The Shakeout Podcast

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 pair of national youth championship golds in the 3,000m and 2,000m steeplechase.

But for someone who loved to work hard, the risks associated with a high-output approach began to grow, and Nobbs spent much of his late high school and early university careers sidelined with injuries, including multiple stress fractures.

Nevertheless, the passion for running never faded, and after wrapping up a university career at UBC in 2022, Nobbs began exploring the world of longer distances on the road, a journey that eventually, and inevitably, took him to the marathon.

Since debuting three years ago, the 26-year-old has steadily improved his time over 42.2 km, most recently with a breakout performance in March in Rockland State Park, NY, where he won the McKirdy Micro Marathon in 2:09:24. It was a three-minute personal best and made him the fourth fastest marathoner in Canadian history.

After years climbing his way back through injury, the former youth champion finds himself once again among the best in the nation, and will make his Abbott World Marathon Major debut in October in Chicago, entering that field as the top-ranked Canadian.

This week on The Shakeout Podcast, Tom joins the show to recap his breakout race, the big-mileage training that got him there, and what he's learned from the highs and lows of 20 years immersed in the world of competitive running.

Follow Thomas @nobbs.not.knobs

Cover Photo: Max Collier

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

 [This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports] Shop now at Altitude Sports and enjoy up to 20% off your first order with the promo code "SHAKEOUT2026" Click here to order 👉 https://bit.ly/altitude-shakeout2026

Create an account or sign in to access the discount. Valid on items at regular price only. Valid for a limited time only after sign up. Cannot be combined with any other discount code and/or promotion. Limited to one use per customer. Membership discount not applicable on this offer.

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 becoming the first woman in Canadian history to dip under 10.90 seconds. 

And while the record-setting run marks a new era in Canadian sprinting, McCreath’s own journey to Canadian record holder parallels the trajectory of the record itself. Far from an overnight success story, McCreath’s breakthrough is rather the result of a decade-plus of relentless work. From nearly walking away from the sport altogether earlier this year to breaking new ground as the fastest Canadian in history, Sadé joins the show to take us inside her journey to national record holder, and how she’s embracing this new chapter in her career with an eye on finding out just how fast she can go. 

Follow Sadé @onlymissmac

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

 [This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports]

Shop now at Altitude Sports and enjoy up to 20% off your first order with the promo code "SHAKEOUT2026" Click here to order 👉 https://bit.ly/altitude-shakeout2026

Create an account or sign in to access the discount. Valid on items at regular price only. Valid for a limited time only after sign up. Cannot be combined with any other discount code and/or promotion. Limited to one use per customer. Membership discount not applicable on this offer.

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 the product of hard work? What if the impacts of an activity-filled lifestyle might actually be contributing to long term health risks? These are the questions that have often gone unheard or overlooked by athletes at all ability levels, but are crucial to making sure that sport remains a healthy part of any athlete's life. 

While there’s no simple catchall answer to the above questions, a recurring theme that has drawn the ongoing attention of leading sports scientists, dieticians, and doctors is the impact of low iron levels. Yet for all iron’s importance to our overall health–and sport performance–it remains largely misunderstood by many athletes.

That’s why a group of Canada’s leading sport-science minds have spent the last three years compiling the research for a landmark consensus on the role of iron in sport. This week on The Shakeout Podcast we’re joined be Kelly Anne Erdman, a registered sport dietitian, Olympian, and co-author of “Canada's Best Practice Guidelines for Iron Optimization in Athletes”. Kelly Anne joins us to discuss the critical importance of maintaining healthy iron levels for general wellbeing, how to spot and treat the signs and symptoms of iron deficiency, and how making iron a priority could be the path to feeling–and performing–at your best.

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

Find out more about Kelly Anne's work with Canadian Olympian teams and athletes at all abilities at https://healthandperformancenutritioninc.com/about/ or contact Kelly Anne: kellyanne.erdman@gmail.com

Push past the finish line with nutrition that fuels you. CanPrev is proudly Canadian and has been delivering supportive natural health supplements for over two decades. Whether you’re training for your next goal race or looking to maximize performance when the gun goes off, make CanPrev's top-quality products part of your well rounded nutrition plan. Discover more at canprev.ca

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 the high jump for the track and quickly becoming one of Canada's brightest young distance running stars. Now, she's taken on a challenge even further removed, the fast growing world of hybrid racing. Late last month at the HYROX Global Championships in Stockholm she was crowned World Champion in the Professional 20-24 division, with a new national record setting time of 57:37 to boot. 

What makes the accomplishment even more impressive is the fact that it comes fresh off the heels of a personal-best setting track season, including a new 15:30 5000m PB set just one week prior to the HYROX global championships.  This week, Madelyn joins The Shakeout Podcast to recap her historic world title and answer once and for all the question runners everywhere are starting to ask: Could Hyrox be the future of endurance training?

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcastfeed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

[This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports]

Shop now at Altitude Sports and enjoy up to 20% off your first order with the promo code “SHAKEOUT2026” Click here to order 👉 https://bit.ly/altitude-shakeout2026

Create an account or sign in to access the discount. Valid on items at regular price only. Valid for a limited time only after sign up. Cannot be combined with any other discount code and/or promotion. Limited to one use per customer. Membership discount not applicable on this offer.

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, the beautiful scenes along the St. Lawrence, or the ever-increasing depth of competition, the Quebec Mega Trail weekend has established itself as the crown jewel on the schedule of the Canadian trail scene. 

Adding further intrigue to the 2026 iteration is its status as the Canadian trail championships for long and short course, pulling nearly all of the country’s top names to compete head-to-head over the 80 & 50k distances. No stranger to QMT is one of Canada’s top returners for this year’s event, Kelsey Hogan. While her global accolades continue to impress, it is here at QMT that Hogan seems to find her very finest form and after 4 straight years on QMT podiums, including back-to-back 100 mile championships in 2022/23, she’s back again in 2026 and looking to reclaim top honours against a stacked field in the women’s national long course championship. 

Today, Kelsey joins the show to talk all things Quebec Mega Trail, from her own preparation leading into this year’s event to the storylines she’s most looking forward to watching play out across the slate of race distances, and what it is exactly about the QMT vibe that keeps athletes coming back year after year.

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

Follow Kelsey @KelseyPamela

[This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports]

Shop now at Altitude Sports and enjoy up to 20% off your first order with the promo code “SHAKEOUT2026” Click here to order 👉 https://bit.ly/altitude-shakeout2026

Create an account or sign in to access the discount. Valid on items at regular price only. Valid for a limited time only after sign up. Cannot be combined with any other discount code and/or promotion. Limited to one use per customer. Membership discount not applicable on this offer.