This week we’re kicking it back to Episode 64 with Frank Gagliano, one of the greatest track coaches of all-time, which was recorded three years ago at his home in Rye, New York. Gagliano, who is now 85 years old, has coached at every level of the sport over the past 60 years—high school, college, and professionally—and he’s had great success at all of them. He has a love for the sport, his family, his athletes, and his country that is unmatched. This is a conversation about coaching and life that had a profound impact on me—and I know it will do the same for you.
Laura Schmitt was the longtime cross country and track coach at Redwood High School in Larkspur, California, where she was at the helm for 35 years and led some of the best teams and athletes in the state. She’s also a wife, a mom, and grandmother—not to mention an entrepreneur who founded a play-based preschool that’s still going strong today as well as the first treadmill studio on the West Coast. In this conversation, we talked about running, community, coaching, family, parenting, and entrepreneurship—all things Laura knows a lot about and has had a lot of success in over the years.
Jinghuan Liu Tervalon is a mother and a runner from Southern California. She started running 14 years ago to deal with heartache and to do something for herself before she eventually found a community that she connected with and started training in earnest for races. She’s also a writer whose work has been published in Runner’s World and Women’s Running. In fact, last year she won a creative grant through the Brooks RunFulness Project to create a multimedia book project that showcases runners from the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. She serves on the board of Bras for Girls, and is an advocate for creating social change through running.
This episode with Tommy Rivers Puzey is a long, winding, and at times heavy conversation with someone I deeply respect and admire about life, death, cancer, identity, hope, potential, love, gratitude, and more that I feel privileged to have had in person and that I am honored to share here with all of you.
In the third installment of Common Ground, a monthly podcast co-hosted by me and Dinee Dorame of the Grounded Podcast, we catch up on all things Boston Marathon, talk a little bit about the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album, look ahead to what’s exciting each of us in the month of May, and more.
I’m excited to share the Racers’ Roundtable I hosted at Tracksmith’s Trackhouse this past Friday with guests Tommie Runz, Erica Stanley Dottin, Mick Iacofano, Caroline Williams, Ken Rideout, Katie Kellner, and Colin Bennie. A mix of first-timers and veterans, elites and age-group competitors, locals and out of towners, we talked all things Boston Marathon: how the Boston mindset is different from other marathons, dealing with pre-race excitement, lessons learned from past Boston experiences, what they were most looking forward to on race day, and a lot more.
I love ladder sessions. It's a great feeling mentally when you start coming back down the ladder and know the longest intervals are behind you. This workout is not that and that's exactly the point.
The "Reverse Michigan" workout is an ascending ladder on the track—starting with a fast 400m, ending with a strong mile—interspersed with longer stretches of tempo running off the track between intervals. It's a great blend of speed and strength that can be beneficial to nearly any runner whether they're training for the mile, the marathon or anything in between.
One-mile repeats are a bread-and-butter session for distance runners prepping to race 5K, the marathon, or anything in between. Every once in a while I like to mix up the intensity and recovery a bit to work on both stamina and speed while also keeping my athletes more engaged throughout the workout.
