Lessons From A Marathoner (with Nicholas Thompson)

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Konakova.
And I'm Nate Silver.

Speaker 1 Today on the show, we have an old friend of mine whom I've known for over a decade, Nick Thompson. So he is currently joining us from the New York City offices of the Atlantic, where he is the CEO.

Speaker 1 So if you hear any background noise, you know, this is Soho, this is New York, there's stuff going on. And Nick has a lot of things going on.

Speaker 1 He is also the editor-in-chief, former editor-in-chief of Awired Awired

Speaker 1 and wrote a book called The Hawk and the Dove about the Cold War era. It's absolutely phenomenal.
You should check it out.

Speaker 1 But to me, he will always be my editor at The New Yorker, which is how I first met Nick.

Speaker 1 And he wasn't just my editor. He actually ran the New Yorker's website.

Speaker 1 And now we have him on because he has a new book coming out. I think the most personal book he's ever written called The Running Ground.
I apologize, I only have a galley, but here's the galley.

Speaker 1 Here's how it looks.

Speaker 1 And it's about running. It's about his dad.
It's a reflection on life. So many different things.
Nick, welcome to Risky Business. Nate and I are so happy to have you here.
Thank you, Maria.

Speaker 1 I was actually just trying to figure out when exactly we met by looking at my old emails, but unfortunately, it appears as though there are 800 of them that I've just gone through.

Speaker 1 And now we're at 900.

Speaker 1 This is what

Speaker 1 editing is like.

Speaker 1 For people who want a behind-the-scenes look at the editing life, Nick and I have probably over a thousand emails between the two of us over the years.

Speaker 1 Here we go. Wait, we got it.
Your new science and technology website.

Speaker 1 Dear Nick, Amelia Lester told me you're looking to hire someone to head up a new science and technology section for the New Yorkers website, September 28th, 2012.

Speaker 1 So we are looking at 13 years and almost a month.

Speaker 1 Wow, that is incredible. Well, it's so good to be reunited here.
And I forgot the most important thing of your intro since your book is about running.

Speaker 1 You are the holder of the American record for the 50K ultra marathon for men 40 to 45, which is pretty fucking amazing, if I may say so.

Speaker 1 So I actually want to start not with running, but with your dad. Your relationship.
with your dad is a major part of the book and I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 1 You have your dad, Scott Thompson, who was a runner and who's the one who actually got you introduced to running.

Speaker 1 And there's this beautiful, you know, very poignant moment of little Nick waiting at the marathon lines to give his dad some new shoes and orange juice, right?

Speaker 1 Orange juice.

Speaker 1 Orange juice.

Speaker 1 Orange juice is kind of on the way out, but like it was super hot for your marathoners in 1982.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I'd love to hear you kind of talk about that intersection and that overlap and your dad. Yeah, so my dad's an amazing guy.

Speaker 1 And part of the motivation for the book was thinking through his effect on me, thinking through his effect on running, thinking about the way running helped us communicate, and then his life story, which is

Speaker 1 interesting. All right.
So my dad grows up in Oklahoma. He's got kind of a complicated family, doesn't want to be there, partly because of his overbearing golden gloves boxing champion father.

Speaker 1 You know, my dad busts out, like finds the school called Andover, applies, gets a scholarship, like rides horseback, delivery newspaper, and pays for it, right? Great American scholarship.

Speaker 1 That's crazy, by the way.

Speaker 1 It's pretty cool, right?

Speaker 1 You know, goes to Andover. He's like, the kid doesn't fit in.
He's got all the wrong clothes. Whatever makes it work.
Goes to Stanford on a scholarship, crushes it, meets John F.

Speaker 1 Kennedy, says this kid's going to be president, goes off with a Rhodes Scholarship, goes to Oxford,

Speaker 1 befriends all the important people in England, comes back, marries my mother, who comes from a prominent political family. Guy's on fire, right? He's like making a plan to run for the Senate.

Speaker 1 you know, he's just crushing it. And then like

Speaker 1 starts to go wrong. Like maybe he's not quite as good as everybody thinks.
Like maybe he's drinking too much alcohol. And then he's like grappling with the secret that he's realized he's gay, right?

Speaker 1 And he is sort of knew he was gay when he was young, but you know, he was closeted. This is 1970s America.
It's a pretty hard time to come out or 1960s America.

Speaker 1 And so in 1982, when I'm seven years old, he's like made the realization to himself that he's gay.

Speaker 1 He leaves, he moves moves to Washington, and he's like, now he's trying to like make up for lost time, right? And so he's in these endless relationships, increasingly inappropriate.

Speaker 1 He's diagnosed as being HIV positive. This is during the plague.
Turns out it's a false diagnosis.

Speaker 1 And he has this like very intense trajectory that, you know,

Speaker 1 in some ways,

Speaker 1 There are parts that are totally admirable. It is, it's possible, depending on how you count, that he is the first openly gay presidential appointee in American history, right?

Speaker 1 When he works united states information agency since shuttered by doge

Speaker 1 um you know he's a very rare gay republican in the reagan administration you know he is like kind of he like plays a kind of important role in the like late 80s early 90s like you know people should come out so that everybody knows the gay people are everywhere but then he's like dating kind of like late teenage guys he's maybe met on the internet or maybe paid for in dupont circle and he's like

Speaker 1 dating like hundreds of people a year and he's like bringing the like wrong people to like parties meeting phones people and then he moves to Asia maybe for academic research and maybe not

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 by the end of his life he's running like a pseudo brothel in Bali he's bankrupt he's a tax fugitive and it's just chaos right so that's my dad you know and like when you meet me you're like what does your dad do you don't really expect that to be the answer I used to like to catch people off guard like what are your parents doing I was like oh my mom's an art historian at Babson my dad runs a brothel in Bali.

Speaker 1 And they're like,

Speaker 1 what?

Speaker 1 Anyway, so like his story, and he creates endless chaos in my life and my sisters' lives.

Speaker 1 But he and I have this like wonderful, loving relationship the whole time through. And like, you know, he taught me to run.
I watched him run this marathon.

Speaker 1 He like cheers me on as I become a good runner. We run together when we're together.
And so running is like part of the spine of our relationship, you know, up until the end.

Speaker 1 And then it's, it doesn't escape my attention that,

Speaker 1 you know, when he dies in 2017, just when I started as the editor of Wired, it is like soon after that that I become a much better runner.

Speaker 1 And there's something about processing his death that also plays a role in my evolution from like pretty good runner to very good runner. Does your need for, well, now I'm psychoanalyzing you.

Speaker 1 Go for it, Nate. Go for it, Nate.

Speaker 1 Does your need for like, or I don't know, I'm presuming a need, right? Does the discipline that you apply in your running and maybe in other parts parts of your life, right? I mean, is that

Speaker 1 out of a concern that if you aren't disciplined, then things could spiral out of control like it did for your dad? That's definitely part of it. I mean, that is a very conscious,

Speaker 1 my sister and I once took this, we were driving together and we were like, we're in this U-Haul, like moving stuff from his house from one place to another.

Speaker 1 And we had this conversation where like we both admitted to the other that our biggest fear in life was that

Speaker 1 like something about our genetic inheritance and having him as a a father faded us to become

Speaker 1 just like crazy chaos agents in our like into like i do have very much have a sense that if i lose discipline i face the risk of i mean i'm very like him like i kind of look like him i kind of act like him right i i had this crazy experience it was like two years ago i'm in this restaurant in san francisco and i'm with one of my dad's old friends he's like roommate um from college and another guy from the stanford class in 1963 walks in and so my dining, my dining friend goes up to the other guy and goes, hey, this kid here, the guy I'm having lunch with, is the son of one of your old classmates.

Speaker 1 Who do you think it is? And he looks at me and goes, oh, that's Scotty Thompson's son, right?

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, knowing that I like 50% of my DNA is his, I was raised by him, influenced by him, right? Like he like embedded his ambitions into me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, obviously I'm like, terrified of going off the rails.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, you, it is, it was very interesting to me that, you know, you did follow in your dad's footsteps, even though when you were a kid, like that couldn't have been easy, but then you went to Andover, you went to Stanford, right?

Speaker 1 Like you, you did all of the things, you applied for the Rhodes. You did not get it.
But

Speaker 1 that you got everything else. So

Speaker 1 I think you're okay. You got it.

Speaker 1 And then even that one I didn't get, I still like, I did what he did without even really knowing like what he had done. He had gotten a Rhodes.
I'm like, gone to Ghana.

Speaker 1 What did I do after I graduated from college? Like, I didn't really intend this. I ended up in Ghana.
Like, he got arrested in Ghana. I got kidnapped in Morocco, right?

Speaker 1 Like, we had like, we had like all these similarities.

Speaker 1 I was like trying to be like the guy. You know, it was

Speaker 1 very interesting to me. And I think part of why you might be like, it could be me right there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Speaker 1 Is that your dad was brilliant, right? A remarkably smart man. He, and you had his diaries that you went through.
And the awareness of what alcoholism did to his father should have stopped it.

Speaker 1 And he intellectually realized that he should have stopped drinking and he didn't and he couldn't.

Speaker 1 And the fact that he was so smart and also disciplined in a lot of ways and conceptually and intellectually grasped all of this and yet on a purely kind of emotional day-to-day life basis couldn't couldn't follow through.

Speaker 1 I think if that were my dad, that would terrify me. I definitely worry that at at some point alcoholism will come for me.
And I'm very, you know, very careful and very disciplined about that.

Speaker 1 I'm, you know, now almost never drink.

Speaker 1 So, you know, dealing with the burdens and having observed my father so carefully and having seen these things come to him.

Speaker 1 And then what you say about the diaries is so interesting because he's so perceptive and smart. And there are things he notices,

Speaker 1 you know, my sister and I often joke, like she'll walk into a room. right and she'll like

Speaker 1 within like 10 minutes like be able to like sort of like see into everybody's soul and figure everything out. But she also feels things so intensely.

Speaker 1 And I'm like sort of very like resilient and like more stuff can like hit me.

Speaker 1 And when I'm like two and she's three, he writes in his diary, like, everything would be better if we could get Nikki to feel a little more and Phyllis to feel a little less. Right.

Speaker 1 Like these insights into like who become. He writes this letter to me when I'm 21 that I didn't reread until I was like, 49.
And I was like, holy cow.

Speaker 1 Like he saw through my whole 20s and like all the sort of the problems that befell me in my 20s.

Speaker 1 The guy was utterly brilliant. And I like wish I had as much of that as he had.
And then I want the alcoholism and the, you know, the tax evasion, whatever genes those were, to not

Speaker 1 ever hit me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's always a mixed bag. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Parents, children, always a mixed bag. True.

Speaker 1 And we'll be back right after this.

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Speaker 1 I want to hear the origin story, as you know I always do, about this book.

Speaker 1 How did you come to wanting to write about something so personal, which is not the type of writing you normally do, and is certainly not the kind of book that your last book was, even though you did have a personal connection to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I had this very strange thing happen in my 40s. So I was a

Speaker 1 very, I was a pretty good runner in my 20s and 30s. And when I was 30 years old, I ran a 243 marathon, which is excellent.
I got sick. I got thyroid cancer.
It took me two years. I came back.

Speaker 1 I ran 243 again.

Speaker 1 And then for the next, 12 or 13 years, I ran almost exactly the same time. I would run fall marathon.
I'd run 243, which is a very good time. It puts you like, you know, in the local elite.

Speaker 1 And then in my mid-40s, I went much faster and I ran a 229, which suddenly put me in a whole new category. And so it was interesting is I was going through this thought process of

Speaker 1 how did I get so much faster at a time where you're supposed to get slower? And like, as my body is clearly decaying, how did I make this improvement?

Speaker 1 Because it's not like I didn't train hard in my 30s, right? It's not like I didn't focus. It's not like I didn't read books.
It's not like I didn't eat kale, right? Like I worked really hard.

Speaker 1 I just didn't go as fast.

Speaker 1 And then one day I was running across the Brooklyn Bridge and I had this like mental breakthrough.

Speaker 1 It's very rare to have like a, I feel like usually ideas come in like waves and parts, but it was like literally hit me like a thunderbolt.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh my God, I didn't go faster because I didn't realize that I could be faster than I had been before I got sick.

Speaker 1 Like I was psychologically blocked from like going faster than 243 because that's how fast I had run before I got sick.

Speaker 1 And then that realization made me realize, well, what makes you go fast and makes you go slow is buried really deep inside of you.

Speaker 1 And that that is a profound revelation for all kinds of things in life. And so that led me to think about my father and the role that he played and made me want to investigate these other runners.

Speaker 1 But it was this realization. that the speed at which one can propel oneself through space is highly dependent on these very deep buried psychological factors made me think, huh, there's a book here.

Speaker 1 So I have,

Speaker 1 you know, we love data here on risky business and data when you're using, when you're making decisions. And that's kind of what you've been talking about.

Speaker 1 But something that I found really interesting in your book is that some of the decisions you make seem to be very subjective in a certain way.

Speaker 1 And what I'm talking about specifically, and this is something that, you know, as I think about risk

Speaker 1 and is something that would be, that was kind of scary for me, which is the way that you describe trying to to subjectively figure out health-wise, like, am I going to, am I about to hurt myself, right?

Speaker 1 Or not? Like, should I, do I want to push through? Or am I about to like cause irreparable damage to, you know, one of my muscles, one of my, you know, bones? Like, am I going to be hypothermic?

Speaker 1 Like, what, what's going to happen to me? How do you actually calculate?

Speaker 1 Because to me, like the risk of mortgaging your health and like doing something that's really, really scary for your body feels very daunting.

Speaker 1 And I would, I would always err on the side of, you know, what, if you think you're about to be hurt, stop.

Speaker 1 And you start the book, you know, with your kind of your cancer diagnosis and kind of this really,

Speaker 1 really monumental, I think, moment in your life where you thought you were going to die and you ended up surviving. So

Speaker 1 In my mind, if that were me, I'd be like, wow, like health is something that's crucially important. And yet, right, you're, you're able to kind of push yourself through these limits.

Speaker 1 And it's not like you have a doctor monitoring you by your side, being like, okay, Nick, you're okay to keep going.

Speaker 1 You have to trust yourself and be like, okay, I'm okay to keep going versus, no, I need to stop. How, how does that work? How does that risk calculus play out in your mind?

Speaker 1 And then also, can we like go broader than running? Then how does it, how does that kind of thinking play out in your day-to-day life?

Speaker 1 Super interesting. So I do have this belief that

Speaker 1 you want, like there's a like a line, right? And it's a very hard line to find, but

Speaker 1 you go up as close to the line as you can get and you're making yourself stronger. And then you get on the other side and you're making yourself weaker, right?

Speaker 1 And it's a little bit like, how hard should you work, right? At like what point does hard work become negative, right?

Speaker 1 As what time does Maria staying up so late, you know, I don't know, preparing for this poker tournament that she'll perform less well, right?

Speaker 1 Or like, you know, the amount of, there's a point where extra effort has negative returns, right? And the same is true in running, where if you,

Speaker 1 because you're basically breaking your body, rebuilding your body, your body rebuilds a little bit stronger. And as you do that, you're able to take on more load, right?

Speaker 1 And so you run the 5K a little bit faster. It makes you a little bit stronger.
You train 30 miles, not 27 miles. The next week, it makes you a little stronger, more capable of going 33.

Speaker 1 And you're just trying to like get further and further and further.

Speaker 1 And like, as you increase the exertion you increase the exertion that you can do the next time and so then the question is when do you like cross over and so

Speaker 1 that comes up in training right where you start to feel right you start to like right now i have like a little something feels a little weird in the top of my right knee right i know it's i know it's like coming inflammation but i have the new york city marathon and so you're taking this trade-off it's not soreness it's it's injury and how do i balance that with my training how do you balance that with your goals and a lot of a lot of what you're trying to do when you train this hard is cultivate awareness about what is your body getting stronger, what is good fatigue, and what is like actual pre-injury fatigue.

Speaker 1 And so that's one element of it. And that's like the only way you can really tell is cultivating body awareness.
That's partly why I don't listen to music when I run, right?

Speaker 1 Because you listen to music and you lose a little bit of that awareness and a little bit of that memory and a little bit of that knowledge.

Speaker 1 It gets harder in a race, right? Because now you're out and you're out in the mountains and something's right? And so then you have a different calculus.

Speaker 1 And so this was the hardest time this ever happened to me. It was the first time I read my first 50-miler.

Speaker 1 And I go out there and I'm like all psyched to optimize. I've done my whole thing.
I've made my split charts. Everything's set.
And then there's like snows, right?

Speaker 1 And I brought these like shoes that are like great for running on like nice, you know, rocky roads,

Speaker 1 but are terrible for snow.

Speaker 1 Mile 32, I slip. I'm trying to like eat a goo.
Like now something is wrong, right? And so the the next five miles, I'm trying to calculate, am I

Speaker 1 injured or am I just tired? And it's so hard to tell. And you're, you're cold, you're like near hypothermic at that point.
I remember pulling off into this tent and they're giving me like hot soup.

Speaker 1 And I'm trying to figure out, do I keep forward? Do I drop out? I ended up dropping out. And I, you know, after I dropped out, I was like, that, what a wimp.

Speaker 1 Like, like, what a terrible decision, right? Like,

Speaker 1 um,

Speaker 1 and then, you know, I tried to run a few days after I I got back. I was like, God, I'm going to like make up for this.
And I was like, oh, something's wrong. I went and saw a doctor.

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, you're like inches from ripping your Achilles. So it's probably the right decision.

Speaker 1 It's hard stuff.

Speaker 1 You don't listen to music? Do you listen to podcasts?

Speaker 1 I love it, Nate. Do you listen to risky business while you're running, Nick?

Speaker 1 So I do when I'm... So most of my miles, I'm like running to work, right? I run to the office.
I run home from the office, and I'm running like nine minutes a mile, right?

Speaker 1 Like I'm just jogging down Canal Street, right? And I'm not like,

Speaker 1 yeah, then I listen to risky business. I'm listening to all kinds of podcasts.
I'm listening to audio books.

Speaker 1 It's great. It's super efficient.
But if I'm out and I'm training, so my basically like I'm training three days or four days a week and I'm just like

Speaker 1 hobby jogging three or four days a week, right? And when I'm hobby jogging, I'm listening to podcasts or whatever. When I'm like training, I'm not.
That makes sense. That makes sense.

Speaker 1 Is it safe to assume that like once you get to a certain level of performance or aspiration, a performance for running, then

Speaker 1 98% of your life has to be not oriented toward that, but like, you know, obviously diet, sleep, booze, drugs,

Speaker 1 other health decisions that you're making, right? It starts to become fairly comprehensive as far as like day-to-day decisions you're making.

Speaker 1 Is that fair or is there like a little bit more slack than one might assume? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Speaker 1 I think to

Speaker 1 really,

Speaker 1 really reach your utter potential, yes. But I've never done that.

Speaker 1 Like I've gone, I've never,

Speaker 1 right. I'm training for the New York Marathon.
It's the age group world championships, right? Like I really want to do well.

Speaker 1 I just like went to Arizona to go run in the Grand Cannon, which is stupid if you're training for a marathon in three weeks, and then immediately flew to Italy to go like moderate an event because that's cool too, right?

Speaker 1 And like you would never do that if you were like really optimizing, right? They optimize a lot, right?

Speaker 1 But not

Speaker 1 99%.

Speaker 1 So this is actually a really interesting point in your book. So you have, there are two coaches that kind of you

Speaker 1 write about. I mean, you write about more coaches, but so you went to Stanford to run originally.

Speaker 1 I mean, obviously for academics, but also it was a kind of legendary running team that you were a part of.

Speaker 1 And that didn't go quite according to plan, but then

Speaker 1 you ended up, and you can tell the story. That's why

Speaker 1 I'm not fully telling it right now. And then you ended up doing this project for Nike where you got hooked up with a coach who changed your life and changed your running trajectory.

Speaker 1 And they both saw you very differently and had a very different approach to how running should be optimized for you personally.

Speaker 1 And I think that's something that we don't talk about enough when we talk about decision-making, right? That there's no one size fits all.

Speaker 1 And that a lot of times you do have to look at the individual variables, the individual, to make the best decision possible. It's not like a universal best decision, right?

Speaker 1 It's how do you train this person? So I'd love for you to talk about this contrast. Yeah, that's a great insight.

Speaker 1 So I go to Stanford and I run this guy, Vin Lenana, who's like the most successful best coach in American track history, or like in the conversation. And I'm not the best recruit.

Speaker 1 I'm, you know, 10th recruit, you know.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I never even raced for the team and I'm off the team by the beginning of my sophomore year. And I interviewed him as part of the research for this book.

Speaker 1 And one of the things he said to me was like, yeah, I needed kids who were utterly devoted and like, who weren't concerned about academic excellence and like really just wanted to be runners.

Speaker 1 And when I was talking, I was like, okay, yeah. And I never, I didn't want that, right? Like, I liked running.
I liked being good, but it was never the most important thing of my life, even then.

Speaker 1 You know, I loved all these other things. And so I was, I like, I couldn't have succeeded.
Like, in order for him to, maybe I had the, maybe I have the innate talent to be a much better runner.

Speaker 1 And if anybody in the world could have found it, it might have been Vin Lenana. The guy's a genius.

Speaker 1 And, but I realized talking to him, like, I never could have committed enough for him to commit to me to find that talent.

Speaker 1 So then when I'm in my 40s, I get coached by this guy, Steve Finley, who interestingly had like studied under Lenana.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Finley like looks at my old logs and like talks to me and realizes that I could be doing much more and training much harder. And there are ways to unlock much more speed.

Speaker 1 But he also realizes that I don't care about it that much. I love being fast.
I care about it a ton. I mean, I wrote a whole book about it.

Speaker 1 I clearly care a lot about running, but I care about my job much more. I care about my kids much more.
And so he made me a schedule.

Speaker 1 These other coaches are like, well, Nick should also do all this core exercise and really needs to

Speaker 1 work on his shoulder mobility. And Steve was like, no, he doesn't.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he'd make this schedule and it would be like Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays would be like run option, right? Do whatever the hell you want. Right.

Speaker 1 He would make workouts for that were like optimized for when I travel. Like, we're going to have to find a track.

Speaker 1 Like he basically set it up to be like, what is the maximum amount that we can get him to improve in the minimum amount of time? Because there's a cap.

Speaker 1 And if he, if you force Nick to do more, he'll just stop because he cares about this other stuff more. And so that was like, I needed that kind of a coach to bring about that success.

Speaker 1 And it's a good lesson for coaching anything. Like if you're coaching someone in poker, right?

Speaker 1 You have to like identify how much time is available, how much mental energy is available, and then structure it for that. If I was like, Maria, you know, like,

Speaker 1 I need you to write four stories a week, right? And you would have been like, you could have done it, or, but you also would have been like, no, Nick, like, I have these other things I'm doing.

Speaker 1 I can write two stories a week. You know, you have to like figure out how, like, if you're a writer-editor relationship is similar to the runner-coach.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 writing and running and poker all have these weird parallels, right? Including, I mean, I own running as well as the other two, obviously, but they seem to attract a certain type of obsessive.

Speaker 1 I mean, that in a good way, who are walking a tightrope between like achievement and discipline and have a long-term plan, but I don't know, there's something,

Speaker 1 you know, when I'm writing something, then like, I almost feel like running is like part of that work. Right.

Speaker 1 I need time to physically move and like process thoughts.

Speaker 1 I do think there are actually a surprising number of writers who are also like George Carl, oats, like very focused runner.

Speaker 1 When I was at the New Yorker, obviously Peter Hessler who wrote for it ran these fast marathons. I was like, George Packer ran a 246 marathon.

Speaker 1 I had Ann Goldstein, the head of copy, ran like a 310 marathon, 80s. Like all of these like New Yorker icons had actually at some point been like hardcore runners.

Speaker 1 So how do you, okay, you're one of the most kind of ridiculously driven people I've ever met.

Speaker 1 And I still remember, I think the first time I met you, came to your office, you had your wedding clothes because you'd run to work. I didn't realize yet that you ran to work every single day.

Speaker 1 At that point, you have already three little kids, or at that point, I think you had fewer. I think I had a lot of fun.
I think I had three kids. I had two kids, but the third one was coming.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they multiplied while I knew you.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, you worked with me on a series about sleep a long time ago and about how important it is.

Speaker 1 And yet, you know, I'm reading here, like you wake up at who knows what time so that you can get all of these different elements of your life in so that you can get these runs in, you can get these, this training in during, during the week.

Speaker 1 So speaking of like that

Speaker 1 give and take of when does this effort, you know, become counterproductive, how, how do you think about all of that? And how do you, how do you think about that balance?

Speaker 1 And it also seems like running actually kind of helps you get that balance, which is, which is very, which is a funny thing to say, given how much of your time you devote to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you get like, you get a little bit, like for for every hour you put into running, you get like five minutes back, right? Because it helps you fall asleep and helps relax your mind.

Speaker 1 You know, that series, it was a three-part series, actually was pretty influential because when you edit a story,

Speaker 1 you read the sources, you go through stuff. I started sleeping more after working with you on that reel.

Speaker 1 I mean, let me just say that I actually think people are like, how do you like...

Speaker 1 How do you spend so much time running and so much time in your job? There's so many parallels. Like running really hard makes you better at focusing during hard Zoom meetings, right?

Speaker 1 I would imagine that concentrating during poker makes you a better interviewer because you are better at concentrating. Like you are learning like similar skills.

Speaker 1 And if your hobbies and passions can reinforce your job, like you're in a good spot. I mean, just some of the marshmallow effect stuff too.

Speaker 1 Maria can tell us whether the marshmallow study is accurate or not, right? But just like the routine practice of having

Speaker 1 discipline, right? I mean, it's one of the most basic things that most people are

Speaker 1 too willing to sacrifice the long term for the short term in terms of happiness, right? And that can include like the long-term patience.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, every article that I write for my newsletter takes somewhere between four hours and like four days, right? And like having the patience to say, I'm going to focus on this and

Speaker 1 not need a quick hit when there's so many impulses.

Speaker 1 Twitter, for example, and television. And I'm dating myself with television already, right?

Speaker 1 But like everything else is such instant gratification where this seems like, this seems like a very different course to choose in life. Totally.
And I feel like

Speaker 1 one of the things I definitely believe is that discipline is cumulative, right?

Speaker 1 If you make your bed, like you do something disciplined and correct first thing in the morning, that makes it easier to do the next thing disciplined and correct, ad nauseum, right?

Speaker 1 And sometimes you need to let your mind relax and take a break, but like discipline builds discipline. And so I actually think that

Speaker 1 running hard, you know, makes it easier to focus and do disciplined things through the rest rest of your day in your life.

Speaker 1 And we'll be right back after this break.

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Speaker 1 Can I ask a very basic, I guess, running question, right?

Speaker 1 Of course, please. How do you pace yourself, right? Because like I will run,

Speaker 1 you know, 5Ks, not ultra marathons, God forbid, right? And like, you know, I'm not even sure what my goal is necessarily, but it's, it's hard to like avoid going out too fast or too slow.

Speaker 1 And when you're planning 26.2 miles or what's ultra, it's like 31 miles, right? An ultra marathon.

Speaker 1 How do you pace yourself and decide like, A, what place do I think I should be running? And B, how's my body like achieved that pace?

Speaker 1 That's so good. All right.
So

Speaker 1 short answer or long answer, Nate? We have a whole hour.

Speaker 1 Long answer, Nick.

Speaker 1 All right. So

Speaker 1 as you get older, one of the advantages of getting older is you have all this data on yourself. Right.
And so you know how you've run in previous races.

Speaker 1 You know all the workouts you did before those races. And you know how those workouts project to future races, or like I do.

Speaker 1 And so before I begin a marathon, I have a general sense of how fit I am compared to previous marathons. So then I make a goal.
So this would be a marathon, a 50K or a 50 miler.

Speaker 1 And I project out either what I think I'm capable of or I project out what is my goal. Like I want to break a record, I want to set a world leading time, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 And then I work backwards and I make a plan for the race. And so

Speaker 1 The last race I ran and really cared about was the Lake Warramog 50 Miler, right?

Speaker 1 And I wanted to run the American record record for my age group, which meant running basically 640s or 638s per mile for 50 miles.

Speaker 1 And so I then kind of projected, can I possibly do this based on my workouts, based on what I've done before? Okay, made a plan.

Speaker 1 And so I made a plan for every mile, like what I would run, what I plan to run. So then while I'm running, I'm basically I'm measuring three things.
I'm measuring my splits.

Speaker 1 So am I running 638 pace, or if my plan is to start at 645 and drop to 632, am i running the pace that i have planned and projected and think i can do based on data inputs that i have that's input number one right second input what is my heart rate right and so heart rate is super important if you measure it on your wrist it's a useless indicator because there's too much noise right there's bone your hand moves you have to measure it on your arm everybody screws this up all the runners do you got to put it on your chest or your arm right Once you do that, you get accurate readings on your heart rate.

Speaker 1 So then you've got a second data signal, and then that can override. And so if my heart rate is above X and I'm running a certain pace, I know I can't sustain it for 50 miles or 26.2.

Speaker 1 So that's input number two. And then input number three is feel, right? And so I know how I should feel at a certain point in a race.
And so then that can override heart rate or pace.

Speaker 1 And so then as you run in an optimal ideal scenario, everything is working as planned. So in that like Waramog race, I'm running 635s.

Speaker 1 My heart rate is like, you know, basically, let's say it's 125 in the first 20 miles and I feel nothing, right? And if I can sustain that, that, then I'm in good shape.

Speaker 1 Then what happens is as the race progresses, A, you like,

Speaker 1 you lose your brain, right? You can no longer think. You can no longer trust yourself, right? You start to make bad decisions and you start to go too quickly or you start to go too slowly.

Speaker 1 But the goal is to be able to hold off and make good decisions as long as you can about how you pace yourself based on all of those inputs.

Speaker 1 Also, I should add, You have to like look very carefully at the weather. You have to look very carefully at the wind.

Speaker 1 And you have to think about like, are you going to be able to run in a group of runners and how does that affect your pace? So, that's a kind of complicated answer. Is that how you do your 5Ks, Nate?

Speaker 1 No, I

Speaker 1 no, but what's frustrating is like, I've gotten good at like running exactly that distance, right?

Speaker 1 The other day, my partner and I were trying to run a little bit longer, and like at exactly 3.13 miles, right? I hit a wall pretty much, right? And so, like,

Speaker 1 I think you're applying a lot more precision.

Speaker 1 But let me, let me ask one more thing: is your goal?

Speaker 1 Let's say you're running a marathon for simplicity's sake, should you feel totally wiped out at the end? Is that a proof that you optimally targeted the right amount of effort and pace?

Speaker 1 Or do you want to feel still able to walk around and not totally beat up?

Speaker 1 You want to feel,

Speaker 1 you do want to feel wiped out, but you don't want to feel like you're wiped out until the very last step.

Speaker 1 Because if you, like most people who feel wiped out at the end of a marathon push too hard early.

Speaker 1 And so then they've crushed themselves in the last five miles, three miles, 10 miles are a death march, and you're going to run a terrible race.

Speaker 1 And so feeling wiped out is like necessary, but not sufficient for having run your optimal pace.

Speaker 1 But like your optimal pace is you actually feel like you've, I think of it as you have 100 pennies in your pocket, right? And you're spending them through the race.

Speaker 1 And the last foot, you spend the last, or the last quarter mile, you spend the last one. You often will spend all 100 pennies by mile 21, and then it's just hell.

Speaker 1 Let me ask a question for people who are not hardcore runners, but maybe more casual runners. What's your favorite place to run in or around New York City?

Speaker 1 Well, Prospect Park is amazing, right? I love it.

Speaker 1 There's also a loop I love to do where, you know, I run out

Speaker 1 to the Verrazano, you run out on the boardwalk under the Verrazano, you run out on the boardwalk in Coney Island, you come back on Ocean Avenue.

Speaker 1 Obviously, that's a long run for people, but that's cool. I do think that like along the Brooklyn Navy Yard is a really good spot.
I love the bridges, right?

Speaker 1 Like, wear a lot of wear and tear on your knees going back and forth across the bridges.

Speaker 1 But, you know, running across like Williamsburg and back on Brooklyn is awesome in the morning before it gets too crowded.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 we have a few more like serious questions, but since Nate asked this, I'm going to give you just a lightning round of very quick questions about running for people who care about that. All right.

Speaker 1 Best time of day to run.

Speaker 1 Sunrise. Okay.
Ooh, that's beautiful. I sleep through sunrise mostly.
Least dependable. That always surprised me about you, Maria.

Speaker 1 Yes, I'm not a morning person at all.

Speaker 1 Least dependable body part.

Speaker 1 Digestive system. Huh.
Interesting. Yeah, because the blood flows away and it gets jostled.
So you get a lot of stomach upset, which is kind of surprising to non-runners.

Speaker 1 Wow, that's yeah, that's very surprising. Pre-run rituals.
I stretch. I have a very legitimate nutrition routine.
And then I watch Sammy Winjuro winning the Chicago Marathon back in like 2000.

Speaker 1 I can't remember what year it was, but like there's this incredible recording of Sammy Wanjiro who's since passed away. But

Speaker 1 he's like, he's racing this guy, Kebede, and they're just going back and forth and back and forth. It looks like Sammy's just like cooked and cooked and cooked.
And then he just destroys him.

Speaker 1 And I'm not sure what Chicago Marathon is, but I've just always Google like Wanjuri, Kebede, Chicago Marathon. And I watch it like an hour before whenever marathon I'm running.
And it's great.

Speaker 1 I love that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Carb loading. Do you carb load one day before a race, two days before a race?

Speaker 1 How do you work that in?

Speaker 1 I don't really like focus carb loading where you carb deplete and then eat lots of carbs.

Speaker 1 I feel like you hurt your immune system more than it's worth it, even if it does help you store carbs a little bit. I eat sort of high-density carbs Thursday.
Race is on Sunday.

Speaker 1 I'll start on Thursday. I'll be very focused on Friday, a little bit on Saturday.
Okay. Gels or chews? Gels.
What brand?

Speaker 1 I think Morton is pretty good at it, but you want to mix them up because you don't want palate fatigue.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you don't want to get too used to something because then it'll make you sick. And so

Speaker 1 A, you rotate them and B, you try to suck them down without tasting them. Fascinating.
And this goes, this goes to

Speaker 1 your gut answer as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. What's the best race?

Speaker 1 New York City Marathon. Okay.
What about the Northeast Harbor Road race? Yeah, it's amazing, but they canceled it. So sad.
That is. That was it.
I love that race so much.

Speaker 1 But yeah, the New York City Marathon, you can't beat the New York City Marathon. But the Northeast Harbor Road race close second.
All right.

Speaker 1 And let's end the lightning round with a very risky business question. And, you know, because we talk about being DGens all the time and gambling and all of that.

Speaker 1 What's the most de-gen-y thing that you've ever done for the sake of running?

Speaker 1 And with D-Gen as in like degenerative?

Speaker 1 No. Oh, Nate,

Speaker 1 we've got a D-Gen newbie.

Speaker 1 So when you're

Speaker 1 a D-Gen is someone who takes maybe a little bit too much risk that they shouldn't be taking in the moment, makes a bad decision.

Speaker 1 Someone like, for instance, if you're a poker player, but then you decide to like use part of your buy-in to play slots, which you should absolutely

Speaker 1 play slots. Degen leaning.
I don't mean to make that anything about sexuality or anything else, but like, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's definitely a lot of de-gen in the sexuality. That is true.

Speaker 1 That's interesting. It's like, well, I mean,

Speaker 1 you've tried so hard, right? Basically, like running a mile too hard to stay with a group is a basic D-Gen move that everybody makes.

Speaker 1 But but the most degen thing that i've done in a race or just in training either one

Speaker 1 i mean okay so literally this is good last saturday i ran the grand canyon right uh-huh and i was running with like two uh folks who have very intense jobs or the group the group people but like two of them had very intense jobs and also had like to catch flights back to be with their kids right and so we had to complete it in a certain amount of time and

Speaker 1 a we like didn't really pay attention to signs which meant we added an extra like thousand feet of climbing and five miles of running. And then B,

Speaker 1 we like were so focused on getting to the airport that we like,

Speaker 1 we ran as fast as we could up the canyon. It's like a 27-mile run.
And then I was like, guys, you have five minutes to shower and pack, right? And they're like, 10 minutes.

Speaker 1 All right, fine, 10 minutes to shower and pack. And so we packed and showered in 10 minutes after running the Grand Canyon, drove like 90 miles an hour, got to the airport, barely made our flights.

Speaker 1 And it was not great for the people next to us and everything else or our suitcases. You know, I am the the world record holder for age

Speaker 1 40 to 49-year-old men at the Denver airport trying to catch a connecting. Are you really?

Speaker 1 That's awesome.

Speaker 1 Do you run, do people run faster mostly when they're in a race?

Speaker 1 Yes. And that's a super interesting question of why, right? Like, what is it about the psychology and physiology of being in a race, but it is totally different.

Speaker 1 And you're able to reach a mental space and extract like a percentage of maximum effort that is much higher than at any other point.

Speaker 1 There's a beautiful moment in your book when you talk about this when you try to run a marathon yourself in Prospect Park and it's much tougher than when you actually have.

Speaker 1 It's like there's a magic of being out there and having people cheer you on.

Speaker 1 But of course, it also creates this degen risk where you can like go too fast because you're trying to like appeal to the crowd and then you cook yourself.

Speaker 1 But it's it's very different like running by yourself, running with one person, running with a group, running a race. You run totally different speeds.

Speaker 1 What's your goal for this marathon this year, Nick?

Speaker 1 This is the weirdest buildup I've ever had because I've had two little injuries. I've had this weird thing that happened last week, but I would love to be able to run

Speaker 1 243.37, which would be one second faster than I ran in 2007, which was when I ran 13 seconds faster than when I got sick. All right.
Well, that is a very good goal.

Speaker 1 And I think a really lovely note on which to end this, even though we could go on forever. But so much fun.

Speaker 1 You guys, it's so interesting because you have such interesting ways into this from your like poker thinking writing backgrounds.

Speaker 1 We should go on for hours.

Speaker 1 But unfortunately, you have a magazine to run.

Speaker 1 Nick, thank you so much for joining us once again. The book is the running ground.
It is wonderful. You guys should all buy a copy and Nick, you should return to editing and be my editor again.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much. And Maria, you should send me another 900-page story memo.
Thank you so much for having me on Maria. Thank you, Nate.

Speaker 1 Let us know what you think of the show. Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Kanakova. And by me, Nate Silver.

Speaker 1 The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isaac Carter.
Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit. Lydia Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors.

Speaker 1 And our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
If you like the show, please rate and review us so other people can find us too.

Speaker 1 But once again, only if you like us, we don't want those bad reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.

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