Hey Reader, My co-host shared an interesting observation on this week’s pod. She talked about what she thinks keeps going wrong at the same point in every marathon she has run so far. Four weeks before the recent London marathon, she ran a half-marathon at 140 beats per minute, comfortable and well within herself, picking up pace toward the end. So when race day came, nothing about what happened made any sense to her. Her heart rate hit 160–165 on the start line before she even started...
9 days ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, I did this run a few weeks ago on a Friday night. It’s called a tour of tens. Six hours of hill repeats in the dark. You do 10 repeats on one hill, drive to another hill, do 10 more, then a third hill for another 10. It’s a workout I learned from a group in Austin years ago. Back then, we’d all do it together, but this time I was alone in the dark. Nobody was watching or keeping track. I was tired, and it felt hard, but I had already committed to the evening. I had a plan. My wife...
19 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Got an interesting listeners’ question from my wife, Zoe, on this week’s pod. She used to swim a lot. She was a high school swimmer, and she played water polo. But she’s been away from it for a while. Her question was basically this: how do you get back into something when you’ve been stuck in a rut of not doing it? It feels overwhelming for her to even think about getting back in the pool. The work and the gap between where she was and where she is now just feels too big. I...
26 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, About a week ago, two men ran a 26.2-mile London marathon in less than two hours. It was the first time in history that happened in an official race. Before the race, someone asked one of them, “Do you think you can break two hours?” He said yes. There wasn’t any “yeah, I think maybe if conditions are right and everything lines up” kind of thing. He believed he could do it even before he did. And the guy who came second also broke two hours in his first-ever marathon. I was...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Something interesting came up on the podcast this week. We were talking about DNFs. Did Not Finish. It was in response to a listener’s question about our biggest running failures and achievements. And my co-host shared a story about pulling out of a marathon halfway. She was vomiting and retching pretty much from the start. In that moment, she had two choices. Slow down, walk, compose herself, and still cross the finish line, or quit the race entirely. In her mind, there was this...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, I watched the Paris-Roubaix race, and I was almost moved to tears. Six hours of racing across some of the most brutal cobblestones in northern France. The winner takes home a literal cobblestone as a trophy. There’s a Belgian rider called Wout Van Aert. He’s been trying to win this race for seven years. But every attempt ended up in crashes and injuries. Just as he’d start finding form again, another crash happens, and another season is gone. While all of that was happening, other...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, I was asked an interesting question on our podcast this week. How I manage my running obsession lifestyle with a partner who doesn’t run. The listener who asked the question knew I run ultras. They knew I have a young son and a wife who doesn’t run. And they just wanted to know how I juggle that. The first story that came to mind was this joke that does the rounds in the ultrarunning community. It goes something like: “Honey, I’ve booked us a lovely family holiday to Chamonix in...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, There’s this story Alice talked about in the first episode of our podcast that really stuck with me. She has this client who has been doing a PhD for years alongside everything else he’s got going on. And things are actually going well. Like, genuinely well. Then one day, he comes to her and says, “Yeah, I’ve been thinking maybe I should just stop the PhD. Maybe now is a good time to do something else instead.” And Alice is sitting there thinking, wait, I’ve seen this before. Not...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, I’ve been putting out these newsletters every week for 116 weeks. I take joy in the ideas, coming up with the things, and creating them. But I no longer have so much fun writing them each week. I think it’s because the real ideas have been popping up somewhere else lately. A few weeks ago, my friend Alice and I started a podcast. Two Average Runners. She’s South African, and I’m Welsh. We’re both average, non-professional runners with actual jobs and actual lives, meandering...
2 months ago • 1 min read