You might know Craig as the 2013 Pan-American Jr. Games 1500m champion or the 4th place finisher at the 2016 US Olympic Trials in the 1500m. More recently, Craig won the USATF indoor mile and set a blazing 3:53 mile PR.

His list of personal bests is eye-popping:

• 800m: 1:46:03
• Mile: 3:53.93
• 5k: 14:20.27

Craig is a fun guy to talk with because he doesn’t take running too seriously. He’s a fierce competitor but you’ll also see how his running really took off in college when he was able to have fun with his team.

(it's funny how you perform better when you're having more fun outside of training...)

He also doesn’t take himself too seriously, which I find incredibly refreshing. He rocks a mullet and an absolutely perfect 1980’s style Burt Reynolds mustache. The RV only came after the mustache because he wanted to keep the 80's theme going.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Jason and Craig talk about how his career exploded in college, his affinity for running fast, and why your next breakthrough might require you to take running less seriously.

After college, Deena traveled to Amarosa, Colorado to train under Coach Joe Vigil. That's when her running took off.

To discover why and how this happened (it wasn't better training), Deena joined me on the Strength Running Podcast to discuss the mental journey she's taken throughout her career.

Our conversation focuses on several topics:

• How to turn negative thoughts into positive thoughts - while running or in everyday life
• Why Deena used to race "with fear" (and how she recovered from this dangerous mindset)
• The mental expectations she's had to abandon to reach higher levels of performance
• How to "participate in the process" rather than overly worry about results

These are all major themes of her award-winning memoir Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory.

You don’t have to just “hope” that your motivation to run will be there in the morning when the alarm blares…

But motivation is fickle and unpredictable. Some days, you’re ready to crush a track workout or long run. Other days, you can barely bring yourself to jog for 30 minutes.

You don’t have to be a hostage to the whims of your running motivation, though. Relying on motivation is a fool’s errand. 

Instead, you can structure your running life in such a way that missed runs or skipped workouts are virtually nonexistent.

You can do this without:

• the latest productivity app
• getting up at four in the morning every day
• joining a convent or becoming a monk…
• “biohacking” your way to the podium

I want to share with you a simple framework for automatically improving your running motivation and increasing the chances that you train hard – so you can race faster.

And it all starts with the other people in your life. Discover more about Strength Running's team.