NXN champion coach joins Dominic to reflect on 26 years of head coaching and his recent decision to step down at Herriman High School. Soles opens up about the toll of 12-hour days, his choice to leave teaching first, and why he's leaving his next move "wide open" r...

He gave everything for his country, came home without his legs, and then completed 110 miles anyway. Mike Egan is a Marine combat veteran who lost both legs to an IED in Afghanistan. In this conversation, he sits down with Dominic to talk about the G1M Go One More Backyard Ultra in Texas, where he completed 27 loops (110-plus miles in a wheelchair over 27 straight hours) finishing 27th in a field...

Jane Hedengren doesn't do freshman years quietly.  Coming off a breakout debut season at BYU, the Nike-sponsored phenom joins Dominic ahead of the Prefontaine Classic to reflect on a year that redefined her expectations of herself. Hedengren opens up about the whirlwind of transitioning from decorated high schooler to collegiate standout, describing her freshman year as less about the records...

Mike Scannell doesn't believe in mileage—he believes in how you run it.  Back on the show for another appearance, the architect of Grant Fisher's Olympic campaign sits down with Dominic to talk about something every serious runner faces and most get wrong: the summer training block.  Scannell makes the case that the six weeks in the dead heat of summer are the truest measure of who an athl...

The boys are back, and nobody came to talk about running.   Dominic welcomes Scotty, Danny, and Chris from the Life in Stride podcast for their fourth appearance on TRE, and within minutes the conversation has already covered protein powder side effects, dry needling in uncomfortable places, and Dom's near-date with one of the most famous athletes on the planet. Before things go completely off...

The NCAA isn't broken: it's been bought, and Coach Chris Miltenberg is one of the last ones willing to say so out loud. Miltenberg returns to the show fresh off an NCAA Championships in Eugene where the women's 5,000 and men's 10,000 runners were swept nearly clean by international athletes funneled in through university-funded recruiting services.  He called it what it is: a parad...

Running a 1:57 doesn't happen by accident. And for Hayley Kitching, it almost didn't happen at all. A year ago, the Penn State senior was in Austin nursing plantar fasciitis while watching the sport move without her. Hayley is here to unpack the full arc: the injury, the comeback, and the NCAA Outdoor final at Hayward Field where she ran the second-fastest 800 meters in collegiate history—and stil...

NEW MERCH OUT TODAY 5PM EST: https://luminarythreads.shop Five NCAA titles. One backwards hat. Zero apologies. Habtom Samuel is not a guy who talks much—he lets the track do it. The University of New Mexico junior just capped a historic 2025–2026 season by sweeping the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, becoming the most decorated athlete in Lobos history.  In thi...

🔗  Shop drop one (early-access password: TRE):   https://luminarythreads.shop Dominic goes solo to launch  LuminaryThreads  — a merch brand three years in the making, built on a simple idea: you pass roughly a thousand people a day, and what you wear is the one way to reach them.  Every month, one drop. One short statement meant to inspire, challenge, or move whoever reads it. When it's gone,...

NEW MERCH OUT ON MONDAY: https://luminarythreads.shop Alex Ostberg doesn't waste your time—and this month's Rundown recap is proof.  Dominic and Alex break down four newsletters that build on each other in ways that feel almost inevitable by the end: a framework for how elite programs fall apart, how coaches know when to pull the plug, and how summer heat can either wreck your confidence o...

NEW MERCH OUT ON MONDAY: https://luminarythreads.shop  From 1:54 and zero Division I offers to sixth at NCAAs in 1:45, Niko Schultz didn't sneak up on anybody, he just refused to stop showing up. This year, in his first campaign at Penn State, he finished sixth at the NCAA Outdoor Championships and earned First-Team All-American honors.  That arc doesn't happen by accident.  Niko sits down...

Ashley Jones competed for six years in Division I distance running with one arm—and she insists that was never the point. If all running taught her was how to go faster in a race, she missed everything. Fresh off a trip marking ten years since the ATV accident that took her right arm at 14 (three months after losing her father), Ashley joins Dominic to discuss her farewell to college running.  Acr...

While his rivals stack hundred-mile months, senior Carter Smith has built one of the fastest high school seasons in America on simplicity, sleep, and a kick nobody saw coming.  Fresh off the wildest stretch of his life—a 3:59.00 mile at the HOKA Festival of Miles; then a 1:48 win in the Brooks PR 800m days later in Seattle—Smith sits down with Dominic to explain how a kid from small-town Pennsylva...

Edwin Martin didn't start running to become an ultra-athlete—he started because life had gotten so dark he almost didn't start anything again at all. At 21, Martin hit rock bottom. Consumed by a gambling addiction and drowning in purposelessness, he was on his bathroom floor, ready to end his life, when a text from a friend (just three words:  I love you ) pulled him back. That moment beca...

She ran 1:57 in an Olympic final as an afterthought—then walked away, rebuilt everything, and came back faster.   Alex Bell isn't just reinventing herself; she's finally becoming who she was supposed to be. In this conversation, Alex takes Dominic through one of British running's most unlikely second acts. She opens about the moment she crossed the finish line in Tokyo and knew (lying...

Logan, Queensland, doesn't typically produce global empires. Jason Daniel didn't get that particular memo. The founder and CEO of LSKD built a self-funded, $400M global activewear brand from a BMX nickname, a carpenter's apprenticeship, and five years stuck at $3 million in annual revenue—and he did it without a single outside investor. What broke the plateau wasn't a strategy. It was books, a sel...

She grew up running miles to school through the hills of Burnt Forest, Kenya—and now she owns the streets of Boston. Sharon Lokedi, two-time Boston Marathon champion and one of the most quietly dominant forces in the sport, joins the show for a wide-open conversation about what it actually takes to run 2:17 twice, back-to-back, on the most unforgiving major marathon course in the world. Sharon doe...

Simeon Birnbaum, the NCAA 1500m record holder, is heading into NCAAs hungry, healthy, and ready to hurt people.  Dominic sits down with the Oregon junior days before the outdoor National Championships, where Birnbaum is eyeing a 1500m/5000m double on his home track in Eugene. The guys cover the full arc of his breakthrough season: from the December 3000m that broke Edward Cheserek's Oregon sch...

The clock has beaten Brian Burns twice. June 4th at the HOKA Festival of Miles, he plans to return the favor.  Burns, a senior at Bentonville High School and committed to UNC Chapel Hill, joins the show eight days out from Festival of Miles—fresh off a ladder workout that confirmed what his coaches have been telling him all spring: he is in 3:57 shape. The gap between where he is and where he need...

Austin Plewe ran a 1:49 at altitude and never trained faster than two-mile pace to do it.  The American Fork senior joins the show ahead of his Festival of Miles 800m debut to explain exactly how that's possible—and why his roughest year ended up being the thing that made him. Plewe is a product of one of the most consistent programs in the country. Coach Timo Mostert has been running the same aer...

Josh Blatchford couldn’t stand long enough to brush his teeth—and he was a personal trainer. After years of chronic illness nobody could diagnose, Josh hit rock bottom in 2020. He was bedridden, losing function on the left side of his body, and spending $30,000 a year on care that kept symptoms at bay for maybe six months before they came back harder. He had a two-year-old daughter he couldn’t lif...

Mario Fraioli has coached hundreds of athletes and written over half a million words about running—and his most important lesson is to do less.  He is the founder of The Morning Shakeout, a weekly newsletter read by tens of thousands of runners since 2015, a longtime running coach, and a Masters competitor still toeing the line himself with a 4:09 mile to his name.  Two days after the 2026 Boston...

Braelyn Combe listed five girls she expected to contend with at Festival of Miles. Chiara Dailey's name wasn't one of them. That detail sits right at the center of this conversation: not as a grudge, but as fuel. Chiara has been one of the best prep distance runners in the country for four straight years: three consecutive California state cross country titles, a sub-4:40 mile PR, four str...