The Shakeout Podcast

So who’s really driving this machine?
Today’s guest, Paul Gamble, PhD, has spent his career preparing elite and international athletes. But after years inside professional sport, he started asking an uncomfortable question: Are we developing better athletes—or just burning kids out earlier?
In his book, Sport Parenting, Paul introduces the idea of the Sport Parent, a powerful, often invisible force shaping sport more than governing bodies, or even coaches. Whether you’re a parent, a former youth athlete or someone who still has emotional scars from PE class, this conversation hits close to home.
We’re talking about early specialization, the rise of “premature professionalism,” why modern kids are actually becoming less athletic, and how well-meaning adults may be trading their kids' long-term confidence and love of movement for short-term results.
This isn’t an episode about blaming parents. It’s about unpacking how a culture obsessed with performance turns play into pressure—and what it costs kids, sport and, ultimately, all of us.
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Follow Paul on social media @PaulGamblePHD and check out his book, Sport Parenting

The last time Cam Levins took the streets of Vancouver for the Vancouver First Half, he left with a new Canadian record at the half-marathon distance. Weeks later, he kept the record-breaking streak going with a career-defining run of 2:05:36 at the 2023 Tokyo Marathon, taking a minute and a half off of his personal best and breaking his own Canadian record in the process. 
Fast forward three years, and Levins is returning to the playbook that served him so well in the past, as he’ll toe the line this weekend at the Vancouver First Half in a final tuneup effort before a much-anticipated return to the streets of Tokyo on March 1.
Now, eight years into his marathon career and nearly 14 years since his first Olympic team in London, Cam joins the show to talk about how he continues to chase excellence in the sport. We talk about his famous high-mileage training, how he’s found his way back to healthy running after years battling injury, and what it all looks like while balancing life as a new father. Plus we talk about his return to the streets of Tokyo, a city that has been a common thread throughout his marathon career, and what it’ll take to once again capture lightning in a bottle there in less than a month’s time. 
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Follow Cam on Social Media @CamLevins

Getting the worst flu of your life isn’t a perfect plan for anyone’s marathon race-week, but if there’s any athlete who's used to less-than-ideal prep it’s Hamilton’s Erin Mawhinney, a nurse educator who balances training upwards of 150km each week with the demands of full-time healthcare work. 
At last month's Marathon Project in Arizona, Mawhinney's hopes of capitalizing on a flat, fast course against world-class competition were dashed by a nasty race-week flu that forced her to withdraw just 10K into the race. Yet for her and coach Reid Coolsaet, a 2xOlympian at the marathon himself, letting the months great training go unused was never an option.  
Fast forward to January 11th and Mawhinney was back on the starting line of a marathon for the second time in under a month, this time in Texas at the Aramco Houston Marathon. Free from the illness that had derailed her previous attempt, Mawhinney would go on to run a massive 7-minute personal best of 2:29:36, finishing 5th in the women's elite field and making her the 12th fastest Canadian marathoner of all time. 
Today on The Shakeout Podcast, we’re joined by Erin Mawhinney and Coach Reid Coolsaet to talk about the work behind the breakout performance and how they approach elite marathon training while balancing the demands of a full life outside of sport. 
Follow Erin @ErinMawhinney_
Follow Reid @ReidCoolsaet
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Huge thank you to this week’s sponsor Smartwool. Join the Smartwool mailing
list to receive updates and 15% off your first smartwool.com purchase on full
price products only. See terms for details. 
https://bit.ly/481oMZY
Conditions apply: Valid on regular-priced items. Can., 16+. Initial registration only. See terms for details.

If there’s one word to describe the professional career of Lucia Stafford, it’s consistency. Since storming onto her first Olympic team in Tokyo at just 22, there has yet to be a global championship or major games where the Toronto native hasn’t been a part of Team Canada. For half a decade, she’s been a constant presence on national championship podiums, while also lowering Canadian records at both the 1K and 2K distances.
Yet, for all the success that consistency has brought over the past five years, 2026 will be a season of change for Stafford. Earlier this month she announced her move to the U.K., where she has joined the likes of Olympic medallists Keely Hodgkinson and Georgia Hunter-Bell as a member of the Manchester-based M11 track Club. 
Today on The Shakeout Podcast, Lucia joins us from training camp in South Africa, sharing about her decision to strike out in a new direction and what she’s excited for in the new year, with a new team around her. 
Follow Lucia on Instagram @luciastafford7
Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.
Huge thank you to this week’s sponsor Smartwool. Join the Smartwool mailing
list to receive updates and 15% off your first smartwool.com purchase on full
price products only. See terms for details. 
https://bit.ly/481oMZY
Conditions apply: Valid on regular-priced items. Can., 16+. Initial registration only. See terms for details.

If the early days of 2026 are any indication, the year ahead might be one for the history books in Canadian road running. This past weekend saw the fall of not one, but two national records in two of the most hotly-contested distances, the 10K and the half-marathon. 
Within the span of just a few hours, the duo of Kieran Lumb and Rory Linkletter lowered the all-time best marks at the 10K and half, breaking new ground for Canadian distance running by eclipsing the elusive 28-minute and 1-hour marks, respectively. 
After a mid-season coaching change in 2025 to begin working with Gjert Ingebrigtsen–the estranged father and former coach of multi-time Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen–Lumb’s pivot and subsequent move to a new training base in Europe paid off on Sunday morning in Valencia, Spain. His mark of 27 minutes and 50 seconds over 10K made him the first Canadian to dip under 28 minutes on the roads, eclipsing Charles Philibert-Thiboutot’s 2025 mark of 28:10.
Mere hours later, in Houston, Texas, Linkletter continued the momentum of a career-defining 2025 season by reclaiming the Canadian half-marathon record with a 59:49 clocking, besting Cam Levins's mark by nearly 30 seconds and becoming the first Canadian man to break the one-hour barrier.
Lumb and Linkletter join this week's episode of The Shakeout Podcast to recap their record-breaking weekend and to set the tone for a year of action in Canadian running that is off to an historic start.
Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.
Check out @Kieran.M.Lumb & @Rory_Linkletter on Social Media
Huge thank you to this week’s sponsor Smartwool. Join the Smartwool mailing
list to receive updates and 15% off your first smartwool.com purchase on full
price products only. See terms for details. 
https://bit.ly/481oMZY
Conditions apply: Valid on regular-priced items. Can., 16+. Initial registration only. See
terms for details.