“Tapping into the side of you that has that internal drive is super important because discipline’s a really hard thing, right? Cadence and consistency to me matters, and when I know I’m off loop is when I don’t have that consistency or cadence. If you take any successful business, any successful athlete, the reality is what makes them most successful is some sort of cadence and consistency.”
Excited to share a conversation I recently had with my good friend Bryan Hill for this week’s episode of the podcast.
Bryan is the co-owner and CEO of Rehab United Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy, which has offices in both San Diego and Seattle. A physical therapist by trade, Bryan was a collegiate All-American in soccer and played professionally for 5 years before opening Rehab United with his brother Sean in 2003. He took up running and triathlon after his soccer career ended and he also coaches a small roster of athletes in those two sports.
In this conversation, we dug into Bryan’s story, how he got into physical therapy and developed his treatment philosophy, the importance of cadence and consistency in anything you do, why community matters so much to him, what runners can do to get strong and stay healthy, and a lot more. (more…)
“I had a breakthrough race in Boston and training for New York has been every bit as good as the training leading into Boston and even better in some aspects, so what I’d really like to do is, I think it would be successful if I validated that performance in Boston…and say, ‘yes, this is where I am and I belong.’ You know, I ran 20 miles with the leaders in Boston and that was the first time running with the international leaders in a marathon that long and so I want to validate that Boston performance.” —Jared Ward
I’m excited to share a special episode of the podcast that was recorded live two days before the 2019 TCS New York City Marathon with Kenyan Mary Ngugi, who went on to finish 10th in the women’s race, and Jared Ward, who was the top American male finisher in sixth place.
Ngugi, who ran a personal best 2:27:36, won silver at the half marathon world championships in 2014, captured bronze at the 2016 championships, and owns the fastest half marathon ever run on American soil, 1:06:29 at Houston in 2016. She is also the mother of an 8-year-old daughter and one of the most outgoing Kenyan athletes on social media.
Ward, whose 2:10:45 clocking was the second-fastest marathon he’s ever run, was sixth at New York for the second straight year. Earlier this year he ran a personal best 2:09:25 at the Boston Marathon to finish eighth and was sixth at the 2016 Olympic marathon in Rio. He is a father of four children and will be a top contender for the U.S. Olympic marathon team in February. (more…)
“If you go into the race knowing it’s going to hurt and you’re OK with it, you’re stronger than most of the people out there—and I just latched onto that: this idea that if I knew it was going to hurt and I was ready for it and I could revel in it and embrace it and be like ‘OK, lets do this’ type of deal with the pain or with the discomfort, that made racing so much easier, and that makes a lot of things in life so much easier.”
I had an awesome conversation with Corrine Malcolm for this week’s episode of the podcast. Malcolm is a San Francisco-based trail and ultra runner for adidas TERREX and she’s also been coaching athletes for CTS since 2016.
A self-confessed science nerd with a degree in Health and Human Performance, the 29-year-old Malcolm was a collegiate cross-country skier and then raced on the U.S. national biathlon team before finding her way into trail and ultrarunning in her early 20s. She’s finished in the top-10 at the last two Western States Endurance Runs, including a tenth-place finish at this year’s race. Malcolm was also fifth at last year’s TDS in Chamonix, France and has shown some pretty damn good range in ultra-distance races over the past few years.
We covered a lot of good ground in this one: what she’s planning on doing the rest of the year since her fall goal race was cancelled, why she’s not planning to go back to Western States next year even though she has a guaranteed entry, developing a healthier relationship with exercise and overtraining and how that’s informed her perspective as a coach, embracing the suck and how she got good at it, and a lot more. (more…)
“Their phrase they have at the Bird-In-Hand Half Marathon is, ‘The joy of running in community,’ and it’s on all their t-shirts, it’s on all their signs: the joy of running in community. And that’s why I struggle with this idea of competition because these guys are very hardcore runners: they’re fast, they’re strong, they do Ragnars, they do sub-3 hour marathons, but always as a gang, as a team, like a cross-country team. So those things began to sort of connect for me: I’m running with these Amish dudes, they all run together. I’m running with these donkeys, they’re all having fun. I would finish runs with the donkeys and my wife and my friend Zeke feeling way better than other runs because we were going slower, we were communicating, your consciousness is off yourself, it’s on somebody else, so for me, I just started to feel and see the effects of running as a group.”
Great episode this week: I had the chance to sit down with New York Times best-selling author Christopher McDougall while he was on tour for his new book, Running with Sherman, which is a heartwarming story about training a rescue donkey to run one of the most challenging races in America.
McDougall also wrote the wildly popular Born To Run, and in this conversation we talked about both of those books, as well as running, writing, storytelling, community, competition, and a lot more. (more…)
“Anybody that’s in this industry, especially somebody that was in my former position, you sit around all the time and complain about what’s wrong with track and field. I’m one of the biggest talkers when it comes to that, I always complain about what’s wrong. And I feel like I have a chance to potentially work towards one piece of the solution, which is an events series in the U.S., after USAs, not only where athletes can make money, but we’re doing things differently, and it’s more entertainment. We’re going to do our best. It’s exciting—very exciting.”
Excited to share a conversation I recorded in late September with Jesse Williams, who was the head of sports marketing at Brooks for 13 years, where he oversaw the marketing and business side of the such initiatives as Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, the Brooks Beasts, the Brooks PR Invitational, and other athlete programs. Williams left Brooks in 2017 and took a year off from work to figure out his next move, and at the end of last year he launched Sound Running, a company which offers training programs, coaching, and events for runners of ALL ability levels. He’s particularly excited about next summer’s Sound Running Tour, a series of track meets in southern California designed to create competitive domestic racing opportunities for athletes seeking Olympic tune-ups and personal bests, all while helping push the sport forward—which is something that it desperately needs right now.
Williams has had interesting career trajectory: from studying exercise physiology and English as undergrad, to becoming a kindergarten teacher as a 22-year-old, going back to grad school for a degree in biomechanics, to then working his way up the chain at Brooks to become head of sports marketing. We got into all that and a lot more over the course of this 90-minute conversation, including quite a bit of discussion about the marketing side of the sport, what excites him and what worries him about it right now, how brands can better use their athletes, and a lot more. (more…)
The 97-year-old lobsterman from Maine is still working—not as much as he used to years ago, but he’s the captain of his ship and manning a couple hundred traps, not because he has to, but because it’s what makes him feel the most alive. I love reading about folks like Olson, who never really embrace the concept of retirement because their life’s work is more than just a job. These stories inspire me as I navigate my own journey through life, work, and where the two intersect. I hope to be coaching at least a few athletes and sharing stories about running as long as I’m alive. Sure, some day I’ll coach quite a few less people than I do now and maybe eventually the newsletter and podcast won’t be a weekly thing (and/or they’ll take on different forms) but I can’t imagine not doing what I do to some degree as long as I’m physically and mentally able. To echo Olson, “I never loafed,” he admits. “Sure I’ve earned it. But hey, I don’t want to.”
Check out the complete morning shakeout issue #202.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mario Fraioli is a writer and running coach based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
