Running Buddies featuring Nicholas Thompson pt. 1

On todays show I welcome Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic and author of the book The Running Ground  to Running Buddies. We talk about Nicks recent trail running experiences and personal updates regarding his media company before diving into his book. This interview was framed around the characters in his book and in this episode we look at Bobbi Gibb and Tony Ruiz. We also discuss demographics of competitive running, debating whether the sport is truly equitable given the geographic and financial barriers associated with ultra-marathons. Ultimately, Nick highlights the emotional and spiritual connections people form with running, framing it as a lens through which to understand larger societal narratives and personal history. Stay tuned for part two!

Partners:

On Trail Nutrition - On Trail Nutrition, high-energy protein bars built for the outdoors. No crashes, no junk, just steady fuel for your hikes, rides, and long days. Check them out at ontrailnutrition.com and fuel your next adventure.

• Link: HERE
• Code: RUNNINGSCARED10

THN Labs - THN make energy gels in Canada with minimal ingredients. If you're running long and want to actually know what you're eating, hit them up at thnlabs.com.

• Link: HERE
• Code: RSP15

PLUS we have a new website: Go to runningscaredmedia.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

You're listening to RunnyBuddies brought to you by RunningScare.com. Wherever step has a story. I'm Jimmy Roberts, and this is the podcast we like to call a jobcast. Whether it's your first time out or you're a season pro, Running Buddies find stories that are bigger than running. And as always, what's bigger than running? Subscribe to the podcast. Go ahead and do it right now. It is free, and you will be getting lots of great content from Running Buddies Soul Scriptors and Hybrid Horizons, our three shows. Before we get into the episode today, there's actually a bunch of things that I want to mention. The first thing is, is of course, we had some technical difficulties when we had our most recent guest, today's episode, with Nicholas Thompson. Nicholas Thompson, the great runner, the great CEO of The Atlantic, an amazing interview. And of course, we had some issues. We were still able to salvage about half of the interviews. So we're going to run this in about two parts. I'm going to hopefully hook up with Nick again to get the second part re-recorded, but part one will go today. It's about 30 minutes long. And it covers some of the characters in his book, The Running Ground. And sort of that's how we framed the interview. Questions as connected to the characters in his book. So you know it's a it was a great interview. It's a shame that something happened. I don't know what. I'm still trying to do some uh you know salvaging through the the uh the wreckage of the tape to find uh to find out if I can actually salvage some of it. Uh but anyways, I've got a half an hour for you, so uh that'll be great. And then part two will be coming to you later uh later on in the summer. Um also I just came off a really important race. I just ran personally my longest trail race uh of my life. It was like just the shade under 20K, uh, you know, just uh with Five Peaks Ontario, Five Peaks, the Trail Running Series, um amazing time, amazing experience. I ran it with my buddy Glenn. It was awesome. It was so cool to kind of be out there. It was a Crawford Lake, steeped in history. The course was beautiful, it was like grueling, challenging, really. I think a step forward in like my running career. I wouldn't as far as say if I have a career, but I'm certainly taking it a little bit more seriously as I take um my work with running scared media a little bit more seriously. So it was uh it was just really good to get out there. It was well attended. It, you know, there was supposed to be rain in the forecast, but it held off or came the night before. So the course was, you know, a little bit slick, but it had dried out enough. So it was just like really, really good. And you know, it was re it was awesome. I had like really good support from uh again from my buddy Glenn. My family came out to support, and I had to think about sort of like fueling, I had to think about all those things that I generally hadn't really thought about before because you know, like a 17, 18k trail race is what I found is very different than road racing. That that might seem very obvious to some of the listeners out here, but for me, as I sort of become more involved in the trail running uh, you know, world, um, through the people I interview and just the races that I want to do and just being out in nature and the events that I want to participate in, I certainly had to fuel. I did it through uh on trail nutrition protein bars. Um they're amazing. Honestly, you know, I took one before I I had one before I uh I did the race and then halfway through just kind of fueled up with half of one. I thought it was really good, natural, um really great. And and you can you know you can take a look at our show notes to get contact with that company. Um but but that was fantastic. Um and then just water. I'm always with my ostrich running gear. I I love that stuff. Um, so I'm always kind of wearing that. So, anyways, it was real just really good. And I felt really great after the race. Didn't feel too bad actually the the following day, but um, but it was awesome. You could take a take a take a look at the Instagram and see some of the pictures of five peaks and and what we did there, and I was like super proud of my kids because they did the 3K as well. Um, and the mom was overseeing everything, so just just really good. In other news, the website has been completely redone, running scaredmedia.com, brand new. The flyer is coming along, it's just about to drop like in less than a week. We've been testing it. Um, but go take a look at the new website, running scaredmedia.com, completely redone to really show what we've been doing over the last year. What I've been working with Rob over the last six years. It has been, you know, a long time in the making, but it's really kind of all coming together, and um, and we've got some great partners we've we've had, and we have upcoming some great guests. Uh, just really, really fantastic, and just a lot of things um happening. We've got some work with um Cayuga Fitness and DECA coming up on June 20th. Uh we've got some more races happening a little bit longer in the summer. We've got another Five Peaks race. I know that uh Hybrid Horizons is running the uh Columnist Marathon. So there's a whole bunch of things that we're gonna be involved with uh through our live events this summer. So just a lot of stuff happening in the running scared world. Um I had the you know the privilege of we've got a special guest coming on. Well, every guest is special, but we've got something a little bit different coming on uh in a couple weeks on Running Buddy. So, you know, just um a lot of exciting stuff for the listeners. And right now, for the listeners, uh, we're gonna jump to our conversation with Nicholas Thompson. Half of the conversation, but he's a sharp mind, and he's really like a good person to talk to. So I enjoyed really every minute with him as we caught up with them uh running in Soho. He was like doing laps, loops around, you know, just keeping it nice and chill so we could talk. Um great conversation. Have a listen here. On today's show, we are talking with author, executive, father, and runner. Uh, it's with great pleasure that we welcome Nicholas Thompson to the conversation. So, welcome to the show, Nick. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

I'm doing great, Jamie. How are you? I'm running down uh Prince Street in Soho right now.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Amazing. How long is the run gonna be?

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Yeah, I don't know. It depends how long we're gonna talk. I'm going kind of slow because I don't want to be out of breath. So I don't know. I'm gonna head to the West Side bike path. I'll head up and then at some point I'll turn around.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Sounds good. And I I just have to ask, I know we were talking about it off off uh off recording there, but uh, is the Knicks fever hitting the streets? Big win last night to the Knicks and flags everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

People are psyched in the city, they love the Knicks. I mean, there's like a real fan base, and you know, even though I'm a Celtics fan, I can certainly never gonna root for the Knicks, but I feel happy for my city. The Celtics would have beaten the ass choked against the Sixers, but anyway.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

You know what? I'll give Tatum a break, right? He's coming back from a bad injury, so you know what? I think the Celtics will be reloaded and re-up for next year. But um, I I'm curious, right? Like we're talking kind of middle of uh of a Tuesday, just kind of mid-morning. When you go out for these sort of runs, like what's the fitness goal? Um, kind of like when you're, you know, midday runs, maybe after a meeting, before you get going. What do you what are you trying to accomplish in those sort of shorter runs if they are shorter?

SPEAKER_01 8:01

They are shorter. I mean, my runs are basically most of my runs are like transportation. They're not, you know, I ran into work this morning. I usually wouldn't go for a run at 10 o'clock in the morning. I would run in, you know, at eight or whatever. And I just run four miles at like nine-minute pace. And I listen to podcasts, I think about work. Today, slightly weirdly, I was talking to ChatGPT about uh work problems. I just put it in audio mode. So I'm not really even really thinking about fitness on these runs. They're recovery, maintenance, head clearing. And then a couple days a week, I'm going hard and I'm thinking about fitness.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Absolutely. That's interesting with ChatGPT. So you're you've got an audio mode. Are you doing like to sort of ideate like um an ideation strategy? Just kind of like uh because I I'm an educator and I work in the innovation department for my school board, and we often talk about, you know, uh when we're when we're when we're partnering with um LLMs and if we need, you know, if we if we need to cite things that they give us, if if what what's the nature of the partnership? It's interesting that uh do you do that often?

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Not that often. I mean, I prefer it in text mode, and when I'm sometimes when I run, I just want my head to be clear. Like when I'm out in the woods, I want to be totally clear. Like you don't want to pollute it, and you don't want to have other stuff come in. You actually, it's a meditative space, you need your mind to wander. But sometimes when I'm trying to be efficient, there's this thing I didn't quite understand. Like there are a couple things I wanted to understand better. You know, AI is my mode for understanding things better. And so um, you know, sometimes you type it in and read, and sometimes you ask it verbally. And so it was kind of weird. I think people I was passing were like, why is this guy like talking to his phone? Like, not like he's talking to a human. So anyway.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

No, I you you know what I'll digress in a minute, but I I love that to understand things better, not just to understand. So you're coming in with a foundational piece. It's what we try to talk about with the students. You know what I mean? There needs to be some kind of baseline, and then you can build upon and sort of work through that. But anyways, I digress to the nature of the conversation today. So um no, listen, so we are a um, you know, we're like an adventure endurance podcast. So having you on is uh is amazing to have um to have a conversation. You know, you recently uh released a book called The Running Ground. It's a fantastic book, and you know, I'm not going to um you know be overly deferential. I really enjoyed the read. I read a lot of books. Um Johnny Eichel, you know, Krakaur, like it definitely had a um a sort of really smooth narrative that I could follow. And and as I'm listening to the different sort of like soliloquies and you know different stories that you have within them, uh I thought it was like really enjoying. I read it really quickly. I again I go through a ton of books, so I wanted to frame this interview a little bit differently today. I wanted to ask you seven questions. Okay. And I want to move through, I want to move through your book. And I want to move through Awesomeness. Yeah, I want to move through just the the different people that you profile and then how that relates to sort of larger macro narratives in the running world. Okay. So this is seven questions with Nick Thompson is told through your book, The Running Ground. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

That's fun. You know, when people ask me about the book, they often don't ask about the characters, right? The book is about me, my dad, and then these five different people. And a lot of times people sort of skip the characters when I'm doing an interview. So I'm psyched to do that.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

I I'm I'm so glad to hear that because conversely, I feel like they're central to the message you're trying to convey.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Totally, totally. So but I think when you have a conversation like if 50% of the book is about one person and like 8% is about one of the other people, like all the questions end up on the 50% purpose. Anyway, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Okay, so um, first question. Okay, so we're gonna we're gonna be running with Bobby Gibb. So in the chapter on Bobby Gibb, you know, um, it relates to being told that she couldn't run Boston, and and there's a quote in there, and it says, uh, my running took on a meaning greater than my own enjoyment. So running meant something more. My question to you is what has running meant to you over the years and how has that changed? And I've got a follow-up to it. So, how has running changed for you over the years?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Yeah, you know, it's never been when Bobby Gibbs said that, he was talking about giant issues. He's like a gender rights pioneer. She's the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. Yeah, and there's this amazing thing she told me to, which I had knew a little bit about her story, not much. But she told me about how she had watched the Boston Marathon. I think it was in 1965, as a young woman in the city, just with her dad. And she didn't even notice that everybody running it was a man. And she just felt the spiritual connection. And then she realized it like this must have been 1964. And then she goes out and she runs it herself two years later, becomes the first woman to do it. She has to disguise herself. It's this amazing story, and it's about showing that women can do this thing that people thought women couldn't do. And she has this wonderful spiritual connection to the sport, and I, you know, she's in her 80s now. I just loved talking to her. For me to answer your question, and I'm sorry, I'm like in the middle of like a little traffic barrier between the north and south lanes of the West Side Highway. So I apologize for the noise. For me, running has been different things. When I was young and I started, it was about kind of, I want to say like self-confidence and self-awareness. You know, I started kind of by accident. I think like a lot of other runners, just when I got caught from another sports team. And then it was the you know, the first thing I was truly good at in high school. And when you're in high school, you're in this like search for identity, for place. And like to me, running like showed that I belonged in this intense competitive boarding school where you're expected to succeed and be good at something. And then I went to college and it I wasn't quite good enough or you know, complicated reasons, it didn't work. And so I either caught or left. It's unclear exactly which was which happened. And so when I rediscovered the sport, it was sort of about in some ways, it was meeting my father's expectations for life, in some ways it was about having a hobby, and then eventually it became something much deeper. And it became one request to sort of show I was alive. Going through an intense medical scare that I go through in the book and came out of it and ran another marathon. In some ways, it was about communicating with my father, who had a very complex life. In some ways, it was about finding a form of meditation. And then, in some ways, I think for a lot of people who are my age, I'm 50 years old, it's about not just showing that you're alive, but kind of slowing the decline and slowing all the things that happen as you age and you know, feeling like yourself and that you're able to kind of fight back against this inevitable process. And part of it is I don't want to say spiritual transcendence. I don't think I'm at that level, but you know, allowing my mind to reach a deeper state as I run and I think through the problems that go through my head as I run. It's also it's got an element of fatherhood where I run a fair amount with my children, you know, nobody cares more about my running life than my 15-year-old son. Like, no one roots for me harder. And I kind of love that, right? Like, I mean, when I run a race, you know, I don't know. My coach wants me to do well, my wife wants me to do well, my mom, you know, if he kind of understood the times, would want me to do well, but like my son like understands everything and like really wants me to do well and is really pissed when I do badly. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

I it's it's funny you say that. I I actually um I'm a little bit younger than you, but not too much. And I started uh I'm doing a race on the sixth, and my kids have taken an interest in it, and they want to come run a shorter kids' version of that race with me. So they've actually they've actually started to come out, they're nine and seven, they've come out and done some trail running with me. And as I'm listening to your answer, I'm thinking of myself how my own running has changed and how they really I'm not pushing them, they're just wanting to be with their dad and doing something that you know he enjoys and just so happens that they enjoy it as well. So that is something that um yeah, that's a really good um something that that is nice that's happening to you and something I'm experiencing as well. But I I want to relate it back to something you said just at the beginning of the answer there about how running changed for you, how it's you know, maybe it's been a confidence builder. I'm curious when you go to like a strict boarding school and and you know, in the book, it it definitely felt like there's all these expectations. Is there is there an expectation from the people around you that you're gonna have this intrinsic confidence already coming into that environment? Or how how does how does that apparatus all set up for when you're walking in as a young man?

SPEAKER_01 17:27

I don't think so. I mean, the interesting thing is I went to the school Phillips Academy Andover. It's like, I think it's the oldest incorporated boarding school in America, right? And it's been around forever, and I don't know, like various presidents have gone there. Like it's it's a proving ground for a lot of Americans that lead it's got all kinds of problems and issues and all that stuff. Anyway, you show up, and when I was there, it's like kids from all over the world, right? And so our student body president came from Lagos, right? Like, you know, they're just all these like interesting people from different schools and different backgrounds, and you know, it's it probably over-indexes towards like families of the New England elite, but it really is uh melting pot. And in some ways, it represents you know a lot of what's best about America, like the ambitious people coming in from more all over the world and testing each other. But I don't think like that, those levels of expectations. I just don't think you have those when you're 14 or 15 years old. So I had my own set of expectations, which probably came more from my father, but I don't think like the other kids, I don't think they they're just kind of there, like they're intrinsically ambitious, they work hard. I don't think they were I don't think we were like measuring each other in that sense.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Interesting. Um I want to uh I want to kind of bring it back to um to to Bobby for a second here. And my follow-up was I think you're talking about like, you know, um uh being told that she couldn't do something and then and then just again that that idea of taking on a different meaning and making sure that she just was going to do it and like you know, running the race and putting like a hoodie over and then eventually being spotted, like like it's so cool, right? Just or not even cool, cool is not the right word. It is it's courageous, is what it is. Yeah, and it's trailblazing. So, Nick, you are positioned as an executive, as a runner, someone who is really uh can see outside in, inside out. And where is the next trailblazing feat coming in running? What's are there frontiers still to be claimed? And I know that that's a such a big question, but I think about it in from my vantage point, and I think through that problem, not problem, but I think through that often. I'm curious, are there are there frontiers still to be claimed in the sport?

SPEAKER_01 19:48

It's super interesting, right? If you go back to when Bobby ran the Boston Marathon, the frontier was that biologists genuinely didn't think women could run a marathon, right? And there's this like, I don't know how many believed it, but certainly it had been written that like if women tried to run that far, their ovaries would fall out. Right. And I doubt that was like a conventional view, but that's sort of the the line that goes along with the story. And what's amazing about Bobby is that she didn't take any of it to heart. Like she's such a free spirit and so much her own woman that you could tell her anything. You could say, This is the case, and she'd be like, Oh, I'm gonna evaluate that myself. And that's can be a bad attitude to have because sometimes you like, I don't know, you don't believe that stop signs are a useful thing, right? On the road. But it's a good thing when you're being told something it's just not true that women can't run a marathon. In fact, women may be like designed better biologically to run a marathon because women are optimized for childbirth. This incredibly long process, right? So obviously, men are better optimized for sprints. Women are better optimized for really long distance running now. Whether that's a marathon or a hundred mile or a 200 mile, who knows? But in any case, the biological biological truth that Bobby Gibb had been taught was just wrong. And so she breaks through that. I should have Bobby, you know, every character in the story connected to me. And Bobby's son was a friend of mine in high school, which is why she popped in in the narrative first. So then you're back to your question I don't know what that frontier is. You know, like I don't know if there's any limit to how far someone can run or anybody actually believes their, you know, massive gender. I wasn't like that excited about breaking the two-hour marathon. Oh, it was cool, it was great, but it wasn't transcendent the way I think people felt about the four-minute mile. I don't know what the the accomplishment by another individual that would like reset my expectations about what it means to be human is.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, you know, and it's it's a question that I end up asking most of the guests that come on. And there are you know, cultural frontiers, there are athletic frontiers, you know, you have somebody that It's scaling a building in, I think it was Taiwan, and then you have somebody who's running the Silk Road. You know what I mean? It's just all these different things. I just, I'm just when I dig a little bit deeper and try to pull the sand away, I'm I'm often thinking about what is is there a cultural piece there, something that is still yet to be done. But I'll continue to search for that answer. It's funny you say I was thinking about, I didn't think I'd I would um you know be citing uh Martin Luther King in this, but he talked about like rules that should be followed and rules that shouldn't, and things that are being just and things that are being unjust. And and you're right, you know, Bobby doing the marathon being such couldn't do it, you know, there was almost like a um an obligation to move past that.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

But uh maybe let me refine the answer. So I I while you were talking, I thought of I don't know what it is exactly, but what I would love is if there's a race or a moment that like truly brings not the world, but brings like large cultures together. You know, like the New York City marathon's amazing, the London marathon's amazing, all these people sign up, people run it for charity, but it doesn't have like real meaning. It's great for individuals, it's cool for a city, but you don't, it's not like at the end of the New York marathon, the world feels like a different place. Like comrades, you know, the longest, I think the oldest ultra marathon in South Africa, it's 100th anniversary is coming up. Like there'll be real meaning attached to that. The Sri Chinwai, 3100 mile race in Queens, has meaning. But if there that there's gotta be some kind of a race, like an Olympic race, like maybe a future Olympic marathon that has real, or maybe there could be a race where like at the end of the war, Russians and Ukrainians are running together. Like that's that's the that's the thing I would most want to see.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

That's actually a, you know, okay, so it's um this a perfect segue into my second question, this is Tony Ruiz' question, okay?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

And, you know, talking about things that bring people together or um events that we still see separation, right? So in reference to the pen relay, so in the book, um, Ruiz talks about when he's at a track meet, and he says something was significant to him, you know, when he first realized that black and Hispanic guys could be distance runners, not just sprinters, you know, growing up in Spanish Harlem. And he was able to kind of see that, and that you know, blew his mind, right? That's something that he could do uh and and didn't think was possible or didn't have experience seeing it. So here's here's my question. This is a question I ask to some, depending on their position positionality, but despite the explosion in running, okay, the advent growth in adventure sports, right? Sort of post-COVID, everything is just like blowing up so big. I still see a monolith when it comes to trail ultra road running. A lot of the climbers, snowboarders I talk to, turn on Black Canyon, Cocodona, UTMB, marathons. Like there's still a lack of equitable demographics. And to me, it's striking. And I actually had I had a good conversation with Damian Hall about this, and this is something that he was trying to address in his uh ultra runners group. But what is the current discourse of like running is the most equitable sport? All you need is shoes. Um what is what does that get wrong about the reality of participating in a sport? And I know it's a long, sort of long-winded question, but you kind of discussed this in the Julia Lucas chapter. Um, but what what does that current discourse get wrong about running as being the most equitable sport?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Well, okay, that's an amazing question. It's a great question. Um so I do think it is the most equitable sport. I do think that you can like really, truly, anybody can go and do it, which is why some of the greatest runners in the world like started running barefoot in Eritrea, right? Or Ethiopia or Kenya or Uganda, right, in East Africa. Um, but it's also true that at certain levels of the sport, you have to fly to the races, you need shoes, you can have sponsors, but there's like they're barriers, right? And they're not as many barriers as there are at like becoming an elite lacrosse player, but they're barriers. When you get to the ultra in the mountains, there are even more barriers because you have to go to the race, you need more gear, maybe you need poles, you need like the water, you need like all these different things. It's more of a travel commitment, right? You can't just fly to a city and stay with whomever. So rent a car. Um, like running a coca donor, I just ran the, you know, I just ran this 100K out in Sacramento. Um, you know, and I had to fly to California. I was flying there for other reasons, but I had to drive up there, stay in the hotel, and drive back. Um so the costs are a little bit higher. But I think the reason why ultra running is less racially diverse, at least in the United States. Well, and I should say that internationally, like they're amazing, like biggest ultra race in the world, comrades, South Africa. There are amazing ultra races in China, right? Like there are, you know, the greatest runners in the world are East Africans, right? It's not intrinsically a sport for people of Western European descent. But in the United States, a lot of people get into the sport through, you know, skiing, right? Like they grew up as a kid, they ski in the mountains, right? And there are they they like it's mostly people who grow up in rural areas. Like some of them grew up on mountains. Killian Journey, probably greatest ultrarunner in history, like literally grew up in the Alps. And so you're starting with a base that, for geographic, cultural, and economic reasons, is less diverse. But I I would imagine it would grow. I mean, there's also there's kind of like David Goggins in some ways is like a Jackie Robinson figure. Like there are, you know, it's not, I would hope that ultra races start to look more like regular marathons.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

Yeah, that's that that's what I was that's what I was thinking. I just are there are the um, you know, there's there's books written on it. I just was reading something by Thomas Sowell, and he just kind of talks about that, right? Like how just nothing is nothing is equal, right? There's just uh there's there's there's different setups that allow different things to occur. I just uh I you know I find myself going onto the live streams and I'm just like, wow, you know what? It would be really nice if we saw a little bit more diversity in in these sports. And then, you know, you take a look and and you you you bring up a good point about like the travel, but even just the cost of the races, I find is just so expensive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Um, ultra races, also it's like they cost more because you know, there's insurance, they're longer, right? Like you could put on a half marathon in Brooklyn and like, okay, everybody show up and run, right? You know, you know, you're gonna put on a race in uh up by that like that 100k up in the canyons, but you need to get the permits, you need to set up affordable potties, you need to get like medical insurance, you need to have doctors at the aid stations, like all this stuff. So the price goes up.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Absolutely. I'm I'm doing um, you know, shout out to one of the race companies out here in Canada, but uh it's a guy that runs uh Five Peaks and runs races all around Canada. I'm doing a 20K trail in two weeks, and it'll be interesting to see uh because his price points are a little bit uh a little bit lower. It'll be interesting to see if what kind of an audience uh what kind of participation it um it attracts. But it's something that I think about, it's something I know other people are thinking about, uh, and hopefully, you know, we can move towards making it um a little bit more, a little bit more diverse. I move on to uh I move on to my third question, which is uh the third person that you profile in the book, and it's Julia Lewis. And and I think this one is just a little bit more one that's open-ended. Also, it was to me, your book is moving and emotional through many different stories that you tell facets of the book. This one I was it was heartbreaking. Uh I read it and then reread it. And think about your running, Nick. Think about your job, think about you as a husband, as a father. Like, what did that conversation with Julia and the chapter that you wrote? What has that taught you about pressure and managing expectations in your life?