the morning shakeout podcast

This week I’m re-sharing a conversation that I had in 2018 with Deena Kastor, which we recorded at her kitchen table in Mammoth Lakes, California. I’m bringing this one back not only because I was in Mammoth Lakes this past weekend but because Deena just ran 2:45:12 at the Berlin Marathon—at the age of 49, no less!—to earn the Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star Medal for completing all six Major marathons: Berlin, London, New York, Chicago, Boston, and Tokyo. I look back fondly at this chat from a few years ago, in which we covered a lot of topics, from the importance of surrounding yourself with a great team, both in running and in life, to using disappointment as a means to fuel the next big breakthrough. We also discussed how coach Joe Vigil influenced her and helped shape her life philosophy, how training for and racing cross-country “feeds her soul” and helps her become a better racer on the track and on the roads, and so much more. This episode is brought to you by:— New Balance. The new Fresh Foam X More v4 is a maximum cushion shoe with a responsive ride that I’m really enjoying for recovery runs right now. It’s super plush but also incredible light. It's available in both men’s and women’s sizes on newbalance.com or at your favorite run specialty retail store.— Goodr: If you want to support the podcast and treat yourself to a pair of goodr sunglasses, head over to goodr.com/MARIO or enter the code MARIO15 at checkout for free shipping on your order. Look good, run goodr!Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m traveling this week and don’t have a new episode of the podcast for you but I want to take this opportunity to re-run one of my favorite conversations that I’ve ever had for the show. It’s with Diljeet Taylor, who is the head women’s cross-country coach and the Associate Director of Track and Field and field at BYU, which is one of the top collegiate programs in the country. We recorded this episode nearly two years ago when we were in the thick of the pandemic and it’s a great one to revisit or maybe check out for the first time. In this conversation, which is really a masterclass is coaching and team building, Coach Taylor talked to me about the culture she’s helped build at BYU, why gratitude is so important to the strength of that culture, the importance of investing in people and not performances, and so, so much more. This episode is brought to you by:— New Balance. The new Fresh Foam X More v4 is a maximum cushion shoe with a responsive ride that I’m really enjoying for recovery runs right now. It’s super plush but also incredible light. It's available in both men’s and women’s sizes on newbalance.com or at your favorite run specialty retail store.— Goodr: If you want to support the podcast and treat yourself to a pair of goodr sunglasses, head over to goodr.com/MARIO or enter the code MARIO15 at checkout for 15% off your order. Look good, run goodr!Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s episode is with Ruben Sança. Ruben and I go back a ways: When I was a senior at Stonehill College we recruited him pretty hard to come run at our school. He ultimately ended up going to our rival, UMass Lowell, where he went on to have a great collegiate career as a 4x All-American and three-time New England champion. It turned out to be the right choice for him as Ruben now works at his alma mater as the Director of Student Life & Well-Being. After college, Ruben made some big jumps as an athlete. In 2011 he represented his home country of Cape Verde in the marathon at the World Championships in South Korea and the following year he competed in the 5000m at the Olympic Games in London. In fact, it was during those Olympics that I first spent some meaningful time with Ruben and got know him a little bit. Ruben has also finished in the top-25 of the Boston Marathon twice and still competes regularly on the New England road racing scene. In August, he and his five-year-old son Greyson broke the Guinness World Record for running a mile with a stroller, clocking a 4:32.2 at the High Street Mile in Newburyport, Massachusetts.Even though he’s five years younger than me, Ruben is someone I look up to for the example he sets through his actions. He works incredibly hard, makes time for the people and pursuits he cares most about, and he does it all with humility. In this conversation, we talked about his recent Guinness world record and how he shares running with his son. Ruben told me about growing up in Cape Verde, moving to the U.S. when he was 12 years old, and what it was like settling into the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston. We discussed his experience running in high school and some of the challenges of being a distance runner in the inner city, why he chose to run at UMass Lowell and his relationship with coach Gary Gardner, and how he was thinking about his pursuit of competitive running after college. Ruben also explained to me how his relationship to running has evolved over the years and how he fits in training at a high level around family and a full-time job, establishing his nonprofit foundation that focuses on integrating sports and academics to make a sustainable impact in Cape Verde, and so much more. This episode is brought to you by:— New Balance. The new Fresh Foam X More v4 is a maximum cushion shoe with a responsive ride that I’m really enjoying for recovery runs right now. It’s super plush but also incredible light. It's available in both men’s and women’s sizes on newbalance.com or at your favorite run specialty retail store.Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am super excited to share this episode with all of you. It’s with Brendan Leonard, an ultrarunner, writer, award-winning filmmaker, speaker, and creator of one of my favorite websites on the internet, Semi-Rad.com. On top of all that, he’s also a new dad, which we talked quite a bit about in this conversation.Brendan is someone whose work I’ve admired for quite a while now. He’s got an unmatched ability to tell stories, use humor, and share drawings that convey many of the things we all feel and experience as runners, and as human beings in general. In this conversation, we bounced all over the place, covering topics like ultrarunning, creativity, storytelling, self-employment, parenthood, where and how all these things overlap and intersect, and a lot more. This episode is brought to you by:— New Balance. The new Fresh Foam X More v4 is a maximum cushion shoe with a responsive ride that I’m really enjoying for recovery runs right now. It’s super plush but also incredible light. It's available in both men’s and women’s sizes on newbalance.com or at your favorite run specialty retail store.Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m excited to bring you the 7th installment of Common Ground, a monthly podcast co-hosted by me and Dinée Dorame of the Grounded Podcast. In this episode, we catch up on what we’ve both been up to of late personally, professionally, and athletically, we talk marathons, discuss music, and a whole lot more. This episode is brought to you by:— New Balance. The FuelCell SuperComp Trainer from New Balance is something else! This shoe is so fun to run in. It’s got 47 plush millimeters of foam underfoot and a super comfortable rocker profile that encourages efficient forward motion. It’s also got a carbon plate in there that helps smooth the transition from footstrike to toe-off. It's available on newbalance.com or at your favorite run specialty retail store.— Goodr: If you want to support the podcast and treat yourself to a pair of goodr sunglasses, head over to goodr.com/MARIO or enter the code MARIO15 at checkout for 15% off your order. Look good, run goodr!Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Grounded Podcast theme music by Jacob Shije (Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) and used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am on a little bit of a hiatus from recording new episodes of the podcast so I’m taking this time as an opportunity to re-run some of my favorites from years past that some of you may want to revisit and others might be hearing for the first time. This week, I’m bringing back an incredible conversation I had a little over three years ago with Katie Arnold. Katie is mom, a heck of an ultrarunner, and a great writer, whose memoir, Running Home, really spoke to me on a number of levels. In it, we talked about “smile” and “flow” and why those words are important to her when she races, reverse goal-setting and how this strategy sets her up for success, and balancing competitive running with the rest of her life. We also discussed the importance of observation and paying attention, how death can wake us up to the powerful realization that everything is changing all the time, and how her book came to be and what she hopes readers take away from it.This episode is brought to you by:— Goodr: If you want to support the podcast and treat yourself to a pair of goodr sunglasses, head over to goodr.com/MARIO or enter the code MARIO15 at checkout for 15% off your order. Look good, run goodr!Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s re-run episode is an incredibly special one to me. It’s with my college cross country and track coach, Karen Boen, who is someone that’s had a profound and lasting impact on my life. Coach saw qualities and abilities in me 20 years ago that I didn’t know I had, and she helped me to not only become a better runner, but she taught me a lot about hard work, leadership, caring for other people, and what it means to be a good teammate and human being. A lot of how I think about training, and coaching, and life in general is due to her influence and I am incredibly grateful to have run for her during my time at Stonehill College.We recorded this episode in June of 2020 and it’s an awesome conversation that goes through Coach’s life growing up in the projects of South Boston, to how she got into track and field in college, to accidentally falling into collegiate coaching at the age of 40. She also told me how she took a small team that was on the brink of extinction and developed it into a nationally ranked program, what it’s like being a full-time female coach at the collegiate level while having a family and maintaining a social life, why she’s always focused on surrounding herself with fantastic people, the importance of setting boundaries, the biggest barriers facing female coaches today at the collegiate level and elsewhere, and so much more.This episode is brought to you by:— Tracksmith. Tracksmith is an independent running brand inspired by a deep love of the sport. Their Summer Collection is now available and features staples ready for your next adventure, including the Run Cannonball Run Shorts, the Off Roads Shorts, the Run Cannonball Run Tee, and more. By using code Mario22 at checkout, you can receive free shipping on your order and 5% of your purchase will go to support the Brave Like Gabe Foundation to fund rare cancer research.Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I do not have a new conversation to share with you this week but I am going to re-run a previous episode of the podcast with Lindsay Flanagan that was recorded in early 2020, just a few weeks before the Olympic Trials Marathon, where she ended up finishing 12th. Since that day in Atlanta, Lindsay has made some huge breakthroughs in the marathon and as a fan, it’s been super fun to watch. This past April she was 11th at the Paris Marathon in a personal best 2:26:54, and then, just a few months later in July, she won the Gold Coast Marathon in Australia, breaking the tape in a new course record, and another personal best, 2:24:43.It was fun to revisit this conversation and hear Lindsay’s thoughts on the marathon and what she’s learned from it over the years, dealing with injuries throughout her career and navigating periods of time when she couldn’t run, what she’s learned as a coach of age-group athletes, and a lot more. This episode is brought to you by:— Tracksmith. Tracksmith is an independent running brand inspired by a deep love of the sport. Their Summer Collection is now available and features staples ready for your next adventure, including the Run Cannonball Run Shorts, the Off Roads Shorts, the Run Cannonball Run Tee, and more. By using code Mario22 at checkout, you can receive free shipping on your order and 5% of your purchase will go to support the Brave Like Gabe Foundation to fund rare cancer research.Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s episode is a long one but it’s a pretty special conversation with one of my first post-collegiate running heroes, Peter Gilmore—who, incredibly and ironically enough, is now my teammate on the West Valley Track Club Masters racing team. In the early 2000s Peter was one of the top marathoners in the U.S. He finished 10th at the 2005 Boston Marathon and later that year represented the U.S. in the marathon at the world championships in Finland. The next year he finished 7th at Boston in a personal best 2:12:45. I didn’t know him at the time but I looked up to Peter from afar because he was everything I wanted to be in the sport: a scrappy underdog, a guy who wasn’t a star in college, he didn’t have a shoe contract, but he busted his butt and became really good. In this conversation, we talked about all of that but what I was really interested in was his path back to the competitive side of the sport a few years ago after an 8-year break from serious training and racing. We got into how and why he came back in 2018, as well as why he retired in 2010 in the first place, and that part of the conversation went in a direction I didn’t expect it to go. We also talked about what’s different for him now as a Masters athlete now versus when he was younger, what it was like spending six weeks training in Kenya right after college and what he learned from that experience, and a whole lot more. This episode is brought to you by:— Tracksmith. Tracksmith is an independent running brand inspired by a deep love of the sport. Their Summer Collection is now available and features staples ready for your next adventure, including the Run Cannonball Run Shorts, the Off Roads Shorts, the Run Cannonball Run Tee, and more. By using code Mario22 at checkout, you can receive free shipping on your order and 5% of your purchase will go to support the Brave Like Gabe Foundation to fund rare cancer research.Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the sixth installment of Common Ground, a monthly podcast co-hosted by me and Dinée Dorame of the Grounded Podcast, we shared our respective personal updates before geeking out on all things World Athletics Championships, which just wrapped up over the weekend. This episode is brought to you by:— New Balance. The FuelCell SuperComp Trainer from New Balance is something else! This shoe, which comes out in August, is so fun to run in. It’s got 47 plush millimeters of foam underfoot and a super comfortable rocker profile that encourages efficient forward motion. It’s also got a carbon plate in there that helps smooth the transition from footstrike to toe-off. It will soon be available on newbalance.com or at your favorite run specialty retail store.— Goodr: If you want to support the podcast and treat yourself to a pair of goodr sunglasses, head over to goodr.com/MARIO or enter the code MARIO15 at checkout for 15% off your order. Look good, run goodr!Click here for complete show notes, sign up here to get the morning shakeout email newsletter delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, and/or join our growing community on Patreon, where you'll also gain access to exclusive content like The Weekly Rundown, my Patreon-only podcast with Billy Yang, a live monthly Coaches' Corner discussion, and other perks that pop up from time to time.Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford. Grounded Podcast theme music by Jacob Shije (Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) and used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.