This is what it looks like to chase reigning UTMB champion Vincent Bouillard around your backyard. (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! Back home in New England, where I’m from, the time between late October and early December is often called stick season. (Noah Kahan, a Vermont native, even named his last album after it.) During this post-fall/pre-winter purgatory it gets dark really early, the trees start to go bare, and the weather can get pretty nasty. It kind of sucks, to be honest. Now,...
9 days ago • 7 min read
Charging hard with half a mile to go in the Dash to the Finish Line 5K on Saturday. I finished strong and raced about as well as I could have hoped for on the day. (More details are on Strava if you're so inclined.) Photo: Anh Bui Good morning! I’m on my way home from New York as I type this and most everything I want to say about my experience over the weekend mirrors what I wrote at this time last year, so I’m not going to rehash all of that here. (But please, do read or re-read it.) I'll...
16 days ago • 9 min read
Chasing sunrise. (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! I’m heading to New York in a few days for one of my favorite weekends of the year and I hope to see many of you out and about in the city. I’m not hosting any shakeout runs or participating in any live podcasts or panels this year but I will be racing in the Dash to the Finish 5K on Saturday (look for the black singlet with the morning shakeout logo on the chest and tell me to get my ass in gear if you see me run by) and supporting my wife...
23 days ago • 8 min read
Caught a comet with my iPhone camera last Thursday night. This was a "shoot and see what ya got" type of situation, aided by Night Mode, as there really wasn't much that your eyes alone could make out in the dark sky. (iPhone photography is a hobby of mine and you can check out my regularly updated photo feed here on Glass if you're so inclined.) Good morning! I’d like to open up this week’s issue with a PSA for fall marathoners and ultrarunners everywhere: it’s OK, even advisable, to unplug...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
I think they call this "street photography." (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! We are in the thick of the fall racing season right now and the day-to-day business of coaching is humming along at a relentlessly quick pace. It’s one of my favorite times of the year: the energy is high, races are happening nearly every weekend, and athletes’ emotions are all over the place (and sometimes the coach’s too!). That said, my typical writing windows won’t be open quite as wide the next two months so...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Early birds get the trail. (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! Let's get right to it. Quick Splits — The zeitgeist’s current obsession with the importance of protein intake over the other macronutrients has always struck me as a bit exaggerated, if not over-the-top, so it was a relief to read Brady Holmer’s most recent post telling everyone to essentially chill out. “There are several nutrient deficiencies that we actually need to be worrying about,” he writes, “but protein is certainly not one...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Doing my best Ansel Adams impersonation in Mammoth Lakes a couple weekends ago. (Shot on my iPhone) Good morning! I’ve got a couple exciting announcements to kick things off this week: 1. The podcast is making a return! I’m going to experiment with a quarterly rotation consisting of one new episode (and one episode only) each month from now through at least the end of the year (and throughout 2025 if all goes well): The first month will be an AMA (Ask Mario Anything) and the next one of these...
about 2 months ago • 9 min read
Tim Tollefson in his element. Photo: Sarah Attar (courtesy of Mammoth Trailfest.) Good morning! We got back from vacation a week ago and a couple days later I took off to Mammoth Lakes for the weekend to support a couple of my athletes at the Mammoth Trailfest, Paddy O’Leary, who raced in the 26K on Sunday, and Tim Tollefson, who hosted the three-day mountain party for a few thousand people. It’s been nothing short of incredible to watch this event grow over the past few years and I couldn’t...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Out of office. Good morning! I’m still on island time (for a little while longer, anyway), so here are some old favorites from years past to hold you over until next week. Let’s get right to it. Quick Splits — From Issue 45, 8 years ago this week: I generally dislike top-10 lists but sometimes the information contained therein can actually be pretty informative, perhaps even useful. These tips on how to be a writer from author Rebecca Solnit caught my attention last week because they were so...
2 months ago • 5 min read