E65 — Nicholas Thompson

Nicholas Thompson is an author and a journalist, a musician, and one of the smartest people we know. But before and beyond that, Nick is a runner.  Marathons, ultramarathons, cross country, ripping around a park with a kid, running to work, rain, fog, sleet, hail. Nick is ready to hit the trail. And he has new book out called The Running Ground: A Father, A Son, and the Simplest of Sports. Host Feet Banks digs into that, writing, Nick's secret to productivity and more! nickthompson.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Well, alright, kiddos. It's time to sharpen up those edges and grease up your chains. We are gonna live it up mountain life. Dropping in five, four, three, two, one.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

You can run mountain lifers, but you can't hide because we're already here, right in your ear hole, ready to suck your brains and eat your knowledge. Actually, no, it's the opposite. My name is Feet Banks, and thank you for tuning in to episode 65 of the Live It Up with Mountain Life Podcast. We're not gonna eat your knowledge. The goal is actually to give you knowledge because Nicholas Thompson is on the pod. Nick is an author and a journalist, a musician, and one of those people that just really loves running. Marathons, ultra marathons, cross-country, ripping around a park with a kid, running to work, rain, fog, sleet, hail. Nick is ready to hit the trail. And he has a new book out called The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports. But before we get into the book and a gazillion other things, let's take a break to hear from our pod partners and friends over at Citizen Watches. Time is important in the mountains. Out there in the wild, missing a rendezvous or misjudging how much daylight is left can have dire consequences. For over 100 years, Citizen have been known for creating quality time pieces and embracing ideas and actions that elevate society above self and respect the planet we love to explore. Need an altimeter or a pro quality dive watch? Citizen's Pro Master series provide functionality, durability, and the spirit of adventure, up in the air, on land, or at sea. With a huge line of professional grade, sport-inspired designs, Citizen keeps you on time and makes every minute count. Find your next perfect timepiece at citizenwatch.com. Better starts now. Oh man. If you're looking for a new watch, check out the Citizen Pro Master Tough. That's the one I've always had my eye on, and not just because it has all the numbers on the face either. But even without the numbers, I can tell you right now it's time to get comfortable because one of my favorite writers, media commentators, and overall magazine role models is on the show today. These days he's the CEO of The Atlantic, a super prestigious and trustworthy American magazine and publisher. But I first came across Nicholas Thompson probably in 2018 or so, when he was the editor at Wired magazine, that seminal technology publication that seemed to only get better and better with each issue Nick headed. On his LinkedIn page, Nick still does a daily video post where he talks about what he thinks is the coolest thing in tech that day. Sometimes it's an AI thing, a new robot, a program, a problem, a solution, whatever. The videos are short and you can learn a lot, and Nick is one of the best things on the interwebs. But that's not really what any of this is all about. Because beyond and before that, Nick is a runner. He grew up running with his dad, and other than a short blip in high school where he hung up the shoes for a moment, he basically never stopped. He's run the New York Marathon 12 times. His fastest outing was at age 44 when he threw down a blistering time of 2 hours, 29 minutes. Nick also holds the 50 kilometer record for men aged 45 to 49, 3 hours, 4 minutes, and change. 50 kilometers. And he wrote a book, The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports, is part family memoir, part scientific journal, and all heart and inspiration. It's about relationships, self-worth, discipline, and passion, and how a lot of times we can overcome anything if we just start by putting one foot in front of the other. So let's get into it. Here's me trying to keep up with Nicholas Thompson. Perfect. So Nicholas Thompson, accomplished runner, author, journalist, editor. I consider you one of the great thinkers of our era. But for this magazine, Mountain Life Readers, we're we're uh adventure driven, and I love a good hook. So to start, I wanted to ask you about that time you got kidnapped by drug dealers in Morocco.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

Yeah. Um, you want me to tell you that story?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah, like a quick version if you can. I know you wrote about it, but I haven't read that. But kidnapped by drug dealers is a sounds like a good story.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

It was a good story. I mean it was only a sentence in my book because the book is really running focused. But um, I was 22 years old and I was I had been fired from my first job and decided that I was gonna take the opportunity of being unemployed to travel through Africa. And I got a lonely planet guide and brought my guitar and headed headed to Africa. Just figured I'd take buses and stay in hostels. And I show up in Tangier's in the north of um Morocco, and day one, and I'm sitting in the train station, I'm gonna take the train down, I think it was to Castle Bloc or Marrakesh, whichever one is north. And I'm playing guitar. This guy comes up, he's like, Hey man, it's Ramadan. You want to come back to my house for a feast? And I'm like, I don't know. And I'm with a friend. My friend's like, dude, that is sketchy, no way. And my friend is like, I'm going to Castle Block, I'll see you there tomorrow. I was like, dude, I'm going to Ramadan and we're gonna play guitar with this guy. He loves Led Zeppelin. And so, and then I asked this like older, like older lady, I'm like, she's like, it's fine, nothing to worry about. It's Ramadan. And then like I get in the guy's car and he starts like driving fast in circles, and like, oh man, this isn't going well. It takes me back to his house, like, shoves me in a bathroom, locks the door. And uh, but he's kind of a kidnapper without a plan. And it's not like this is like pre-9-11. There's not like some established, like, let's like, let's kidnap the you know, Americans and like ransom them. And then um, you know, middle of the night, he and his brother are there, they're like smoking weed, they're talking in Arabic, and then they like reveal their plan, which is something like, you know, we're drug dealers, we want you to sell our drugs in New York. And I'm like, how is that gonna work? Like, what you're gonna like, I'm gonna go back to New York, you're just gonna mail me drugs and I'm gonna sell them. I was like, okay, whatever, right? And uh eventually you the the saving grace, and this is kind of it leads to another story, which is pretty interesting. So they go through all my stuff and they they they like find nothing. They just find these clothes. I had a passport, right? I had money, a couple hundred bucks or whatever I had, traveler ships, and I had like a mini computer, but it was all hidden in the lining of my backpack.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

And I had a special like smuggler's backpack that had been made to me by a friend who was in this environmental organization. The side note is that friend would later be part of the group that like burned down the animal testing facility at Yale. And then he went on the run for like 15 years and was just captured in Cuba a couple years ago. So I had this amazing backpack that had everything hidden. So they went through it all and we're like, this guy's got nothing. Like, what are we doing? Like, we've got a hobo, right? And so they eventually just like not eventually, the next day they kicked me out. And um, I like sort of wandered to train station and went to find my friend. Now, the amazing, so I had like 60 bucks, 60 bucks like in the outer part of the pocket. Yeah. So they took 60 bucks, and so I go and I see my friend, he's like, Man, just to only have spent 60 bucks and they get a story like that, that is worth it. I'm like, you asshole, right? Like, I just went through hell. I was scared for my life. I was locked in a bathroom, right? I thought these guys could have killed me. And he's like, Oh, what a story. But he was right, you know, and then and then I ended up writing about it. So I you know, I spent a couple months in Africa and I wrote an essay that got published in the Washington Post, and it was about my time in Africa, and it began with uh getting kidnapped, and so kind of helped me grow. Yeah, an early boost for your career, totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

So thank you, Muhammad. Was there ever a chance to run while you were with those guys?

SPEAKER_03 7:39

I don't think so. Okay, I didn't know where I was, right? Right. Like I like I didn't well, like I wasn't in Tangier, I was somewhere else. They'd driven me for a while.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Crazy. Crazy, good, good, good times. So like you said, that's only one line in the new book, but it stood out to me. But I have the book, you know, uh The Running Ground, a father, a son, and the simplest of sports.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Um it's very much about your life growing up as it is about the physical act of running. Um without giving too much away. Can you take us back to the to the beginning? And and like when did you first realize running was gonna be your thing?

SPEAKER_03 8:19

Well, I first ran with my dad, you know, he's training for New York City Marathons. It was right before my parents split. I was five or six years old, and I ran a couple miles with him. He'd take me out, I loved it. But I wasn't the moment it became my thing was when I was a sophomore in high school. And my dad had left. I'd become a basketball player, a tennis player. I was into all these other sports, and I show up at this, you know, elite, you know, tough high school. Everybody's good at something, and I think I'm gonna make the varsity basketball team. And I've been recruited at other schools, I've been captain of my grade school team. I show up, I don't make the varsity. Okay, too bad. And then I don't make the JV. It's kind of lame. And then I don't make the J V too, right? So now I'm a loser. Um, and I go and the only sport you could go to was track. And so I like go down to the track, and the guy's like, go run the two mile, and I run the two mile, and I'm not very good. And I just it's like kind of a hard period in life where I just wasn't succeeding at all in any way whatsoever. And high school's hard, right? Like you don't have your people, you don't have your like, you don't stick out, and like you're at, I was at Phillips Andover, right? If you're like kind of mid at everything, you feel like a loser. And um so track season continues. I run all these like 1140s for two miles, which is not very fast. And then it comes the final race of the year, New England Championships, and I'm like, I'm gonna run 1130, right? That'd be great. And that's I think 22 seconds a lap around 150 meter, 150 yard track. And the race is at this other school and it's at 160 yard track, but I don't know that. And so I go out and I run, you know, I 22 seconds a lap, but you run 22 seconds a lap on 160 yards, and boom, you're actually running 520s, not 545s. Right. And I didn't even realize how fast I was going. And I finished the race in 1048 and I set a sophomore class record, and it was like, what the hell? And that was the moment started.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

And and is that the same uh the line in the book that stood out for me was uh, you know, to do it, I had to first forget that I couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

Yeah, that's totally it. Right. And that was like, it's an amazing lesson in life, right? Where if you had asked me before that race, what are the odds that you can run a 1048? I would have said 0.00. What are the odds that you can run an 1120? Not a one in a thousand, right? Because you've yeah, you really have focused so hard on running like 545s, 540s, right? And I'd never run a 520 mile in my life. And the notion I could run two of them back to back was absurd. And somehow I did it. And it's like this reminder that sometimes what's limiting you is your own belief system. Now, you can't just break, I can't like, you know what? Right now, Nick can go run a two-hour marathon, right? And I'm gonna go like take off this blazer and go run a two-hour marathon through the streets of New York. There are real physiological limits, but sometimes you don't know exactly where the line is.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yeah, I I mean that's an incredibly valuable lesson. You know, now later in life, you put it in a book, it speaks to someone like me. But as a young person, like, did that realization sink in right away when you were young, or did that take a while?

SPEAKER_03 11:22

It took a while. Like, I didn't quite, I'm not sure when I had that realization that I did, I don't know when I had like a sophisticated analysis of like mental limits and breakthroughs. Yeah, I just was like, damn, like, whoa, I can run a 1048 now. Like, let's see what I can do next. And, you know, then I was down that path that every young runner goes through where you start getting faster, you start doing well, and you're like, huh, maybe I can run 1038, maybe I can run 1028, maybe I can run 10 flat, right? Maybe I can run 930. And you just kind of just like go faster and faster and faster.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

For for our readers that obviously haven't read the book, you know, um, in 2021, you you set a record for your age group in the 50 kilometer for age 49 to 49. You've done the New York marathon 12 times, your fastest time was at age 44. You're running faster in your 40s than you ever have in your life.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

I I was, yeah. Not my last marathon wasn't necessarily faster feet, but you know, many of my marathons in my 40s were quite a bit faster.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

And how much of that comes down to a different training regime and how much of it comes down to mindset?

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Um, 70% mindset, 30% different training regime. Uh, you know, like I came. So what happened is I ran a 243 marathon, which is fast, right? That's like 610 per mile. Like that's fast. And I ran that when I was 30. It was very cool. It was a you know, very great moment for me. Then right afterwards, like days, I get diagnosed with thyroid cancer. And I go through this, you know, I go through hard stuff. It's not pancreatic cancer, it's thyroid cancer. I'm young, I'm gonna make it. Yeah, but it's hard. And I finally come back, and it takes me two years to get back. And I run the marathon again and I run it again in 243, which is amazing, like one of the greatest moments of my life. And so the book, first real chapter of the book, is a minute-by-minute recounting of that second 243. Then I get stuck for like 13 years, or all I can do is run 243. Like I just like over and over and over and over again. Um, and I think what happened was I wish I had remembered that lesson from high school. Like, I just couldn't conceive of going faster. I couldn't imagine running a marathon faster than six minutes per mile. And then finally, in my mid-40s, I get these new coaches. I become part of this program with Nike, you know, this great guy, Steve Finley. And like they start structuring a new program and they start making me eat a little bit differently, and I start like paying attention to other stuff. I train more miles, I do the harder workouts. But really, what they're doing is retraining my mind and making me believe in myself again. And then suddenly it's like, oh, I ran a 238, and huh, that was pretty good. And then it's like the next marathon, whoa, 234, right? That's like getting better. And then 229. And for folks who aren't marathoners, like these five-minute jumps doesn't sound like much, but it's night and day, right? Like when you're a 234 guy, you can't conceive of being a two, like nobody goes 234 to 229. It's very, very hard. Um, and I just made these like jumps from 243 to 238 to 234 to 229. Um, and at 229 at age 44 is very fast. Um, and you know, then I set the American, I mean then we had COVID, right? So it stopped. And I was like, I'll go, I'll go 225, right? And but it stopped COVID, came out of COVID, set the American record in the 50k, and then I've had like since then I've you know haven't been able to run that fast in the marathon. Um, but I did, you know, you know, run some fast 50 mile times and done well in some 100k races.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

I know I mean a lot of our mountain life readers and and and listeners are uh more on the sort of trail running side. And I know you've done some of that as well. What's what's you talk about running a marathon and like finding the direct lines of attack and the flat part of the road and stuff? What's the mindset for you know stumbling over roots and mud and rocks and side hills? And is it is it a similar mental uh focus kind of process for you?

SPEAKER_03 15:13

No, because in the marathon, like when you're in a road marathon, like there's all this crap you think about, like all these like little optimizations, right? And like, you know, I I I really do think about like running on the shady side of the street and like running in the tangent and you know, optimizing exactly like can I get somebody but behind me so they're actually creating air bubbles and pushing me forward and someone in front of me so they're blocking the wind. And like when I grab a paper cup, I'm like twisting the top and I'm drinking it. I'm trying to be as efficient as possible with my arm. I'm like literally trying like not to look at my watch because it takes energy to look at your watch because you're really being precise.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Right, it's almost math, you're almost just calculating endless math.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

Endless math, right? Because you know, when I ran that 229, like my goal was to run 229.59, right? And so, you know, that's I ran the first half of that marathon in 114.59, right? When I ran my 50k record, I can't remember exactly, but I believe my 10 mile splits were um I think they were like 5920 for 10 miles and then like 5917 and then like 5912, right? Something like that. You know, like very precise. And like when you're running in a mountain, like if you try to be precise, you're like, I'm gonna run an 1115 that first mile. Who like because you're gonna stub your toe and you're gonna like your leg's gonna be bleeding, you're gonna fall on your face, right? And like you're certainly not gonna have somebody blocking the wind, and like who the hell knows what the grade is? And maybe it's gonna start raining, maybe you'll get stung by a bee, you know, like all this stuff happens when you're running a mountain race. And so, like the first time, first couple times I ran these mountain ultrasound, I was trying to, I kind of had that marathoners mentality, yeah, and it didn't work, right? It's just like you're doomed. You go in there and you're like trying to optimize stuff and you're planning everything. Because the the problem with like planning for all this precision is you get knocked off a little bit and it can mess with your head. But in a mountain race, like you're gonna be knocked off within like 30 seconds, so you just gotta go in and have a totally different attitude.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

One of the parts of the book that I really like is you know, it is a a memoir, it's about you, it's about running, but you do you talk to other people, right? You talk to these other, you know, famous or known to you coaches, athletes, and you talk to Bobby Gibb, the first woman to run the to run the Boston Marathon. And one of the things she talks about is her youth just unplugging and being able to run and no intervals, no times, and just running. But how often as a competitive runner do you allow yourself to do that kind of running where there's no watch, there's no time, you're just hauling ass over the landscape.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

I probably don't do any runs where I don't keep time, right? Um because I'm I'm logging them all on Strava, you know, and I'm but yeah, I don't know. Like last week I ran, you know, I don't know, four and a half hours out in Aspen and uh up, you know, up to this place called Warren Lakes from town. I didn't care at all. I wasn't looking at this at all. I just turn the watch on when I start and like don't look at it, and then I finish and I press stop. Um, and I'm not listening to stuff, I'm just trying to like be one with nature and trying to be like Bobby, right? So when Bobby ran, he's got this beautiful spiritual approach. She's like, you know, your feet hit the ground, your head's up in the sky, your head's towards the heavens. It's amazing that you can do this. And, you know, she trained for her first marathon. She's the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. She trains for it by getting in this little minivan, driving across the country and sleeping in a different park every night, and then like running with her dog, like until the sun sets, and then like laying a blanket on the ground and sleeping. Like, how awesome is that? Like the woman's just she's this like gender pioneer. She runs this marathon at a time where women aren't allowed because like the official organizers feel like if women run, their ovaries will fall out. And so she goes and she sneaks into the Boston Marathon and she runs it in like 315 in nursing slippers and a bathing suit, right? Like, what a badass! Like, she's incredible. No one remembers her as the woman who won run the Boston Marathon because the next year a woman runs it, and like there's this famous photograph of the woman getting knocked off the course. Everybody thinks that woman is the first woman to do it, but she's not. Um, Bobby is. And um, you know, Bobby's just that woman is awesome, Kathleen Switzer. Praise her, bless her. But like Bobby Gibbs, amazing. And um, I was lucky to get to spend a lot of time with her and tell her story.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

And did like, you know, you're on a track team in high school. You when did that sort of spiritual side of running sort of take root of you or or reveal itself?

SPEAKER_03 19:42

That's such a good question because I kind of think that what happened is I mean, a little bit from the get-go, like I always love to run in forests. I always like even in high school, like if something bad would happen, I get dumped or whatever. Yeah, um, I go for a run. But I didn't really think of running as a spiritual release or something that would, you know, bring me, bring me closer to God, whatever that means, whoever that person wants to take that. But to me, running can be a very spiritual thing. And the funny thing about it is that I run at high school and then I go to Stanford and amazing track team. And I, you know, I drop off it after a year. And as I was writing, and the story I'd always told myself was that I dropped off because I didn't have enough talent, right? I've been a guy who ran 930 for two miles in high school, and these other kids had run nine flat. But now that I see how fast I've run, obviously that wasn't true. Like I had the talent. And I think what happened is I like didn't understand how valuable running can be emotionally. And so because all I cared about was like being fast, I just was sort of as intimidated by everybody else and quit. And if I had like understood the spiritual reasons for running, I would have stuck with it, and then my talent would have revealed itself. And I would have, you know, I would have been on the team and I would have been reasonably good. Um, but to your question of when I first uncovered that, you know, there's a run I remember, and I don't write about it in the book. I I wrote it in a draft and cut it out. But I was about to get married because I was 29 years old, and I was running in um East Rock, either East Rock or West Rock, the big one in New Haven. And um I was running like this 15-mile loop, and I remember writing like my wedding toast and like really understanding something profound about like my marriage and my coming life. And um it was like one of the first times where like running was I realized like you can actually do your best thinking, and the most important stuff in your mind can happen while you're outside in the woods. Um, so maybe it was there, maybe it was later when I started running the escarpment trail, this awesome 30k mountain race. Um you know, I I don't know exactly when it was.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yeah, yeah. I I it's interesting when you talk about writing that speech in your head while you're running and and you know, there's a link, there seems to be a link between writers and running. Uh you posted, I think not long ago, a nice paragraph from Joyce Carroll Oates. Yeah. Oh nice, I'm glad you saw that.

SPEAKER_03 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah. And then I I assume you know the Mirakami book on running. Of course, of course. And and the Atlantic even ran a piece, you know, why writers run in twenty fifteen. Um in your regular life, you're you're a writer, a journalist, CEO of the Atlantic. It's it seems from you know, from this end of the continent, like a very busy, hectic life. How much how much of a role does the running play in your creative process and also in just your professional management of the day-to-day grind? Because you run every day almost, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:30

I run every day. You know, I run to and from the office. Um, and so I'm, you know, when I run in, if I have like yesterday, I often what I'll do is I'll think about the hardest thing I have to think through that day. So I had um, you know, some annual reviews, which are like a hard thing to do when you're the CEO, right? You're because you're reviewing people who are very senior in the organization. And what you need to do is, you know, help them do better at a job they already do exceptionally well. And so, you know, that was the hardest thing I had to do yesterday. So when I went in on my run, I was like, okay, I'm gonna think through that. Today, when I ran in, I just felt like I was like a little behind on the news. So I was listening to the news to catch up, right? So you're doing like a little bit of like mental processing. You know, no one's people probably aren't calling you. Like occasionally I'll take a phone call when I run, but like you're you're kind of on your own, you're running through Brooklyn, you're crossing the bridge. Um, so I do think there's like a it's a a kind of a reset time, uh, and it's also kind of mental processing time. You know, when I run like 20 miles on the weekend, often I'll be thinking through hard things, or you know, when I was running in aspen, like thinking through what my goals for the new year are. So it's a pretty, it's a pretty important part of my day. There's an interesting question. Like, would I be better at my job if I quit running? I would be for like the first couple months because I'd have a little more time. Yeah, I think I'd be worse eventually.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah, I I agree. I I wonder if there's a difference for the brain if you're running through the city or running through the forest. Is yeah, are you are you solving the same problems or does it shift more to a more creative world out in nature?

SPEAKER_03 23:58

It shifts to a more creative world out in nature. You can't like well, A, like when I'm out in nature, I'm not listening. I like it won't have headphones in, right? And I'm just like, you know, because because there's there's like there's birds, there's you know trees, right? Um when I'm running through the city, like I have headphones in in part because like the damn train is so loud, you've kind of counteract it, right? Like, yeah, um, so I'm I'm I force myself into a different spiritual space or mental space. And then I think also when you're running in nature, you just different things happen in the body. You know, you're you're it's what your ancestors did, it's what we're supposed to be doing. Like we were, as they say, born to run. And like there's something primal that happens while we run. Like we like did legitimately used to chase down antelopes, right, on the savanna. And you'd run long distances, and we're actually better at going like 30 miles than an antelope is, much more. Yeah, so there's something profound that happens when you just go out and do that.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Yeah, that was how we got them, right? Is we were better at endurance, they were faster, but the humans could run longer and they eventually we wear them out, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:01

The cheetah can sprint them down. We like we run them down slowly.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Uh obviously, running's been part of your life a long time. Uh, a lot of the book is about your relationship with your father. Yeah. I mean, this is your second book. The first one was about some figures in the Cold War, I think. So a bit of a pivot for this one. I'm wondering how did it come about? How long were you thinking about this? How long did it take?

SPEAKER_03 25:24

It took it took five years from the moment I thought I was gonna write it to the moment I finished it, um, which is a long time for not a very long book, but I have the day job. It started, it started when I was processing this question of why I had gotten so much faster in my 40s. And, you know, the realization that it was tied in with my cancer was like a pretty profound realization. And it made me think like, you know, there's a good story here, right? It's not just a question of like, you know, it's not just a story of like how VO2 max training works when you're in your mid 40s. It became like a question about something deeper. So that's when I thought I had a had an idea for a book. Um, and then, you know, just what was hard about it, I guess what took the longest was like getting the structure right. Because it's, you know, I tell you, it's the simplest of sports, but like really complex structure because it's not Nick's life, right? It's not Nick's life from childhood to adulthood. It's, you know, partly Nick's life, partly Nick's father's life, partly these other people, and then partly the physiology of the sport. And I wanted it to be chronological, I wanted it to be easy to read, I wanted it all to make sense. And so the hardest thing was this like puzzle of okay, where do we introduce this character? Where do we introduce this idea? Where's the simplest place to put this? Okay, what about this detail? Should it be in? Should it be out? And so endless iteration. I just did an analysis of my first draft and my final draft. And I think it was like um six percent of the sentences in the first draft were still in the final draft in the same place, right? Like a lot of work to make it all come together.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Is that you know, five drafts later, seven drafts? How many drafts were there in between the first and the final?

SPEAKER_03 27:06

120. And I mean like lots, like it depends on how you what you define as a draft, but like a tinker here, a tinker there, but no, no, like I I honestly think there are a hundred legitimately different drafts.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

Wow. Yeah, because I sent it to all these different people. I mean, I had one friend who read seven different drafts, right? And gave me like read them through full and like gave me sentence by sentence structural comments. You know, I had different characters, some of those characters, like Michael Westfall, I had not met when I started writing the book. Um, you know, the guy who, you know, the world's fastest runner with Parkinson's. Um, I had this initial concept when I started the book that I would write about like famous runners, like there'd be a chapter on Elliot Kipchoge, because it's like spiritual relationship. I was like, nah, I'm not gonna do famous runners, there's gonna be people I know. Yeah. Um, so all of these different changes, like the question of the kidnapping. You know, I had a version of this where there was a long description of the kidnapping, but the problem is it's not a memoir. And once you make it a memoir, well, then you have to put in a lot of other stuff.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Right.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

So, okay, so it's not a memoir. And if it's not a memoir, then you're not choosing stories based on how interesting they are, you're choosing whether they relate to running. And the kidnapping kind of slightly related to running because it showed sort of how disarray, how much in disarray I was as a young man at that point, which relates to my training. And so, like, once you have that, everything has to connect to the running part of Nick's life, then you apportion the length you give it. And so the kidnapping goes from three paragraphs to a sentence. And so it's that kind of choice that made it into as many drafts as there were.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Was this I mean, other than the structure and and that, was this a more difficult? There's a lot of personal detail and personal details about your family members. Did that make it harder to write than the Cold War book, which was I assume more just research focused?

SPEAKER_03 28:50

I mean, definitely. The Cold War book, um Yeah, when you're writing something that's personal, you're you're thinking about well, A, you're processing like your own thoughts about your dad, right? Or I was like figuring out what I believed about him. And that's a research project, but it's also this like emotional excavation.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

But then I was thinking the whole time, like, well, what's my mother gonna think when she reads this? Right? She's still with us, right? Like, yeah, how am I gonna describe my mother? What's my wife gonna think? What are my sisters gonna think, right? What are my friends gonna think? What are these people gonna think, right? When you write a book about the Cold War, everyone was dead. Um and so they're not looking over your shoulder. And you know, here they're they can look over your shoulder. So that just creates it creates a different kind of complexity.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Do you think it would have been the same book if your father was still alive when it came out?

SPEAKER_03 29:44

I'd like to think so, right? I'd like to think that that I didn't hold anything. I don't think I don't know if there's any, I guess uh I maybe would I've held anything back if he were still alive. I don't think so. You know, and he rewrote this note at the end of the end of his life. It's like Nick, you should write memoirs and you know tell the whole truth about me, and some of it will be hard for me to read. So I think it I I think it would have been the same, but I can't say that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

One of the one of my favorite parts of the book, um, as a you know, a very uh inexperienced rookie runner who really only started in my 40s because I kind of always believe like you don't run unless something's chasing you, but I'm definitely finding the value. But one of the things was uh, you know, for marathon you say for marathon training, you have to learn to run when you're hurt and hurt when you run. And I thought about like the the discipline that you exhibit in the book and that is required for real running. Were you always a disciplined person? Um, or does did the running build the discipline, or did the running become good because you already had the discipline, or was it a bit of both?

SPEAKER_03 30:51

I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, I think that I've in a way in a way I've always had discipline in the sense that I've always worked hard, I've always done my homework, I've always like I always show up at practice on time and I always do what the coach says to do, right? Always have, always will. Um But I also like if you if you ask the critics of me or people who've thought that Nick could do better, there's this like belief that like throughout my life, well, you should focus more, right? And so that's a different kind of discipline, right? The ability to like go to a soccer practice and then a tennis practice and pay attention to both, that's one kind of discipline. The ability to like go to two soccer practices in a row, right? That's a different kind of discipline. And so, you know, what my dad often said is like, come on, Nick, you like, you know, you do too many things at like 90%, right? You got to do some things where it's a hundred percent, like too many things where you get nine out of ten, you got to get 10 out of 10. And so that's a different kind of discipline. And you know, I've built a life where it kind of suits my personality and I do a bunch of stuff, right? I like run pretty hard, right? But I could probably run a little harder, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Um, and you know, you make a daily video for the internet, like that tends to be a little bit more than probably be better, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:00

You know, um, so I've kind of learned like there's some things in life where you have to do it 10 out of 10. There's some things in life that eight out of 10 will work, there's some times in life where six out of 10 is okay. And I try to like, you know, it's a discipline of knowing when to really do a 10, like the book's 10 out of 10. That's why I wrote all those damn drafts, right? You know, I, you know, maybe maybe the reader doesn't think it, maybe the reader does, but like that's the best I could do, right? I worked so hard on that thing.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Yeah, 100 drafts in five years with a full-time job and a family.

SPEAKER_03 32:33

Yeah. On the other hand, like I put this video on the internet yesterday about like how to make agents more adaptable with AI and like where that creates new business opportunities. I spent like 15 minutes from the time I like found the paper, read it, thought it through, posted it. Like, is that 10 out of 10? Sure not. Was it eight out of 10? Maybe. I don't know. You know, but like some things you gotta just do.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Out here, we call it, you know, my buddy has a house painting, had a house painting business. He called it good enough painting. Like it's not just good, it's good enough. Right. But for those internet videos, it is totally good enough, right? It's gonna be gone tomorrow because you're gonna make a new one.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Yeah, and like sometimes if it's about like a thing where the Atlantic's involved or it's really important, or I've got like something I care about, like, yeah, maybe you make it a 10 out of 10, but you know, you gotta kind of just go for it.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Well, the book's definitely a 10 out of 10 for me. Um Thank you, Pete.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

New York Times bestseller. I don't know what that means though. Is there is that a hard number? Like I see a lot of books called clay making that claim, but I don't really understand what it means.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

Well, so this so I didn't know this either until it begins, but there's three categories. There is New York Times bestseller, which means it's one of the top, I think, 15 books of that week in the New York Times list. But the New York Times list is like partly based on how much you sell and then all these other factors.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

National bestseller, which means either it's like two local papers um or USA Today, or just bestseller, which means like it's like the Baltimore Suns bestselling list. And so this was actually a national bestseller, and that for two weeks it made the USA Today list and the Baltimore Sun list.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Which is fantastic because it means people are reading, right? Which I know it's amazing. I've seen I've seen uh there's a lot of discourse around whether or not people are still reading. And I I thought about with your book, you you include a lot of old old letters to your father, old emails, Facebook posts. I wondered, are are you the kind of person that still will sit down and and hand write a letter or hand type and put it put a letter in the mail?

SPEAKER_03 34:29

I do. I do I in fact I write um not every day, but probably a couple a week. I have a 91-year-old aunt, and when I was young, she wrote me letters all the time, and she had gotten letters from her grandmother. And so she's in, you know, not the best state, physical state, and so I write her letters all the time just because I know she likes it.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

I I did the same with my grandparents, and it was handy to use a computer because you can just increase the font size as they age. Yeah. Um, do you think more people would read books or magazines if more people sent handwritten letters? Just the physical act of getting something in the mail and opening up and reading it, do you think that would translate into a broader reading experience for everyone?

SPEAKER_03 35:14

Good question. Um I mean, what has to like the the reason people don't read as much is the reason they don't do anything as much, which is who he's all the time has gone to Instagram and TikTok, right? Like, and you look at the amount of time that people spend on social media, and it's like four hours a day, five hours a day. You look at this pew survey of kids, and some of them are spending eight hours a day. And you know, I just look out my window, right? There's a dude walking down the street right now, like neck bent on his phone. Probably maybe he's on a map, right? But probably he's like checking his likes on an Instagram post. And you know, people would anything that would that got people off their phones would make them read more. Um, and so with the act of writing letters, I don't know, it depends. If you write a letter and then you're like, shoot, I only have four hours to scroll Instagram and you went and scrolled Instagram, but maybe it would also like the people who write letters, I think, are the people who read books.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Yeah.

unknown 36:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:05

But it's it's it's tricky. It's tricky. It's one of the hardest. I one of the things that we don't quite understand the consequences of are like, what are the consequences of having a generation of people under 30 who you know don't do what everybody else did for the last couple hundred years, which is read books and instead, you know, scroll posts. And you like you develop different skills and different habits of mind, and your brain you develops in different ways.

unknown 36:25

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

A lot of benefits from it, some costs.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

I I always well, you know, I have buddies and they they're on the internet all the time and they're processing so much information so quickly, and they kind of get spun out, and we see the rise of conspiracy theories and all that. And I always say, buddy, like get a book. A book forces you to take in the information slowly, it gives you time to ponder things and think about things as you're taking it in, as opposed to 15 articles about something in 25 minutes. So I and I agree, I feel like people either read or they don't, right? Like people that read books probably also read the cereal box while they're eating breakfast, right? Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

I mean, what's nice is that there's so many different ways to read, like half the books I read last year were audiobooks, like that didn't exist. Yeah. So like technology giveth and technology taketh. Um it's interesting that like the number of people who run marathons has gone way up, which I consider kind of a reaction to TikTok. Yeah, you know, it's a way to be off your phone for four or five hours.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Um and and do you think we, you know, we talk about social media? I've I've discovered this word yesterday, but there's run fluencers out there. Like, are you considered a run fluencer or what or do you know what they are?

SPEAKER_03 37:33

They're just people that run and inspire others, or yeah, they it's no, they're they're some of them are amazing, and they're like they're people who share their running journey and interview other runners and like do TikToks where they interview people on the run, or you know, some are kind of like con men who you know run to take their shirts off, they look really good, and they talk about VL2 Max and longevity and stuff they don't know anything about, and they sort of spread misinformation, and um, some of them are super smart and like spread a lot of good information. So I I I have no jet I have no general things to say about run flancers, but like some are great and some are crap.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

In the in in our neck of the woods, you know, a lot of these outdoor sports that we do, you know, hiking, skiing, backcountry skiing, um paddling, there it's it's too bad because the more people that go outside, the better people they're gonna be. But also, if too many people go to these places, you don't get that same experience. Is there such a thing as too much popularity for running? It feels like running might be immune to that.

SPEAKER_03 38:37

No, it's immune. Like it's I mean, it's hard to get into a race organized in New York City. Like, I can't get into any of these darn races, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Right.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Um, you know, you have to sign up so far in advance, but whatever. There's tons of races, there are tons of places to run.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Yeah. Running out of out of all the sports, running seems very tied to technology, like with the Strava, with the timing. Yeah, it's it's in the old days when you were young, you would just look at a watch on your wrist as you're running those laps.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

Yeah, it, you know, well, so when you're running those laps and you're running a race, they'll call it out, right? Right. But like when I was when I would run during the summer, right? And I would like the coach would say, run seven miles a week. Well, how would I know, right? Like maybe you drive your car down the road and you paint a line, right? Or you know that like this tree to that tree, you've measured once with your car, but kind of you're just making it up and right, and you're like figuring I'm running seven and a half minute miles, I ran 75 minutes, I went 10 miles, right? But maybe you didn't, maybe you went nine, maybe you went 11, right? And so, you know, I I used to always think that the reservoir around near my house was a mile, right? And it was actually 0.94 or something, right? So all my times are totally different, right? So now, you know, now you can run with all this data, right? Like I've got my my pace, I've got my cadence, I've got my power, I've got my heart rate, I've got my body, all this stuff, you know, and it's very useful. Um, but it's also different from the way it was 20, 30 years ago, and they're pluses and minuses.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

I always, I mean, some people run bare feet, right? I know you got some special shoes when you're doing like that would only work in some conditions, but is there something to say for like just also not getting too into the gear and the gadgets and not for and not letting that pull you away? Like we see it in mountain biking, where there are a segment of people that care more about the components of the bike than the experience of mountain biking or or identify with that more. Is is there a is there a danger that people are gonna forget about running just to run, just because of all this tech?

SPEAKER_03 40:24

Yeah, there's a couple of dangers. So one is like if you start to think it's math, uh you can kind of lose some of the spiritual connection to it, right? And there's another problem, which is you can become too dependent on the gear, and then you're like unable to do it without the gear. Like, oh my god, I can't run because I don't have my spot carbon shoes, right? Or, you know, I can only run, I run like four seconds per mile faster on my carbon shoes. I don't have my carbon shoes, so or like I'm trying to calculate the race. You can you can mess with your head, right? But barefoot running is super interesting, right? So there's that book, Born to Run, that came out maybe 15 years ago. And the book's awesome, right? It's these great stories about the Taromar Indians, these mountain runners, and it had this hypothesis that the shoe companies had kind of conned us and that you know big clunky shoes weren't actually better, that barefoot running is better. And so the book comes out, everybody reads it, such a good book, and starts running barefoot. They all get injured, right? Like it is actually like clearly better to run with shoes. And you are clearly faster if you run with shoes that have like really efficient light insulation, a little spoon at the front, right? Like they're all actually all kinds of innovations in shoes. And in fact, the way you put the spoon can affect your ankle stability and the like the size of the heel can really make a difference, right? So I actually I barefoot run, I try to run a mile a week barefoot. It's hard in the winter because it's cold here in the water.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

But like you're not not you're doing that on pavement or no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

I'm doing like on a golf course or like a like a soccer field. Okay, you know, I would never do it on pavement because it's just too much stress. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting about barefoot running, like when people start to barefoot run, their injuries go away because it puts different pressures, right? Maybe it hurts your Achilles and not your knee. And so if you had a knee problem, your knee problem goes away, but soon you have an Achilles problem, right? And it's kind of like anything. Like you go on a ketone diet, or you like I'm gonna go on an all-protein diet, you will like lose weight because you don't actually know what to eat for a while, right? Your body just sort of changes and the inputs change. What I learned from the barefoot running revolution is that you should like really shift the shoes around because it shifts the pressure and the pain and like so run with one shoe one day, run with other shoes another day. And then barefoot running in and of itself is cool. It does genuinely like it strengthen your foot muscles, right? Like these small muscles and your feet. It does like, it does teach your ankles something about stability. And I do think there's something like natural about it that's good. When I was in college, the coach would have us run barefoot on the um Stanford soccer field after workouts. So there's definitely something to it, but if you run like 10 miles a week barefoot, you're gonna either step on a nail, B, step on a heroin needle, or see like record your Achilles.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

Yeah, yeah. Uh speaking of gear, what are your thoughts on headbands?

SPEAKER_03 43:01

Headbands? Yeah, do you use one? No, I usually wear a hat.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03 43:06

Um, if it's cold. Headbands are cool though, right? Because like your ears get super cold, right? I was thinking, I was running on Sunday and I hadn't worn a hat and uh my ears were killing me. I was like, man, I wish I had a headband because my head is fine. I actually I'm not having a problem with temperature regulation, but you know, your hands get cold and your ears get cold. So go for it.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

And also, I think those retro two-stripe headbands look cool.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

Oh, yeah. Anything that makes you look like a 70s runner is good for me.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:31

Yeah, I'm like, I'm I love the band brand Tracksmith, which I think uh has taken some of the aesthetic from that.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Right. You you run kind of rain, sun, sleet, fog, hail, snow. Do you have any tricks that you can share with people that like you know, someone like me that wakes up and there's a and the weather's inclement and you're like, Man, I don't want to go. Like, d is there motivator things that would work for someone beyond you that you know of? I mean, just I mean you could

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Like they're kind of motivation tools for doing a streak, right? Like you can say, how many days in a row have I run? Right? That's like a cool thing. And then you can like have a friend and be like, you know, hey, you know, talk to your friend and like we're gonna each we're gonna run the next 21 days. That's the deal. We're gonna hold each other to it. And then maybe you learn the habit. Because the thing about running, like, pretty much you can do it in whatever, right? Like, yeah, because if it's cold, your body heats up, you know? And if it's hot, your body cools down, right? Your butt, and it's it's actually better for you physiologically to run in all these temperatures, you know? And it's very good physiologically to run when you're tired, to run when you're hungry, to run when you're hot, to run when you're cold. You teach these different adaptations that are good that are good. And so I I never worry about the weather, right? If it's super, super cold, right? It's like 10 below, you know, I put on mittens, right? Put on two layers, I wear wool socks, I put Vaseline on my nose, right? Like, and if it's a hundred degrees, right, you know, I put maybe I'll put ice in my hat, right? And I'll go run. And like you that'll help you for a little bit. I don't know. You do like, and if it's pouring rain, yeah, I wear contacts instead of glasses, or take my glasses off, like whatever. Yeah, you know, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Uh I think it's it's it it it you know, the development of good habits, the accountability of doing what you're saying to all these things, it it can make you a better person. It doesn't have to be through running, it can be through anything. But your father in the book talks about uh life's purpose being the pursuit of the awakening quest and and that never-ending sort of chase of betterment. And I feel like with running, for a lot of people, especially starting out, you can watch yourself get better quite quickly.

SPEAKER_03 45:42

Well, that's the thing about it, right? More than any other sport, right? The subtitle of the book is The Simplest of Sports. And the point is you can observe both your improvement and your decline, right? Right. Like, because you can go out there and you can run, you know, I see you've got a house, you can run like run a lamppost and time yourself, and you can run in 20 seconds, and the next day you can run in 19, and the next day you can run in 18, and then three months later you've gotten hurt and you can run in 22. And you're like, that's pretty good feedback on what your body is. And when you play tennis or you play soccer, you can't tell, right? Because there's a team and it's all these intricate little motions. Like, maybe you can tell you're getting better, right? You can't really tell. Um, you know, I have had an interesting experience. I was playing soccer with my 11-year-old and I haven't played soccer with him. I've been watching, I've been watching his games. I'm like, oh, he's a little bit better. And then I play against him. I'm like, God damn, he's gotten good, right? He just like shoves me off the ball immediately.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:36

It's like, whoa. And it's like, but I hadn't noticed it, right? Because it's harder to notice. Now, if I've been watching him run, I would have seen like, oh, he now he's running like 70 seconds per quarter. Now he's running 62, right? But if you're watching something and you don't know the time, you can't quite tell. So running just like it has this feedback loop, which is tighter. And tight feedback loops are good and they're bad.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

It I like that it has, you know, you can you can find immediate value in the destination. You cross a finish line, you beat a time, whatever. But then there's all these things we've talked about for clearing the head, the value in the in the act of getting there as well.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Um coming from your background, you know, with uh maybe different heavier expectations, right? Yeah, don't get four nines, get a couple tens. Um is is expectations that you put on yourself or from coming from an outside source, is that entirely beneficial? Can there be negative? You know, out here we say like a no expectations is the way to go through life. What are your thoughts on your your own expectations of yourself and those that come on others for you know career run running for everything?

SPEAKER_03 47:43

You know, I live in a world where I have really high expectations. And if you want to work at the Atlantic and you just want to chill, like I'm gonna get somebody better than you, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:58

Like you should come to Mountain Life if you want to just do like that.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

Yeah, and you have some people who come in, oh, it's a good place to work. You know, we're owned by this wonderful wealthy woman, right? Like it'll be cool. And like I know that for the editor-in-chief Jeff Goldberg, and for me, it's like, no, that's not the way it works, right? Like, we're trying to be the best magazine in the world, right? And we want to be better than every other magazine out there. We want to do better stories, we want to have better consumer marketing, we want to have better customer service than every other magazine in the world. And if you don't want to do that, go somewhere else, right? And they're different personalities for these different jobs. Now, am I like, are we perfect at finding people who you know work their asses off and you know, respond if you make? No. But, you know, that's definitely that's the world I grew up in. And it's the world I've always lived in. It's the world I expect to stay in. And it comes from my father, it comes from my grandfather, it comes from my mother, it comes from my sisters, right? Um, now I have a different view of my children, right? Like where you can, like, as a father, I will I model certain behavior, but like I never say to them, you know, I try very, I try that not say never. I don't like, I don't push them the way my father pushed me because it can also you can have like real triggering effects and can trigger someone to be quite unhappy or have a hard time. So it's different, it's different situations. Like, if I'm running with you, I don't care how fast you are. I don't, and like if you're on my track team, I don't really care how hard you try and your workout, it doesn't matter. Like we're all out there to run for different reasons and it doesn't matter. If you work at the Atlantic, like you better be committed, or else I don't want you here.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Yeah. I I I you in the book you talk about post-traumatic growth and you know the the mindset shift after beating cancer, after seeing what you're capable of, and just a little bit of a better perspective, maybe, of what matters to you personally, maybe not so much professionally. Um, have you ever found any other way to get like here in the mountains, we get it from losing friends. We lose too many friends to avalanches, you know, and it shows you what really matters. Have you found a way to get that sort of boiled-down perspective on life that doesn't involve, you know, trauma or or a you know, something like cancer or deep loss?

SPEAKER_03 50:00

But I think you can experience through reading, you can experience it through empathy, you can experience through religion. Like, I think there are a lot of different ways of getting a deeper understanding of life and like caring more and like thinking more and being more present. And you can get it. You know, I think religion is a really good way to get it. I think that certain kinds of meditation are a good way to get it. Now you can also separate yourself and you can like distance yourself from the hard questions of life and the hard moments of life. You know, you get it through experience as you get older. You know, I was probably fortunate to go through cancer when I was 30, right? And so, like I think it set my life on a much better track once I was through it. Um, you know, you hate to say it that I mean it's a little bit like that story of the kidnapping story you told me at the beginning, right? Like, right, so I where my friend was like, for 60 bucks, you got you got to go through that.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:50

You know, for you know, for like I came through if you can if you can get cancer and you can like feel like you're on the precipice, and then you can get through it, and you're actually totally clear, like you're a really fortunate individual. And I you know, I was lucky that happened when I was young.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

Yeah. Uh we'll we'll start wrapping it up, but you in the book you talk about the four states of mental bliss, uh, meditation, uh flow, catharsis, oneness. Um, you know, we in in the mountain sports we know a lot about flow. You know, it's really easy to not think about your taxes or the laundry when you're in a no-fall zone on your skis or your bike or climbing. How often do you get to those those last two states, the catharsis and the oneness?

SPEAKER_03 51:33

Catharsis is you know, to get to catharsis, you need to be in a state that requires being cathartic, right? And it's like you reach it when you're in like pain, and you go for a run, and you know, a friend of mine explained it, it's like if you can make yourself hurt while you run more than you hurt in your life, it helps you process the hurt in your life. And um you know, that's a pretty hard state. You don't want to you don't want to have to need it, but it's a good tool to have. And I don't know when the last time I was in so much trauma that like I had to run to kind of burn through it, right? I've been like in a stable, healthy marriage for 25 years. My kids are healthy, like you know, when my father died, my father died of a heart attack suddenly, and you know, there haven't been moments where you know, a lot of a lot of hard things have hit, but they hit and they hit in ways that are almost predictable. And like catharsis is more like someone dumps you all of a sudden. Like I remember this in high school, like, wait, did she really just dump me? Right? Like, why? Like, what does that mean? And so you're running and like you're kind of exercising that when you run. Um the oneness, I can reach that. I mean, that's where even the most beautiful version, you know, you're running a race and you have a goal, whether the goal is to finish or whether the goal is to you know finish in 229, right? And you're you've like you've mod you've like modulated your effort perfectly. And so by the end, you're you're just there, right? And like there's you know, if I think about my best marathons, there's like almost so like my worst marathons, like everything shuts down early and I'm confused and I'm in pain, and I'm like, I can't, I can't control myself. My best marathons, you know, I'm running 540, 550 per mile, and but everything is shut down, like there's nothing else, right? So there's this amazing video of me finishing when I set the American record in the 50k and I've been running 557 per mile for three hours, and I had never I didn't feel pain, right? I didn't feel like I was going too fast, I didn't feel like I was going too hard. I just felt like I was going exactly the pace I should be going. And like by the end, you know, the last couple miles, no peripheral vision, right? No, I couldn't hear anything, right? You could have had like you could have had a marching band with like a guy doing backflips, I wouldn't have noticed, right? Like you're just there with the road, and all you're thinking about is the road, right? And like, you know, and then I run and I run through the finish line, right? And then I collapse, right? And it was like this incredible. I really was at one with the road and the running, and that's a state that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 54:24

And and if the finishing line had been a mile further, you would have gone another mile in the pocket, like right.

SPEAKER_03 54:29

I would have gone like I would have been like a little slower for the previous three or four miles, but I would have gone another mile in the pocket and then fallen over, right? Like, and that's like that's that's it's nuts.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

Yeah, and um my my friend's at the Olympic snowboarder, and he said the same thing. He's like, When I when I won that race, all I could hear about was a sound of the snow. That's the only thing I could hear.

SPEAKER_03 54:48

Yep. Yeah, um, I remember this great line. I was reading a book. It was about it was called the warrior athlete. I remember reading it when I was in like high school, and the guys interviewed he's like, Do your athletes meditate before they compete? And he's like, No, they meditate while they compete, right?

SPEAKER_01 55:00

Yeah, totally, totally. Um, what's what's one piece of advice, you know, for kids or someone, anyone really, who's interested in running or writing, or you know, just what's a piece of to get them on the right path that you would give?

SPEAKER_03 55:17

Well, for running, you know, I have I have a very specific piece of advice, which is like go out there tomorrow and run. Not so much that you stress yourself. Like maybe it's a mile, maybe it's half a mile, maybe don't even use your watch, right? Like just go run however much feels comfortable. But while you do it, don't put on your headphones, just listen, right? Or just look, right? And like shut down a different sense, kind of each little bit, right? Like shut down your shut down what you smell, shut down what you hear, shut down what you see, right? And like just be really present in the run or think about, think about your hips, right? Think about like think about your abdomen, think about like your shoulders, right? And just be really present in where you are in the run. And uh you do that and you're like, oh wow, this is pretty interesting. What's going on here, right? Um, you know, for writing, I mean, the advice that I try to follow every day, and I don't always follow it, is like you wake up in the morning, and it's good to wake up when it's quiet, right? And before, you know, I try to I wake up before my kids wake up, before my wife wakes up, right? Um and there's a little bit of time which is just you. And in that time, I like to try to do the hardest thing that the thing on my to-do list that I like kind of don't want to do, right? Like there's this thing I've been putting off, or like you I kind of look at the to-do list, I look at the boards, I try to do that, right? And I think that's uh it just like kind of gets things going the right way. If I get up and I like do the thing I do want to do, it's just to like scroll through my email and like delete messages and respond to the nice ones and like see how many retweets I got, right? Like that's not useful, right? Like find the thing that's hard and go at that, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:49

And and get it over with.

SPEAKER_03 56:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Um, okay. Well, the book's called The Running Ground by Nicholas Thompson. I think everyone should go buy it from their independent bookstore if possible. Uh Nick, thanks so much for your time. Uh, I appreciate it. Thank you for saying that.

SPEAKER_03 57:04

Like the best thing is for people like go into the bookstore. Do you have the running ground by Nick Thompson? Oh, you don't have it. You should get it. That's a really good book. You why don't you order me one? That's like it's just beautiful because then the bookstore stocks it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Buy it. Yeah, it's great. And the and the bookstore stays in business.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

Yeah, which is great. And then more people read, it's awesome all the way around.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Fantastic. Thank you so much. And uh thank you, Pete. Have a great week.

SPEAKER_03 57:25

You too. Cheers. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

Exceptional. As we mentioned, independent booksellers are the best. But be sure to check out nickthompson.com and the running ground. That book makes me want to lace up and hit the trail. Thank you again, Nick, for being so generous with your time. The dude runs a legit publishing empire, fighting the good fight every day down there, and he still found time to be here with us and talk about ripping around in the woods. That's a kind and classy move, and we appreciate it. Thank you also to Citizen Watches, to Shirai Rules and Adrian Gendro for the voiceovers and guitars we've been banking on for 65 episodes now. And thanks to you, dear listener, for listening. Uh, I didn't eat your brains after all. And if you want more knowledge by next book, check out some of our previous pods and be sure to hit up mountainlifemedia.ca for the best stories and images we can muster. Other than that, be kind, mountain lifers, be excellent to each other, be on time, and be sure to leave the campsite better than you found it. Have you got the time? Or is it time to get yourself a new Citizen Watch? Did you know their EcoDrive watches are powered solely by light, any kind of light? Or that their atomic timekeeping watches are constantly syncing with atomic clocks all over the planet to ensure your watch's margin of error never exceeds one second every hundred thousand years? Check out that kind of wild tech and all the great watch options at citizenwatch.com.