On a weekly basis, host Mario Fraioli gleans unique insights and inspiration from a wide range of athletes, coaches, and personalities in the sport of running through compelling longform conversations you won’t hear anywhere else.
This week, my right-hand man Chris Douglas serves me up some listener questions in an old-school Ask Mario Anything episode of the podcast. In this one, I answer inquiries about my favorite books, “lighthouses” in my life, breaking through in the marathon, returning to running after a stress fracture, and a lot more.
I recently sat down with my good friend and three-time podcast guest Simon Freeman, the co-founder, editor, and publisher of my favorite running magazine, Like The Wind, for the second installment of our yet-to-be named quarterly conversation, which you can listen to wherever you get the morning shakeout podcast or at this handy link. An excerpt of this exchange can be found in Issue #36 of LtW, which comes out later this week. In this one, Simon and I talk all about coaching: our experiences with being coached and what we got out of them, the different forms that coaching takes, the impact a coach can have on an athlete, and a lot more.
In this conversation, Randy Ashley and I tall a little about how he got into coaching, before discussing all things related to working with high school athletes: keeping it fun, building and maintaining team culture, dealing with the pressures of social media, interacting with parents, generalization versus specialization, how he thinks about training, and a lot more.
My guest for this episode is Starla Garcia, an Olympic Trials marathoner, registered dietician, and body and cultural diversity advocate. After sharing her story of how she got into running and eventually became a dietician, Starla and I talk all things nutrition and fueling for runners: maintaining a healthy relationship with food, being comfortable in your own body, how and when to fuel in training and in racing, eating for performance and recovery, hydration and electrolyte replenishment, different considerations for women versus men, supplementation, and much more.
My guest for this episode is Dr. Justin Ross, an avid endurance athlete and licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in health, wellness, and human performance psychology. In this conversation we bust some myths about sports psychology, unpack what it means to be a mentally tough athlete, discuss how to approach goal setting and performance standards, and a lot more.
My guest for this episode is Anh Bui, Doctor of Physical Therapy, 2:53 marathoner, running coach, and certified strength and conditioning specialist. In this conversation, we discuss what it means to run resiliently, understanding the difference between injury pain and normal aches, why strength training is important for runners (and how to best fit it into the week), the importance of pre-run activation exercises, considerations for Masters athletes, and much more.
My guest for this episode is Mark Coogan, coach of Team New Balance Boston and co-author of the new book, Personal Best Running: Coach Coogan’s Strategies for the Mile to the Marathon. In this conversation, Mark and I discuss his book, get into his training principles and the influences behind them, the importance of effort over exactitude, and a lot more.
In this episode, Simon Freeman and Mario Fraioli have a great conversation about emerging footwear, apparel, and media brands and trends in the running space. It’s very much two friends with a lot of industry experience just shooting the shit and speculating about what we’re seeing and we hope you enjoy being a fly on the wall for it.
This final episode of the year is a “best of” compilation of highlights from 12 of the most meaningful and impactful conversations that I’ve had over the past 12 months. As I’ve written in years past, putting together this episode is equal parts exciting and impossible. It’s a real treat to revisit all of the amazing exchanges I’ve had over the past year but it’s a tough task to pull out twelve that stood out above the rest. The honest-to-God truth is that they’re all pretty special otherwise I wouldn’t have had them in the first place. Each and every person that has been gracious enough to give me an hour or two of their time for this podcast has taught me, inspired me, entertained me, moved me, or changed me in some way—and it’s my hope that they’ve done the same for anyone who has taken the time out of their day to listen in on our conversations. They are, in order of episode release date: Bolota Asmerom, Luis Grijalva, Amy Leedham, Phil Shin, Nell Rojas, Tommy Rivs, Jinghuan Liu Tervalon, Tommie Runz, Peter Gilmore, Alison Mariella Désir, Chris Mosier, and Marielle Hall.
I’m excited to bring you the 11th and final installment of Common Ground for 2022, a monthly podcast co-hosted by me and Dinée Dorame of the Grounded Podcast. In this year-end episode, we talk about our running highlights of the year, podcast highlights of the year, music highlights of the year, and a lot more.
