Good morning! I’m back home from visiting family and friends on the east coast and enjoying the last little bit of downtime before the pace of life picks back up again next week. After experiencing a bad case of burnout earlier this year, I’ve been making more of an effort than ever to slow the heck down the past few months. I’m a pusher by nature with a tendency to overcommit and squeeze as much as I can into a given day. And while being a hard charger has helped me to accomplish a lot, it’s also gotten me into trouble more times than I can count. Over the past few months I’ve been deliberately disengaging from work and building more breaks into my schedule, setting boundaries around social media usage, reducing input, saying no to most requests, and generally just being more protective of my time. It’s not easy for me to pull back the throttle but it’s necessary if I want to be in this for the long haul (and I do). It’s no different than running: you can’t go all-out all the time if you want to last. As a coach, I know this and preach it to my athletes regularly in regard to training, yet I still need to remind myself that the same principle applies to the rest of our lives as well. I’m in a much better place than I was back in February and optimistic that I can avoid all-encompassing instances of overwhelm moving forward. Most importantly, I’m enjoying myself more than I have in quite some time and feeling more energized, too.

Speaking of running, I’ve been putting in 40-45 miles a week for the past six weeks—about 2/3 my usual volume—and have no real desire to run much more than that right now. I’ve hopped in a handful of workouts recently but most of my miles have been easy, unfocused, and alongside other people. It’s been a nice change of pace post-NYC Marathon and I feel great. As of this writing, it looks like I’ll end the year with a little over 2,800 miles, which is my lowest annual total by at least 200 in the past 10 years (since the great stress fracture of 2009, in fact), and I’m A-OK with it. I still don’t have any competitive goals that are exciting me right now, and I’m fine with that too. My relationship with running is in a different—but all-in-all solid—place at this point of my life. I know it will continue to evolve, and that excites me.

Before we dive into this week’s abbreviated collection of insights and interestingness, I’d like to thank PATH Projects for sponsoring the newsletter this past month. One of the most unique and innovative elements of PATH’s apparel line is that all their running shorts have separate base liners. This independent suspension system allows the short to move freely without shifting the base liner when you run. You can personalize your runs with different base liners, allowing you to dial in compression, breathability, moisture wicking, and weather response. Also, less panels = less seams = less friction points and less likelihood of painful chafing. Finally, separate base liners mean you wash your shorts less (and pack less) when traveling, helping keep things easy and simple. Find out more about the component layering system here and enter for a chance to win a $100 PATH Projects gift card at pathprojects.com/mario.

OK, let’s get right to it.

Quick Splits

— I had never heard of Yitka Winn, who writes for REI, Trail Runner, and other publications, but a reader sent me this blog post she wrote about her “longest off-season yet” and I just had to share it here given what I wrote above about burnout, slowing things down, and where I’m at with my own running right now. Winn writes, “I am not great at sitting still. So usually, by mid November, I’m itching hard to lay down a race schedule for the next year and start training my ass off again. I’ve surprised myself this year by not feeling that tug at all. My first inclination, of course, was to panic. To think that it’s finally happened—I’ve burnt out! Drat. My second inclination was to steamroll right over my ambivalence, sign up for some races and trust that the fire will rage again, as it always does the moment I’ve inked my name on a registrants list on Ultrasignup. My third inclination, though, was to do something completely crazy, and choose to take an entire year off from racing, instead of just a few months.”

— The Tinmen Cometh. “We’re getting there, we’re going to be on the world stage,” says Drew Hunter, the unofficial captain of the Boulder-based Tinman Elite squad. “In four years, it’s not even going to be a question. We’re going to be one of the best groups in the world.” I love the chutzpah, confidence, or whatever you want to call it that Hunter and the rest of his Tinman teammates seemingly possess in spades. This group of young men, who just three-peated as national club cross-country champions, is one of the most exciting teams in professional running right now and part of what makes them so appealing is the almost counterculture nature of how they train and go about the rest of their business. “We’ve been called ragtag, a mob, the Beastie Boys of running. Some people don’t understand how we’ve done what we’ve done in such a short time span,” team member Sam Parsons told Runner’s World. “It’s about happiness. It’s about our coach. And it’s about us being raw and authentic, so people can connect to running.” I’m a big fan of the Tinmen—I only wish there were some Tinwomen—and their coach, Tom Schwartz, whose work-hard-but-not-too-hard training methodology I’ve been studying since he began posting about it on the now defunct run-insight.com website in the early 2000s. The squad reminds me of NAZ Elite in some ways—part of both groups’ ethos is to connect with fans both online and in-person in an effort to share every part of the journey—but with a vibe and an attitude that’s all their own. The Tinmen are playing the long game, emphasizing the importance of slow, steady development over instant results, and I’m excited to see how it shakes out for them in the coming years.

— Time is a finite resource. Despite our best efforts (and good intentions), we can’t make the day any longer than it already is, but, to some degree, we can control how we spend it. “What to do?” Oliver Burkeman writes for The Guardian. “The rule of thumb is: just because your problem is one of strained capacity, don’t assume increasing capacity is the answer. It may make more sense to emulate 14th Street and reduce, or at least put a ceiling on, your capacity instead.” To expound upon part of what I wrote in the introductory paragraph above, being more protective of my time—which, for me, means saying no to most phone calls and meeting requests, batching tasks like processing email, replying to text messages, and responding to athlete feedback in Final Surge so I’m not reacting in real time all the time, making myself unavailable the first few hours of the day so I have time to walk the dog, read, and/or go for a run (i.e. do something for myself), and blocking off non-negotiable blocks of time on my calendar each week to write training schedules, record and/or edit podcasts, and write—has helped me to prioritize the things I want and need to do in a given day, avoid feeling the need to “do all the things” everyday, waste less time in general, and do better work.

— The Gift of Hope: “It can be daunting, wondering what to give people, especially at this time of year,” writes Shane Parrish on the Farnam Street blog. “What gift properly communicates the feelings you have for someone? One idea is to give yourself. Another is to give the gift of hope.” This short post, which highlights an excerpt from Krista Tippett’s book, Becoming Wise,  reminds me a lot of the late Gabe Grunewald, who showed courage and resilience in her fight against rare cancer, and left a legacy of hope that will give others the strength to face their own challenges in life. No doubt she’s given this gift to so many people over the past 10 years, and will continue to do so through her foundation, Brave Like Gabe, for generations to come. “There are millions of people at any given moment, young and old, giving themselves over to service, risking hope, and all the while ennobling us all,” Tippett writes. “To take such goodness in and let it matter—to let it define our take on reality as much as headlines of violence—is a choice we can make to live by the light in the darkness, to be brave and free."

The bottom line. 

Throw me to the wolves

Because there's order in the pack

Throw me to the sky

Because I know I'm coming back

— Red Hot Chili Peppers, Easily

That’s it for Issue 216. End 2019 on a high note (or get 2020 off to a good start) by forwarding this email, sharing the web link, or encouraging someone to subscribe. 

Thanks for reading and happy new year, 

Mario

P.S. Looking for some morning shakeout merch to upgrade your wardrobe in 2020? I’ve got a small run of logo tees, tanks, and hoodies available for purchase. These shirts come in a few different colors, styles, and fabrics. Check ’em out on Cotton Bureau and order yours today.