issue #73: Feb. 7, 2024
All-sporters, this week’s newsletter is going to be like 93% about the Olympic Marathon Trials because that’s what occupied the entirety of my brain over the weekend (whenever I wasn’t actually running myself) — and was the subject of our Seattle Watch Party. 100+ people showed up to a bar at 7 a.m.!
I also feel like last week’s mega tri news has now been dissected and re-sected and picked apart and what else is there to add? People keep asking the same five questions and I already answered 4.5 of those questions anyway last week. So, just re-read the thing.
Or, maybe I’m crabby and tired from all the run training.
BOOK CLUB! We did announce our next Book Club book: ‘What Made Maddy Run’! Also, I added elevator music to the audio versions of the weekly newsletter (as a fun perk for paying subscribers — which is why there’s a paywall on your weekly Wednesday newsletter, fyi).
- Kelly
Bet on yourself
That, of course, is our theme from Orlando: Bet on and believe in yourself.
I was going to say a bunch of snide things about how everyone made the whole ‘how to qualify for the Olympics’ thing way more confusing than it needed to be—almost as if people don’t regularly read Olympic qualification criteria in their normal lives—but, let’s instead focus on what we took away from the race.
In a lot of ways, the Trials marathon is the most interesting marathon out there. There are no pacers, no holding back. People have to take their shot, anything can happen. And they have to believe anyone can be top three on the day.
Here’s my 90-second summary
Though Allison at Fast Women has the absolute complete and final recap of the race, with all the details you’d want
Men’s race
Sure, Clayton Young & Conner Mantz earned their top two somewhat easily (aren’t they the cutest almost finishing together), but Zach Panning believed anyway. He knew that the only way the men would get the third spot (realistically) was if they ran fast enough to achieve that 2:08 standard — so, goddamnit, he tried. He imploded at the very end, but he tried.
Women’s race
Because there were three spots and because the race was way more up-for-grabs (!), there was a lot more that happened in the women’s race.
Yes, it probably went out too hot for the heat. Yes, the only people from that front pack who ultimately survived were the 1-2 — so many other big names DNF’d. Yes, the breakthrough races behind the first two were by people who just chipped away and ran their own pace. Races aren’t always fair, races are races. Still, though, I think there was something to learn from each of them.
Fiona O’Keeffe won in her first ever marathon (she qualified on the half-marathon standard) and she ultimately ran the fastest Trials time ever (2:22:10). Believe.
Emily Sisson was smooth under pressure. After DNFing four years ago, with so much on her shoulders as the American record holder this time around, she simply looked at ease and got the job done. Believe enough in yourself to stay strong under stress.
Dakotah Lindwurm’s mile PR in high school was 5:35 (her two-mile was 11:56). She walked onto her DII college team. She never even should have been a pro runner, by conventional standards. She still works a full-time job as a paralegal. But when the race was on for third, she just kept chipping away and made her first Olympic team. Believe you belong.
Jess McClain, oh god, might be my favorite of the weekend. She basically ‘quit’ pro running during the pandemic. She’s unsponsored, self-coached, works a full-time job. During the race she didn’t go with the front group, because it felt too fast for her — but she knew what she was capable of and just kept running her own race. She only moved into the top 10 with five miles to go, and it wasn’t until the final stretch that she passed people into fourth. Bet on yourself.
Sara Hall missed out on another Olympic team. Yes, she got a Masters American record and, yes, it was probably her best Trials race in 5th. But, more than anything, she never stopped digging as deep as she could. Even when she wasn’t going to make the team, she still absolutely completely turned herself inside out. She keeps believing that today is her today even though so many days it hasn’t worked out that way. It just has to work out sometimes.
There are a lot of things that make some athletes the best athletes: talent, luck & timing, hard work. But one of the components I’ve thought too much about over the years is the amount of belief that is also necessary—and how necessary it is to hold onto that belief even after so many times when your belief isn’t rewarded. You lose more times than you don’t, and yet the best have to keep believing. You can see it in their finishes, sometimes, how much they didn’t expect to win but still turned themselves inside out to see if maybe this was the time they would win anyway.
This was something Matt Fitzgerald and I talked about a couple of years ago, from his book Comeback Quotient: That the best comebacks come not from clinging to what you planned to happen, but by changing expectations yet still continuing to try AS HARD AS YOU CAN. Think about the athlete who has a mechanical or a nutrition mishap, and yet they adjust out there on the course to: ‘I’ll try run a PR’ or’ I’ll see how many people I can pass’ or ‘I’ll use this as an opportunity to test how much time I can make up.’ They just keep believing in themselves, even when they shouldn’t.
I do not have this ability. Not in the face of overwhelming evidence. I eventually stop believing, just a little bit. It’s probably emotionally healthier in the long run. But you can’t win, and you can’t win big things, without betting on yourself.
If you just want to cry more, btw: Try this IG post or this one.
A short update on my actual training
Speaking of. While I am not the best athlete, I am a very similar athlete to lots of you: Mostly know what I’m doing, know what I’m doing wrong (and yet I keep doing it wrong), have some big-ish goals (my first 100K this year + nail an Ironman) but also I have a job & a life.
So, I assume a lot of you, like me, are slow to do the things you know you should—like sweat tests. Like, I had to find my scale & then I had change the batteries & then I needed to remember before and after a workout (ideally one leaving from my house) to weigh myself & then I had do the math of ounces to liters and grams to calories.
To that end, I thought it’d be semi-useful to walk you through what I’m doing myself:
Here’s my actual Precision Fuel & Hydration spreadsheet I’m adding workouts too — though I need to do some non-rainy runs! And I need to try a test in the dehydration chamber of the overheated YMCA pool.
So far these tests have all corroborated my initial sweat test: I’m a light/moderate sweater (~.5L/hr) and light on the saltiness (~450mg/L). So unless it’s hot I don’t overworry. But I do need to remember to eat more!! Turns out everyone tends to underfuel. Or as Emily, the sports scientist at Precision, told me: They underdo everything.
And then I chatted with Emily about what’s been working and not working for me. And we came up with a plan for me to gut train myself up to 70g of carbs/hour and then aim for 60g/hour at the 50K I’m doing in a few weeks (mostly through gels & chews). I’ll carry one 500mL flask of water & one 500mL flask of the 60g carb mix.
I’m sure some things will work and some won’t. But it’s been worthwhile to actually write out a whole plan. You know you should try it.
You can get your own sweat test spreadsheet that does the calculations for you — scroll down to the middle of this article on how to measure your sweat rate. You can also use the fuel spreadsheet, in the middle of this article about the three levers of fueling, in order calculate your carb intake as well. And anyone can actually book their own 20-minute consultation with the Precision sports science team, too.
Uber, Netflix, the PTO?
In case you didn’t know, I live just outside San Francisco—and so it is impossible to get through life here without learning more than I’d like to ever know about VC rounds and disruptive models and tech start-up funding. And one of the things I’ve learned is that a lot of times the funding and the cash flush-ness of a flashy new start-up is able to then prop up an unsustainable business model just long enough for it to take out existing old model competitors—until, suddenly, everyone realizes the emperor has no clothes & no one has figured out yet how to really make money with the new thing & the old thing is now bankrupt.
And then strikes shut down Hollywood because the streaming services destroyed the broadcast TV model without creating something sustainable that could last long-term in its place. And all the newspapers are gone. And we’re paying taxi prices for Uber except without as much regulation or employee protections. Yay, disruption!
Do you see where I’m going with this?
I wrote out all the basics of the PTO T100 tour last week—and I think some people could probably stand to re-read that. And if you need more details, the Daily Tri podcast went deep.
So at this point I don’t think the question is whether the racing will be good. (It will be! 🔥) I think the only question is: Who does which races? What happens from here? Will it work? I hope so. Does Ironman need to waive the validation requirement for its top athletes from the 2023 IM World Champs in order to even get enough of the best people on the 2024 start line? Probably.
Related: Like, look, I don’t think Lucy Charles-Barclay is right to skip her Ironman World Champs title defense, but it’s her choice and she’s never particularly wavered from being clear that Nice wasn’t really her course. And she’s absolutely right that you can’t do all six of the championship-level PTO races + a qualification IM + the World Champs without risking getting hurt (and she very much got hurt last two years). So everyone chill out. Jan has said way dumber things.
The -ish
Other things from around our sports you should know about.
OK, yes, there were far more serious race results in the last week, but the Strava-Chipotle ‘burritos for life’ challenge had the best outcome of all of them: Of course (!) it was five athletes in L.A. who realized if they teamed up and tied then they would *all* win burritos-for-life—and they even emailed Chipotle to confirm the fine print! Of course. Go California! (DC Rainmaker)
We’ll get our weekly results page back up and running once the season is fully underway. Right now it’s still just a handful of results. This weekend: Chelsea Sodaro won her first race since 2022 Kona down at Tasmania 70.3 in New Zealand; and Javi Gomez had more bad luck, Nick Thompson won. (Instagram/Tri247)
Mathieu van der Poel won his 6th Cyclocross World Champs & Fem van Empel won her 2nd. (Velo/Bicycling)
Emma Pallant-Browne became the latest triathlete to race her country’s national TT champs—taking second for S. Africa. (Instagram)
People are starting to show up in California for training camps ahead of Oceanside 70.3 (and are probably only medium thrilled about the massive storms they showed up into). (Instagram)
This is your brain on ultrarunning and on triathlon. (TrailRunner/Triathlete)
I don’t understand what Outside RUN is other than just changing the logo on what was already their run coverage (?), but I do understand what the Outside Festival is and tickets go on sale this week. (Outside/Denver Post)
300 cycling races are set to be aired on HBO Max starting next month. (Velo)
More layoffs have hit Zwift and the co-CEO left. (Escape Collective)
The new Ironman CEO has started posting on IG if you want to really spend some time thinking about what his goal is there. (Instagram)
We forgot last week to share the statement UTMB released that says they met with Zach Miller & Killian Jornet and it went super great (this is after their whole organizing pros to “boycott” — ie. all go to another race). Because 100% what you should do, as a company, when you’re facing a PR nightmare of your athletes feeling like you’re out of touch and too corporate is to issue a vague statement speaking for other people about how great things are. (Instagram/TrailRunner)
In the Otillo world, who got into this year’s world champs was announced this past week.
Also, the Patagonaman lottery opens this Thursday. (Patagonaman)
Jonas Deichmann’s latest extreme triathlon challenge thing is completing the Roth course 120x in a row. For some reason. (Challenge Roth)
The Ironman Foundation is offering up three ‘Race for Change’ scholarships for coaching, entry, gear, and travel/hotels for athletes from underrepresented communities. So there you go, the foundation is still around! (Ironman)
And Triathlete went deep (deep!) on the new USAT membership categories — ultimately saying very similar stuff to what I’ve said before: As in, fyi, no kidding, these big triathlon organizations and companies are facing a huge cash shortage. (Triathlete/Triathlonish)
Puma definitely had a banner day at the Trials and it looks like the shoe count is really finally evening out in the marathon. (Outside)
Apparently, there’s a new book about Sebi Kienle. (Endurance Sportswire)
I also talked to Matt Fitzgerald forever ago about dealing with long COVID. Now, the New York Times is writing about how, since he can’t workout anymore, he’s rebuilt a career and a dream training camp facility for others. (New York Times)
One last thing
Just bookmark this as race season starts.
This issue was brought to you by Precision Fuel & Hydration. Get 15% off your first order here.