October 29, 2025 • 42 mins
Nate and Maria sit down with the elite amateur runner Nicholas Thompson (who also happens to be the CEO of The Atlantic) to talk about his new book The Running Ground. They discuss what running can teach about productivity and fulfillment, his favorite brand of gels, and…his late-father’s brothel in Bali.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Mariaknakova and I'm Nate Silver. Today on
the show, we have an old friend of mine whom
(00:37):
I've known for over a decade, Nick Thompson. So he
is currently joining us from the New York City offices
of the Atlantic where he is the CEO. So if
you hear any background noise, you know this is soho,
this is New York. There's stuff going on, and Nick
has a lot of things going on. He is also
the editor in chief, former editor in chief of a
(01:00):
Wired and wrote a book called The Hawk and the
Dove about the Cold War era. It's absolutely phenomenal. You
should show out. But to me, he will always be
my editor at The New Yorker, which is how I
first met Nick. And he wasn't just my editor, he
actually ran The New Yorker's website. And now we have
(01:24):
him on because he has a new book coming out,
I think the most personal book he's ever written, called
The Running Ground. I apologize I only have a galley,
but here's the galley. Here's how it looks, and it's
about running, it's about his dad, it's a reflection on life,
so many different things. Nick, Welcome to Risky Business. Nate
(01:45):
and I are so happy to have you here.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Thank you, Maria.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I was actually just trying to figure out when exactly
we met by looking at my old emails, but unfortunately
it appears this other eight hundred of them that I've
just gone through and now we're at nine hundred.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
This is this is what editing is like for people
who want to behind the scenes look at the editing life.
Nick and I have probably over one thousand emails between
the two of us over the years.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
All right, here we got wait, we got it.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Your new science and technology website, Dear Nick, Emilia Lester
told me you're looking to hire someone to head up
a new science acknowledge second for the New Yorker's website
September twenty eight, twenty twelve. So we are looking at
thirteen years and almost a month.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Wow, that is incredible. Well, it's so good to be
reunited here. And I've forgot the most important thing of
your intro. Since your book is about running, you are
the holder of the American record for the fifty k
Ultra marathon from men forty to forty five, which is
pretty fucking amazing, if I may say so. So I
(02:50):
actually want to start not with running, but with your dad.
Your relationship with your dad is a major part of
the book, and i'd love to hear you talk a
little bit about that. You have your dad, Scott Thompson,
who was a runner and who's the one who actually
got you introduced to running. And there's this beautiful, you know,
very poignant moment of little Nick waiting at the marathon
(03:12):
lives to give his dad some new shoes and orange juice, right,
orange juice, Yeah, orange juice.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Like orange is kind of on the way out, but
like it was super hot for marathoners and I take
it too.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So so yeah, i'd love to hear you kind of
talk about that intersection and that overlap and you're dad.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
So my dad's an amazing guy. And part of the
motivation for the book was thinking through his effect on me,
thinking through his effect on running, thinking about the way
running helped us communicate, and then his life story, which
is interesting. All right, So my dad grows up in Oklahoma,
He's got kind of a complicated family, doesn't want to
be there, partly because of his overbearing Golden gloves boxing
(03:53):
champion father.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You know, my dad busts out, like finds.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
The school called andover replies, gets a scholarship, like rides
horseback delivery newspaper and pays for it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Right, Great America. That's crazy, by the way, it's pretty cool, right,
you know, goes to Endover.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
He's like, the kid doesn't fit in, hes got all
the wrong clothes whatever makes it work. Goes to Stanford
on a scholarship, crushes it, meets John F. Kennedy says,
this kid's we president. Goes off it's a Rhodes scholarship.
Goes to Oxford, you know, the friends, all the important
people in England. Comes back, marries my mother, who comes
from a prominent political family. Guy's on fire, right, he's
(04:28):
like making plan to run for the Senate. You know,
he's just crushing it. And then like starts to go wrong,
like maybe he's not quite as good as everybody thinks,
Like maybe he's drinking too much alcohol. And then he's
like grappling with this secret that he's realized he's gay, right,
and he is sort of new he was gay when
he was young, but you know he was closeted. This
(04:49):
is nineteen seventies America, it's a pretty hard time to
come out, or nineteen sixties America. And so in nineteen
eighty two, when I'm seven years old, he's like made
the realization to himself that he's gay.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
He leaves, he moves to.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Washington, and he's like, now he's trying to like make
up for lost time, right, And so he's in these
endless relationships increasingly inappropriate.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
He's diagnosed as being HIV positive.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
This is during the plague. Turns out it's a false diagnosis,
and he has this like very intense trajectory that you know,
in some ways the parts that are totally admirable, it is,
it's possible, depending on how you count, that he is
the first openly gay presidential appointee in American history. Every
why works in the United States Information Agency since Shovered by Dog.
(05:34):
You know, he's a very rare gay Republican in the
Reagan administration. You know, he is like kind of he
like plays a kind of important role in the like
late eighties, early nineties, like you know, people should come
out so that everybody knows that gay people are everywhere.
But then he's like dating kind of like late teenage
guys he's maybe met on the Internet or maybe paid
(05:55):
for in DuPont circle, and he's like dating like hundreds
of people a year, and he's like bringing the like
wrong people to like parties, meeting fulm of people. And
then he moves to Asia, maybe for academic research and
maybe not. And by the end of his life he's
running like a pseudo brothel in Bali. He's bankrupt, he's
(06:15):
a tax fugitive, and it's just chaos. Right, So that's
my dad, you know, And like when you meet me,
you're like, what is your dad?
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Do?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
You don't really expect that to be the answer. I
used to like to catch people up guard, like what
are your parents doing? It's like my mom's an artistory
and a baps and my dad runs a brothel in
Bali and they're like what.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Away?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
So like his story and he creates endless chaos in
my life, in my sister's lives. But he and I
have this like wonderful loving relationship the whole time through
and like, you know, he taught me to run. I
watch her run this marathon. He like cheers me on
as I become a good runner. We run together when
we're together, and so running is like part of the
spine of our relationship, you know, up until the end.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And then it's it doesn't.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Escape my attention that, you know, when he dies in
twenty seventeen, just when I started as the editor Wired,
it is like soon after that that I become a
much better runner. And there's something about process in his
death that also plays a role in my evolution from
like pretty good runner to very good runner.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Does your need for it? Well, now I'm psychoanalyzing you
go for it? Nate, go for it?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Nate?
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Does your need for like or I don't know, I'm
presuming in need? Right? Does the discipline that you apply
in your running and maybe in other parts of your life? Right?
I mean, is that out of a concern that if
you aren't disciplined then things could spiral out of control
like it did for your dad.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
That's definitely part of it.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
I mean that that is a very conscious My sister
and I once took this. We were driving together and we
were like, we're in this U haul, like moving stuff
from his house from one place to another, and we
had this conversation where like we both admitted to the
other that our biggest fear in life was that like
something about our genetic inheritance and having him as a
father faded us to become just like crazy chaos agents
(08:05):
and unlike until like I do have very much have
a sense that if I lose discipline, I faced the
risk of I mean, I'm very like him, Like I
kind of look like him, I kind of act like him, right.
I I had this crazy experience. It was like two
years ago. I'm in this restaurant in San Francisco, and
I'm with one of my dad's old friends. He's like
roommate from college, and another guy from the Stanford class
(08:28):
in nineteen sixty three walks in and so my dining
my dining friend goes up to the other guy and goes, Hey,
this kid here I'm having lunch with is the son
of one of your old classmates. Who do you think
it is? And he looks at me and goes, oh,
that's Scottie Thompson's son, right, And you know, knowing that
I like fifty percent of my DNA is his. I
(08:48):
was raised by him, influenced by him, right, Like he
like embedded his ambitions into me.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, obviously I'm like terrified of going off the rails.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, I mean you it is. It was very interesting
to me that, you know, you did follow in your
dad's pustups, even though when you were a kid like
that couldn't have been easy. But then you went to andover,
you went to Stanford right like you you did all
of that that you applied for the roads you did
not get it, but that you got everything else. So
(09:18):
so I think I think you're I think you're okay, you.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Got and then even that when I didn't, I still
like I did what he did without even really knowing,
like when he had done he had gotten the roads,
and like Ghandak Ghana, what did I do after I
graduated from college? Like I didn't really intend this. I
ended up in Ghana like he got arrested in Ghana.
I got kidnapped in Morocco right like we had like
we had like all these similarities.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I was like trying to be like the guy.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
It was very interesting to me. And I think part
of why you might be like it could be me
right there, but for the grace of God go I
is that your dad was brilliant, right, a remarkably smart man.
He and you had his diaries that you went through,
and the awareness of what alcoholism did to his father
(10:06):
should have stopped it, and he intellectually realized that he
should have stopped drinking, and he didn't, and he couldn't,
And the fact that he was so smart and also
disciplined in a lot of ways and conceptually and intellectually
grasped all of this and yet on a purely kind
of emotional, day to day life basis, couldn't couldn't follow through.
(10:27):
I think if that were my dad, that would terrify me.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I definitely worry that at some point alcoholism will come
for me. And I'm very you know, very careful and
very disciplined about that. I'm you know, now almost never drink, so,
you know, dealing with the burdens and having observed my
father so carefully and having seen these things come to him,
And then what you say about the diaries is so
interesting because he's so perceptive and smart and there are
(10:50):
things he notices.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
My sister and I often joke like she'll walk into
a room, right and she'll like, within like ten minutes
like be able to like sort of like see into
everybody's soul and figure everything out. But she also feelsing
so intensely, and I'm like sort of very like resilient,
and like more stuff can like hit me. And when
I'm like two and she's three, he writes in his
diary like everything would be better if we could get
(11:14):
Nikki to feel a little more and phil Us to
feel a little less. Right, like these insights into like
who become He writes this letter to me when I'm
twenty one that I didn't reread until I was like
forty nine, as like holy cow, like he saw through
my whole twenties and like all the sort of the
problems that befell me in my twenties. The guy was
utterly brilliant and I wish I had as much of
(11:36):
that as he had. And then I want the alcoholism
and the you know, the tax evasion, whatever.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Change those were to not not ever hit me.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And it's always a mixed bag, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, parents, Jondren, always a mixed bag. True.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And we'll be back right after this. I want to
hear the origin story, as you know I always do
(12:19):
about this book. How did you come to wanting to
write about something so personal, which is not the type
of writing you normally do? It is certainly not the
kind of book that your last book was, even though
you did have a personal connection to it.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
So I had this very strange thing happen in my forties.
So I was a very I was a pretty good
runner in my twenties and thirties, and when I was
thirty years old, I ran a two forty three marathon,
which is excellent. I got sick, I got thyroid cancer.
It took me two years. I came back, I ran
two forty three again. And then for the next twelve
(12:52):
or thirteen years, I ran almost exactly the same time
I would run Fall Marathon. I'd run two forty three,
which is a very good time. It puts you, like,
you know, in.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
The local elite.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
And then in my mid forties I went much faster
and I ran a two twenty nine, which suddenly put
me in a whole new category. And so it was interesting,
is I was going through this thought process of how
did I get so much faster at a time where
you're supposed to get slower, and like, as my body
is clearly decaying, how did I make this improvement? Because
it's not like I didn't train hard in my thirties right.
(13:23):
It's not like I didn't focus, it's not like I
didn't read books. It's not like I didn't eat kale right,
Like I worked really hard, I just didn't go as fast.
And then one day I was running across the Brooklyn
Bridge and I had this like mental breakthrough. It's very
rare to have, like a I feel like U see
ideas common like waves and parts. But it was like
literally hit me like a thunderbolt. I was like, oh
(13:43):
my god. I didn't go faster because I didn't realize
that I could be faster than I had been before
I got sick, like I was psychologically blocked from like
going faster than two forty three because that's how fast
I had run before I got sick. And then that
realization made me realize, well, what makes you go fast
it makes you go slow is buried really deep inside
of you, and that that is a profound revelation for
(14:06):
all kinds of things in life. And so that that
led me to think about my thought role that he
played and maybe want to investigate these other runners. But
it was this realization that the speed at which one
can propel oneself through space is highly dependent on these
very deep buried psychological factors made me think there's a book.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Here, so I have. You know, we love data here
on risky business and data when you're using when you're
making decisions, and that's kind of what you've been talking about.
But something that I found really interesting in your book
is that some of the decisions you make seem to
be very subjective in a certain way. And what I'm
talking about specifically, and this is something that you know,
(14:47):
as I think about risk and is something that would
be that was kind of scary for me, which is
the way that you describe trying to subjectively figure out
health wise like am I going to am I about
to hurt myself?
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Right or not?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Like should I do I want to push through? Or
am I about to like cause irreparable damage to you know,
one of my muscles, one of my you know, bones,
Like am I going to be hypothermic? Like what's going
to happen to me? How do you actually calculate? Because
to me, like the risk of mortgaging your health and
(15:25):
like doing something that's really really scary for your body
feels very daunting and I would I would always err
on the side of you know what if you think
you're about to be hurt. Stop and you start the book,
you know, with your kind of your cancer diagnosis and
kind of this really really monumental I think moment in
(15:46):
your life where you thought you were going to die
and you ended up surviving. So in my mind, if
that weren't me, I'd be like wow, Like health is
something that's crucially important. And yet right you're you're able
to kind of push yourself through these limits. And it's
not like you have a doctor monitoring you by your
side being like Okay, Nick, You're okay to keep going.
(16:07):
You have to trust yourself and be like Okay, I'm
okay to keep going versus no, I need to stop.
How how does that work? How does that risk calculus
play out in your mind? And then also can we
like go broader than running then how does that kind
of thinking play out in your day.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
To day life?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Super interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
So I do have this belief that you want like
there's a like a line, right, and it's a very
hard line to find, but you go up as close
to the line as you can get, and you're making
yourself stronger and then you get on the other side
and you're making yourself weaker. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And it's a little bit like how hard should you work?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Right?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
At like what point does hard work become negative? Right?
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Is what time does Maria staying up so late you know,
I don't know preparing for this poker tournament, that she'll
perform less well, right, or like the amount of there's
a point where extra effort has negative returns, right, And
the same is true and running where if you because
you're basically breaking your body rebuilding your body, and your
body rebuilds a little bit stronger, and as you do that,
(17:11):
you're able to take on more load, right, And so
you run the five k a little bit faster. It
makes you a little bit stronger. You train thirty miles
not twenty seven miles. The next week, it makes you
a little stronger and more capable of going thirty three.
And you're just trying to like get further and further
and further, and like, as you increase the exertion, you
increase the exertion that you can do the next time.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And so then the question is when do you like crossover?
And so.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
That comes up in training right where you start to
feel right, you start to like, right now, I have
like a little something feels a little weird in the
top of my right knee. Right. I know it's like
coming inflammation, But I have the New York City marathons.
You're taking this trade off. It's not soreness, it's injury.
And how do I balance that with my training? And
how do you balance that with your goals? And a
lot of a lot of what you're trying to do
(17:57):
when you train this hard is cultivate awareness about what
is your body getting stronger, what is good fatigue, and
what is like actual pre injury fatigue. And so that's
one element of it, And that's like the only way
you can really tell is cultivating body wardness. That's parably
why I don't listen to music when I rung right,
because you listen to music and you lose a little
(18:19):
bit of that awareness and a little bit of that
memory and a little bit of that knowledge. It gets
harder in a race, right, because now you're out and
you're out in the mountains and something's wrong, right, and
so then you have a different calculus. And so this
was the hardest time that's ever happened to me. Was
the first time I read my first fifty miler and
I go out there and I'm like all psyched to optimize.
I've done my whole thing, I've made my split charts,
(18:40):
everything's set. And then there's snows, right, and I brought
these like shoes that are like great for running on
like nice, you know, rocky roads, but are terrible for snow.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Mile thirty two, I slip.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I'm trying to like eat it goo like now something
is wrong, right, And so the next five miles I'm
trying to calculate am I injured or am I just tired?
And it's so hard to tell. And you're cold, you're
like near hypothermic. At that point, I remember pulling off
into this tent and they're giving me like hot soup,
and I'm trying to figure out do I keep forward
(19:14):
do I drop out?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I ended up dropping out, And you know, after I
dropped out, I was like that, what a whimp?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Like a terrible decision, right like, and then you know,
I tried to run a few days after I got back,
I was like, God, I'm going to like make up
for this, and I was like, oh, something's wrong. I
went to a doctor like yeah, you're like inches from
ripping your achilles, so.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
It's probably the right decision. It's hard stuff.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
You don't listen to music? Do you listen to podcasts?
Or I love it?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Do you listen to risky Business while you're running? It?
Speaker 4 (19:47):
So I do.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
When I'm so most of my miles, I'm like running
to work, right, I run to the office, I run
home from the office, and I'm running like nine minutes
a mile, right, Like I'm just jogging down Canal Street, right,
And I'm not like, yeah, then I listened to risky Business.
I'm listening all kinds of podcasts. I'm listening to audiobooks.
It's great, it's super efficient. But if I'm out and
i'm training, so my basically like I'm training three days
(20:11):
or four days a week, and I'm just like hobby
jagging three or four days a week, right, And when
I'm a hobby jagging, I'm listening to podcasts or whatever.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
When I'm like training, I'm not. That makes sense?
Speaker 1 (20:20):
That makes sense?
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Is it safe to assume that, like, once you get
to a certain level of performance or aspiration of performance
for running, then ninety eight percent of your life has
to be not oriented toward that. But like you know, obviously, diet, sleep, booze,
drugs other health decisions that you're making. Right, it starts
(20:43):
to become fairly comprehensive as far as like daytay decisions
you're making. Is that is that fair or is there
like a little bit more slack than one might assume?
And is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I think to really really reach your utter potential?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yes, but I've never done that, like I've gone I've never.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Right, I'm training for the New York Marathon.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
It's the Age Group World Championships, right, like I really
want to do well. I just like went to Arizona
to go run in the Grand Cannon, which is stupid
if you're training for a marathon in three weeks and
then immediately flew to Italy to go like moderate an
event because that's cool too, right, And like you would
never do that if you were like really optimizing.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
They optimized a lot, right, but not not ninety nine percent.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
So this is actually a really interesting point in your book.
So you have there are two coaches that kind of
you write about. I mean, you write about more coaches.
But so you went to Stanford to run originally, I
mean obviously for academics, but also it was a kind
of legendary running team that you that you were a
part of, and that didn't go quite according to plan.
(22:02):
But then I did that you ended up and you
can tell the story. That's why I'm not a I'm
not fully I'm not fully it right now. And then
you ended up doing this project for Nike where you
got hooked up with a coach who changed your life
and changed your running trajectory. And they both saw you
very differently and had a very different approach to how
(22:24):
running should be optimized for you personally. And I think
that's something that we don't talk about enough when we
talk about decision making, right, that there's no one size
fits all, and that a lot of times you do
have to look at the individual variables the individual to
make the best decision possible. It's not like a universal
best decision, right, It's how do you train this person?
(22:45):
So I'd love for you to talk about this contrast.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah, that's a great insight. So I go to Stanford
and I ron this guy Vinla Nana is like the
most successful best coaching American track history, or like in
the conversation, and I'm not the best recruit. I'm tenth recruit,
you know, and I'm like, I never even raised for
the team, and I'm off the team by the beginning
of my sophomore year. And I interviewed him as part
(23:09):
of the search for this book, and one of the
things he said to me was like, yeah, I needed
kids who were utterly devoted and like they weren't concerned
about academic excellence and like really just wanted to be runners.
And I like, when I was talking, I was like, okay, yeah,
and I never I didn't want that, right, Like I
liked running, I liked being good, but it was never
the most important thing in my life even then, you know,
I loved all these other things. And so I was
(23:30):
I like, I couldn't have succeeded, like in order for
him to maybe I had the Maybe I have the
innate talent to be a much better runner. And if
anybody in the world could have found it might have
been Lenana. The guy's a genius. And but I realized
talking to him, like I never could have committed enough
for him to commit to me to find that talent.
So then when I'm in my forties, get coached by
this guy, Steve Finley, who interestingly had like studied under Lenana,
(23:52):
and you know, Finley like looks at my own logs
and like talks to me and realizes that I could
be doing much more and training much harder, and like
there are ways to unlock you know, much more speed.
But he also realizes that, like I don't care about
it that much. Like I love being fast, I care
about it a ton, I mean wrote a whole book
about it. Right, clear care a lot about running, but
I care about my job much more. I care about
(24:12):
my kids much more. And so he made me a schedule,
Like you know, these other coaches are like, well, Nick
should also do all this like core exercise and like
really needs to, like you work on his shoulder mobility.
And Steve was like, no, it doesn't right, And you know,
he makes the schedule and it would be like Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays,
Sundays would be like run option right, do whatever the
hell you want right. He would make workouts for that
(24:34):
were like optimized run a travel, like I wouldn't have
to find a track. Like he basically set it up
to be like what is the maximum amount that we
can get him to improve in the minimum amount of
time because there's a cap and if if you force
Nick to do more, he'll just stop because he cares
what this other stuff more. And so that was like
I needed that kind of a coach to bring about
(24:55):
that success. And it's a good lesson for coaching anything.
Like you're coaching someone in poker, right, you have to
like identify how much time is available, how much mental
energy is available, and then structure it for that. But
if I was like Maria, you know, like I need
you to write four story is a week, right, and
you would have been like you could have done it
or but you also would have been like, no, Nick,
like I have these other things I'm doing. I can
(25:16):
write two stories a week. You know, you have to
like figure out how like if you're a writer editor
relationship is similar to the runner coach.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Yeah, writing, writing and running in poker all have these
weird parallels, right, including I mean I'm running as well
as the other two obviously, but they seem to abtract
a certain type of obsessive I mean that in a
good way, who are walking a tight rope between like
achievement and discipline and have a long term plan. But
(25:43):
I don't know, there's something you know when I'm writing
something then like I almost feel like running is like
part of that work, right, I need time to physically
move in like processed thoughts.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
I do think there are actually a surprising number of
writers who are also like George carl Ohates, like very
focused runner. When I was at the New Yorker, like
obviously Peter Hesler, who wrote for work round these past marathons,
I was like George Packer ran a two forty six marathon,
and go Steen, the head of Copy ran like a
three ten marathon eighties. Like all of these like New
York icons had actually at some point been like hardcore runners.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So how do you okay? You're one of the most
kind of ridiculously driven people I've ever met, and I
still remember. I think the first time I met you,
came to your office, you had your running clothes because
you'd run to work. I didn't realize yet that you
ran to work every single day at that point. You
have already three little kids, or at that point I
think you had fewer I had.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I had three kids. I had two kids, but the
third one was coming.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, they multiplied. While I knew you, and you know
you you worked with me on a series about sleep
a long time ago and about how important it is.
And yet you know I'm reading here like you wake
up at who knows what time so that you can
get all of these different elements of your life in,
so that you can get these runs in, you can
(27:01):
get these this training in during during the week. So
speaking of like that give and take of when does
this effort, you know, become counterproductive? How how do you
think about all of that and how do you how
do you think about that balance? And it also seems
like running actually kind of helps you get that balance,
which is which is very which is a funny thing
(27:23):
to say, given how much of your time you devote
to it.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, you get like you get a little bit like
for every hour you put into running, you get like
five minutes back, right, because it helps you fall asleep
and helps relax your mind. You know that that series,
it was a three part series. Actually it was pretty
influential because when you edit a story, you know, you
read the sources, you go through stuff. I started sleeping
more after working with you on that. Really, I mean,
(27:45):
let me just say that, I actually think people are like,
how do you, like, how do you spend so much
time running and so much time in your job. There's
so many parallels, Like running really hard makes you better
at focusing during hard zoom meetings. Right. I would imagine
that concentrating during poker makes you a better interviewer because
you are better at concentrating, like you are learning like
similar skills. And if your hobbies and passions can reinforce
(28:09):
your job, like you're in a good spot.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
I mean, just some of the Marshmallow affects stuff too.
Maria can tell us whether the Marshallow study is accurate
or not. Right, But just like the routine practice of
having discipline, right, I mean, it's one of the most
basic things that most people are are too willing to
sacrifice the long term for the short term in terms
of happiness, right. And that can include like the long
(28:32):
term patience, Like you know, every article that I write
for my newsletter takes somewhere between four hours and like
four days, right, And like having the patience to say
I'm going to focus on this and not need a
quick hit when there's so many impulses like Twitter, for example,
and television, and I'm dating myself with television already, right,
But like everything else is such instant gratification where this
(28:52):
seems like this seems like a very different course to
choose in life.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Totally, And I feel like one of the things I
definitely believe is that discipline is chumutal it. Right, if
you make your bed, like you do something disciplined and
correct first thing in the morning, that makes it easier
to do the next thing discipline and correct ad nauseum. Right,
And sometimes you need to let your mind relax and
take a break. But like, discipline builds discipline, and so
(29:18):
I actually.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Think that.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Running hard, you know, makes it easier to focus and
do discipline things through the rest of your day in
your life.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Pam, We'll be right back after this break. Can ask
a very basic, I guess running question, right, of course, please,
(29:57):
how do you pace yourself? Right? Because like I will
run you know, five k's not ultra marathons, God forbid, right,
and like, you know, I'm not having sure what my
goal is necessarily, but it's it's hard to like avoid
going out too fast or too slow. And when you're
planning twenty six point two miles or what's it's like
(30:19):
thirty one miles, right, ultra marathon? How do you pace yourself?
And decide like a what point place do I think
I should be running and be how has my body
like achieved that pace?
Speaker 2 (30:32):
That's so good? All right, So short answer, a long answer, Nate.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
We have a whole hour long, long answered, Nick. All right.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
So as you get older, you know, one of the
advantages of getting older is you have all this data
on yourself, right, And so you know how you've run
in previous races. You know all the workouts you did
before those races, and you know how those workouts you know,
project to future races or like I do. And so
before I begin a marathon, I have a general sense
of how fit I am compared to previous marathons.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
So then I make a goal.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
So this would be a marathon of fifty k or
a fifty miler, and I project out either what I
think i'm cap or I project out what is my goal,
like I want to break a record, I want to
set a world leading time, whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
And then I work backwards and I make a plan
for the race. And so.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
The last race I ran and really cared about was
the Lake Warmog fifty miler, right, and I wanted to
run the American record for my age group, which meant running.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Basically six forties or six thirty eights per mile for
fifty miles.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And so I then kind of projected, can I possibly
do this based on my workouts, based on what I've
done before? Okay, made a plant, and so I made
a plan for every mile, like what I would run,
what I would plan to run. So then while I'm running,
I'm basically I'm measuring three things. I'm measuring my splits.
So am I running six thirty eight pace? Or if
my plan is to start at six forty five and
(31:54):
drop to six thirty two? Am I running the pace
that I have planned and projected and think I can
do based on data inputs that I have. That's input
number one right, second input what is my heart rate?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
And so heart rate is super important.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
If you measure on your wrist, it's a useless indicator
because there's too much noise, right, there's bone, your hand moves.
You have to measure it on your arm. Everybody screws
this up, all the runners do. You got to put
it on your chest to your arm right. Once you
do that, you get accurate readings on your heart rate.
So then you've got a second data signal, and then
that can override. And so if my heart rate is
above X and I'm running a certain pace, I know
I can't sustain it for fifty miles or twenty six
(32:30):
point two. So that's input number two. And then input
number three is feel right, and so I know how
I should feel at a certain point in a race,
and so then that can override heart rate or pace.
And so then as you run in an optimal, ideal scenario,
everything is working as planned. So in that like warmog race,
I'm running six thirty five, my heart rate is like
you know, basically, let's say it's one twenty five in
(32:52):
the first twenty miles and I feel nothing right, and
if I can sustain that, then I'm in good shit.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Then what happens is as the race progresses.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
A you like you lose your brain right, you can
no longer think, you can no longer trust yourself right,
you start to make bad decisions, and you start to
go too quickly or you start to go to slowly.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
But the goal is to be able to hold off.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
And make good decisions as long as you can about
how you pace yourself based on all of those inputs. Also,
I should add you have to like look very carefully
at the weather, you have to look very carefully at
the wind, and you have to think about like are
you to be able to run in a group of
runners and how does that affect your pace? So that's
a kind of complicated answer.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Is that how you do your five k's Nate?
Speaker 4 (33:31):
No? No, But what's frustrating is like I've gotten good
at like running exactly that distance. Right. The other day
my partner and I were trying to run a little
bit longer, and like at exactly three point one three miles, right,
I hit a wall pretty much right, And so like, yeah,
I think you're applying a lot more precision. But let
me let me ask what worth is your goal? You'll
(33:54):
say you're running a marathon for simplicity's sake. Should you
feel totally wiped out at the end? Is that a
proof that you optimally targeted the right amount of effort
and pace or do you want to feel still able
to walk around and not totally beat up?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
You want to feel.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
You do want to feel wiped out, but you don't
want to feel like you're wiped out until the very
last step, because if you, like most people who feel
wiped out at the end of a marathon. Push too
hard early and so then they've crushed themselves in the
last five miles, three miles, ten miles or a death march,
and you're gonna run a terrible race. And so feeling
(34:35):
wiped out is like necessary but not sufficient for having
run your optimal pace. But like your optimal pace is
you actually feel like you. I think of it as
you have one hundred pennies in your pocket, right and
you're spending them through the race, and the last foot
you spend, the last or the last quarter mile you
spend the last one. You often will spend all one
hundred pennies by mile twenty one, and then it's just hell.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Let me ask a question for people who are not
hardcore runners, but maybe more casual runners. What's your favorite
place to run in or around New York City.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Well, Prospect Park is amazing, right, I love it. There's
also a loop I love to do where you know,
I run out to the verizono. You run out on
the boardwalk onto the Verizona, you run on the boardwalk
in Corney Island, you come back on Ocean Avenue. Obviously,
that's a long run for people. But that's cool. I
do you think that, like along the Brooklyn Navy Yard
is a really good spot. I love the bridges right, Like,
(35:29):
we're a lot of wear and tear on your knees
going back and forth across the bridges. But you know,
running across like Williamsburg and back on Brooklyn is awesome
in the morning before it gets you crowded.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
So we have a few more like serious questions. But
since Nate asked this, I'm going to give you just
a lightning round of very quick questions about running for
people who care about that. All right, best time of
day to run.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Sunrise?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Okay, oh that's beautiful. I sleep through sunrise.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
Mostly surprised me about you, Maria.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yes, I'm not a morning person at all. Least dependable body.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Part digestive system huh.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
The blood flows away and it gets jostled, so you
get a lot of stomach upset, which is kind of surprising.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
And non runners, Wow, that's yeah, that's very surprising. Pre
run rituals.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
I stretch, I have a very like legitimate nutrition routine,
and then I watch samu Wan Duro winning the Chicago
Marathon back in like two thousand. I can't remember what
year it was, but like there's this incredible recording samu
Won Duro since passed away, but he's racing this guy
Kebdet and they're just going back and forth and back
and forth.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
It looks like Sammy's just like.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Cooked and cooked and cooked and then he just destroys him.
And I'm not sure what Chicago Marathon is, but I
just always google like one jury cabadet Chicago Marathon and
I watch it like an hour before whenever marathon I'm running,
and it's great.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Carbloating, do you carbload one day before a race, two
days before a race? How do you work that in?
Speaker 4 (36:59):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
I don't really like focus carbloating where you carb deplete
and then eat lots of carbs. I feel like you
hurt your immune system more than it's worth it, even
if it does help you store carbs a little bit.
I eat a sort of high density carbs Thursday races
on Sunday, I'll start on Thursday.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I'll be very focused on Friday a little bit on Saturday.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Okay, gels are choose, Jelos, what brand?
Speaker 3 (37:19):
I think Morton is pretty good at it, But you
want to mix them up because you don't want palate fatigue.
You want so you want to like, you don't want
to get too used to something because then it'll make
you sick. And so A you rotate them and B
you try to suck them now without tasting them fascinating.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, this goes this goes to your to your gut
answer as well. Yeah, all right, what's the best rice
New York City Marathon? Okay, what about the Northeast Harboro
Road Race.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, it's amazing, but they canceled it. So sad that
was it. I love that race so much.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
But yeah, the New York t amer you can't beat
the marathon, but the Northeast Tarborough Race close second.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
All right, and let's let's uh end the lightning round
with a very risky business question. And you know, because
we talk about being d gens all the time and
gambling and all of that, what's the most djeny thing
that you've ever done for the sake of running?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
And with djen as in like degenerative.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
No, oh, Nate, we've got we've got a we've got
a djen newbie. Yeah, So when you're when you're a djen,
is someone who takes maybe a little bit too much
risk that they shouldn't be taking in the moment, makes
a bad decision. Someone like, for instance, if you're a
poker player, but then you decide to like use part
(38:30):
of your buy and to play slots, which you should actually.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Your dad might play slots.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Degen leaning, I don't mean to make anything about sexuality
or anything else, but like, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Mean there's definitely a lot of DGEN and sexuality that
is true.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
That's interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
It's like, I mean, you've tried so hard, right, basically,
like running a mile too hard to stay with the
group is a basic DGEN move that everybody needs. But
the most DGEN thing that I've done in a race
or just in training either one. I mean, okay, so
literally this is good. Last Saturday, I ran the Grand Canyon, right,
uh huh. And I was running with like two folks
(39:11):
who with very intense jobs. The group people both like
two of them had very intense jobs and also had
like to catch flights back to be with their kids, right,
And so we had to complete it in a certain
amount of time, and a we like didn't really pay
attention to signs, which meant we added an extra like
thousand feet of climbing and five miles of running and
then b we like, we're so focused on getting to
(39:33):
the airport that we like, we ran as fast as
we could up the cans, like a twenty seven mile run.
And then I was like, guys, you have five minutes
to shower and pack, right, And they're like ten minutes,
all right, find ten minutes to shower and pack. And
so we packed and showered in ten minutes after running
the Grand Can and drove like ninety miles an hour,
got through the airport, barely made our flights, and it
was not great for the people next to us and
(39:54):
everything else or our suitcases.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
You know, I am the world record holder for age
forty to forty nine year old men at the Denver
Airport trying to catch a connecting cart. Are you really? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
Do you run? Do people run faster mostly when they're inner?
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Yes, And that's a super interesting question of why, right,
Like what is it about the psychology and physiology of
being in a race? But it is totally different, and
you're able to reach a mental space and extract like
a percentage of maximum effort that is much higher than
at any other point.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
There's a beautiful moment in your book when you talk
about this when you try to run a marathon yourself
in Prospect Park and it's much tougher than when you
actually have.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
It's like there's a magic of being out there and
having people cheer you on. But of course it also
creates this dgen risk where you can like go too
fast because you're trying to like appeal to the crowd,
and then you cook yourself. But it's very different like
running by yourself, running with one person, running with a group,
running a race, you run totally different speeds.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
What's your goal for this marathon this year?
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Nick, It's this is the weirdest build up I've ever had.
So I've had two little injuries, I've had this weird
thing that happened last week. But I would love to
be able to run two forty three thirty seven, which
would be one second faster than I ran in two
thousand and seven, which is when I ran thirteen seconds
faster then when I got sick.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
All right, Well, that is a very good goal, and
I think a really lovely note on which to end this,
even though we could go on forever, but.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
So much fun.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
You guys.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
It's so interesting because you have such interesting ways into
this from your like poker thinking writing backgrounds.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
This we should go on for hours.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
But unfortunately you have a magazine to run. Nick, thank
you so much for joining us once again. The book
is the running ground. It is wonderful. You guys should
all buy a copy, and Nick, you should return to
editing and be my editor again. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
You should send me another nine hundred page story memo.
Thank you so much for having me on. Maria, thank you, Nate.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot FM.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaa Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia
Jean Ka and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there, Thanks for tuning in
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Mariaknakova and I'm Nate Silver. Today on
the show, we have an old friend of mine whom
(00:37):
I've known for over a decade, Nick Thompson. So he
is currently joining us from the New York City offices
of the Atlantic where he is the CEO. So if
you hear any background noise, you know this is soho,
this is New York. There's stuff going on, and Nick
has a lot of things going on. He is also
the editor in chief, former editor in chief of a
(01:00):
Wired and wrote a book called The Hawk and the
Dove about the Cold War era. It's absolutely phenomenal. You
should show out. But to me, he will always be
my editor at The New Yorker, which is how I
first met Nick. And he wasn't just my editor, he
actually ran The New Yorker's website. And now we have
(01:24):
him on because he has a new book coming out,
I think the most personal book he's ever written, called
The Running Ground. I apologize I only have a galley,
but here's the galley. Here's how it looks, and it's
about running, it's about his dad, it's a reflection on life,
so many different things. Nick, Welcome to Risky Business. Nate
(01:45):
and I are so happy to have you here.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Thank you, Maria.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I was actually just trying to figure out when exactly
we met by looking at my old emails, but unfortunately
it appears this other eight hundred of them that I've
just gone through and now we're at nine hundred.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
This is this is what editing is like for people
who want to behind the scenes look at the editing life.
Nick and I have probably over one thousand emails between
the two of us over the years.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
All right, here we got wait, we got it.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Your new science and technology website, Dear Nick, Emilia Lester
told me you're looking to hire someone to head up
a new science acknowledge second for the New Yorker's website
September twenty eight, twenty twelve. So we are looking at
thirteen years and almost a month.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Wow, that is incredible. Well, it's so good to be
reunited here. And I've forgot the most important thing of
your intro. Since your book is about running, you are
the holder of the American record for the fifty k
Ultra marathon from men forty to forty five, which is
pretty fucking amazing, if I may say so. So I
(02:50):
actually want to start not with running, but with your dad.
Your relationship with your dad is a major part of
the book, and i'd love to hear you talk a
little bit about that. You have your dad, Scott Thompson,
who was a runner and who's the one who actually
got you introduced to running. And there's this beautiful, you know,
very poignant moment of little Nick waiting at the marathon
(03:12):
lives to give his dad some new shoes and orange juice, right,
orange juice, Yeah, orange juice.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Like orange is kind of on the way out, but
like it was super hot for marathoners and I take
it too.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So so yeah, i'd love to hear you kind of
talk about that intersection and that overlap and you're dad.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
So my dad's an amazing guy. And part of the
motivation for the book was thinking through his effect on me,
thinking through his effect on running, thinking about the way
running helped us communicate, and then his life story, which
is interesting. All right, So my dad grows up in Oklahoma,
He's got kind of a complicated family, doesn't want to
be there, partly because of his overbearing Golden gloves boxing
(03:53):
champion father.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
You know, my dad busts out, like finds.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
The school called andover replies, gets a scholarship, like rides
horseback delivery newspaper and pays for it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Right, Great America. That's crazy, by the way, it's pretty cool, right,
you know, goes to Endover.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
He's like, the kid doesn't fit in, hes got all
the wrong clothes whatever makes it work. Goes to Stanford
on a scholarship, crushes it, meets John F. Kennedy says,
this kid's we president. Goes off it's a Rhodes scholarship.
Goes to Oxford, you know, the friends, all the important
people in England. Comes back, marries my mother, who comes
from a prominent political family. Guy's on fire, right, he's
(04:28):
like making plan to run for the Senate. You know,
he's just crushing it. And then like starts to go wrong,
like maybe he's not quite as good as everybody thinks,
Like maybe he's drinking too much alcohol. And then he's
like grappling with this secret that he's realized he's gay, right,
and he is sort of new he was gay when
he was young, but you know he was closeted. This
(04:49):
is nineteen seventies America, it's a pretty hard time to
come out, or nineteen sixties America. And so in nineteen
eighty two, when I'm seven years old, he's like made
the realization to himself that he's gay.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
He leaves, he moves to.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Washington, and he's like, now he's trying to like make
up for lost time, right, And so he's in these
endless relationships increasingly inappropriate.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
He's diagnosed as being HIV positive.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
This is during the plague. Turns out it's a false diagnosis,
and he has this like very intense trajectory that you know,
in some ways the parts that are totally admirable, it is,
it's possible, depending on how you count, that he is
the first openly gay presidential appointee in American history. Every
why works in the United States Information Agency since Shovered by Dog.
(05:34):
You know, he's a very rare gay Republican in the
Reagan administration. You know, he is like kind of he
like plays a kind of important role in the like
late eighties, early nineties, like you know, people should come
out so that everybody knows that gay people are everywhere.
But then he's like dating kind of like late teenage
guys he's maybe met on the Internet or maybe paid
(05:55):
for in DuPont circle, and he's like dating like hundreds
of people a year, and he's like bringing the like
wrong people to like parties, meeting fulm of people. And
then he moves to Asia, maybe for academic research and
maybe not. And by the end of his life he's
running like a pseudo brothel in Bali. He's bankrupt, he's
(06:15):
a tax fugitive, and it's just chaos. Right, So that's
my dad, you know, And like when you meet me,
you're like, what is your dad?
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Do?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
You don't really expect that to be the answer. I
used to like to catch people up guard, like what
are your parents doing? It's like my mom's an artistory
and a baps and my dad runs a brothel in
Bali and they're like what.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Away?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
So like his story and he creates endless chaos in
my life, in my sister's lives. But he and I
have this like wonderful loving relationship the whole time through
and like, you know, he taught me to run. I
watch her run this marathon. He like cheers me on
as I become a good runner. We run together when
we're together, and so running is like part of the
spine of our relationship, you know, up until the end.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And then it's it doesn't.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Escape my attention that, you know, when he dies in
twenty seventeen, just when I started as the editor Wired,
it is like soon after that that I become a
much better runner. And there's something about process in his
death that also plays a role in my evolution from
like pretty good runner to very good runner.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Does your need for it? Well, now I'm psychoanalyzing you
go for it? Nate, go for it?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Nate?
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Does your need for like or I don't know, I'm
presuming in need? Right? Does the discipline that you apply
in your running and maybe in other parts of your life? Right?
I mean, is that out of a concern that if
you aren't disciplined then things could spiral out of control
like it did for your dad.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
That's definitely part of it.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
I mean that that is a very conscious My sister
and I once took this. We were driving together and we
were like, we're in this U haul, like moving stuff
from his house from one place to another, and we
had this conversation where like we both admitted to the
other that our biggest fear in life was that like
something about our genetic inheritance and having him as a
father faded us to become just like crazy chaos agents
(08:05):
and unlike until like I do have very much have
a sense that if I lose discipline, I faced the
risk of I mean, I'm very like him, Like I
kind of look like him, I kind of act like him, right.
I I had this crazy experience. It was like two
years ago. I'm in this restaurant in San Francisco, and
I'm with one of my dad's old friends. He's like
roommate from college, and another guy from the Stanford class
(08:28):
in nineteen sixty three walks in and so my dining
my dining friend goes up to the other guy and goes, Hey,
this kid here I'm having lunch with is the son
of one of your old classmates. Who do you think
it is? And he looks at me and goes, oh,
that's Scottie Thompson's son, right, And you know, knowing that
I like fifty percent of my DNA is his. I
(08:48):
was raised by him, influenced by him, right, Like he
like embedded his ambitions into me.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, obviously I'm like terrified of going off the rails.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, I mean you it is. It was very interesting
to me that, you know, you did follow in your
dad's pustups, even though when you were a kid like
that couldn't have been easy. But then you went to andover,
you went to Stanford right like you you did all
of that that you applied for the roads you did
not get it, but that you got everything else. So
(09:18):
so I think I think you're I think you're okay, you.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Got and then even that when I didn't, I still
like I did what he did without even really knowing,
like when he had done he had gotten the roads,
and like Ghandak Ghana, what did I do after I
graduated from college? Like I didn't really intend this. I
ended up in Ghana like he got arrested in Ghana.
I got kidnapped in Morocco right like we had like
we had like all these similarities.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I was like trying to be like the guy.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
It was very interesting to me. And I think part
of why you might be like it could be me
right there, but for the grace of God go I
is that your dad was brilliant, right, a remarkably smart man.
He and you had his diaries that you went through,
and the awareness of what alcoholism did to his father
(10:06):
should have stopped it, and he intellectually realized that he
should have stopped drinking, and he didn't, and he couldn't,
And the fact that he was so smart and also
disciplined in a lot of ways and conceptually and intellectually
grasped all of this and yet on a purely kind
of emotional, day to day life basis, couldn't couldn't follow through.
(10:27):
I think if that were my dad, that would terrify me.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I definitely worry that at some point alcoholism will come
for me. And I'm very you know, very careful and
very disciplined about that. I'm you know, now almost never drink, so,
you know, dealing with the burdens and having observed my
father so carefully and having seen these things come to him,
And then what you say about the diaries is so
interesting because he's so perceptive and smart and there are
(10:50):
things he notices.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
My sister and I often joke like she'll walk into
a room, right and she'll like, within like ten minutes
like be able to like sort of like see into
everybody's soul and figure everything out. But she also feelsing
so intensely, and I'm like sort of very like resilient,
and like more stuff can like hit me. And when
I'm like two and she's three, he writes in his
diary like everything would be better if we could get
(11:14):
Nikki to feel a little more and phil Us to
feel a little less. Right, like these insights into like
who become He writes this letter to me when I'm
twenty one that I didn't reread until I was like
forty nine, as like holy cow, like he saw through
my whole twenties and like all the sort of the
problems that befell me in my twenties. The guy was
utterly brilliant and I wish I had as much of
(11:36):
that as he had. And then I want the alcoholism
and the you know, the tax evasion, whatever.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Change those were to not not ever hit me.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And it's always a mixed bag, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, parents, Jondren, always a mixed bag. True.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And we'll be back right after this. I want to
hear the origin story, as you know I always do
(12:19):
about this book. How did you come to wanting to
write about something so personal, which is not the type
of writing you normally do? It is certainly not the
kind of book that your last book was, even though
you did have a personal connection to it.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
So I had this very strange thing happen in my forties.
So I was a very I was a pretty good
runner in my twenties and thirties, and when I was
thirty years old, I ran a two forty three marathon,
which is excellent. I got sick, I got thyroid cancer.
It took me two years. I came back, I ran
two forty three again. And then for the next twelve
(12:52):
or thirteen years, I ran almost exactly the same time
I would run Fall Marathon. I'd run two forty three,
which is a very good time. It puts you, like,
you know, in.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
The local elite.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
And then in my mid forties I went much faster
and I ran a two twenty nine, which suddenly put
me in a whole new category. And so it was interesting,
is I was going through this thought process of how
did I get so much faster at a time where
you're supposed to get slower, and like, as my body
is clearly decaying, how did I make this improvement? Because
it's not like I didn't train hard in my thirties right.
(13:23):
It's not like I didn't focus, it's not like I
didn't read books. It's not like I didn't eat kale right,
Like I worked really hard, I just didn't go as fast.
And then one day I was running across the Brooklyn
Bridge and I had this like mental breakthrough. It's very
rare to have, like a I feel like U see
ideas common like waves and parts. But it was like
literally hit me like a thunderbolt. I was like, oh
(13:43):
my god. I didn't go faster because I didn't realize
that I could be faster than I had been before
I got sick, like I was psychologically blocked from like
going faster than two forty three because that's how fast
I had run before I got sick. And then that
realization made me realize, well, what makes you go fast
it makes you go slow is buried really deep inside
of you, and that that is a profound revelation for
(14:06):
all kinds of things in life. And so that that
led me to think about my thought role that he
played and maybe want to investigate these other runners. But
it was this realization that the speed at which one
can propel oneself through space is highly dependent on these
very deep buried psychological factors made me think there's a book.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Here, so I have. You know, we love data here
on risky business and data when you're using when you're
making decisions, and that's kind of what you've been talking about.
But something that I found really interesting in your book
is that some of the decisions you make seem to
be very subjective in a certain way. And what I'm
talking about specifically, and this is something that you know,
(14:47):
as I think about risk and is something that would
be that was kind of scary for me, which is
the way that you describe trying to subjectively figure out
health wise like am I going to am I about
to hurt myself?
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Right or not?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Like should I do I want to push through? Or
am I about to like cause irreparable damage to you know,
one of my muscles, one of my you know, bones,
Like am I going to be hypothermic? Like what's going
to happen to me? How do you actually calculate? Because
to me, like the risk of mortgaging your health and
(15:25):
like doing something that's really really scary for your body
feels very daunting and I would I would always err
on the side of you know what if you think
you're about to be hurt. Stop and you start the book,
you know, with your kind of your cancer diagnosis and
kind of this really really monumental I think moment in
(15:46):
your life where you thought you were going to die
and you ended up surviving. So in my mind, if
that weren't me, I'd be like wow, Like health is
something that's crucially important. And yet right you're you're able
to kind of push yourself through these limits. And it's
not like you have a doctor monitoring you by your
side being like Okay, Nick, You're okay to keep going.
(16:07):
You have to trust yourself and be like Okay, I'm
okay to keep going versus no, I need to stop.
How how does that work? How does that risk calculus
play out in your mind? And then also can we
like go broader than running then how does that kind
of thinking play out in your day.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
To day life?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Super interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
So I do have this belief that you want like
there's a like a line, right, and it's a very
hard line to find, but you go up as close
to the line as you can get, and you're making
yourself stronger and then you get on the other side
and you're making yourself weaker. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And it's a little bit like how hard should you work?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Right?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
At like what point does hard work become negative? Right?
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Is what time does Maria staying up so late you know,
I don't know preparing for this poker tournament, that she'll
perform less well, right, or like the amount of there's
a point where extra effort has negative returns, right, And
the same is true and running where if you because
you're basically breaking your body rebuilding your body, and your
body rebuilds a little bit stronger, and as you do that,
(17:11):
you're able to take on more load, right, And so
you run the five k a little bit faster. It
makes you a little bit stronger. You train thirty miles
not twenty seven miles. The next week, it makes you
a little stronger and more capable of going thirty three.
And you're just trying to like get further and further
and further, and like, as you increase the exertion, you
increase the exertion that you can do the next time.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And so then the question is when do you like crossover?
And so.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
That comes up in training right where you start to
feel right, you start to like, right now, I have
like a little something feels a little weird in the
top of my right knee. Right. I know it's like
coming inflammation, But I have the New York City marathons.
You're taking this trade off. It's not soreness, it's injury.
And how do I balance that with my training? And
how do you balance that with your goals? And a
lot of a lot of what you're trying to do
(17:57):
when you train this hard is cultivate awareness about what
is your body getting stronger, what is good fatigue, and
what is like actual pre injury fatigue. And so that's
one element of it, And that's like the only way
you can really tell is cultivating body wardness. That's parably
why I don't listen to music when I rung right,
because you listen to music and you lose a little
(18:19):
bit of that awareness and a little bit of that
memory and a little bit of that knowledge. It gets
harder in a race, right, because now you're out and
you're out in the mountains and something's wrong, right, and
so then you have a different calculus. And so this
was the hardest time that's ever happened to me. Was
the first time I read my first fifty miler and
I go out there and I'm like all psyched to optimize.
I've done my whole thing, I've made my split charts,
(18:40):
everything's set. And then there's snows, right, and I brought
these like shoes that are like great for running on
like nice, you know, rocky roads, but are terrible for snow.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Mile thirty two, I slip.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I'm trying to like eat it goo like now something
is wrong, right, And so the next five miles I'm
trying to calculate am I injured or am I just tired?
And it's so hard to tell. And you're cold, you're
like near hypothermic. At that point, I remember pulling off
into this tent and they're giving me like hot soup,
and I'm trying to figure out do I keep forward
(19:14):
do I drop out?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I ended up dropping out, And you know, after I
dropped out, I was like that, what a whimp?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Like a terrible decision, right like, and then you know,
I tried to run a few days after I got back,
I was like, God, I'm going to like make up
for this, and I was like, oh, something's wrong. I
went to a doctor like yeah, you're like inches from
ripping your achilles, so.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
It's probably the right decision. It's hard stuff.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
You don't listen to music? Do you listen to podcasts?
Or I love it?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Do you listen to risky Business while you're running? It?
Speaker 4 (19:47):
So I do.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
When I'm so most of my miles, I'm like running
to work, right, I run to the office, I run
home from the office, and I'm running like nine minutes
a mile, right, Like I'm just jogging down Canal Street, right,
And I'm not like, yeah, then I listened to risky Business.
I'm listening all kinds of podcasts. I'm listening to audiobooks.
It's great, it's super efficient. But if I'm out and
i'm training, so my basically like I'm training three days
(20:11):
or four days a week, and I'm just like hobby
jagging three or four days a week, right, And when
I'm a hobby jagging, I'm listening to podcasts or whatever.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
When I'm like training, I'm not. That makes sense?
Speaker 1 (20:20):
That makes sense?
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Is it safe to assume that, like, once you get
to a certain level of performance or aspiration of performance
for running, then ninety eight percent of your life has
to be not oriented toward that. But like you know, obviously, diet, sleep, booze,
drugs other health decisions that you're making. Right, it starts
(20:43):
to become fairly comprehensive as far as like daytay decisions
you're making. Is that is that fair or is there
like a little bit more slack than one might assume?
And is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I think to really really reach your utter potential?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yes, but I've never done that, like I've gone I've never.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Right, I'm training for the New York Marathon.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
It's the Age Group World Championships, right, like I really
want to do well. I just like went to Arizona
to go run in the Grand Cannon, which is stupid
if you're training for a marathon in three weeks and
then immediately flew to Italy to go like moderate an
event because that's cool too, right, And like you would
never do that if you were like really optimizing.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
They optimized a lot, right, but not not ninety nine percent.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
So this is actually a really interesting point in your book.
So you have there are two coaches that kind of
you write about. I mean, you write about more coaches.
But so you went to Stanford to run originally, I
mean obviously for academics, but also it was a kind
of legendary running team that you that you were a
part of, and that didn't go quite according to plan.
(22:02):
But then I did that you ended up and you
can tell the story. That's why I'm not a I'm
not fully I'm not fully it right now. And then
you ended up doing this project for Nike where you
got hooked up with a coach who changed your life
and changed your running trajectory. And they both saw you
very differently and had a very different approach to how
(22:24):
running should be optimized for you personally. And I think
that's something that we don't talk about enough when we
talk about decision making, right, that there's no one size
fits all, and that a lot of times you do
have to look at the individual variables the individual to
make the best decision possible. It's not like a universal
best decision, right, It's how do you train this person?
(22:45):
So I'd love for you to talk about this contrast.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah, that's a great insight. So I go to Stanford
and I ron this guy Vinla Nana is like the
most successful best coaching American track history, or like in
the conversation, and I'm not the best recruit. I'm tenth recruit,
you know, and I'm like, I never even raised for
the team, and I'm off the team by the beginning
of my sophomore year. And I interviewed him as part
(23:09):
of the search for this book, and one of the
things he said to me was like, yeah, I needed
kids who were utterly devoted and like they weren't concerned
about academic excellence and like really just wanted to be runners.
And I like, when I was talking, I was like, okay, yeah,
and I never I didn't want that, right, Like I
liked running, I liked being good, but it was never
the most important thing in my life even then, you know,
I loved all these other things. And so I was
(23:30):
I like, I couldn't have succeeded, like in order for
him to maybe I had the Maybe I have the
innate talent to be a much better runner. And if
anybody in the world could have found it might have
been Lenana. The guy's a genius. And but I realized
talking to him, like I never could have committed enough
for him to commit to me to find that talent.
So then when I'm in my forties, get coached by
this guy, Steve Finley, who interestingly had like studied under Lenana,
(23:52):
and you know, Finley like looks at my own logs
and like talks to me and realizes that I could
be doing much more and training much harder, and like
there are ways to unlock you know, much more speed.
But he also realizes that, like I don't care about
it that much. Like I love being fast, I care
about it a ton, I mean wrote a whole book
about it. Right, clear care a lot about running, but
I care about my job much more. I care about
(24:12):
my kids much more. And so he made me a schedule,
Like you know, these other coaches are like, well, Nick
should also do all this like core exercise and like
really needs to, like you work on his shoulder mobility.
And Steve was like, no, it doesn't right, And you know,
he makes the schedule and it would be like Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays,
Sundays would be like run option right, do whatever the
hell you want right. He would make workouts for that
(24:34):
were like optimized run a travel, like I wouldn't have
to find a track. Like he basically set it up
to be like what is the maximum amount that we
can get him to improve in the minimum amount of
time because there's a cap and if if you force
Nick to do more, he'll just stop because he cares
what this other stuff more. And so that was like
I needed that kind of a coach to bring about
(24:55):
that success. And it's a good lesson for coaching anything.
Like you're coaching someone in poker, right, you have to
like identify how much time is available, how much mental
energy is available, and then structure it for that. But
if I was like Maria, you know, like I need
you to write four story is a week, right, and
you would have been like you could have done it
or but you also would have been like, no, Nick,
like I have these other things I'm doing. I can
(25:16):
write two stories a week. You know, you have to
like figure out how like if you're a writer editor
relationship is similar to the runner coach.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Yeah, writing, writing and running in poker all have these
weird parallels, right, including I mean I'm running as well
as the other two obviously, but they seem to abtract
a certain type of obsessive I mean that in a
good way, who are walking a tight rope between like
achievement and discipline and have a long term plan. But
(25:43):
I don't know, there's something you know when I'm writing
something then like I almost feel like running is like
part of that work, right, I need time to physically
move in like processed thoughts.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
I do think there are actually a surprising number of
writers who are also like George carl Ohates, like very
focused runner. When I was at the New Yorker, like
obviously Peter Hesler, who wrote for work round these past marathons,
I was like George Packer ran a two forty six marathon,
and go Steen, the head of Copy ran like a
three ten marathon eighties. Like all of these like New
York icons had actually at some point been like hardcore runners.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So how do you okay? You're one of the most
kind of ridiculously driven people I've ever met, and I
still remember. I think the first time I met you,
came to your office, you had your running clothes because
you'd run to work. I didn't realize yet that you
ran to work every single day at that point. You
have already three little kids, or at that point I
think you had fewer I had.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I had three kids. I had two kids, but the
third one was coming.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, they multiplied. While I knew you, and you know
you you worked with me on a series about sleep
a long time ago and about how important it is.
And yet you know I'm reading here like you wake
up at who knows what time so that you can
get all of these different elements of your life in,
so that you can get these runs in, you can
(27:01):
get these this training in during during the week. So
speaking of like that give and take of when does
this effort, you know, become counterproductive? How how do you
think about all of that and how do you how
do you think about that balance? And it also seems
like running actually kind of helps you get that balance,
which is which is very which is a funny thing
(27:23):
to say, given how much of your time you devote
to it.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, you get like you get a little bit like
for every hour you put into running, you get like
five minutes back, right, because it helps you fall asleep
and helps relax your mind. You know that that series,
it was a three part series. Actually it was pretty
influential because when you edit a story, you know, you
read the sources, you go through stuff. I started sleeping
more after working with you on that. Really, I mean,
(27:45):
let me just say that, I actually think people are like,
how do you, like, how do you spend so much
time running and so much time in your job. There's
so many parallels, Like running really hard makes you better
at focusing during hard zoom meetings. Right. I would imagine
that concentrating during poker makes you a better interviewer because
you are better at concentrating, like you are learning like
similar skills. And if your hobbies and passions can reinforce
(28:09):
your job, like you're in a good spot.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
I mean, just some of the Marshmallow affects stuff too.
Maria can tell us whether the Marshallow study is accurate
or not. Right, But just like the routine practice of
having discipline, right, I mean, it's one of the most
basic things that most people are are too willing to
sacrifice the long term for the short term in terms
of happiness, right. And that can include like the long
(28:32):
term patience, Like you know, every article that I write
for my newsletter takes somewhere between four hours and like
four days, right, And like having the patience to say
I'm going to focus on this and not need a
quick hit when there's so many impulses like Twitter, for example,
and television, and I'm dating myself with television already, right,
But like everything else is such instant gratification where this
(28:52):
seems like this seems like a very different course to
choose in life.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Totally, And I feel like one of the things I
definitely believe is that discipline is chumutal it. Right, if
you make your bed, like you do something disciplined and
correct first thing in the morning, that makes it easier
to do the next thing discipline and correct ad nauseum. Right,
And sometimes you need to let your mind relax and
take a break. But like, discipline builds discipline, and so
(29:18):
I actually.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Think that.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Running hard, you know, makes it easier to focus and
do discipline things through the rest of your day in
your life.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Pam, We'll be right back after this break. Can ask
a very basic, I guess running question, right, of course, please,
(29:57):
how do you pace yourself? Right? Because like I will
run you know, five k's not ultra marathons, God forbid, right,
and like, you know, I'm not having sure what my
goal is necessarily, but it's it's hard to like avoid
going out too fast or too slow. And when you're
planning twenty six point two miles or what's it's like
(30:19):
thirty one miles, right, ultra marathon? How do you pace yourself?
And decide like a what point place do I think
I should be running and be how has my body
like achieved that pace?
Speaker 2 (30:32):
That's so good? All right, So short answer, a long answer, Nate.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
We have a whole hour long, long answered, Nick. All right.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
So as you get older, you know, one of the
advantages of getting older is you have all this data
on yourself, right, And so you know how you've run
in previous races. You know all the workouts you did
before those races, and you know how those workouts you know,
project to future races or like I do. And so
before I begin a marathon, I have a general sense
of how fit I am compared to previous marathons.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
So then I make a goal.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
So this would be a marathon of fifty k or
a fifty miler, and I project out either what I
think i'm cap or I project out what is my goal,
like I want to break a record, I want to
set a world leading time, whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
And then I work backwards and I make a plan
for the race. And so.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
The last race I ran and really cared about was
the Lake Warmog fifty miler, right, and I wanted to
run the American record for my age group, which meant running.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Basically six forties or six thirty eights per mile for
fifty miles.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And so I then kind of projected, can I possibly
do this based on my workouts, based on what I've
done before? Okay, made a plant, and so I made
a plan for every mile, like what I would run,
what I would plan to run. So then while I'm running,
I'm basically I'm measuring three things. I'm measuring my splits.
So am I running six thirty eight pace? Or if
my plan is to start at six forty five and
(31:54):
drop to six thirty two? Am I running the pace
that I have planned and projected and think I can
do based on data inputs that I have. That's input
number one right, second input what is my heart rate?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
And so heart rate is super important.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
If you measure on your wrist, it's a useless indicator
because there's too much noise, right, there's bone, your hand moves.
You have to measure it on your arm. Everybody screws
this up, all the runners do. You got to put
it on your chest to your arm right. Once you
do that, you get accurate readings on your heart rate.
So then you've got a second data signal, and then
that can override. And so if my heart rate is
above X and I'm running a certain pace, I know
I can't sustain it for fifty miles or twenty six
(32:30):
point two. So that's input number two. And then input
number three is feel right, and so I know how
I should feel at a certain point in a race,
and so then that can override heart rate or pace.
And so then as you run in an optimal, ideal scenario,
everything is working as planned. So in that like warmog race,
I'm running six thirty five, my heart rate is like
you know, basically, let's say it's one twenty five in
(32:52):
the first twenty miles and I feel nothing right, and
if I can sustain that, then I'm in good shit.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Then what happens is as the race progresses.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
A you like you lose your brain right, you can
no longer think, you can no longer trust yourself right,
you start to make bad decisions, and you start to
go too quickly or you start to go to slowly.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
But the goal is to be able to hold off.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
And make good decisions as long as you can about
how you pace yourself based on all of those inputs. Also,
I should add you have to like look very carefully
at the weather, you have to look very carefully at
the wind, and you have to think about like are
you to be able to run in a group of
runners and how does that affect your pace? So that's
a kind of complicated answer.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Is that how you do your five k's Nate?
Speaker 4 (33:31):
No? No, But what's frustrating is like I've gotten good
at like running exactly that distance. Right. The other day
my partner and I were trying to run a little
bit longer, and like at exactly three point one three miles, right,
I hit a wall pretty much right, And so like, yeah,
I think you're applying a lot more precision. But let
me let me ask what worth is your goal? You'll
(33:54):
say you're running a marathon for simplicity's sake. Should you
feel totally wiped out at the end? Is that a
proof that you optimally targeted the right amount of effort
and pace or do you want to feel still able
to walk around and not totally beat up?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
You want to feel.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
You do want to feel wiped out, but you don't
want to feel like you're wiped out until the very
last step, because if you, like most people who feel
wiped out at the end of a marathon. Push too
hard early and so then they've crushed themselves in the
last five miles, three miles, ten miles or a death march,
and you're gonna run a terrible race. And so feeling
(34:35):
wiped out is like necessary but not sufficient for having
run your optimal pace. But like your optimal pace is
you actually feel like you. I think of it as
you have one hundred pennies in your pocket, right and
you're spending them through the race, and the last foot
you spend, the last or the last quarter mile you
spend the last one. You often will spend all one
hundred pennies by mile twenty one, and then it's just hell.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Let me ask a question for people who are not
hardcore runners, but maybe more casual runners. What's your favorite
place to run in or around New York City.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Well, Prospect Park is amazing, right, I love it. There's
also a loop I love to do where you know,
I run out to the verizono. You run out on
the boardwalk onto the Verizona, you run on the boardwalk
in Corney Island, you come back on Ocean Avenue. Obviously,
that's a long run for people. But that's cool. I
do you think that, like along the Brooklyn Navy Yard
is a really good spot. I love the bridges right, Like,
(35:29):
we're a lot of wear and tear on your knees
going back and forth across the bridges. But you know,
running across like Williamsburg and back on Brooklyn is awesome
in the morning before it gets you crowded.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
So we have a few more like serious questions. But
since Nate asked this, I'm going to give you just
a lightning round of very quick questions about running for
people who care about that. All right, best time of
day to run.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Sunrise?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Okay, oh that's beautiful. I sleep through sunrise.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
Mostly surprised me about you, Maria.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yes, I'm not a morning person at all. Least dependable body.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Part digestive system huh.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
The blood flows away and it gets jostled, so you
get a lot of stomach upset, which is kind of surprising.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
And non runners, Wow, that's yeah, that's very surprising. Pre
run rituals.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
I stretch, I have a very like legitimate nutrition routine,
and then I watch samu Wan Duro winning the Chicago
Marathon back in like two thousand. I can't remember what
year it was, but like there's this incredible recording samu
Won Duro since passed away, but he's racing this guy
Kebdet and they're just going back and forth and back
and forth.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
It looks like Sammy's just like.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Cooked and cooked and cooked and then he just destroys him.
And I'm not sure what Chicago Marathon is, but I
just always google like one jury cabadet Chicago Marathon and
I watch it like an hour before whenever marathon I'm running,
and it's great.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Carbloating, do you carbload one day before a race, two
days before a race? How do you work that in?
Speaker 4 (36:59):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
I don't really like focus carbloating where you carb deplete
and then eat lots of carbs. I feel like you
hurt your immune system more than it's worth it, even
if it does help you store carbs a little bit.
I eat a sort of high density carbs Thursday races
on Sunday, I'll start on Thursday.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I'll be very focused on Friday a little bit on Saturday.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Okay, gels are choose, Jelos, what brand?
Speaker 3 (37:19):
I think Morton is pretty good at it, But you
want to mix them up because you don't want palate fatigue.
You want so you want to like, you don't want
to get too used to something because then it'll make
you sick. And so A you rotate them and B
you try to suck them now without tasting them fascinating.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, this goes this goes to your to your gut
answer as well. Yeah, all right, what's the best rice
New York City Marathon? Okay, what about the Northeast Harboro
Road Race.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, it's amazing, but they canceled it. So sad that
was it. I love that race so much.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
But yeah, the New York t amer you can't beat
the marathon, but the Northeast Tarborough Race close second.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
All right, and let's let's uh end the lightning round
with a very risky business question. And you know, because
we talk about being d gens all the time and
gambling and all of that, what's the most djeny thing
that you've ever done for the sake of running?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
And with djen as in like degenerative.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
No, oh, Nate, we've got we've got a we've got
a djen newbie. Yeah, So when you're when you're a djen,
is someone who takes maybe a little bit too much
risk that they shouldn't be taking in the moment, makes
a bad decision. Someone like, for instance, if you're a
poker player, but then you decide to like use part
(38:30):
of your buy and to play slots, which you should actually.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Your dad might play slots.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Degen leaning, I don't mean to make anything about sexuality
or anything else, but like, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Mean there's definitely a lot of DGEN and sexuality that
is true.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
That's interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
It's like, I mean, you've tried so hard, right, basically,
like running a mile too hard to stay with the
group is a basic DGEN move that everybody needs. But
the most DGEN thing that I've done in a race
or just in training either one. I mean, okay, so
literally this is good. Last Saturday, I ran the Grand Canyon, right,
uh huh. And I was running with like two folks
(39:11):
who with very intense jobs. The group people both like
two of them had very intense jobs and also had
like to catch flights back to be with their kids, right,
And so we had to complete it in a certain
amount of time, and a we like didn't really pay
attention to signs, which meant we added an extra like
thousand feet of climbing and five miles of running and
then b we like, we're so focused on getting to
(39:33):
the airport that we like, we ran as fast as
we could up the cans, like a twenty seven mile run.
And then I was like, guys, you have five minutes
to shower and pack, right, And they're like ten minutes,
all right, find ten minutes to shower and pack. And
so we packed and showered in ten minutes after running
the Grand Can and drove like ninety miles an hour,
got through the airport, barely made our flights, and it
was not great for the people next to us and
(39:54):
everything else or our suitcases.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
You know, I am the world record holder for age
forty to forty nine year old men at the Denver
Airport trying to catch a connecting cart. Are you really? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
Do you run? Do people run faster mostly when they're inner?
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Yes, And that's a super interesting question of why, right,
Like what is it about the psychology and physiology of
being in a race? But it is totally different, and
you're able to reach a mental space and extract like
a percentage of maximum effort that is much higher than
at any other point.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
There's a beautiful moment in your book when you talk
about this when you try to run a marathon yourself
in Prospect Park and it's much tougher than when you
actually have.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
It's like there's a magic of being out there and
having people cheer you on. But of course it also
creates this dgen risk where you can like go too
fast because you're trying to like appeal to the crowd,
and then you cook yourself. But it's very different like
running by yourself, running with one person, running with a group,
running a race, you run totally different speeds.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
What's your goal for this marathon this year?
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Nick, It's this is the weirdest build up I've ever had.
So I've had two little injuries, I've had this weird
thing that happened last week. But I would love to
be able to run two forty three thirty seven, which
would be one second faster than I ran in two
thousand and seven, which is when I ran thirteen seconds
faster then when I got sick.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
All right, Well, that is a very good goal, and
I think a really lovely note on which to end this,
even though we could go on forever, but.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
So much fun.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
You guys.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
It's so interesting because you have such interesting ways into
this from your like poker thinking writing backgrounds.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
This we should go on for hours.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
But unfortunately you have a magazine to run. Nick, thank
you so much for joining us once again. The book
is the running ground. It is wonderful. You guys should
all buy a copy, and Nick, you should return to
editing and be my editor again. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
You should send me another nine hundred page story memo.
Thank you so much for having me on. Maria, thank you, Nate.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot FM.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaa Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia
Jean Ka and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there, Thanks for tuning in
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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