A large part of getting back in shape is remembering how to hurt.
Mental toughness is a skill.
It's normal for your alarm to be hyper reactive when it hasn't experience fatigue in a while.
The way back is to gradually show you can handle it, without freaking out.
A little more for the marathon nerds: Yomif Kejelcha ran 1:59:41 to become the second man under two hours in a legal race and he was on Sabastian Sawe's shoulder until 41K. Took a bit different of a fueling approach.
The Santamadre team, an emerging Spanish company, shared his fueling plan with the targeted amounts at each station. A few things stood out to me, if I'm reading this correctly. Kejelcha planned to take roughly 60ml of fluid at most stations, which is estimated at less than half of Sawe's intake (though it's worth noting runners often toss bottles quickly and don't hit their targets exactly). He skipped 5K entirely and took nothing at 40K.
🗣️Santamadre co-founder Alfonso Beltrá López: “We took advantage of the pre-race window to reduce digestive load as much as possible. We knew exactly how much fluid the athlete loses and how much energy his body consumes, as we had monitored him 24/7 over the previous three months: body temperature, breathing rate, heart rate and oxygen saturation. We also controlled his caloric load in detail. The strategy was to provide 287.4 g of carbohydrates between the pre-race and in-race fueling, in addition to the 580 g of glycogen we had built up during the two-day carb-loading phase before the race.”
I didn't know as much about their products beforehand but the Unusual Fuel (taken by him at 15K, 25K, 35K) is a high-carb drink mix: 100g of carbs and 500mg of sodium per 500ml. Unusual Gel 45 is a 45g carb gel in a 1:1 glucose-to-fructose ratio, available with or without caffeine. He used the caffeinated version pre-race and at 20K.
Then there's Reset Gel (10K, 30K), which is an interesting one. It's billed as a CNS fatigue blocker with 300mg of tart cherry polyphenols. It also has 30g of carbs. It kicks in quick and his two doses overlapped to cover most of the second half.
🗣️ López: “We used RESET Gel at 10K and 20K, a gel designed to help control muscle damage and reset fatigue. It was one of the key parts of our strategy, exactly as we had seen in the specific training sessions.”
Finally, the Prototype he sipped for 75 minutes pre-race is a new product in the works. Santamadre says more is coming on that in the months ahead.
🗣️López: “It was a real shame he couldn’t grab the last bottle at 35K. We believe everything could have changed. At 41K, he ran empty; those extra three minutes could have been covered by the 12.4 g of carbohydrates planned for that point.”
Two sub 2 hour marathon performances in the same race, with a third runner under the old world record.
The most mind blowing day of performances in maybe any sport.
What happened, what were the contributing factors, and how do we make sense of it? https://t.co/2EZj5b2MDC
As AI proliferates, sports will be more important.
We’ll have to fill the void of doing real things, a feeling of connection & mastery.
Both watching live events & participating in them will explode as we fulfill our basic needs
Similar to how run clubs took off post covid
Alex Honnold just climbed the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 building live for the world to see.
No rope. No harness. No safety gear. 101 floors.
His first words at the top? "Sick." Then he took a selfie.
How does someone deal with the fear and pressure of knowing one mistake means death? Neuroscientists peered into Honnold's brain to find out:
The best routines are invisible.
They don’t scream “look at me”—they quietly make the hard stuff easier to do.
Great performers don’t chase complexity.
They refine simplicity until it becomes second nature.
There is no secret.
Consistency over intensity.
Small wins instead of chasing heroic efforts.
Progress beats perfection.
Solid work. Repeated for a long time. That's it.
A simple rule for life that rarely fails:
Optimize for enthusiasm. Make as many choices as you can that leave you feeling energetic and interested. Pay attention to when you have the urge to pursue or participate in something and do more of it.
One of the most underrated skills in life is performing well even when you don’t feel your best. Optimization culture makes us fragile. Not every negative feeling needs to be fixed. Not every night of sleep needs to be perfect. You can show up and get the job done anyways.
Stay on the bus. It's Silverdale not Helsinki, but shows you that you've gotta stay on the bus to get anywhere special and different. https://t.co/2bd69ii9oQ
There seems to be a high correlation in '26 between something being straight forward and uncomplicated, when a person in a suit claims to be complicated and not so straight forward.
https://t.co/ZrFtB7ZnEJ
Seems to be a high correlation in '26 between something being straight forward and uncomplicated when person in a suit claims to be complicated and not straight forward.
One key differentiator for elite performers?
They don’t see it as a sacrifice.
Going to bed early, skipping the party, putting in hours of practice...
That’s not giving something up.
It’s living in alignment with what they care about most.