Running On Purpose

Telos Running

A seasonal, bi-weekly podcast dedicated to integrating body, mind & soul for what the race requires.

  1. The oyo.run Project

    SEASON 3, EPISODE 3 TRAILER

    The oyo.run Project

    Hello, it's Steve Sisson, recording this in March of 2026. As you've probably guessed, this podcast has been retired — but I'm excited to share what's coming next. It's called oyo.run, & the focus is simple: self-coaching. Taking ownership of your running experience — as you should have been doing all along. I'll be your host, joined by a range of collaborators who'll help me break down the fundamentals of training & racing with as much clarity, precision & honesty as I can muster. We'll move across the full spectrum — physiology to strategy, mental skills to organizational planning — all with one purpose: to make you more invested, more effective, more motivated, & ultimately, to help you derive more meaning from everything you do as a runner. Think of it as the definitive resource for the self-coached runner. The name oyo.run carries a legacy & a story — and I'll unpack that in the very first episode, dropping April 1st, 2026. Yes, April Fool's Day. You'll find it wherever you get your podcasts. I'm bringing to this is fifty years of my own running & racing experience, as well as over thirty years of coaching expertise. My goal with these early episodes is to lay the foundation — the how & why behind the training systems coaches build. For some of you, this will be review. For others, it'll be critical background you've never had access to. Either way, my goal is to provide the foundation to develop your own system, or at minimum, to deeply understand the one you're already in. Eventually, we'll get deeper into the weeds with all manner of topics, guests & breakdowns. Alongside the free podcast, I'll be hosting a private online community resource for deeper exploration & discussion. More on that in the coming weeks.  Now — you might wonder why a coach would give away the keys for free. That's reasonable, I guess, so I'l provide a clear answer: I benefit far more from working with an informed, thoughtful, reflective athlete than I ever could from one who simply follows orders. While my system has been honed through thirty years of hard-earned experience, what makes coaching truly rewarding is having an athlete who can take that knowledge into the arena of their own unique experience. So this isn't a pitch to stop working with a coach. If anything, I view this as a public service for coaches everywhere — including myself. Think of the difference between a cook who follows a recipe & a chef who understands balance, flavor, technique. I'd rather coach a chef. Someone who can take the fundamentals into the kitchen of their own experience & make something real with them - not just execute instructions they don't understand. &, as I'll argue throughout the entire podcast run, the athlete who knows gains significantly more benefit from any training or racing situation than one who simply follows.  So join us April Fool's Day for episode one. All the information lives at www.oyo.run.  I am honored & excited to share this project with you & Godspeed.

    5 min
  2. 05/02/2024

    Endorphin Book Club: The Art of Mastery Review

    Back finally with another solo episode. As I mentioned recently, I have been working on a new series for this podcast that I’ll be announcing very soon. This series will fold in with the Innerwork Dialogues I have been doing with Kobe over at In The Zone & continued posts around the Endorphin Book Club - more on that below - & continued reflections around training the body mind & soul as inspiration ensues. I already have outlines for the following topics: The Felt-Sense; Three Intelligences (the head, the heart & the gut); The Essential Skills of Attention & Awareness; a deep dive into the energy systems introduced in the Keep Going podcast (see Episode 22) with a special focus on the esoteric aspects, & many more topics. If you’ve got a topic you’d like me to cover, please feel free to reach out to me at sisson at telos running dot com & I promised I’ll consider it. Today’s episode has been long in the incubation, if rather short in the execution. I announced the Endorphin Book Club in Season 2-Episode 12 & we had about a dozen folks start reading Peter Ralston’s The Art of Mastery together. It was a bit of rocky going as I was facilitating my first book club & didn’t really understand what a book club should be & the nature of Ralston’s book made discussion initially very challenging. After four meetings, we finally got through the book & our last two discussions were really fruitful. If you are interested in joining the EBC, simply send me an email & I’ll invite you to the club. It’s free, we meet 1-2 times a month for an hour or so & discuss a portion of the book we are reading. We end with a final wrap-up meeting. We are currently voting for our next selection this week. If you want to vote, be sure to reach out. Voting is closing on Sunday evening, May 5th. The books we are voting on are Shambhala by Chogyam TrungpaOpen Focus Life by Les Fehmi, Susan Shor Fehmi & Mark BeauregardFree Play by Stephen Nachmanovich The EBC’s schtick is it's a book club for runners reading books not specifically about running but useful for unpacking & relating to in a running context.  The Art of Mastery by Peter Ralston Initial Overview: If I have ever read a more complex book that uses conventional English language, I can’t remember it. I read a lot in the subjects of philosophy, psychology & spirituality & self-help, but rarely have I read a more challenging book written in what I call “plain-speak”. It’s not the language Ralston uses that is challenging, it's the concepts & the way he asks the reader to consider these concepts in really radical, non-intuitive & non-traditional ways. Because of this, the book makes for some heavy sledding. Perhaps this is the reason our book club shed engaged readers over the three months we wrestled with the text. But before you decide that it’s not for you, please hear me out. There are so many diamonds in this book for practical application, for challenging assumptions, habits & even our conception of reality. But Ralston does so without relying on philosophical language. He keeps it really real.  In this episode I am going to cover the book’s format, it’s core concept & a few very practical takeaways that I believe will be really helpful to enhance a runner’s training & racing experience. Some of these are coming from our EBC discussions, & some are simply my personal points of resonance. I hope this review will help you in determining if you’d like to read further into this work & potentially into other works by Ralston.  Who Is Peter Ralston?I found Peter Ralston’s work over a dozen years ago as I was researching different approaches to body awareness & the inner experience of physical skill & mastery. I came across his book, Zen Body Being, which I devoured immediately. I loved the book so much that I recommended it incessantly, bought copies for others or loaned my copy out without expectation of having it returned. As I transitioned from Rogue to Telos, I found Ralston’s approach to somatic skill permeating into much of my coaching work. I found myself using his principles in a variety of different contexts: physically, mentally & foundationally as in worldview exploration. I bean reading his more philosophical work around what he calls consciousness work & found in it even more resonance & challenge. I even considered taking an extended visit at his retreat center outside San Antonio, near Bandera. But the amount of commitment that Ralston required in terms of time away from family & work, was too much for me to accept. SO I continued reading & watching videos from his YouTube channel. If you watch these you’ll realize he is a bit cantankerous & aloof. Eventually, I moved away from his work in consciousness & just settled on Zen Body Being.

    46 min

Trailer

4.8
out of 5
56 Ratings

About

A seasonal, bi-weekly podcast dedicated to integrating body, mind & soul for what the race requires.