Run Your Mouth

Before we get into the thick of Olympic coverage this week, enjoy some good pure fun on the latest episode of Run Your Mouth with guests Millie Palladino and Drew Piazza of New Balance Boston. We get right into the ridiculous with parking ticket stories and high school shenanigans, but we also covered the experience of joining a professional team, transferring colleges, and making hard choices in the sport of track and field.

Drew and Millie both competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials in June in their first year with New Balance, with Drew finishing 20thin the men’s 800m and Millie finishing 14th in the women’s 5k. Drew has run 1:45 for 800 and 3:56 for the mile, and Millie has run 4:32 in the mile and 15:14 in the 5k.

Drew grew up in Massachusetts and competed at the University of New Hampshire before transferring to Virginia Tech for the remainder of his collegiate career, and Millie grew up in West Virginia and competed at WVU before transferring to Providence College.

On being new to the New Balance Boston team:

Millie: “To be honest, I feel like the transition was pretty seamless. I never felt super out of place [….] I couldn’t be happier with how I feel like I fit in with everyone, and that’s a testament to both Mark and the girls.”

Drew: “It’s really rare to get a group of people where you can feel supported by everyone at all times [….] you have someone to go to for whatever you need.”

On honest feedback from teammates and coaches:

Drew: “We had a similar [injury] thing, where we both knew we shouldn’t be racing. But we can’t see it for ourselves; we see it for each other. And then Mark steps in and tells us to relax.”

Millie: “Sometimes you need somebody to tell you to just not be dumb.”

On transferring colleges:

Millie: “I was in a place like – ‘you’re either going to keep doing this, and doing it the right way, or you’re going to give it up.’”

Drew: “For me, when I was thinking about transferring, I was terrified. But as soon as you decide you have to transfer for your own good, it doesn’t become scary anymore. It becomes: you have to do this for your own survival.”

Millie: “It’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve done, but one of the best things I’ve done for myself.”

On tough decisions:

Millie: “No matter what, people are going to have opinions about what you should do with your life. But if it’s something you want to do, it’s always worth it.”

This week’s guest is newly-minted Olympian Bryce Hoppel, who joined the podcast a few days before leaving for Tokyo. Bryce qualified for the 2021 Olympics when he finished third in the 800m, making his second U.S. national team since turning pro in 2019. At the World Championships in Doha, he finished 4th in the 800m, and he’s not shy about his desire to land on the podium this time around.

Bryce is a Texas native and graduate of the University of Kansas and we had a great conversation about his path to running, his go-to taco order, why he should star in Space Jam 3, and everything in between. The first round of the 800 is the evening of Friday, July 30 if you live in the U.S., so don’t miss the chance to cheer him on!

On the men’s 800m squad:

“We come around when it counts. People are already counting us out but we’re definitely going to put two, if not three of us into the final, and one of us is gonna get a medal for sure. I know I’m going for it.”

On pre-Olympics jitters:

“I think it’s definitely more nerve-wracking leading up to it. Once it actually gets here, it’s like, there’s nothing you can do about it: go out there and compete. I just want to get to Tokyo… that’s the most stressful thing. They’re so strict about everything, you worry ‘am I even gonna make it there?’ And once you’re there, everything will click.”

On heading to Tokyo without American Record holder Donavan Brazier on the 800m team:

“It hit me right after all the feelings of making the Olympic team – I was like, dang, Donavan’s not on the team. That was crazy. It’s definitely going to be a different team without him, but he’s going to bounce back; he’s one of the best to ever do it.”

On choosing the University of Kansas:

“Kansas was one of the official visits that I went on and really liked it. I fell in love with track and cross country by finding a great group of friends there at Midland [in high school], and when I met the tight-knit community here, I was like, ‘let’s do it.’ Two days later I was scheduled for another official visit, but something just woke me up at 3am and I was just like, ‘I really loved Kansas. I want to go there’ [….] and luckily everything worked out and went well, and I definitely wouldn’t do anything different.”

This week’s guest is Woody Kincaid of Bowerman Track Club, a Colorado native and University of Portland grad who recently qualified for his first Olympic games in the 5k and 10k. Longtime listeners will remember that we first had Woody on the podcast in 2018, when he was coming off a string of injuries that derailed his early pro career, and it was a great full-circle moment to have him come on again at the top of his game and to reflect on how far he’s come

Woody is a great friend of host David Melly and we got right into it, so get ready for an all-timer episode. We covered a wide range of subjects from “self-inflicted wounds,” to his relationship with his coaches, to why he threw up before the 10k at Trials, and everything in between.

Enjoy the episode and don’t forget to catch Woody representing Team USA in Tokyo in a few weeks. Don’t forget to subscribe, like, follow, review, and everything else!

On believing he can make the Olympics through setbacks:

“I do have this weird confidence in my own abilities. I have a pretty pessimistic outlook toward other things in the world, but I have a very strong self-belief. I’m not one of those guys that’s like, ‘anything is possible,’ but I know that if I focus I can do pretty much anything I set my mind to. I’ve had moments where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work out,’ but those are, for me, generally pretty passing.”

On his relationship with University of Portland coach Rob Conner:

“RC was always a very hands-off coach. His philosophy was, ‘you can take a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’ and he was always taking me to water and I just… would not drink. But I think he’s very proud now and he’s happy to see the potential that he’d always seen on the big stage.”

On his relationship with Bowerman Track Club coach Jerry Schumacher:

“Jerry and I are the same person with two very different philosophies of life. Personality-wise, we’re very similar, stubborn kind of people, but we disagree on a lot. We always fight, but we understand each other.”

On participating in track and field media:

“I’ll go on podcasts because I have a respect for recording in the moment, but it’s not wise… it’s not smart. If I were smart, I wouldn’t have a Twitter as a professional athlete, because it doesn’t do me good. [….] At the same time, everybody has a [platform] now, and one of the good things about that is that people are more sympathetic to people just being themselves. I’m not worried about what people are going to think at this point – I’ve been out there for a while.”

On dealing with speculation and criticism:

“I’m most defensive when people discredit everything I do. I’ve always been that way. It can be anything… doping allegations or anything else. When I ran 12:58, it was like, ‘well, it’s just the shoes, it’s the environment.’ And Centro made a good point – he said: that just means you made it. And I really took that to heart. When people are so mad at me, it just kinda means that now I’m on the radar.”

This week’s guest is Skylyn Webb, a middle distance runner for Saucony’s Freedom Track Club. Sky has an incredible story beginning in Colorado where she played basketball at Fort Lewis College before joining the track team and becoming a 3-time D2 national champion in the 800. Most recently, she qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials at the Music City Track Carnival this past weekend and you can catch her in Eugene next week.

We got into some pretty heavy stuff talking about Sky’s unorthodox journey to running, coming out to her parents, and learning to channel adversity into positive outcomes.  We also assessed Sky’s potential in the beer mile, her impulse pickups of a tattoo and a puppy, and planned our post-pandemic Boston summer. Sky’s leading the way as one of the few openly gay athletes at Trials, which we talk about a bit on the pod, so happy Pride to all our queer listeners and friends!

This was a great episode with a wonderful person and athlete and hopefully the first of many more in the coming weeks leading up to, and during, the Olympic Trials in Eugene. Make sure you subscribe if you aren’t already and enjoy the great long-run talk we’ve got coming up!

On taking up running at a difficult point in her life:

“I was in a tough spot, and I ended up reaching out to the track coach at Fort Lewis and he let me on the team. It brought me out of that hole and allowed me to finish my eligibility at UCCS and it all led to… here. At the time it was awful, but I wouldn’t change it now.”

On taking an unorthodox path to pro running:

“I hope [my story] can go to show that you don’t have to be this perfect runner all throughout your whole life…. it’s fine to get into it later or not be so serious for a while, and it can still work out.”

On her potential in the beer mile

“I don’t want to be too confident, but I think I could be real good. That might be the only time I could beat Helen [Schlachtenhaufen] in a mile.”

This week’s guest is Dan Michalski of Tracksmith and LeTourneau University, a steeplechaser who’s been turning heads all season with his big performances, most recently when he ran a big PR of 8:21 and notched an Olympic standard at the USATF Distance Open this past weekend.

Dan is an extremely impressive guy who only started running track his senior year of high school in Ohio before running for Cedarville University, a D2 school, before transferring to Indiana University and nearly winning the NCAA steeplechase in 2019 before falling over the final water jump. He’s currently balancing a newborn baby and a full-time coaching job with his own running career and is currently ranked #8 in the world without a professional contract.

We talked a lot about his unconventional path to elite running and the challenges of balancing a career and family with training, but we also got into his love for disc golf, his hardest steeple falls, and the story behind his moustache. Dan’s story is super inspirational and hearing from him made for a great episode.

On racing pros while unsponsored:

“I have a little bit [of a chip on my shoulder], but I also don’t want to confine myself to that narrative. America loves the underdog, and I know that about myself and the people that know me know my story, but at the same time… I make ends meet. I’d much rather be making a salary and getting health insurance doing what I’m doing than being the guy that’s just kinda hung around one of the pro training groups.”

On potentially racing Evan Jager:

“There was some fangirl nervousness in me… he and Will Leer and Ben Blankenship […] those guys were on my wall at my parents’ house. He was somebody that I did elevate, and it’s crazy to think that I could be sharing a starting line with him – we’ll see if we’re sharing the finish line.”

On learning from his infamous fall at NCAAs:

“I had the most epic ‘failure,’ but what did it really cost me? It’s in a sport; it’s not real life. It wasn’t truly consequential, and really it’s been kind of a formative moment for me. If I can get past one of my biggest failures, I can say that I’m so much more of a person than just the runner that was going for a national title that one time.”