Good morning and happy holidays! I’m in Massachusetts this week visiting family and friends, running some of my old routes, and generally just trying to lay low. 

As of this morning, I’m halfway through the two-week social media sabbatical I committed to last Tuesday and I can’t say that I miss scrolling Twitter or Instagram all that much. It became obvious to me within a few minutes last Tuesday morning that I was mindlessly wasting too much time on those particular platforms despite the fact that I’d relegated their use to my iPad and desktop (my iPad screentime this past Sunday was down 37% from the week before, FWIW). By the end of last week I had finished a book that I’d barely opened in the two weeks prior and filled the rest of my newfound free time by catching up on a dozen or so articles I’d saved to my Instapaper, journaling in my paper notebook, and actually calling people to talk on the phone. Not only did I make better use of my time, but my mind feels noticeably less muddled than it has in quite some time. None of this comes as much of a surprise, and it’s consistent with others’ experiences as well as my own past ones, but it’s been a realtime reminder of how easy it can be to get sucked down the rabbit hole of the infinite scroll if you don’t set very firm boundaries on exposure and usage. I’ll return to these platforms—and Strava—sometime in 2020, but with much more a much more disciplined and intentional approach. For now, I’ll just continue enjoying the break. 

OK, I’ve got a tight collection of thoughts, articles, and podcasts waiting for you under this digital tree of mine. Let’s get right to it. 

Quick Splits

— Race two important high-level marathons less than two months apart? In an Olympic year, no less? Who does Des Linden think she is to attempt such a feat? To borrow and amend a line from Once a Runner, “That, my dear, shows how much you know. Des Linden is Des Linden, the famous American clock cleaner.” Last week, the two-time Olympian and 2018 Boston Marathon champion announced she’ll be racing both the Olympic Trials Marathon at the end of February, the Boston Marathon some seven weeks later, and, running gods willing, the Olympic Games a few months after that. She told Erin Strout for Women’s Running that, “It’s what’s fun about the sport, especially at this point. I know I can do a marathon—that’s not a challenge really. But throwing in something to shake it up makes it enjoyable.” General advice and common practice suggests that marathoners not race more than two hard marathons in a calendar year, much less three in less than six months. I’ve certainly subscribed to this philosophy, and, for the most part, it’s sound advice. But at the same time, I know how much excitement fuels motivation and enjoyment, especially for someone like Linden who has been at this for a long time, and I don’t think you can discount the added importance of that in this situation. The way she and coach Walt Drenth are approaching this reminds me of a magnet I have on my refrigerator: “That’s a crazy idea. Insane. It doesn’t make sense. ‘You’ll do it?’ ‘Of course,’ I replied.”

— I majored in philosophy so seeing a headline that reads “What Philosophy Can Teach Us About Endurance” speaks my love language. That said article was written by Alex Hutchinson just warms my heart all the more. The piece helps explain what University of Alberta researcher Jim Denison, a former 3:43 1500m runner and prominent coaching theorist, calls “the Foucauldian approach to coaching distance runners,” or a “socio-cultural” approach to coaching, based on the work of the late social theorist Michel Foucault that puts the importance of the coach-athlete relationship and dynamic on the same level of importance as the details of a particular workout/training program and/or what physiological responses you are attempting to create. I found myself nodding throughout the article as I was reading it because this approach has always come pretty intuitively to me: I’ve always approached coaching from the philosophical and psychological end of things, developing a relationship with my athletes, getting to know them as people first and understanding their motivations before figuring out what their training program should like. That doesn’t discount the importance of the physiological side of things—it’s equally as important—but it’s different than coming at coaching from more of a pure sports science standpoint where the initial emphasis is put on understanding the athlete’s physiology in order to develop a formula in order to achieve the desired result. Philosophy, psychology, physiology—they’re all equally important fields for a coach to study and understand—but I think you have to get the order right. As the saying goes, “Your athletes don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Or, to put my own spin on it: A coach has to know their shit, but first they have to give a shit. 

— The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius: This essay has nothing to do with running or coaching—directly, anyway—but it’s a thought-provoking read by programmer, writer, and investor Paul Graham on the importance of having what he calls “a disinterested obsession with something that matters” in order to do great work—whatever that means for you. “An obsessive interest will even bring you luck, to the extent anything can,” Graham writes. “Chance, as Pasteur said, favors the prepared mind, and if there's one thing an obsessed mind is, it's prepared.”

— Organizational psychologist Adam Grant has been making the podcast rounds of late. I enjoyed him on Dax Shepherd’s Armchair Expert a little more than I did his appearance on The Tim Ferriss show, but both are good conversations and full of applicable takeaways about motivation, finding meaning in your life and work, the difference between givers and takers, the importance of asking for feedback and criticism, and a lot more. Listening to him talk about how he asked his students for feedback throughout the year motivated me to solicit some from my own athletes in the end-of-the-year wrap-up email I sent to them over the weekend. 

— Two of the many things I’ve come to appreciate about Shalane Flanagan over the years are that 1. She’s a straight shooter and 2. She leads by example. Both of those qualities are evident in spades on this episode of the Keeping-Track podcast with hosts Roisin McGettigan, Alysia Montano, and Molly Huddle. Flanagan talks about her double knee surgery, the challenges of retirement, transitioning to coaching, the Mary Cain story and what the environment was like amongst the Bowerman Track Club women/at Nike after that story came out, how her relationship with food evolved over the course of her career, aggressiveness and how to channel it the right way, advocating for yourself and creating your own opportunities, and a lot more.

Enter for a chance to win a $100 PATH Projects gift card! 

Many thanks to my friends at PATH Projects for sponsoring the newsletter this month. PATH Projects makes running shorts with 3 or 4 zip pockets so you can carry your phone, keys, gels, ID, etc., without things bouncing around when you run. They’re great for both road running and trail running, whether you’re going long, short, or somewhere in between. PATH Projects also offers base liners, shirts and headwear. All the gear is only available at PATHprojects.com and ships to customers around the world. Enter for a chance to win a $100 PATH projects gift card at pathprojects.com/mario.

Congrats to TMS podcast listeners Rob Pepper, Catherine Brewer, Michael Potter for winning a $75 gift card.

The bottom line. 

“You can’t expect to do great things by leading an ordinary life.”
— A favorite saying of Karen Boen, my collegiate coach at Stonehill, who last week was inducted into the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

That’s it for Issue 215. Please forward it, share the web link, or reply at your own risk. 

Thanks for reading, 

Mario