THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST

Mark Dowdle didn't grow up a runner.  He was a two-sport college athlete who heard David Goggins on a podcast during a bus ride home from a losing lacrosse trip, and decided to become a different person. Six years later, he's on Team USA.  He's won backyard ultras covering 283 miles in 68 straight hours. He ran 135 miles through Northern Minnesota in sub-zero January temps and took fir...

She missed NXN in the fall. By March, she was winning national titles. Braelyn Combe is a senior at Santiago High School in Corona, California, and the latest athlete to join TRE's Festival of Miles series. Right now she's the most dangerous prep distance runner in the country. Not because she's the fastest out of the gate, because she knows exactly when to move. At the 2026 Nike Indoo...

Miami doesn't have a running culture by accident. Frankie Ruiz built it. From 17 Florida high school cross country state championships (9 in a row); to a junior who just finished 4th at Nike Cross Nationals; to a marathon that generates $300 million a year for Miami-Dade County; and a government appointment to make an entire city healthier—he does all of this simultaneously.  And he's been doing i...

He said it was his to lose. Then he went out and made sure of it. Josh Kerr is back on The Running Effect, and this time he's not limping off a global stage. He's walking out of Toruń with gold, and already calling his next shot. At the 2026 World Athletics Indoor Championships, Kerr reclaimed the 3000m title he first won two years ago in Glasgow. He ran a 7:35.56, the second-fastest winning time...

A sub-2-hour marathon was supposed to be impossible. Then Dr. Brad Wilkins built the mathematical model that proved it wasn't, and Nike handed him the keys to make it happen. In 2017, Kipchoge ran 2:00:25 at Breaking2—25 seconds short. Close enough to prove the science was right. Two years later, the 1:59:40 happened in Vienna. The blueprint Wilkins built made that possible. Now he's back...

-The Run Down By The Running Effect (our newsletter!): https://tinyurl.com/mr36s9rs What if the secret to running faster is eating a donut?  World-class coach Alex Ostberg is back for another monthly breakdown of his newsletter, The Rundown; and this one might be his most thought-provoking yet. Dominic and Alex tear through four recent editions, starting with a piece that'll make your clean-ea...

What do you do after you've literally run around the world? For Isaiah Photo, apparently, you wake up at 5 AM every single morning, jump into an ice bath, and spend 75 days trying to get a six-pack.  This is the kind of unhinged, disciplined, borderline-beautiful chaos that Isaiah Photo lives in. You might know him from his 10 million YouTube subscribers, or from that video where he attempted...

Grant Fisher holds American records, world records, and an Olympic medal. He's arguably the greatest American distance runner alive—and he's only 28. But the story that shaped all of it almost didn't happen. His college coach sat him down junior year and asked one question: how much do you actually care about this? That conversation changed everything.  Then, before the 2024 Olympics,...

Adriaan Wildschutt just became the first South African in history to win the NYC Half Marathon, and it looks like he’s in the middle of a memorable career. Adriaan holds five South African national records. He ran a sizzling 59:13 half marathon debut. He was 13th at the World Cross Country Championships, which was the best finish a South African man has ever had at that event. This guy is notbuild...

The man behind one of the most exciting moments in collegiate track this season is here: BYU Assistant Coach Ryan Waite. His athlete, Carter Cutting, just claimed the 2026 NCAA Indoor Mile title. Ryan isn't just a coach. He's a five-time All-American who ran these same kinds of races, felt that same pressure, and now pours every bit of that experience and wisdom into the athletes he develo...

Just a few months ago, Carter Cutting wasn’t the favorite in the men’s mile of the NCAA Indoor Championship.   In fact, he was ranked 10th in the field heading into this big meet. But when the moment came, the BYU junior delivered one of the most decisive kicks of the entire meet—closing his final 200 meters in 27.35 seconds to win the 2026 NCAA Indoor Mile National Championship in 3:58.94. That v...

The last time Kimberley May joined the show, she was a 4:27 miler pulling back the curtain on what it takes to compete at the highest level of collegiate running. Since then, her career has accelerated into something much bigger. In early 2025, May ran 8:44.73 for the indoor 3,000m, breaking the Providence College record and posting one of the fastest times in NCAA history.  Over the past year, sh...

For nearly 40 years, Jeff Troesch has worked behind the scenes with NBA players, MLB All-Stars, Olympic medalists, and national championship programs. He's coached athletes at every Olympic Games since 1988, helped shape the mental systems at IMG Academy, and consulted for USA Track & Field. In 2025, he distilled 150 mental performance lessons into one book:  One Day Better . Jeff doesn&#3...

Mike Scannell is back on  The Running Effect Podcast . The last time he joined the show, we talked about the long-term vision behind coaching one of America’s most talented distance runners. Since then, that vision has turned into one of the most remarkable stretches in American distance running history. His athlete, Grant Fisher, has won two Olympic bronze medals in Paris, broken indoor world rec...

The last time Connor Burns and Simeon Birnbaum were here, they were two highly anticipated freshmen trying to find their footing in one of the most historic distance programs in NCAA history. Now? They’re conference-dominating sophomores ready for their next target. At the 2026 Big Ten Indoor Championships, Simeon Birnbaum swept the distance double, winning both the 3,000m and the 5,000m to claim...

Clayton Young fell early at the Marathon World Championships, and still finished as the top American. He also ran 2:07:04 at Boston (the fastest marathon of his life), and somehow it still felt like there was more in the tank.  Since 2024, he’s been everywhere that matters: including 2nd in the U.S. Olympic Trials, 9th at the Paris Olympics, 7th in New York, 7th in Boston, and 9th in Tokyo. This m...

In the span of a few months, Trent McFarland has gone from conference contender to one of the most dangerous milers in the NCAA, running 3:52.73 to break a school record and then defending his Big Ten title in a gritty, tactical 4:11 championship race.   As one of the top milers in the Big Ten and the NCAA, Trent has had a tremendous 2025-26 season so far. He is the back-to-back Big Ten mile champ...

Cameron Hanes didn't inherit greatness. He built it: one mile, one arrow, one brutally consistent day at a time.    He wasn't a child prodigy hunter or a naturally gifted runner. He was a warehouse worker, a utility employee, and a guy who struggled through his first mile of running. And through obsession, discipline, and an uncompromising personal code, he became the man who can run 20 miles befo...

Aleksander Lingauer is back on the show, this time putting everything on the table. Aleksander is an endurance athlete and writer, and the mind behind Project 61: a solo mission to run the length of Germany, one marathon a day, for two straight months. He's also crewed for Kim Gotthwald across two Last Man Standing victories. And this year, BPN extended him an invitation of his own. Aleksander...

Becs Gentry isn’t just an influential Peloton instructor.  She’s a 2:32 marathoner, a former British Olympic Trials fourth-place finisher, the first female non-elite at the 2019 NYC Marathon, and now the newest Global Brand Ambassador for HOKA. And that’s not even mentioning her incredible second-place finish in The Great World Race in 2024: she ran 7 marathons, on 7 continents, in 7 days, setting...

The story of coach Craig Kirkwood doesn’t begin and end with teenage phenom Sam Ruthe.  Yes, just this year the 16-year-old Ruthe ran 3:48.88 indoors, breaking the World U18 Indoor Mile record and the New Zealand senior record in one race. It was a generational performance. But this wasn’t Coach Craig’s first run-in with elite talent. He has coached Olympic medalists like Hayden Wilde (Olympic bro...

The grade-two calf tear he suffered during the World Championship 1500m race in Tokyo in 2025 could have resulted inJosh Kerr stepping off the track and licking his wounds. Instead, he finished the race, committed to rehab, and returned to the stage at the Millrose Games. Kerr lined up in the 2-mile not just as the world indoor best holder (8:00.67), but as the man everyone was chasing. In a tacti...

-The Run Down By The Running Effect (our new newsletter!): https://tinyurl.com/mr36s9rs Alex returns for his monthly Run Down to unpack five recent essays that challenge how we think about talent, training, and long-term development in running. First, he explores why most prodigies don’t ultimately make it at the highest level. Early success, he argues, often masks structural weaknesses. That them...

Since his last appearance on the show, Coach Pat Henner has continued shaping distance culture at the highest levels of the sport while playing a quiet but meaningful role in one of the most remarkable middle-distance arcs in recent American history. After joining the University of Georgia in June 2022, Henner coached standout athlete Will Sumner to an NCAA title and helped elevate the Bulldogs’ d...

What does one of the most decorated American middle-distance runners in history do after her final race?     After 20 years at the top of the sport, including four global medals, a World Championship gold, an Olympic bronze, 11 U.S. titles, and a 3:57 1500m personal best, Jenny Simpson stepped off the professional stage at the 2024 New York City Marathon for the final time. But she didn’t step awa...