Alexi Pappas is a professional athlete who holds the Greek national record in the 10,000-meters and competed for Greece at the 2016 Olympic Games. She’s also an award-winning writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Runner’s World, The Atlantic, Outside magazine, and other publications.
In this episode you’ll hear from six women and six men whose stories, experiences, wisdom, and insight really stood out to me. They are, in order of episode release date: Fernando Cabada, Laura Schmitt, Nate Jenkins, Mike Smith, Mary Cain, Karen Boen, Faith E. Briggs, Mike Rouse, Brenda Martinez, Kilian Jornet, Diljeet Taylor, and Knox Robinson.
Alex Hutchinson is the author of the New York Times best-seller Endure, which is one of my favorite books of the past few years, he’s a contributing editor at Outside magazine, where he writes the Sweat Science column, and his byline has also appeared in numerous other publications.
Knox Robinson is a returning guest to the show. He first appeared back on Episode 12, which was recorded Boston Marathon weekend in 2018. He was also the first person I interviewed for the morning shakeout’s Going Long series almost four years ago.
Chris Miltenberg is one of the top collegiate cross-country and track coaches in the United States. He’s currently the director of cross country and track and field at the University of North Carolina, where he took over last year after holding the same position at Stanford from 2012 until mid-2019.
This week on the podcast I’m answering listener questions in the final Ask Mario Anything episode of 2020. We got some good ones about diversity in the sport, running with my dog Tahoe, easy run paces and weekly mileage, shoes, setting goals, and more.
The Alternating Miles Long Run, which bounces back and forth between marathon pace and the faster end of your normal training pace, is one of my favorite sessions to assign my athletes, whether they’re in marathon training or not.
I first read about this workout, made popular by former Boston winner and marathon world champion Rob De Castella of Australia, in Michael Sandrock’s Running With The Legends (one of my favorite running books of all-time, for what it’s worth) when I was in high school. I first wrote about it for Competitor, now PodiumRunner, five years ago. The session’s construction is simple: 8 x 400m with a scant 200-meter float for “recovery” between repetitions.
