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Good morning! It’s the last day of the year and we’re going to wrap it up with a few highlights from the past 12 months of newsletters. Before we dive in, however, I’d like to thank all of you for your interest in, and support of, my work here at the morning shakeout. There’s now over 12,000 readers receiving my Tuesday morning missive, some of you who’ve been subscribed for years, others just a couple of months or even less, but it’s my hope that most weeks you’ll come across something that resonates with you, informs you, entertains you, or inspires you in some way. When I started this thing back in 2015 I had no inclination that I’d still be writing it nine years later, but it remains my favorite thing to do every week. I appreciate you being a part of this journey with me and I’m excited to see where it takes us in 2025.

OK, let’s get right to it.

Quick Splits

— As I do every year on New Year’s Day, tomorrow I’ll re-read this now 66-year-old letter that a then 22-year-old Hunter S. Thompson wrote to his friend Hume Logan in response to a request for life advice. If you’re feeling a little lost heading into the new year, or, like me, you just need the annual reminder that “every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience,” and “as your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes,” then take 5 minutes out of your day right now and give this one a read.

— From Issue 432, February 20: A few issues back I wrote that I had started to compile my own list of training principles, inspired in part by posts from mountain maestro Kilian Jornet and exercise physiologist Stephen Seiler. What follows here is a working set of principles I know to be true, developed from 27 years of trial and error as both an athlete and a coach, countless hours of my own reading and research into training theory and the history of the sport, and the influence of athletes and coaches I’ve been fortunate enough to observe, spend time around, form relationships with, and ask questions of over the course of my career. These principles form my training “philosophy” and help guide my thinking (and ultimately decision making) when it comes to working with athletes and putting together training programs.

+ The previous post on my training principles pairs well with this one from July. It came about earlier this year after a good friend texted me for training advice. He asked specifically about exogenous ketones and power meters, knowing full well that he was poking the bear, and this is a cleaned-up version of the rant (a few have called it a manifesto) that he got back from me. If you think someone might benefit from reading it, please feel free to send them either the web link or the IG post.

— From Issue 437, March 26: Along these lines, music and culture critic Ted Gioia’s recent post on “The State of the Culture, 2024” is one of the most poignant things I’ve read in a long time. He writes alarmingly about the ongoing degradation of the arts and entertainment by way of our society’s addiction to distraction. He dives into Dopamine Culture and makes a case for how and why this will be the issue of our time. “The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction. Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity,” he writes. “The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated. It’s a huge business, and will soon be larger than arts and entertainment combined. Everything is getting turned into TikTok—an aptly named platform for a business based on stimuli that must be repeated after only a few ticks of the clock.” None of this is new news, but I do think Gioia is on the money here. There’s reason to be worried, and it’s in our hands to shift the culture, both on an individual level and as a collective. Carve out time to get away from the screens and get out in the real world to do real things with real people. And don’t rush shit. Make space in the day for long conversations over quick text chats, the movie or album over an endless stream of reels, to actually visit places instead of sitting in your living room with ugly ass goggles strapped to your face, or just listen to the podcast at a normal speed instead of 1.5 or 2x for crissakes. It feels silly to even write all that but just take a look around if you’re wondering why the reminder is necessary.

— From Issue 438, April 2: My friend Sam Robinson turned me on to retired tennis pro Andrea Petkovic’s newsletter, Finite Jest, and it’s been one of my favorite things to read of late. This post in particular, a reflection about aging and letting go as an athlete, felt relevant to running, even for those of us who are nowhere near the professional level but have taken the sport seriously for a long time. She writes wonderfully and candidly about the challenges many of us navigate when those fast-twitch muscle fibers start to go, delusion starts to give way to reality, and both lifestyle and identity begin to untangle in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. “There are many reasons as to why it is so hard to let go when from the outside it can look very simple,” she writes. “There are two reasons in particular, however, that make it especially hard. It has become increasingly difficult to separate the tennis player persona from who you are as a person. Living a tennis player’s lifestyle is strongly intertwined with your identity. The way you eat, how you sleep, what you do in your leisure time – all of these aspects done wrongly can have a direct impact on your performance on court. Or done rightly just so. Hell, even reading an annoying text message moments before you go out to play can be your downfall. If everything you do is for tennis, everything you are is for tennis. And if everything you are is for tennis, now when you take tennis away – what remains?”

— From Issue 444, May 14: This past Saturday my wife Christine and I were driving east on I-80 toward Folsom, outside Sacramento, where she was competing in a race. Shortly after 5 AM the lower horizon of the sky began to illuminate in a magnificent glow. I’ve seen plenty of sunrises over the years but this particular one sent me straight into a moment of deep awe and contemplation while I sat there in the passenger’s seat. The main thought that came to me, which I shared excitedly with Christine, who nodded along in the “uh huh, that’s great, whatever you say honey” way that spouses do, was what a fucking miracle this all is. I experience moments of wonder like this every so often, but this one hit me in a very visceral way when I didn’t expect it. (Maybe the coffee was starting to kick in, who knows.) It’s easier than ever these days to get stressed about this or that, or make a mountain out of a molehill—and I’d be full of shit if I told you I hadn’t been in both of these boats myself in recent weeks—but it can be a literal and figurative eye-opener when you take the time to pause every once in a while and appreciate how incredible it is that we even exist in the first place, that we have this beautiful planet to explore and inhabit, and that we get to spend time with people we’ve grown to know and love. Now, appreciating the mere fact of our miraculous existence doesn’t diminish the very real problems we individually experience and collectively share—my hope, however, is that doing so has the exact opposite effect: that it helps us have more empathy for others, that it encourages us to practice kindness more regularly, that it spurs us to take better care of our environment, and that it makes us want to spend more time with the people we love. These opportunities are available to everyone. It’d be a shame not to make good on them while we’re here.

— From Issue 458, August 20: Like this guy, I also hated all the A.I. ads during the Olympics, and the ones that had anything to remotely do with running—the father asking Google’s Gemini A.I. to write a letter to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, or the woman in the Meta ad asking the A.I. bot to design her a training program—really got under my skin. And no, it’s not because I’m worried that A.I. is going to take my job as a writer or coach, it’s because I’m scared shitless that artificial intelligence is going to erode humanity’s actual intelligence to the point where we don’t actually know how to do anything for ourselves, e.g., a young girl writing a sincere letter to her hero, or a coach actually thinking through why they’re putting a training program together a certain way. Now, I’m not a technophobe by any stretch, and there are certainly advantageous use cases for some forms of A.I., but I see so many people not using their brains to actually learn how to do shit or understand how and why things work the way they do, and that’s going to be bad news on a number of levels if we’re not careful. (On the flipside, I also believe opportunities will always exist, if not open up more, for folks who are really paying attention, care deeply about developing an understanding and cultivating meaning, and generally aren’t lazy or trying to cut corners.) OK, end mini rant.

— From Issue 473, December 3: This “letter” from Roger Federer to Rafael Nadal after the latter’s retirement announcement is one of the best things I’ve read in recent memory. It’s representative of what sport should be about: being honest with yourself, respecting your rivals, appreciating their differences, making one another better through competition, and cherishing the lessons learned and memories made along the way. Read this post, revisit it often, and share it widely. “I keep thinking about the memories we’ve shared,” Federer writes. “Promoting the sport together. Playing that match on half-grass, half-clay. Breaking the all-time attendance record by playing in front of more than 50,000 fans in Cape Town, South Africa. Always cracking each other up. Wearing each other out on the court and then, sometimes, almost literally having to hold each other up during trophy ceremonies.”

— From Issue 461, September 10: I saw John Moreland play at The Chapel in San Francisco on Saturday night. It was my first time catching him live. I was introduced to John’s music earlier this year and connected to it right away. His songs are intensely emotional and deeply personal but universally relatable. When he stepped onto the stage everyone clapped briefly and then the place fell silent as he took his seat. His presence was arresting and he hadn’t even so much as said a word yet. A few years ago Clay Skipper profiled Moreland for GQ and wrote, “Go to a show…and you’ll get a sense of what it’s like to be in the blast zone when it explodes out of him.” As soon as he put his fingers to the guitar and began singing “Hang Me In The Tulsa County Stars“ with his gruff yet warm voice, you felt the impact deep inside of you. It was unavoidable even if you were ready for it. Aside from a round of applause after each song, the place was dead quiet. (In fact, the few times I heard people talking they were immediately shushed by others in the audience.) A lot of care went into the performance and it was clearly appreciated by most everyone in attendance. This gentle giant from Oklahoma, equipped with nothing more than an acoustic guitar, a harmonica, and a microphone, sat there in front of a room full of strangers and spilled his soul for nearly two hours straight. There wasn’t a wasted lyric or chord amongst the entire setlist. It was pure craft, and to watch a master at work was such a treat.

— A big thank you to the four partner brands that help make my work possible week in and week out, namely Tracksmith, New Balance, Precision Fuel & Hydration, and Final Surge, all of which have missions I believe in and products that I trust and use myself on a regular basis. One of the best ways to support what I’m doing here is by patronizing the partners that have kept the newsletter and podcast going the past few years. Check out some of the discount codes and special offers available exclusively to readers and listeners of the morning shakeout at this link.

Workout of the Week: 3 is a Magic Number

Not only does this workout share its name with one of my favorite covers of all-time, it also happens to be one of my favorite sessions to assign my athletes. In fact, if I were only allowed to use one interval—but could manipulate the intensity, recovery, and number of reps to suit my needs and desires—it’d be 3-minute repetitions. What makes them magic? Three-minute reps are short enough to keep your attention, long enough that you can’t fake your way through a set of them, and versatile enough to achieve different objectives depending on the day. Let me explain.

The bottom line.

“Time is repetition, a circle. This is obvious. Day and night, the seasons, tell us this. Even so, we don’t believe it.”

—Joy Williams, “Autumn”

That's it for Issue 477. Please forward this email to a friend, share the web link on social media and/or in your group chats, or reply to me directly at your own risk.

Thanks for reading,

Mario

P.S. If you’re looking to get your fueling and hydration dialed in this winter ahead of the spring racing season, my partners at Precision Fuel and Hydration have a ton of awesome resources in their Knowledge Hub that can help you solve some of your problems and/or tie up any loose ends before race day. (I helped them with this piece on marathon pacing and fueling, as well as this one about why runners aren’t as good at fueling as triathletes and cyclists.) They’ve also got a free fuel and hydration planner to help you better understand your carb, sodium, and fluid needs. You can also book a free 20-minute video call with a member of their team. These are GREAT resources from good people that will put you on the right path to solving any intake issues you might have. (And if you’re interested in trying Precision Fuel & Hydration products for yourself, check out this link and save 15% off your first order.)

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