Nicholas Thompson: Record-Holding Runner & CEO Shares the Tricks That Drive Extreme Performance

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're the CEO of the Atlantic. You're also the American
record holder for.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Fifty K for men forty five and l.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
What would be your tips for somebody trying to get faster?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Well, the equation that determines how fast you go is
power multiplied by efficiency divided by mass. You did really
good at understanding what is good pain and what is
bad pain. Your uc day should be easy, your hard
day should be hard. That running is a way to
explain and process hard things in life. My father, we
have this very hard, complicated relationship, but running is part
of what helps it to stay a piece. You know,

(00:30):
if you want to excel, you have to actually like.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
What's up, guys.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
It's Kate Max and today we're sitting down with Nicholas Thompson,
CEO of the Atlantic and a record setting endurance athlete
with some unbelievable personal stories right here on post run high.
We'll be right back with our conversation after this short break.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
All right, Oh wow, that's fun.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
What a run?

Speaker 1 (01:09):
That great perfect temperature, lovely day fall, foliage, like just draw.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Vibes out there, the kids, the other people, people smiling
and other runners.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Great there, Nicholas Thompson welcome to post run. Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Thank you so much, Kate. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
I'm so excited to have you so. Nick and I
just ran three miles in Dumbo. We ran along the
Brooklyn Bridge Park. It's one of my favorite places to run.
You're a massive runner. Do you run here a lot?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Like? Is that a trail you do?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's not. I probably run it every other week. I
do love it, you know, And sometimes I'll drop my
kids to play soccer at Pier six and I'll go
run it. I wore while we were running, wore my
academ fifty k which starts at Evil Twin Brewing and
so it has like a whole bunch of loops around there.
But I'm kind of more Prospect Park.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
It's interesting knowing that they do a lot of fifty
k's in New York. Like, I feel like I've never
heard of that race before.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, it's a weird race, but it's cool. It starts here,
and you like you run across and back. Of course,
the bridge is like nine times and then you go
up to Middle Village, Queens. It's in April or maybe
it's March.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Okay, yeah, do you do that? Like every year.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
I just did it this year. I'll do it next
year too.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, so you are a long distance runner, a marathon runner,
and an ultra marathon runner.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, and what would you say your race breakdown?

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Is y?

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Really like? You just did the New York City Marathon.
What else do you have on tap?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
So this last year I ran the ickid In fifty k.
Then I ran the Lake Warmog fifty miler, and then
it took a break, and then I was really focused
on running a sub five minute mile on my fiftieth
birthday with my kid. We did that. Then I ran
the Twisted Branch hundred k, then I ran the Grand Canyon,
and then I ran the New York City Marathon.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Did your kid run a sub five He paced.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Me for twelve hundred meters. He is a sub five
minute miler. He wasn't in peak shape, so he dropped
out at twelve hundred. Wow, but he did pascee me
to the Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
So you have three kids, three boys, three boys? And
is that your oldest?

Speaker 2 (02:53):
So my oldest is seventeen and he's more of a hiker.
The fifteen year old is an excellent runner. Eleven year
old's a excellent runner.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, they're following in your footsteps.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, they're more focused on soccer, but they do like running.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I like that you said that you'll drop your kids
off the peer for soccer, which, by the way, I
always see kids on that peer playing soccer and it's
fun to see. And that you will then go for
a run because growing up, I had like a crazy
Jersey mom that was always on the sidelines screaming at
me if I did anything wrong and across or I
didn't really play soccer but lacrosse basketball, but there were
some moms that would get out there and dads and

(03:25):
kind of go for a run around the tournament fields
or you know, wherever we were playing.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah, you know. My commitment is like for parenting, is
take them anywhere, right, and then if they're playing in
the game, watch them in the game. But if it's practice,
it's warm ups, Like I might be doing running and
it's half time, I might be doing planks. Right, you
had to get your workout in and like, as every
new parent learns, like time gets so crunched.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
No, it's so true.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
You really have to fit it in when you can,
especially with kids, especially when you're running around with kids,
bringing them to games and whatever. I also think the
beautiful thing about running and just body workouts like planks
is that you really can do it anywhere. And that's
my favorite thing about running is all you need is
a pair of sneakers. They can be old sneakers, doesn't
matter how long you've worn them for. You can go
barefoot if you want to. But you really can do

(04:07):
it anywhere.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, you can do it anywhere. And sometimes it embarrasses
your kids, but sometimes it's cool. I remember I was
I was like doing airplanes on the sideline, right, you
know where you put your one leg up and like
this and you go out to the side. I was
during one of my son's soccer practices and then they're
running around and I hear two of them and not
with my kid, and one of them is like that
weird dude is like what's he doing on the sideline,
And the other guy's like, that's Zach Stad He's the

(04:30):
American record holder. And the guy was like, oh cool, okay.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Wait, so we talked about this on the run. You
are the American record holder for.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Fifty K for men forty five and up. So it's
a pretty obscure race and obscure distance and like narrow
age band. But it's still the case that I have
run it faster than anybody has run it.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, and can you tell us the story behind it?
I know you said it on the run, but let's.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, it was fun. So I got fast at marathons,
and I was obsessed with marathons, and I ran like
a two twenty nine marathon at age forty four, forty five,
and then COVID hit and so I'd had this great
progression and I was like I'm running two twenty five,
you know, And then it was all like there are
no marathons, there's nothing to do. And at some point

(05:12):
during COVID, des Linden's agent, Des Linden, the great Boston
Marathon winner. The agent wrote reached out and was like, hey,
you want to pace DEAs. She's gonna try to set
the world record in the fifty k. And this is like,
I don't know if you remember, but DEAs in October
of COVID, October twenty twenty ran like one mile in
October first, like sixteen miles on October sixteen, thirty one miles,
like she was training, you know, like she'd like lost

(05:34):
a bet, you know, like playing beer pong, and so
Des is doing this cuckoo thing, and I'm like, sure,
I'll come with you. And I realized the American record
for men is just about the world record for women,
and so it's perfect. And so we go out to
Oregon in April, you know, out on this beautiful flat
road right, because you can optimize all the conditions right

(05:55):
at the time, the weather. We could even optimize the
day right. And so we go out into this parking lot.
It's like on a Tuesday, and perfect, perfect conditions, and
I go and I run. I wasn't her pacer because
she'd kind of gotten too fast. I ended up running
like a three h four and she ran like a
two fifty eight. The old American record and the women's
world record I both been like three oh six. But
it was amazing. I broke the tape and it's like

(06:16):
the best race I ever ran.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Was it an actual race that you guys were running
with other people or was this something that you guys
just did on your own.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
There were like ten people in the race, okay, and
everybody was trying for something else. So Dess had her pacer.
This guy Charlie Lawrence. There's this guy Peter Bromco is
a really good writer. Ryan Hall, like the American record
holder of the marathon, was there on a bike training
this like, uh, pacing this Lebanese woman who was trying
to make the Lebanese Olympic team, trying to get the standard,
so like all it was like she was just sort

(06:45):
of cuckoo. And there were like seven Dess's husband was
in the race. I don't know, maybe like eight people,
ten people, and I think most people dropped out. They
had a marathon marker and then they had a fifty
k marker. Most people dropped out at the marathon, so
I think it was just me and Dess for the
fifty k at the end.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
I feel like that is a whole other level of Hardoh,
when it's just you and like ten other people and
you're out there running this insanely fast time, Because talk
about the inner strength and the mental strength to push
yourself through that when there's nobody cheering for you on
the sidelines. You know, it's not like the New York
City Marathon that you've got bands playing and student groups
out there singing. Like you guys were pretty much alone

(07:21):
out there.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Well, that's ultra running, right, Like, you go and you
run an ultra run and you're there might not be
another human for like a mile. You know, you're just
up on these mountains. You're crossing rivers, you know. The
last ultra reun I ran, I like, I'm like three
miles from anything, and I bang my foot on a
route and my toenail splits off and like it hurts
so much, right, and you got to get to the

(07:42):
next age station. Then at the age station, like do
you have any tape? You tape it up and you
keep running. So you just when you're in the ultra world,
you kind of it's just a little bit different. But
that race, that's the other thing that was very funny
is we finish and it's a Brooks sponsored race because
they're a sponsor, and I've been wearing Nikes and at
the end of a race, you said a record. I
didn't know this guy. I've never said a record before.
You have to drink champagne out of your shoes and

(08:04):
so they're like, okay, Nick, you got to drink champagn
out of your shoes. I'm like great, and they're like,
but you gotta have Brook shoes, and so Dessa's husband
is like, would you like to drink champagne out of
my shoes? And I was like, Ryan, I really like you.
I enjoyed meeting you here, But like, how about I
I'll drink out of my shoes, but I'll cover the logo.
And so it's a funny photograph of me like drinking
champagne out of my shoes with my hand over the swoosh.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Can you imagine you're like drinking champagn out of somebody
else's smelly sneakers. I'm like, mine are one thing, but
somebody else's.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Are a whole.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
I'm gonna have been interesting. If he had said, you
can't do the photograph unless you do my shoes, it
would have been the right choice to drink out of
his shoes. That's what I guys. I say that.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, well, I just find it so fascinating because you
have this big job.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
You're the CEO of the Atlantic.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, you're also running seventy plus miles I'm sure a week.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
You know, you've got three kids, you're a dad.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
You have all these side quests going on with your
your running schedule, right, I mean doing ultras and marathons.
It's it's a lot, and it's super interesting, Like how
do you make time for it?

Speaker 2 (09:00):
So there are a couple of things. So one is
I do have a bunch of life hacks that make
it much easier than you would think. So I run
to and from the office. Right. It takes about the
same amount time as a subway. But I'm getting eight
to ten miles a day, and during that time, I'm
often also working. Right, I'm listening to I have a
queue of podcasts i have to listen to for work people.
I'm going to interview events, I'm going to host like
and so it's very productive time and I'm getting in

(09:22):
my runs. All my cross training, one hundred percent of
my cross training is with my children, right, Like we
go to the gym and we lift together, they like
have me go do sprints. My cross training is quite
erratic because it's all with my children. But like all
the cross training I've done for the last fifteen years
has been like, Okay, we're gonna play NERF basketball with
the kids, right, So that's all parenting. I also, then,

(09:45):
of course, do do these long runs, right, and I'll
get up before they wake up, right, I'll get up
at five and I'll go run on the Averizona or
you know, around under the Verizona, around Coney Island or wherever.
And then there's this beautiful thing happening now, which is
I can train with them. So, you know, this summer,
my fifteen year old and I would go out and
we'd go run four hundred me to repeat, So i'd
lead one, he'd lead one. I'd lead one, he'd lead one.

(10:06):
I lead one, he'd lead one, and you know, soon
he'll be cooking me and we'll have to you know,
it used to be the case that we would do
four hundred meter repeat where I would like run three
hundred and he'd run the last hundred. Probably like this
coming summer, it'll have to be like that and reverse.
But it's great. So I try to just mix. I
try to do two things at once as much as possible. Right,
If you can do your cross training and your parenting,

(10:26):
if you can do your running and your commuting, right,
that's the way to do it.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah. I'm very similar in that way.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Like if I'm going out for a solo run, which
I try to go every morning before, like before we
ran together, I ran four miles and I do the
same thing.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
I'm listening to podcasts.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
I'm studying for the week ahead and the interviews that
I have coming up. I think that's the really cool
thing about about podcasts is, especially when you love to
do long distance running, is you just like your headphones
in and.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Get to I mean, I am very I never listen
to them if I'm doing a workout right, and I
never listened to them if I'm like in the woods, right.
It's just when I'm in the when you're like being operational,
functional and efficient. Because when you're in the woods, for
me at least, it's like that's like spiritual and you're
trying to like clear your head. And then when you're racing,
when you're working out right and you're doing four by

(11:10):
two miles, you're eight mile tempo, you're trying to like
process the body signals and you're trying to understand your
form and you're trying to understand your heart rate. You
don't want anything interrupting it. But when I'm like warming
up for that or when I'm just like jogging around
Queen's or wherever I am, Yeah, I'm listening to podcasts.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah, that's so true, because I do feel like with
whatever the form of movement is that you're doing, the
intention behind the workout is so important. And yeah, like
the runs where I mean, I'm often multitasking and I
am listening to podcasts and studying at the same time
as you know, doing a solo workout, but you're so
right that you do kind of have to be just
locked in on the workout sometimes to really make it efficient. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
You know, it's a funny thing about running where it's
like sometimes we'll think about it like, Okay, so if
a marathon prep is twelve weeks and I do two
hard workouts a week and it's like four by two miles,
that's like okay, that's a really hard work out. That's
forty and you add it up and the total amount
of time where you really are hurting yourself is like
fifteen hours. It's like not that much time, and so

(12:09):
you just actually have to be focused those fifteen hours.
And when you look at it that way, it kind
of seems simpler than like, oh, it's twelve weeks of
hard workouts. You go to the track and you're like, Okay,
I'm gonna run sixteen by four hundred right, and that's
like twenty minutes, right, you just have to like twenty
minutes where you have to be focused.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Do you feel like you're always training?

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Because I feel like I talk to a lot of
long distance runners and I'll say, you know, what does
your training schedule look like for the New York City
Marathon or whatever marathon it may be, And They're like, well,
I don't really, I don't really train because I'm always training.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
I do. I do more periodization than that, maybe less
than I used to. I used run New York City
Marathon and then I would kind of take a break
until January and then I might pick it up and
run Boston. Now it's a little more fluid, but I
do try to take a couple week break after a
race or you know, after the like Warmark fifty miler
in April, I took quite a bit of downtime before
you getting.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
At it again, what does your downtime looking?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, then I'm just running to work, right, and like
maybe I'm running one way, right, so I'm running like
four miles a day. I remember like thirty five forty
miles a week.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
What about post the New York City Marathon, Like, what
were you doing in the last eleven days.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Well, so the New Yorky marith in this year was
so weird because I got quite sick before it and
then I ran quite slowly. And so what I didn't
know is whether I ran the marathon like thirty minutes
slower than I'd expected to run it. And in fact,
I probably ran twenty six point two miles ten times
this year faster than I ran the New York City Marathon.

(13:30):
Just didn't like runs, and I ran the marathon much
slower than I ran the first twenty six miles of
my fifty mile race. So I didn't know like what
my recovery would be. I was like, well, maybe I'll
just be like an easy run, but it wasn't. The
recovery has actually been like a real marathon because I
really did. I was straining a weakened body, and so

(13:52):
I've been kind of a ratic where at first I
was like, I'll just get back at it, and now
I realized, okay, I need to take a little time.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah, So we were talking about on the run that
year you were aiming for a two thirty you ended
up doing a three zero six and this past marathon,
but you are somebody that's been able to get down
to a two thirty marathon a very fast time, And
you were saying that you went from kind of consistently
running two forty three marathons to then all to then
really breaking through. So what would be your tips for

(14:20):
somebody trying to get faster?

Speaker 3 (14:21):
What do they have to focus on with?

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, so there are a number of things to get
faster ways to get faster. You know, Increase the amount
of mileage you run always helps, right, And so you
go from fifty miles a week to sixty to seventy,
and you've got to figure out how it depends on
your schedule and depends on your like how durable you are,
because like that you're playing with fire. But you should
increase like five percent a week. You know you're doing fifty,
Maybe you go up to fifty two and then fifty five.

(14:44):
Maybe go up two weeks down a week, but build
your mileage. Make your hard workouts hard, right, Your easy
day should be easy, Your herd day should be hard,
and like make your I do workouts on like Tuesdays
and Thursdays. But like you know, I just said four
by two miles, that's a hard workout. Like if you
if you're going like at your you're getting your heart
rate up to your maximal not quite your maximal level,
but like make your workouts really really count. So that's

(15:07):
that's important. I improve my diet. I started to be
a little My previous diet had been like a little defensive,
like no fatty foods, no extra sugar, no processed foods.
And then it became like a little more offensive. Okay,
let's get the beat you. So let's get the dark
lea thy greens. Let's figure out exactly what I need today.
Let's try to figure out what kind of protein I
need today. So figuring out your diet can be super helpful.
I'm and this is like playing with fire too, but

(15:29):
I believe in form right, Like basically, the equation that
determines how fast you go is power multiplied by efficiency
divided by mass, right, and so there are three variables.
And power is like your fitness, like your cardiovascu, your fitness,
your leg strength, you know, it's kind of your cadence,
and that's what we're always training on. Mass is like
how much you weigh, and that's hard to deal with,

(15:52):
but like the less you weigh the faster you go,
but that's really complicated. And then efficiency is how well
you move through space, and you know that depends on
you know, how your arms are moving. It tends how
your head is centered over your shoulders, right, And so
I think a lot about form when I run, and
I do think that having proper form. Most people are like, ah,

(16:13):
you know, your body figures it out, just run the
way you want to run. And I don't believe that.
And I believe that, like there are better and worse
ways to run. And I don't have the perfect form.
You know, I'm a little stiff. I don't have the
right kind of forward lean that if you watch like
Bernard l like got and the best runners they have.
But I think a little bit about form and so
and then get your rest and your recovery, because when

(16:34):
you start training, when you're really burning the way like
I was when I was getting fast and running into
twenty nine, you've got to you know, you're gonna get
hurt if you don't. If you don't let yourself you recover.
And so you have to get very good. This is
again ties into what I was saying about music and podcasts.
You have to get really good at understanding what is
good pain and what is bad pain, what is the

(16:56):
pain that's leading to an injury. It takes a long
time to learn that, be very cautious, but that's uh,
those are That's what I would be working on.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
You know. I think one of the cool things about
you is and you know, we leaned into this a
little bit on the run, but we were saying, how
for you running for so long has been this really
like mental.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
And spiritual thing for you.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
But you also are somebody that's training right and trying
to optimize your running and kind of push yourself to
that next level.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
So it really is a bit of like this this
you know it uses people.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Right, But let's talk about running as a form of
mental clarity for you and and you know how that translates.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
So there are a couple of things. So one is
I do believe it's a form of meditation, right, and
I believe that. Like what I tell people if they're like, oh,
I don't like to run, I can't run, I don't
get it. You know, what I say to them is okay,
fair enough, lots of people don't, but go out tomorrow,
put on your shoes, put on pair of shorts and
just run to whatever the lamppost is nearest your home.
And when you do that, only think about what you
see right, And then like when you run back, only

(18:04):
think about what you hear right. And suddenly you're like
your mind opens up in these interesting ways, and I
feel like, oh, that's great. Like people start to love that.
So I do think that there are ways of getting
into it. For me, the mental clarity comes from doing that.
I actually was doing that a little bit while we
were running, like just sort of enjoying the leaves. There's
another form of mental clarity that is important to me,

(18:24):
which I use in racing, mostly in ultra racing, where
most of the time, and I did in the York
Marathon too, when I'm in a hard place, most of
the time, I'm like really fixated on how fast am
I going, how hard am I breathing? How do I feel?
What is my heart rate? Right? And before every race,
I make a spreadsheet and it's like, you know, from
miles one through five, I want my heart rate to
be between one twenty five and one thirty and I

(18:45):
want to be running between five fifty seven and six
so two right, something like that. And if I'm going
faster than five fifty seven, I should slow. If my
heart rate is above one thirty, I should slow, right.
And so you're kind of like building in you don't
know exactly how it's going to go, but you've like
I set these domains and like for fifty mile race,
I'll do it for all fifty minis else. But there
are points where you have to let that go because
you go crazy. And so like in the New York Marathon,

(19:06):
I had made a little spreadsheet, but I had this
respiratory thing I didn't know. And so about about mile
I was going up the Queensboro Bridge, like mile fifteen,
I was like, you know what, I'm not anywhere near
this right, Like I'm cooked. And so then I was like,
just release it, and I click a button on my watch,
so I can no longer see my heart, right, I
can no longer see my pace just tells me the
time of day. And then I start to try to

(19:27):
think that I'm like above myself. I'm trying to like
let myself release myself, like spiritually mental, and I'm just
looking down on Nick running right, and so I'm sort
of trying to like dissociate as opposed to associate. And
sometimes what I'll do is all then I'll like imagine
that I'm a child in the woods, right, Okay, now
I'm running through I'm now running like to Sergeant Mountain

(19:48):
right in Acadian National Park. Right, I'm not running up
First Avenue, right. And that's a way to kind of
release the stress because you can get you can you
can boil over if you're like, my god, it's still
eleven miles to go. I just feel terrible again, and
I'll try forty miles to oh, and I feel horrible.
So you know, there's a way of releasing yourself that's
really important too.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, because it's like, while you're pushing yourself to this,
you know, level of excellence, it's also like, oh, you're
running the New York City Marathon. You know, looking around,
it's like one of the most fun marathons to run
in the world. Right, So how do you balance sometimes
that performance that you're pushing yourself to do, which is
running a two thirty marathon, with also enjoying a race

(20:29):
like the New York City Marathon.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Well, that one's easy. The unfortunate answer is I just
don't I don't deal with the crowds. I don't focus
on that. You absorb it, take, you take the love,
you take the chair, and you use it to push
you forward. But my focus is on forward motion, right,
And like you know, I always feel you know again,
my last marathon was a disaster, but most of the
marathons have been quite good than the last ten years.

(20:51):
And you know, if I'm going to pack at five
people and we're running and one person is like high
fiving people on the side, a person's gonna finish ten
minutes behind me, right, It's just the way it works.
And so when I'm running, you hear and you see,
but you don't think about that. You're like you're actually
trying to block it in a way out and you're
trying to just focus on your breath, your form, your

(21:12):
forward motion. Because if you have every thought that is
not about moving forward, is eventually like energy that you're
going to wish you had at the end. And so
I'm very clear about what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
So what are the thoughts going on in your mind
when you're running a race?

Speaker 2 (21:31):
So not much, you know, it's actually not It's funny.
I sometimes when I was writing the book, I would
go for a run and I'd like bring my phone
or I'd even bring a notepad and I would write,
write down everything, Like, Okay, I just thought for the
last like three minutes about my dad. I was worried
about this sort of this complicated thing at work, and
I was worried about the subscription funnel, and I was interested,
you know, I was interested in how like what your

(21:52):
shadow looks like as you pass the streetlight as the
sun comes up. Right, Like whatever I'm writing about when
I'm in a race, I'm not thinking very much. I'm
just like, I'm thinking about my mantra right foot, left foot,
right foot, left foot, I'm thinking about pace heart right.
But I'm not observing processing. Like if you were to
create a movie of whatever, you were to take the
movie that runs in my mind on like a run

(22:14):
in the woods, it'd be pretty interesting. Right If you
take the movie it runs in my mind in a
racer workout pretty dull. I mean, I do there are
some things that are interesting, right. I am trying to, like,
I am doing all the things to try to make
myself more efficient, right, so I'm trying to like identify
what is the flattest part of the road, right, because
if you're running on an anglic part of the road,
you're putting more stress on one leg than the other. Right,
I'm trying to identify where the shade is, right, particularly

(22:36):
if it's a day where the temperature is above like fifty.
I'm trying to identify how to get in an air
pocket where you have somebody in front of you and
somebody behind you, right, because they push air into you
and they block air from coming into you. Right, I'm
trying to identify of the people near me who is
actually likely to run an even pace, Like if I
see an elite woman, she's probably gonna run an even pace.
If I see like a guy who's like, ah, like,

(22:59):
probably not right. So you want to stick with people
who you know are going to be like metronomes, and
you know you're thinking about where your water station is.
So there are like kind of boring running thoughts, like
what is the tangent that so important? Like what is
the most efficient line I can run? Because you don't
run efficient lines, you end u running twenty six point five,
right or twenty six point seven, And so I'm thinking

(23:19):
about all of that stuff. But that's all in like
to the service of how fast can I run this marathon?

Speaker 3 (23:24):
So interesting?

Speaker 1 (23:25):
I never even thought about some of those strategies, but
it's so true. It's like when they say, when you're
running in Central Park and you kind of are constantly
going with the direction of the park, one of your
body's one side of your body, the left, I guess,
does become stronger than the right because Central Park is
on a little bit of an angle.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
I mean, think about a track, like you run the
same way around the track right, you know, you know,
you've got your left shoulder to the curve. Like you
go to a track and nobody's there, you should run
the other direction and try to balance yourself out. I
alternate directions in Prospect Park. When I run like one
with clock clockwise counterclockwise, your body can become asymmetrical very easily.
In the sport.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
So your wife, you said, was a dance sir, Yeah,
and you've always been a runner? Are you?

Speaker 3 (24:04):
Guys both very into health and fitness, because I feel
like dancer.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Is Yeah, she's you know, yes, our whole family is.
And the kids, you know are like my middle son
like cares more about what he eats than I do.
He's really focused on it. He's like really interested in
studying different kinds of proteins and making sure that we
have like the right kind of bread on the avocado
toast for breakfast. You know my wife, you know, now
that she's no longer dancing, it's less she's more interested

(24:29):
in the artistic elements of dancing, and she runs the
dance program with the new school, So she has a
you know, different relationship where it's less physical and more
about understanding it as an art.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
What does eating look like in your household? Like, is
there certain food that you've found really helps with your training?
Are there certain supplements that you're taking that you're like, wow,
this really worked for me.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
I don't eat. Yes, So every morning I get up.
I usually get up before all the kids get up.
My oldest son leads through school at seven, the other
guys at like eight fifteen, so I make breakfast for him.
I have the same thing every morning. I have, Like
I have this big container where I put in oatmeal
and sometimes protein oes, sometimes regular roads, and a bunch
of nuts, gus seeds, flax seed, ground flax seed because
you obsorb it better, A bunch of healthy stuff. I

(25:10):
give that to myself. I give it to my middle son,
put food on top of it. The other boys I
give like rice crispies right with food on top, because
they're less focused on it. Some days, like today, I
made avocado toast, cut up tomatoes, gave it to them,
you know, because the older guy wants protein, you know, lunch,
trying to have a grain bowl or a salad. I
do drink beat juice every day.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
What does bee juice do?

Speaker 2 (25:33):
So? Beatjuice has nitrates in it that help you carry
oxygen to the blood, carry oxygen through the blood so
to the muscles. One hundred percent. Like that is like
easiest nutritional hack. Drink bea juice before your rais and
your workouts. Do it every day, one hundred percent. It's
clearly it seems to have a There may be other
ways to get nitrates, but I think that beet juice
is quite healthy. So and then dinner, you know, family

(25:55):
of three soccer practice, it's chaos. Like you know, ideally
you're having like a healthy salad or like vegetable soup
or something, but sometimes you're just ordering burritos because life
is hard and supplement So I take al cicraline. I
take the bee juice. I've been taking magnesium theonaate trying
to help me recover from the marathon, taking rodola in

(26:17):
the morning to try to help me recover from the marathon.
I take creatine. I didn't up until this year, but
it seems very clear that the science of creatine is healthy.
Obviously caffeine is super healthy, and I take caffeine before
I run. Before I run a race, I'll do betuice, caffeine, citralline,
sometimes creatine if it's a If it's a marathon, I
won't do creatine because I don't like the increase in

(26:38):
body weight in the week before race. But that's the
kind of supplement mix.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna start weaving beat juice. And I'm like,
you have mentioned beatjuice a lot of times. Even on
our run, we were talking about beatchus and now I'm like, okay,
we've got a common theme of beat you.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
So yeah, it's a it's a pretty interesting one. I mean, like,
there may be other ways to get the nitrates, like
you can probably get it in by eating a lot
of kale, but BetUS is a very efficient way to
do it.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
I was talking to Tim Tebow the other day and
we were talking about one of the supplements that he
started finding out that football players were taking for focus,
and it's called neuron and I had never heard of
it before, but I kind of want to check it
out now because he like spears by it. So it's
fun finding out what a big time athletes, you know,
like yourself, are are eating and using. But it's definitely

(27:21):
helpful when your family and your kids are also a
little bit in on it.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
But yeah, totally. And then like you know, I also
when I'm running a race, I take keytones. If I'm
running a ultra marathon, I'm taking I haven't I haven't
started doing bicarp, which is what all the sort of
fast runners are doing. You know, some ultra runners think
you should do it. And then I try to teach
my kids like these are like this what you should
have a halftime right? Like this is these electrolytes, these
to the calories like and I'm a little more specific

(27:45):
with the fifteen year old because he's into it. In
the eleven year old, I'm just like, have some watermelon.
It as else a true internet.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, No, it's it's fun that it's fun that your
fifteen year.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Old is into it. Yeah, that's great, that's really fun. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
What do you feel like you've learned about running through
your fifteen year old?

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Oh? From my fifteen year old. The most important thing
is he more than anybody I've ever watched shows the
weird way that talent works. And so you put my
kid out. You to take ten kids his age, and
none of them have run for two months, and you say,
go run a mile. My kid will not do well.

(28:20):
Maybe he'll be seventh place. And then you say to them,
you guys all do the same workouts for the next month.
At the end of the month, my kid will be
first place. Right. He has this like trainability, right, and
so when he starts training, he improves faster than everybody else.
And this is an interesting thing about talent that I
write about in the book. We all think about talent
as like where you start. Right, If you put like

(28:41):
a bunch of people who up been trained and you
put them on a field, who gets to the end
that person has talent? But that's not actually what talent is, right.
Talent is a bunch of other things too. It's like
your trainability, right, it's your durability. And so this woman
Julia Lucas, who I read about in the book. You know,
we were running one point and she came as close
as you can get to the Olympics and not make it,
you know. She at one point we often in my generation,

(29:04):
talent was kind of considered your votwo max, which is
like a measure of your oxygen car and capacity, and
like you'd all get tested for your VIEO two max,
and like Lance Armstrong's it's ninety two, right, and the
best kid on the Stanford team is eighty. And I
got tested for Vo two max and I was like
sixty five, right, not very high. That's high, but not
that high. And I was starting with Julia, and Julia
was like, at one point, what was your VIO two max?

(29:24):
I was like sixty five And she started to laugh,
right because it's like such a low number for someone
like her. And then she's like, well, you know what, like,
but you do have this talent because you've never been heard, right,
And she's like, you're like a car with a small
engine and a frame that makes it super durable. And
she's like I'm a car with a huge engine and

(29:44):
a frame that cracks all the time, right, And like
which one's talent, right? Is it the VO two Max
or is it the frame right? And you know, so
watching my son has maybe kind of like appreciate this
more that talent is. It's really calm, complicated, you know,
and in a way he doesn't have talent, and that
he's frustrated because the beginning of the year he's not fast,

(30:07):
but actually he does because he trains and maybe it's
his dedication, maybe it's the work eything, but it's also
his trainability. You know. I saw this there was a
summer I guess it was the summer of COVID and
he like, you go run a mile around like a
ten thirty and then like we do workouts for a
little bit and it's down to six fifty right when
he's just a little kid. So he's I've learned that
through watching him. He trained soccer six days a week.
They play for this crazy club in Queens. It's amazing,

(30:28):
both of the younger boys. You know, club sends people
pro it's like it's a it's a real thing. This
winter he's like, you know, Dad, I'm going to join
the swim team. I was like, really, you don't even
like swimming. He's like I know, but like I want
to improve my cardiovascular endurance, I can get it in
before soccer practice and it won't get the same wear
and tear of like you know, an impact sport. I
was like, damn, yeah on it.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah, he's on it.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
I just would say, don't overtrain, because I was definitely
overtrained in high school. Like I did varsity cross country
into varsity track to then prepare for lacrosse, and I
was I trained too hard and then I ended up
getting hurt.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Yeah, I'm trying so hard with him. It's hard, you know,
and I got hurt. You know, I got I haven't
been hurt in my adult life because I've learned how
to balance at my you know, high school life. I's
heard all the time, right, but.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
It is so true the trainability thing.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
And there's that famous quote that's talent is hard work
when hard.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
Work fails to work hard. What is that quote?

Speaker 1 (31:20):
I can't remember it, but something along those lines. I mean,
I even saw it growing up. It's like the kids
that come out that maybe aren't like the most athletic
or the most naturally gifted, it really doesn't matter. It
comes down to your coachability. And your ability to work
hard to kind of get to that next level. And
I think that's the really cool thing about running, is
you can train yourself to be a great runner, as
long as you just put the hours in and the

(31:40):
work in, and you're consistent and you push yourself and
you get into that pain cave. And that leads me
to your book, The Running Ground, which we talked a
lot about during our run. But I would love for
you to just break down what this book is about, yeah,
and what people can expect in it when they read it,
because it's it's packed with a lot of information.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yeah, the book is about how running can help us
understand the hardest things in life. It's not a training book.
It's not a book just for runners. And in fact,
some of the best response I've gotten has been from
people who aren't runners. We're like, this is just a
book that helps you understand obsession. There are three main stories.
There's my story of running, which is really about how
I got faster as I aged, like how did I
run so fast in my forties and the sort of

(32:19):
deep psychological reasons. There's the story of my father and
the way that running helped him hold his life together
as it was falling apart, and then the way it
helped me understand and connect with him even as he
became a great burden on my life. And then there's
the story of different runners who take you two extremes
of understanding both, whether it's how running can be a

(32:42):
form of transcendence, how running can be a way to
process pain, how running can help you get through addiction,
how running can help you break barriers. And so these
aren't runners I found in Wikipedia. They runners with whom
I've my life has crossed, and so they enter into
the narrative as I tell my life story when I
meet them, and then I step back and tell their stories.
So all those things together make it a book about

(33:02):
you know, running, pain and understanding.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah, and all of the people that you know, we
ran through them during our run. But each person that
you listed out, like the guy that's the fastest marathon
runner with Parkinson's, you know, it's each person that you
mentioned has gone through something very traumatic in their life
like you did with your dad and found running as
a form of transcendence and getting through this really tough

(33:28):
emotional thing. So do you mind just telling us the
story of your dad? And how running kind of helped
you through it.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah. So my dad is a really interesting guy. He
grows up in BayCon, Oklahoma, on a Native American reservation.
His father had been a missionary who had later risen
become president of BayCon. But father's a big, gruff, sporty guy.
My dad is, you know, shy. I wants to listen
to music. And my dad learns about a school called
Philips Academy andover great boarding school in New England, and

(33:56):
he applies and gets in, gets a scholarship and leaves
and like his dad is like, no, you don't have
enough money to pay for the lunch money. And my
dad is like, I've actually been delivering newspapers on horseback
and I do, and I'm out. So he goes from
there where he's a misfit. He goes to Stanford, gets
a scholarship there, and then he's just a star.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
He brings Nickson to campus, brings Kennedy campus. Kennedy says
his kids be president. Provost writes a letter say, this
is the best kid we've had on campus since Herbert Hoover. Right,
Like my dad is rock star. He's photographed by a
Saturday evening post when he graduates, or no, when he's
a sophomore, whin's a Rhde scholarship, goes to Oxford, you know,
comes back, marries my mother. Everything is just going great

(34:34):
and I'm born, thank goodness, and then his life kind
of unravels. He he doesn't meet his prefer professionalize. It's
hard when you're told that you're going to be president, Like,
it's hard to live up to that. Right, he whom
the gods wish to destroy, they first make promising. And
my dad said that all the time.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
I mean, I think that's one thing I feel like,
being told you're going to be president. Whatever I get
at you're a smart kid, going to Stanford, getting a
Rhodes scholarship, getting a scholarship to Oxford, those things stand
out to me more.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, And just like everybody expected him to like run
the world, and he it just wasn't working. And so
he was having a hard time handling that. And then
the important, the really important thing is he realizes he's gay.
And you know, this is nineteen seventies, early nineteen eighties.
It's different from today, Right, you realize you're gay today,

(35:20):
you come out of the closet and you hang out
with your gay friends, right. He didn't know how to
deal with it, and so he leaves my mother. He
moved to Washington to write in the AIDS crisis. He's,
you know, profoundly promiscuous, all the wrong people. He's diagnosed
is having an HIV. It's turns out it's a false positive,
but he lives with it for a year. He then

(35:41):
this really traumatic thing happens where there's this other guy
he thinks of as like his twin, this other guy
who was like photographed by Eisenstaff for his college graduation,
also Rohde scholar, also like everybody thought was going to
be secretary of State or whatever, also gay. And it
becomes like my father thinks of his twin closest friend.
And then that guy I just can't handle it, can't
handle ups and down his life, and he kills himself

(36:03):
in my father's garage. And so my dad, you know,
from that moment on, it's like, oh my god, like
what will how can I how can I live as
a gay man in this closeted world? And so he
just you know, kind of unquorks at that moment. He
ends up moving to Asia, where he like does some

(36:24):
academic work, but also kind of runs a brothel for men,
runs out of money during this whole time, though, he
does run right, and he like teaches me to run
when I'm five, He runs New York Marathon when right
after the divorce, I go and I cheer him on
just on the downside of the Queensboro Bridge almost breaks
three hours. You know, we run together. He loves my running.
We communicate a lot about running through running, and so

(36:46):
running is like one of the through lines of his
life and our relationship, and so part of the story
is my processing the kind of the madness, Like he
comes back, like he literally comes back, comes to my
apartment in Brooklyn, and like will show up and just
like he'll show up, walk in under a suitcase to
just dump it on the floor, and there's like tax statements,
moisturize or bottles of gin like cigarettes, what Dad, what

(37:07):
are you doing? Like go to your room right then?
You know, at one point I'm like he's like fix
my iPad. I'm like, okay, fixing your iPad like rebooted,
fix it up. And he's like ordering prostitutes to come
as soon as I leave for work, not caring that
my children will be there. Right, So, like weird dude,
but an amazing guy, and like a wonderful person to
talk to. An interesting guy. So we have this very hard,

(37:27):
complicated relationship, but running is part of what helps it
to stay at piece. He dies in twenty seventeen, and
then after he dies, you know, that's when I start
running really fast. He had said that he could only
run fast after his father had died because the shadow
of his father and like his father's athletic demands had
made it impossible for him to succeed athletically. That wasn't

(37:48):
the same for me. But it is also the truth
that after he was gone was when I got really fast.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
I mean, it's such a complicated relationship to share with
your father because it is hard. It's like you have
this dad that's so successful in all of these things,
but then also has this really complicated life and is
making really complicated life decisions.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
So like, how do you feel like that fueled.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
You in life? Because I know you went on and
you kind of followed in his footsteps in a way
by going to Stanford, Right, So what did that do
to your psyche and your mental and how do you
feel like running pushed you through.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Well, you know, when I was I've made a lot
of choices like his, Right, I went there, I went
to Stanford, and I traveled in Ghana, right, which is
where he had done his PhD. Right, But that was
all before he had gone before like the king Leer
like crazy stage. You know, that was when he was
still just like my dad. And you know, but once

(38:53):
he started to kind of lose it, like once he
stopped punctuating his emails and when he kind of spun
out a control, I definitely thought of running as a
way to like I worried I was gonna end up
like him, right, Like I'm not an alcoholic, right, I
Like I do brush my teeth right, like I fold
my clothes right, unlike my dad. But I still worried,

(39:14):
like whatever had happened with him, like could that happen
with me? Like, you know, I've been a promising kid
at Stanford, right, And I think running was a way
for me to like maintain the discipline and say, you
know what, I'm just gonna I'm gonna keep running. I'm
going to hold onto this discipline. I'm gonna hold onto
this practice that I think makes you more efficient and
like helps your life be more disciplined. I'm gonna hold
onto this in a way so that I don't become him.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, and I do think discipline in a real way
does equal freedom.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Did you see your dad with time lose his discipline
for running and spiral?

Speaker 2 (39:44):
He lost his discipline for everything, Like he just became incapable.
Like you couldn't have a conversation without him starting to
talk about sex. You'd be like, Dad, like I don't
want to hear about this, right, Like we talk about politics? Please?
Can we talk about like who's gonna win the election
in Thailand? Right? Like you know, what's what's the king
gonna do? If you start the General's like ah, this
guy I met and you're like, Dad, stop And he

(40:05):
could just kind of lost, like his mind got He
didn't sleep, right, he slept like four hours a night.
He drank all the time. Right, He's like surrounded by
these like weird guys he's met on the internet, you know,
and it's it's sometimes in some ways, like I don't
remember Apocalypse now at the end where you find Marlon
Brando and he's in like this just like crazy place,
Like that was a little bit like what it was
like visiting my father. So he had lost what he

(40:29):
hadn't lost. He hadn't lost his like charm. He's like
still so interesting, he's got great taste and already listens
to like beautiful music and understands it all. And but
I it just be like the the kind of part
that you could understand. It just became a narrower and
narrow portion of of who he was, you know.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
I think the interesting thing about your book is, I
know when you set out to write it, it was
about training and running and getting faster as you've gotten older,
and then you slowly started to weave in this story
about your father and how it translates.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Into your running.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
So at what point did you decide that you wanted
to be vulnerable about this and speak about what happened.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
I think it was it was pretty early in the process,
you know. I knew that the story of my father
was deeply intertwined with the story of my running. The
biggest shift was when I decided, like one of the
hardest things was deciding Okay, I'm going to write about
other people, and then figuring out which other people to
write about, because I didn't think my life's not interesting
enough for like a memoir.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
That's not true he got kidnapped in Africa.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
I think that's like two pages. I mean it would
be like it's like one line in this book. I
try to make the book very tightly about my I
worked at the New Yorker for six years, an amazing place,
like incredible.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
By the way, I have a subscription to The New Yorker.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
It's been my favorite magazine in publication to collect since
I was like twelve.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Right, So it's a great place. Right. There's like three
paragraphs of why I time with the New Yorker. So
it's definitely not a memoir, right, Like I'm CEO of
the Atlantic. There's like one sentence about the Atlantic, right,
Like there's I just don't talk about. There's not a
lot about work, and it's really focused on my life
running anyway. So the hard part was figuring out which
people to put in, where to put them, and like

(42:05):
who not to put it, right, because I interviewed all
these people and I've like making lists and I've like
kind of in my head, I had a structure, but
I kept changing and I anyway, so that it was
like the hardest part of the book was getting the characters,
in choosing the right characters and putting them in the
right places.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
What was your process for choosing the right characters.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
I kept the doc and it had like a one
hundred people on it. I was like, these people are
interesting to me for these reasons, and initially I thought, well,
maybe I'll just like choose any runner, right, So I
was like listening to podcasts and like taking riding on
stories of this person's like, wow, that's interesting. They had
interesting relation to their father. And I was like, no,
it's it's ridiculous if you just try to like, that's
not what you got it. It's got to be people
who are in your life, right, Like that's it's gonna

(42:46):
be much more real, Like it will feel inauthentic if
you're just pulling people off the web, Like it has
to be people. And that was an important decision. Maybe
it was the right one, it was the wrong one,
but then I start okay, so then it's very limited, right,
And then it was like I want people who kind
of exemplify the themes of the book, but two in
extreme right. So one of the themes I explore is
like the self transcendence that I find while running ultras. Great,

(43:08):
So now we've got super But Beckjeorde, who you know
won the Queen's thirty one hundred mile race nine times, right,
that's around the same block in Queen's Right, She's the
one who you know taught me to kind of release
myself when I run, So like writing about her allowed
me to write about self transcendence in a way that
I couldn't do it in my life. Right, Like I
overcame thyroid cancer ran again, Right, that's like an important

(43:28):
part of the story how you process that post traumatic growth. Okay,
but I'm gonna write Aboutchael Westwall, who you know, fastest
run ever with Parkinson's Right's running three sixteen marathon with
his arm like swaying over his head like this time
ties one arm behind his back with string right, Like
the guy's unbelievable. Right. You know I like to write
about my like spiritual association with the forest. Well, I'm

(43:50):
gonna write Aboutobby Gibb, first woman run the Boston Marathon.
Who you know she trained for the Boston Marathon. She
got her parents van, drove across the country and slept
in a different park every night and ran like three
or four hours, like just by herself with her dog. Right,
just goes and runs, and there's like I'll go and
no maps, just like I'm gonna drive west and I'll

(44:10):
find someplace beautiful and I'll run every day. Like how
awesome is that? Like it's the most awesome way anybody's
ever trained for anything. And then the organizers are like,
women can't run marathons. So she goes and runs one
hundred miles with horses. You know, why would I have
a problem with men if I can run with horses.
And then they're like, still won't let her in, So
she hides in the bushes and runs a marathon like,

(44:31):
bless this woman, She's incredible. And then she enters the
book because my high school graduation. She's there because her
son is a classmate and friend of mine. I win
this big award and my father, blitzed out of his mind,
charges the stage and like knocks all the other parents over.
So it's like a perfect way to bring her into
the book.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
What would you say is the common thread that you
learned through all of these kind of extreme stories.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
I mean, the thing that connects them all is that
running is a way to explain and hard things in life? Right,
I was trying to find people where what they overcome,
what they went through. I wanted people who are like
really smart, really interesting, fun to talk to. I wanted
people who had been through things that I hadn't been through.
I didn't want someone who's like, you know, became a
good master's runner, right Like, So what I wanted people

(45:17):
who'd like been to been to different a different kind
of edge than the ones I went to.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
For you, what would you say was the hardest part
of the book to write? Like, is there a passage
in the book that you read and it will still
make you choke up or bring you to the tears?

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Like, what was the hardest thing for you to write about?

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Hardest thing was the title? One hundred percent here actually
give me the copy. So the title for a long
time was run for Your Life, which I hate, but
I like, I couldn't, I couldn't beat it. It was
what I called the proposal manuscript. It's like, okay, but
like every single person, every single runner who's written a
memoir could call it run for your life, right like

(45:54):
literally or running for your life like one hundred percent
of the books. And so but I couldn't. I was like, like,
I'm calling it time to run, which is like running
an efficiency, and like it's in order. It was like
stupid too. And then uh, this book took five years,
and like I was called run for your Life for
like four and a half years. In fact, if you
go to Amazon, I think it's still like the u
URL is like run for your life, because when the

(46:15):
publisher submitted it, that's what it was. And then one
day I was up in the Catskills where we have
a place, and I was looking at this print that
from Maximus of Tire that ben Sean had stylized, and
my dad had given it to pay off alone. And
it's beautiful and it's this is what it reads. It says, uh,

(46:36):
God himself, the father and fashioner of all that is
older than the sun or the sky, greater than time
and eternity, and all the flow of being is unnameable
by any lawgiver, an utter le by any voice, not
to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable
to apprehend his essence, use the help of sounds and names,
and pictures of beaten gold and ivory and silver, of
plants and rivers, mountain peaks, and torrents, yearning for the

(46:57):
knowledge of Him, and in our weakness, aiming all that
is beautiful in this world after his nature, just as
happens to earthly lovers. To them, the most beautiful site
will be the actual lineaments of the beloved. But for
rememberance sakes, they'll be happy in the sight of a liar,
a little spear, a chair perhaps, or a running ground,
or anything in the world that wakens the memory of
the beloved. It ends, let them know, let them love,

(47:18):
let them remember. And I had looked at it, and
I had never noticed the phrase a running ground, right
like a Greek track, and I realized, wow, like finding God,
finding love, finding meaning in a Greek track like boom,
there's the title. And so that's how I came up
with that. But if I hadn't had that day up
in the Catskills, I don't know. I guess it would

(47:38):
be called Run for Your Life, and I would just
be like embarrassed.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
I do still like the title run for your Life,
but the running ground is different.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Run a marketing test, and you put run for your
Life in the running ground like run for your Life
will sell more copies right like it'll probably go off
the shelf, like, Oh cool, run for your life. Like,
but it wasn't me, you know, the running Ground that's
me right, Like that is like and it also like,
that's what this book is about. It is exactly about
what like Maximus writes in that passage.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Also, we were joking before about how your outfit is
perfectly coordinated and this, Oh yeah, you are very coordinated
with your.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Book, right. Well, only because the part of that is
the accidental fact that I'm wearing yellow shorts and the
fact that this shirt though is of course cordecuse it's
a special shirt that Nike made about the book.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
Okay, let's talk about tell me how this collaboration with
Nike came to be, because it's very cool.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
It's very cool. Right, So, if you're just listening to
the podcast, I'm wearing a shirt has Running Ground on
the front, and then on the back it has a quote,
the long quote about pain and understanding pain that comes
from the book. So Nike. When I was training to
run that two twenty nine, I trained with some coaches
from Nike, Steve Finley, Brett Kirby, Joe Holder, and so
I had like developed a relationship and I wore the

(48:49):
vapor Fly twos. I wore the vapor Fly ones in
my first two thirty eight, two thirty four, and then
vapor Fly twos in my two twenty nine. And so
I had a relationship with Nike and then when I
finished the book, I sent it to him. I was
like hey, and they're like, wow, this this sort of
resonates with the brand, like, let's do a thing before
the New York Marathon. I was like, great, And so
I did an event with your holder. He interviewed me

(49:09):
about He's such a smart guy. He interviewed me about
the book. And then Nike made these cool T shirts
and all these folks like ran across the Brooklyn Bridge
and running ground t shirts and my kids love it
and I think they're cool too.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
Yeah, I mean they are really cool.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
And what an honor to, you know, have Nike say wow,
we want to be a part of your story.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
And in some sort of way.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
It's great. It's great. You know, when I was young,
they've like the big book was born to run right
of course. Read when I was reading this and like,
awesome book, like incredible storytelling, like and I've modeled bedtime
stories for my children off the characters in it, But
the underlying thesis of Born to Run was that running
shoes don't work right, and like we should run barefoot
because these big, clunky shoes like make you not associate

(49:51):
with the ground. And that was maybe kind of a
little bit true. But then Nike figured out, like, actually,
if you put a spoon in it, use airplane insulation
in the back of it, and you make it super
light and you improve your ankle stability, people run a
lot faster than they get hurt a lot less. And
now everybody's doing that, and so they like their innovation
lab predicting the period when I was writing this book

(50:11):
just crushed it.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
Yeah, no, it is impressive.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
But I do have to say I like this sub
headline of your book, which is, you know, it says
a father, a son and the simplest of sports.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
Yeah, and running is and I'm barefoot in that and
you're barefoot in the photo.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Yeah, And I love that you called that out because
running really is the simplest of sports. And I feel
like the reason why I got into running at such
a young age is because, you know, at fourteen years old,
I wasn't paying to go to a gym. My parents
were not paying for a gym membership. If I wanted
to go to the gym, they would have said, use
your school gym. You go to a public school, they
have a gym. It's available to you, you know. Yeah,
but I lived in a sidewalk community. Not that you

(50:45):
have to live in a sidewalk community to go for runs.
I mean, you ran to the airport the other day and.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
You see which I'm sure was along some highways.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
But it really is this thing that you can do anywhere,
anytime with very little star fee or money.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
It's the best thing about it, right, And it's why
there's like, you know, why is it that the Ethiopians,
the Canyons and the air Treans are so great at
running and they're not so great at lacrosse? Right, Like,
well they're you're getting lacrosse stick is a little bit harder, right,
and the requires a field, and you know, you know
it's it is the most equitable of sports.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
You don't have to run races to be a runner.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
You don't have to know. Everybody can be a runner,
and you can do it anytime you want, in anywhere
you want, right, And that's like creates the great psychological
burden because if you succeed, it's on you. If you fail,
it's on you. But you can go out you within.
My favorite thing about running is you run, like on
the same course in the same day as Eliot kip Choke,
Like you run the New York Marathon, and you're like
you're actually racing him. Like you don't get to play

(51:41):
tennis against Roger Federer, right, but you do get to
race against Elia kip Choke. It's partly why I hate
that the New York road runners start the elite man
now five minutes ahead of the field. I think it's
like unethical. That's a side note.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Well, I mean if you're running a two twenty nine marathon,
I mean, Elliott ran a two fourteen this year, I
think it's like you're not coming in that far after them,
which is the pretty wild thing. I mean, ten minutes
in running is a long time.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
It's a lot Like, yeah, if people are like two
twenty nine, you could almost win the marathon, Like you
know what, you know, how long I could stay with
those winners? Maybe eight hundred meters? Right, if I went
all out, I could stay with the guys for eight
hundred meters, right, it's crazy how fast they go. It is.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
It's it's a nuts. I actually got to interview Elliott
this year.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
He's before it's like at a whole different like psychological level, right,
Like he's so calm, it's crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
I do feel like most runners that I meet though, that,
like long distance runners do, you have a very calm
presence to them. And I think it's because our heart
rates are so low because we run so much.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Well, and you have to, like because if you are
like spiky and like you're like you can't race right,
you have to, like you have to learn how to
pace yourself right. It's like a habit of mind that
comes from running that is spreads to the rest of
your life. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
No, I got really lucky.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
The story that interview was I was doing a video
with Nana Lynch, who's one of the chairs of York Roadrunners,
and we were in the media center where I guess,
like all the elite runners go for press and whatever
before the marathon and then after the race. And I
was in there with her and we passed Elliott who
was kind of sitting down with his team, and she goes, Kate,
I'm going to give you three minutes go make something happen.

(53:22):
I went over to him and I was I was scramma.
I didn't know it was the first time he had
ran the New York City Marathon. I had done no
prior research on really him or history. I mean, I
knew who he was obviously through just the running world,
but it wasn't like I knew specifics. And I went
up there and I completely wung the interview and it
ended up being great. I think it got like maybe

(53:43):
five hundred thousand views on one platform, three hundred on another.
Elliott went so viral this marathon because it was such
a big, big deal for him, right he completed. Yeah,
but it was it was really lucky, and it was
it was pretty special.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
But yeah, he's a he's a yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
I like that in your book you didn't focus too
much on your job because it is so cool that
running for you is this whole other life that you
live outside of being the CEO of the Atlantic and
having had this really impressive career. But I'm curious for you,
how do you feel like running and being so disciplined
in the sport has translated into your profession.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Well, I think there are a couple of ways, right.
I do think that discipline is cumulative. And so if
you do a hard thing in the morning, you go
and you run right, and you you know, you run
when it's cold, like, you will be more disciplined through
the rest of the day. Right. That act of discipline
means that you will have like a store of discipline
that you can use throughout the day and it will
set you up for like at the end of the

(54:41):
day if you had a hard day, well, at least
you ran right, and you'll sort of feel better and
then you'll reset and you'll go back to it tomorrow.
There are other like specific habits of mind. We're just
talking about pacing, right, Like why do wire runners calm? Right, Well,
you have to learn how to pace yourself, right, if
you're an ultra long distance runner. You can't have like
crazy mood swings or you can, but it's not helpful.
And that's very helpful in work, Right, the discipline, like

(55:02):
the the kind of you know, ability to sort of
sustain a steady pace for two hours, Like that's actually
pretty important for working. Right. A lot of times you
have to like stay focused for two hours, right, You
have to like stay forwarded for six hours, stay focused
for fourteen hours. Right when you're doing a hard job, right,
and like, I'm going to keep doing this thing until
it is done, you know the whole. Like to me,

(55:24):
the most important lesson is the most important lesson in life,
which is and I always trying to tell this to
my kids, like I got too much homework, I'm never
gonna be able to get it done. Well, you know
what you should do is start right, And like you
learn that in your job, you learn that in a
hard job. You learn that in running, Like if you
oh my god, it's too cold to run, Oh my god,
like my foot kind of hurts, Oh my god. I
like maybe I et too much, maybe too little. Right,

(55:46):
If you start to worry about that stuff, you're never
going to get the run in right. You just actually
have to you just, you know, and if you complain
about it like well I'm tired, I heard, or my god,
my heart rate's too high, my whoop score is too low,
Like you just have to go do it right. And
the same thing in your job, right, if you're you're
trying to wait for conditions to be perfect, or you're
trying to wait for things to be exactly right, or
I'm not going to start working on this project just

(56:07):
yet because I'm better after lunch, right, Like come on,
like you're never gonna get it done, you know, And
so you kind of learn similar sort of stoic discipline
of like I'm just going to go ahead and I'm
going to do this, I'm going to identify it, and
then you have to learn to like go at an
uncomfortable speed. Right if you're like I'm going to run,
but I'm just gonna I'm just gonna run thirty minutes

(56:27):
slower than I should. It's all okay, it's all cool, right, Okay, fine,
but you know, if you want to excel, you have
to actually like make yourself hurt. And same thing in business, right,
if you want to like you want to hit your target,
you know, you have to try to set the goal
a little high. You have to like work it's a
little bit uncomfortable, and you know, you don't want to
drive yourself into the ground, just like in running you

(56:48):
want to injure yourself. But it's kind of similar habits.
So I think there's a lot of overlap between business
success and running success.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
Yeah, you know, one of.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
The things Elliott said to me when it came I
think I him a question about what is your advice
to first time runners or first time marathon runners or
people that want to get into running, and he said,
get up, get your gear and or on.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
Yeah, it's great. I mean, that's it right like, and
I say to my kids, you know, like, Okay, why
don't you just start right And there's a scene in
the book where you know, I was I didn't have
a lot of confidence as a writer, and I was
working at the New Yorker and Boston marathon bombings happened
twenty thirteen, and David Remnick walks into my office to
the editor New Yorker and he's like, Nick, you're gonna

(57:30):
write about this. I was like no, No. I would
say no because I kind of scared. I was like, no,
I gotta edit this. I got it. He's like, no, No,
you're going to write about this. I was like, no,
I have to like call Murakami and I got, like
Georgia Packer my file and he's like, Nick, this is
what's going to happen. I'm going to close this door.
You're gonna put down your phone and you're going to
start to write the essay in an hour. I'm going

(57:51):
to open the door and you're going to hand me
the essay. He closes the door and walks away, right,
and like, okay, guess I'm going to start right now, right.
And it's a great skill in running, and it's a
great skill in journalism. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
And when you said you didn't have a lot of
confidence in writing, you had graduated from Stanford and you
were I mean, I know you did a little bit
of hustling on the subway, you were a musician or
street street musician, but you were a journalist, right, So
by twenty thirteen, what was it that you weren't confident
about with your writing?

Speaker 2 (58:21):
I mean, I'd written a book. The book had gotten
great reviews. I wrote book book the Cold War, I
written all cards articles. But I worked at the New Yorker,
right like you're there, like I don't know, you're running
John McPhee right, like you're the best writers in the world, right,
And I just didn't think I was at that level.
I didn't think I could write at that level. And
I knew I could edit at that level. I knew

(58:43):
I could manage people at that level. I knew I
could like manage a team, and I knew I could
set strategy at that level. I just didn't think I
could write at that level. But I worked really hard
at and got better and I became much more confident
at it.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Yeah, it is. It is interesting how different editing is
than writing.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
It's kind of like with you know, our video now
it's I would even say, I'm like, I'm not as
good as a video editor as some of these video
editors that work on our team are, but I'm good
at editing and providing edits.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
But at the same time, it's like, but I should
be just as good of a video editor.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
And there different skills right, right, And part of life
is like identifying where in an organization you really have
those skills, Like Okay, they're twelve things and I'm the
seventh best, the fourth best, the third best, but oh
this thing, I'm the best, so I'm going to focus
on that, or like this is where it's most useful.
But also part of life is identifying like Okay, well,
actually this is the thing I'm weakend and I should
get stronger at right. Like again, this comes with my

(59:34):
kids in soccer, where it's like, okay, you know what
is the thing your best at, your best at, like
long shots? Okay, great, so we could do some long shots.
What is the thing you're worst at, well, your works
worst at, like leftot of dribbling. Well, really that's what
we should work at when nobody's looking right. And so
part of life is identifying, like when you lean into
your strengths and when you like work on your weaknesses.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
My dad always when we were growing up, had us
live by this like one touch method, which was basically like,
you know, not procrastinating the littlest thing and then the
biggest things. It's kind of like if you get an
email or a text, respond to it right away, you know.
Or if it's like, you know, a homework assignment that
you don't want to do, tackle that one first.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
That's great advice.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Yeah, But I also think what's really interesting, and we've
had a lot of CEOs on the show, and the
commonality that they've all talked about is that in order
to be a CEO of an organization, you have to
understand all the pieces.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Of the pie, definitely, and that was when I came
into my role as CEO of The Atlantic. I had
a much better understanding of the journalism side than like
any other media CEO, because I've been a journalist, right
and I've been an editor, but I had a weaker
understanding of the advertising side, right, and exactly how you
know what is it that like really makes a renewal? Right? Okay,
so now how do you get your win rate up?
Like which of these variables matter the most? Which are
the ones that we can influence? And so I had

(01:00:43):
to like learn some things that most other CEOs didn't
and not learn other things that other CEOs did.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
What would you say are the things that you look
for in hires at the Atlantic?

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
I look for I mean right now, I really look
for like velocity, work ethic, you know, getting people who
want to come into the office and want to like
have ambition and have a little bit of an edge.
You know, that's super important. You know, it's surviving in journalism.
Is people sometimes want to come to the Atlantic because

(01:01:14):
we're doing really well and it's a great place, it's
an awesome magazine, and they read their whole life and
like they know we have like good health care and
they come in and they can kind of shell and
we're cooked if we hire too many people like that, right,
because AI is about to turn our business upside down
and like shake us all out, and you know, we
need people who are super aggressive and understanding what AI

(01:01:37):
is doing and how it's changing, and want to experiment
and want to work hard. So that's what I'm looking for.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Yeah, I would say in media and in journalism and
in any job, it is not the time to coast.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
That's the one of the things about we have this
Atlantic used to lose money and now it makes money
and lots of stories written about our turnaround. It's great.
You know, we're doing really well other journals and places,
and so there's a little bit of a we're owned by,
you know, a very wealthy woman learning power jobs there
can be complacency, and as soon as we get complacent,

(01:02:09):
that's when the bad stuff starts to happen. And so
I'm trying really hard to make sure that we only
hire people who have an edge and like really want
to work and really want to succeed.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
And competitors, you know, like people that are really going
after it. And I feel like that translates to all jobs,
you know, it really is. I feel like the job
market is pretty tough right now, especially for new grads.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
You really have to be curious and go after an
industry that gives you energy and yeah, have an edge.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Yeah, that's what we're looking for.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
I agree with that advice.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
You know, final questions as we sort of wrap up here,
But you know, I know you're very involved with AI
and I've saw it. You've done some podcasts talking about A.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Doing an event right before I came here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
An event right before you came here to Pep learning AI.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Yes, So how is and how are you foreseeing AI shifting?

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
You know, even the public publication like the Atlantic, Well, so.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
In lots of ways. So you know, the most important
is that it's going to change the structure of the Internet,
and so it'll change the way people find the Atlantic, right.
And so we're already seeing this, Like people used to
go to Google and go to the Atlantic. Now you
just go to Google and you get sucked into Gemini, right,
And so we're finding far fewer people coming that way.
Soon people will be sending out agents. Right, instead of
like Kate going to read the web, you'll be like
Kate's agent, go summarize the web, bring me back nuggets.

(01:03:21):
So we're going to figure out how to make a
business model in that world, So that's really important. We
have to figure out how it will change our internal processes,
Like what does it do for reporters?

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I used AI to help edit my book? Right, Never
use it to write it, right, but help edit and
sort through things. But how will reporters use it? How
will we use it on the business side?

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
We just moved our customer service platform's now using AI
to handle a subset of queries, right, what can we
expand that subset? Can we do more? Should we do less?
And then there's the relationship with the AI companies, right, Like, Okay,
these companies all still our data in the middle, and
I violated our terms of service and build competitive products, right,
So we are actively suing some of them. We are
partnering with others figuring out their relationship with yet others.

(01:04:02):
You know, our ideal world is we partner with, give
our data to and support ones that are trying to
build business models that help creators and that help journalists.
And we're fighting the ones who just steal. And you know,
we're trying to figure out that dynamic as well. So
they're all those different axes on which are a strategy exists.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
What are some of the providers that steal? Like are
they mainstream ones that we use?

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Oh yeah, of course. I mean like every AI company, right,
they went and they you know, they trained on the
entire internet to build like every single of the AI
companies without any compensation, right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Chat, GPT, Gemini of course, and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Right now Chat GABT has come back and they've made
licensing deals with us, like they have said, you know,
we'll make it, and so we're now we're very comfortable
with open ai. But you know, every single one of
these AI companies trained on data to which they did
not have rights and then built a product that is
disadvantaging some of the people who had created that data.
Their claim is that it's fair use. You know where
we just we went. It's like going into a library
reading every book in the library in five seconds, right,

(01:04:59):
Like that's fine, Like what's wrong with that? Our product's
not competitive? Our position is it's not quite like doing that, right,
You aren't like a humanity library. You're doing something extremely different,
and you are building a product that is displacing and
competing with us, which means that it's not actually fair use.
So the courts are going to settle that question. But
you can't if there's a world where it's not a

(01:05:21):
good world for It's not a good world for Google
and Gemini if they drive all the publishers out of
business because we create a lot of data that is
useful to their customers, and so it's in their interest, right.
The old Google model worked pretty well. We create a
lot of data, they drive people to it. People go
to Google, they see ads. Google makes money. They come
to our site, they see our stories, we make money.
We feed our stuff into Google. It's great. If we

(01:05:41):
can figure out something like that where everybody benefits, that's great.
But if it's a world where you just go and
you ask a question, Google answers it, and you never
leave and you ever never go to the place that
provided the information that allowed for the answer, then you've
killed off all the crops that the animal eats. And
that's not great.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Yeah, it's so true.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
And I also feel like, you know, as somebody that
is an interviewer and is constantly researching people, I probably
interview like eight people every week. I feel like when
I use chat sheept or Jebini too much, they sometimes
get things wrong totally.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
I mean, they're amazing. They hallucinate, they make things up.
They've been trained to please you, so they if they
have been turned into bsirs, it's just a weird thing
about them.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
So it is so true.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
Like I'm always asking, like if I'm using it for research,
I'll be like fact check, like give me the sources.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
So it is so true.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
It's like you can't cut off the sources and then
expect these platforms to be totally accurate. So you're so
gladly they do have to play together, and I like
that insight. Well, the Running Ground. I am so excited
to dig into this book.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
So happy you got it there.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Yes, I'm so happy for you. I'm also excited to
have it in our bookshelf. I love having books of
people that we've had.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Oh, pull me next to David Goggins, my son, I'll
be so happy.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
I need to have David Goggins.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
On the show. My son told me that the only
person who could make the book cool was if David
Goggins blurbed it. But I know how to reach him.
I got Killian Jornee to blurn it. So I've got
like Killian join Anna Wintor. I don't think they've ever
both blurbed the same book, which is pretty funny. Anna
Winter a runner, No, but she.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Loved the book, Okay, we Anna Wintur wrote, it would
seem disingenuous to say that Nicholas Thompson's mesmerizing and moving
The Running Ground isn't really about running, but while running,
from its practical agonies and ecstasies to its philosophical and
deeply personal undercurrents, suffuses this book, and something Thompson writes
early on, holds the key to its deeper revelations. Running

(01:07:28):
is the simplest of sports, but if we look closely,
it can teach us about the hardest things in life.
It's those hard things that make this an endlessly surprising,
revelatory and heart heart trending read.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
A nice quote from Anna Winter, right, Yeah, that's pretty iconic.
Yeah that's awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
I guess when you're the CEO of the Atlantic, you
know all these.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Anna's great, Ana's amazing. Well, I didn't know Killian I sent.
I just wrote to him and said, hey, Killian, and
he read it before running Western States and it's like
used in his taper. But I did not know. I
could not reach David Goggins to get a blurb.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
So I feel like Oz Perlms ran with David before.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Well, next book, I'll have to write to Guggins.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
All right, Well, I want to ask just like one
final thing, So for people that read The Running Ground,
what is the key thing that you want them to
take away from your journey and the journeys of the
people in.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
This I want them to finish the book and go running.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
There we go. We want to get that post run high,
going and flowing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Yeah. I mean, I've had so many people write to
me and say, I haven't run any years. I read
your book, I started running. Two reactions that are pretty common.
One haven't run a year, started running and two my
spouse is a runner. I never understood them. I read
this book now it makes sense, and that those reactions
I keep getting every day. It's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
Yeah, that's the most beautiful thing when you can inspire
other people to get their body moveing, especially when something
helped you so much with like running, and then you
inspire other people to do it to do it, it's
really special.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
And Nicholas, thank you so much for.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Thank you to be here. I was delighted to be
asked so much fun to talk with you. It's so
much fun to run with you.

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
Thank you. I had a great time.

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Kate Mackz

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Nicholas Thompson: Record-Holding Runner & CEO Shares the Tricks That Drive Extreme Performance