T Hanes

For most of his career, Justin Verlander pitched angry. It was his routine To step onto the field in full snarl. In the last start of his career, his 7-year-old daughter walked out to the mound to take him out of the game. He says she’s the reason he had one of the best seasons of his career at 39, when he stopped pitching out of anger and started pitching out of love. Anger worked really well for most of his career. By the time of his surgery, he had Two Cy Youngs, an MVP, and three no-hitters. But after missed nearly two seasons after COVID and Tommy John surgery. Looking back this week, he said: “Once my daughter was born and I went away for COVID and had Tommy John surgery and got to spend so much time with her and the family, it just really changed me to the core. To the point that when I came back in 2022 and tried to go back into my old routine, it felt fake to me.” “So I started changing things. I would just use the love that she would give me. I would leave for the park and there was this little girl and it didn’t matter what I was going to do. I’m not going to put my headphones on and be angry after that. I can’t.” Too often, we create a caricature of competing. We think, I’m wired this way...I need this...I can only do it this way... The best competitors are both/and. They realize that as Olympic champion swimmer Ryan Murphy told me, “You need multiple sources of motivation.” Sometimes, anger or intensity works. Other times, love, exploration, and joy. And they can change over a career or even shorter period of time. There are multiple ways to the top. There are multiple ways to fuel the pursuit. Verlander didn’t lose his competitive streak by letting go of the anger. “The competition. I love competing. I love preparing.” But he found a different path, a different perspective, that felt more authentic to him as family changed him. And it still worked. “I would leave for the park and there was this little girl and it didn’t matter what I was going to do.” He still cared. He still competed like hell. But the start was no longer a verdict on who he was. He had unconditional love, win or lose. Today, we saw the last start of a generation and type of pitcher we might not see for a while. A throwback of sorts. And he battled injury to come back to Detroit for one final start, 5.1 innings, 91 pitches. 6 strikeouts. And his daughter, Genevieve Verlander, walking to the mound to take him out of the game. Asked what he’d remember about that final Cy Young at 39, he said: “I will always kind of remember this Cy Young as looking back at the growth of me as a father and as a person.” His career started with him pitching angry. It ended with his daughter walking him off the mound.

What in the world did we just see! The 2 hour marathon barrier has been broken. Three guys went under the old world record... Sabastian Sawe just ran 1:59:30 with crazy negative splits, closing the last half in 59:01....faster than the American Record in the half. One of the most mind blowing performances we've seen. How did we get here? Every breakthrough is a mixture of belief and progress. It takes folks daring to see what's possible, surrounding themselves with a quality team and doing the work to give themselves a shot. You've got to bet on yourself in a big way. When asked whether he believed he could run a sub-2-hour marathon before the race, Sawe answered with one word: "Yes." Let's get the obvious out of the way. Performance enhancing drugs are the legitimate question mark to every breakthrough. So Sawe did as much as he could about taking that off the table. He and his team asked to be tested all the time. His sponsor put up 50K to the Athlete Integrity Unit. The tests are run independently, no advance notice. Over a 2 month stretch, he went through 25 drug tests. There's always a doubt. There has to be given what we know. Hopefully there's transparency in the results. But hats off to Sawe for addressing it: "I want to prove that I am clean when I set foot at the start line." But how'd we actually get here where two guys went sub 2 in the same race? 1. Shoe tech We've had a revolution in shoe technology that boosts running economy. For years shoe companies said their shoe would make you faster and was mostly marketing. Until 2016, when it actually did. Initial research showed a 3-4% saving in economy, while subsequent work has shown it's highly variable. Now, it's a matching game. Find the perfect shoe for your form and you can get a big boost. Normally, it takes years of lots of miles and strength training to boost economy. But now we get that instant boost that not only helps boost performance but often leaves us feeling less beat up in the later stages of the marathon. So we get a little bit less hitting of the wall... 2. The fuel For a long time, fueling was limited by biology. You can only take in and process so much. Then in the 2000s, researchers found if we mixed sugars, we can boost intake because they're processed differently. Then recently, Maurten found if you use a hydrxogel, you boost utilization without GI distress anymore. We've gone from pushing 60g/hr to 120g/hr in a few decades. Again...less bonking. 3. Depth A few decades ago, you spent your career racing on the track and then once your speed started to fade a bit you went to the marathon. Now, many skip right to the marathon. That's where the money is. And with the economy boost from the shoes, you can make that jump quickly. More depth of talent means more competitors in their prime pushing barriers. 4. Belief Even with the shoes and tech, a few years ago sub 2 hours seemed a long way off, until Kipchoge pushed that barrier in a series of time trials. Yes, they weren't official races and had contrived pacing. But it absolutely shifted everyone's thinking on what is possible. A generation of runners saw Kipchoge go for it. Our prediction of what is possible changed. It's mind blowing how far we've come in such a short time. What once seemed decades away, just got smashed twice in the same race. Hats off to Sawe, especially for addressing the scourge of doping and showing folks what is possible with a lot of hard work, some crazy belief, and some fortuitous advances.