The Shakeout Podcast

Between the two of them, there isn't much in the world of global running championships that sisters Gabriela DeBues-Stafford and Lucia Stafford haven't tackled. Both two-time Olympians and multi-time national champs, the Stafford sisters have come to define middle- and long-distance track for a generation of Canadian athletics fans. Between them, they hold Canadian records at 1,000m, 1,500m, 2,000m, 3,000m and 5,000m.

But in ca...

We’ve all got one, but what does it actually mean, and does the number your smart watch gives you actually matter? 

This week on The Shakeout Podcast we're setting out to understand the science of VO2 Max, a metric that seems to be everywhere in the saturated world of endurance training advice. 

From its correlation to performance to its proven effects on longevity, VO2 Max might be one of the most all encompassing in...

If you wanted to know which athlete was at the top of Canadian trail running, a safe bet, at least in the most literal sense, would be Alex Ricard. 

The Squamish based athlete has established a reputation as the best vertical runner in the country, clocking off wins and KOMs on some of Canada’s most iconic climb trails and mixing it up with the very best in the world at past editions of the world mountain and trail runni...

Jadyn Keeler will be the first to admit that the further the race distance, the happier she is. 

That love for going long was on full display last weekend in Edmonton at the Canadian Half Marathon Championships, where even a measurement error that added nearly 700m to the stated race distance couldn’t dampen her professional, and half marathon, debut. In just her second-ever road race, Keeler ran away from an historicall...

Based on running accomplishments alone, Stephanie Case’s career is nothing short of remarkable, boasting a raft of ultra victories and podiums across some of the globe’s most iconic and challenging courses in a career that spans the better part of two decades. 

Yet while her accomplishments in the sport are enough to astound, it is her work on the sport of running that has made the most lasting impact. 

Throug...

The Canadian half marathon championships take place this Sunday, August 16th in Edmonton and for Canadian marathon record holder Natasha Wodak 13 miles and a stellar women's elite field stand between her and a 13th national championship title.

After a convincing win on the Edmonton course in 2025, Wodak returns looking to defend her title against a field loaded with talent, including last year's runner-up Florence Caron&n...

Kumsa Yuya spent years believing that his chronic fatigue and frequent illnesses were simply the cost of training hard for his marathon goals. Based on conventional wisdom, it seemed to Kumsa that he was doing everything right: prioritizing recovery, eating nutritious food, and paying special attention to his nutrition around key workouts and long runs. 

Still, bouts of sickness and fatigue that resigned him to bed persis...

For someone who has yet to reach his 27th birthday, Thomas Nobbs has already spent a lifetime in the world of competitive running. Since joining his first track club at age seven, the Vancouver native quickly found his stride, falling in love with the work harder/run faster equation that distance running offered. He also found his stride on the track and went on to assert himself as one of the country's top youth athletes, with a p...

For most of the past 40 years, the Canadian record in the women’s 100m remained stagnant, hovering right under the 11 second barrier and moving just 0.04 over the span of nearly 4 decades. But that all changed earlier this month when Ajax, ON Sadé McCreath stormed to a massive lifetime best of 10.86 at the Edmonton International Track Classic, taking nearly a full 10th of a second off of the previous national record and becom...

For many athletes, especially in the world of endurance sport, the exhaustion that follows a hard effort is part of the reward for the training it took to make it happen. But when the mountaintop feeling of a new personal best fades away and the fatigue still lingers, it might be a sign of something deeper lurking beneath the surface. 

What if that fatigue you’re battling during a heavy training block is more than simply...

A few months ago, Madelyn Eybergen joined this show as Canada's university cross-country champion. Today, she's back as a world champion, but not in running. Instead, she conquered one of the fastest-growing sports in endurance: hybrid racing.

If there were ever a competition to crown the world’s most well rounded endurance athlete, Eybergen would be able to make a strong case. She's no stranger to reinvention after trading t...

For all of Canada’s incredible venues for trail racing, none captures the attention of the running world quite so much as the famed Quebec Mega Trail. For years, QMT has been the proving ground for the nation’s top ultra endurance athletes and one that has increasingly drawn the interest of some of the sport’s biggest names globally as a stop on the World Trail Majors circuit. Whether it’s the raucous crowds...

Nickademus de la Rosa is no stranger to mountaintops, of both the literal and metaphorical variety. 

For much of the 2010s he was at the top of the ultrarunning world, rattling off podium appearances at some of the longest, toughest and most iconic events in the sport, and boasting a list of completions almost as long as the races themselves.

Of all the highs, perhaps none was greater than his finish at the 2013 Barkley Marath...

The 2026 Canadian track & field championships are underway from Ottawa and The Shakeout Podcast team brings you all the storylines you need to know heading into a full weekend of action on the track.

Host John Gay is joined by Canadian Running's Cameron Ormond and special guest Avery Pearson, fresh off her final collegiate season at The University of Colorado.

From a jam packed night...

A quick scan of a pre-race warmup area and you’ll see a rainbow array of brightly coloured drink mixes filling the bottles, beakers, and hydration packs of endurance athletes. For many, these beverages are the bridge between the hydration needs of “normal” people and the performance necessities of athletes, with brands touting optimized mineral blends and special formulas aimed at keeping athletes running harder f...

Weeks after retiring from one of the greatest professional running careers in a generation, Evan Jager found himself inside a Swedish lab testing a supplement made from broccoli sprouts.

The results of those lab tests caught his attention, and before the ink was dry on his retirement letter to the sport of distance running, the Olympic silver medallist and American record holder was right back in the world of high performance. ...

This week on the Shakeout Podcast host John Gay is joined by his coach Jonathan Green of Verde Track Club to breakdown the 2026 Ottawa Marathon, John's debut at the distance.

48 hours post race John and Jon review the training block leading up to Ottawa, the key workouts along the way, and the final preparation before the gun went off. From race-day strategy to tapering, recovery, and setting up the next training block, Jon shares ...

For his entire adult life, Olivier Duhaime has been no stranger to taking on hard challenges. Running his first marathon at just 18 years old proved a gateway into endurance sport that would see the Gatineau native tackle events from ironmans to ultramarathons and even a multi-day cross-province run from Quebec City to Ottawa. But when a shock cancer diagnosis in late 2021 put a pause to his endurance-sport lifestyle, it presented ...

It’s the middle of May and if you’re a marathon runner chances are that means one of two things for you:  either entering the final weeks, days, or maybe hours of your race taper or, on the other end of the spectrum, relearning the fundamentals of basic human function after your most recent date with 42.2km.

With marathon season peaking we’re diving into a topic that’s often overlooked but critically im...