Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Matthew Futterman, NY Times Deputy Sports Editor

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

This week’s conversation is with Matthew Futterman, the deputy sports editor of The New York Times.He has previously worked for The Wall Street Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Star-Ledger of New Jersey, where he was a part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News in 2005.Matthew grew up in Larchmont, New York, and eventually found his way to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.One of his deep passions in life is running for long distances.While we do discuss running, this conversation is more about how he uses his inner life to help others do the same, whether that's through his journalism at the New York Times or through his new book, Running to the Edge.At its core, the book is more about insights and strategies toward improvement as a human, than it is about running tactics.I've had the privilege of being interviewed by Matt, when he was at the Wall Street Journal and since then, I've followed his work.He was one of the rare folks who've been able to capture the spirit of what I want to communicate about how people can flourish in life._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I don't think I would write about sports if it didn't help me sort of order the world, understand life a little better, understand myself, gain some insight, and hopefully, hopefully, here's the big hope, that the people that read my stuff, that it helps them gain some insight and help them get through the day and have

some revelations about what it means to be human. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais by Trade in Training. I'm a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. Now, the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, who have a deep and a rich understanding and insight about how they work, how their craft works, how the world around them works, how they organize their inner life to be able to flourish and meet the demands and challenges of their external world. And so we also want to dig to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine

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slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay, this week's conversation is with Matthew Futterman, the deputy sports editor of the New York times. And he's previously worked for the wall street journal, the Philadelphia inquire, the star ledger of New Jersey, where he was part of the team that won the Pulitzer prize for breaking news in 2005. Matthew grew up in New York and eventually found his way to Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. So he studied it. He cares about writing. He's got some serious chops behind him. And one of his deep passions in life is running.

And he does it a lot for long distances. And he's fast too. And so this conversation, though, it's not about running. We do talk about it. But it's about how he uses his inner life to help others do the same, whether that's through his journalism at the New York Times or through his new book, Running to the Edge. At its core, the book is way more about insights and strategies toward improvement as a human than it is about running tactics. And I've had the privilege of being interviewed by Matt when he was at the Wall Street Journal. And since then, I've followed his work.

He's one of the rare three folks who have been able to really get to the essence and capture the spirit of what I wanted to communicate in the interview. And that's really about how people can flourish and the thoughts around that. So for that, I've just enjoyed his writings from that time. And I hope that you'll do the same. And maybe it starts with buying his book. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Matthew Futterman. Matt, how are you? I'm great. Doing very well today. Five and a half hours on a plane, but sitting in Hermosa Beach doesn't get much better than that. It's a little overcast, which is rare, but it is a beautiful place in the world, isn't it?

It's phenomenal. Yeah. This is like one of my favorite areas in the world. I mean, I'm a New Yorker, but I absolutely love California. I have a daughter who goes to school in Northern California, another one who's going to join her in a couple months in Northern California. So we're out here a fair amount. But this area particularly, like just south of LA is special. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Larchmont, New York, which is a little suburb just north of New York City, northeast. Okay, so describe what that was like, like growing up. What is it like growing up? So growing up for me in Larchmont, New York, if you've read John Cheever, there's those short stories, which many of them take place in Rye.

I think some of them take place in Larchmont, but sort of classic suburban New York. You know, I guess back in the day, the word, I don't know if it's a politically correct word to use anymore. It was kind of a waspy sailing town. But, you know, and it has, you know, it's much more mixed, much more mixed now than it was back in the 1950s. But this is sort of the classic, you know, Larchmont Yacht Club is a big place. It's kind of an idealized childhood in a lot of ways. So that's the neighborhood. And then when you zoom into what it was like for you, what was it like inside your home, inside of your family?

So I'm one of three brothers. I'm the youngest of the three brothers. I have to say, growing up, I was kind of the black sheep. My older brothers, school came easier to them, let's just say that. And, you know, they were probably, athletically, I think they were better than me. I guess whether or not I was the black sheep, I kind of see myself that way. And so that's really sort of, you know, after all these years, that's what it was like. And, um, you know, but pretty loving, pretty supportive household. Father's a lawyer, mother's a psychoanalyst. And, uh, you know, I mean, people could, you could, you could write a, you could write a funny cartoon about us i say that attorney and psychoanalyst okay

and you got a chip on your shoulder like you're the black sheep does that mean you got something to prove um was that more something else like like this man i don't fit in i don't know that i would say i had something to prove other than you know i i mean mean, I guess, I guess I, yeah, I mean, I just, you want to, you're the youngest kid, you want to measure up, um, you want to do well. And it's hard when, you know, you're not quite that, you're not as fast as they are. This is actually a big deal that we're talking about. This is a really big deal because as you would recognize that kids that have a hard time in sport, boys that have a hard time in sport at a young age, if they're in the bottom third, according to some interesting research, that

it's hard for them. And so that is an indicator for struggle in sport. I'm sorry, struggle in school. So for boys that are in bottom third of performance in sport, it's a tough place to be in America. Yeah. I mean, and I was fine. I just wasn't excelling. And my middle brother, Danny, really good soccer player. I mean, good in 1980s suburban good. Not great foot skills or anything,

but varsity soccer team in the midfield. And I got cut from varsity soccer team in the midfield. And, you know, I got cut, you know, I got cut from varsity my junior year. That's really why I became a pretty serious runner. I joined the cross country team. So that was my sort of introduction to one of the things that has become the kind of mainstay of my life. And my oldest brother, David, and Danny as well, they're just super smart and just straight A students seemingly without much effort. I don't think anyone, if they read your work, would ever say, oh, poor guy struggles. So how do I know you're not just being humble right now? And this is just a mark of humility as opposed to, no, Mike, this is really how it happened i wasn't very

fast i didn't have great footwork i wasn't so athletically minded i was okay and i've looked around my family like super high achievers and i don't feel like i fit in i mean it takes it takes a lot of work i think people don't realize when they read stuff, whether it's magazine articles or books, just how much work goes into that. How much of writing is rewriting? How much of it is draft after draft? You just can't get it right on the first try. Some people might. I'm not that good.

I just don't. And so I rewrite a lot. And it's just, we really care about the quality of the expression of words and ideas. So let's assume somebody does care and that caring is going to lead to a desire to get it right. And that's a matching of what we think we understand internally with the external words on paper and the way that maybe somebody else will feel or think when they read it. So that's my process of communication. And for me, it's really hard to match what's inside with the way I communicate. And as I practice, it gets better. And as I rewrite or re-say, it gets easier as well. But I want to ask you the deeper question. Like, I'm assuming you care because of the way that you write and the phrase you just said.

What do you care about? Like, what is the deep drive underneath of why you care so much to do the painful work of rewriting? Well, the first thing I really care about most is I'm terrified of boring a reader. Oh, so it's a fear of what, not people think of you, but fear of something else. Of just the thing I write being boring. Honestly, that's sort of the main thing.

Like, is this fast enough? Does this get to the heart of the story? There are so many options out there for how people spend their time. And getting someone to sit with you and to get through your thousand-word story or your hundred-thousand-word book is a really big ask these days. And so you got to grab the readers and you got to keep the story moving and you got to keep it interesting and you can't gum it up with a lot of flab. And so I, so a lot of writing to me was, it has been sort of getting to know what kind of writer I am and what I do well and

what I don't do well. And, you know, people, it's really nice when people tell me, oh, you're a terrific writer. I do not think of myself as a terrific writer. So there's that humility. No, it's not humility. It's, there are certain things I think I do really well. I think I'm a really good reporter. Oh, so you see this differently? Reporting and writing. Well, good, I mean, generally good – in the nonfiction realm, generally good writing is good reporting.

If the reporting isn't there, it's going to show in the writing, which is going to be sort of flabby and people are going to be – you can tell when people are trying to sort of like bullshit their way through a story and they just don't have the goods. So, so I'm a, I'm a really good reporter, but you know, I could rattle off the names. I mean, the first two people that come to mind, you know, one of them I work with John Branch, he's just a great stylist. He can turn a phrase in his sleep. Another one I used to work with Ben Cohen. Yeah. I mean, just great, hilarious, terrific sentences just seem to sort of fly out of his fingers. Jason Gay is another one. These are sports writers that I've worked closely with for years. And, you know, they have things that I don't.

And that's cool. That's great. I probably have a few things that they don't. And that's cool. That's great. I probably have a few things that they don't. And we talk about that and I help them with their stories and they help me with mine. And, um, you know, it's, it, it's a, it's kind of a collaborative art, even though it doesn't seem that way. Really cool. And what are the skills that you're good at? What are the things that if they can turn a phrase, that's a cool, I've never heard that before. Like I really like that, that imagery that they can turn a phrase, meaning that they can create something that is eloquent.

Definitely. They're really good at the metaphor or the simile at the end of the sentence, which, you know, if I'm going to describe something that happens, I'm going to sit here with you and I'm going to ask you to tell me every last detail. And I'm going to write down all those details and then I'm going to recreate it and just put it down there and put it down sort of raw. It is what it is. And that's going to have to carry the day. They can do that. And then at the end of it, they can say sort of like a, and they can complete it in sort of complete that sentence in a really beautiful way that brings up an image, you know, the Hemingway line, hills like white elephants. I'm never going to come up with hills like white elephants. That's not who I am.

But I can talk to people for a while. I can get them to tell me over a series of hours and conversations, because there are a lot of hours and a lot of conversations that go into it, to sort of recreate things. And then I can take really good notes, and I think I can turn that into a pretty good narrative, if the narrative is there. And that's what writing has come to be for me.

And other people have different processes other people um who are terrific novelists don't need to do that research it's all in their heads but uh i don't have that good of an imagination okay so when you when you go and you're writing and i want to go back to the fear okay so when So when you actually put words out, string them together, creating ideas, and you're afraid of how people spend their time, what is the fear of? Is it letting people down? Is it what they'll think of you? Is it time that you really have a value of time and you don't want to waste others? Can you go underneath the surface of that thought just a little bit and help shape what you're afraid of? So one of my favorite writers is Richard Ford, the novelist, always has been, wrote The Sports Writer, wrote Independence Day. Frank Bascombe is his main character.

He's kind of his alter ego. And I remember listening to an interview with him after Independence Day had come out, and Independence Day is one of my favorite books in the world. And after that came out, and he mentioned that not very long before that, he had thought of just giving up writing and doing something else. And here was this Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, one of the quote unquote important novelists of the last quarter of the 20th century. And he was just going to walk away from it

and sell real estate or something or pursue another interest. And it was baffling to me and it was baffling to the interviewer. She couldn't understand it. And he said, look, I write to be read and I wasn't really being read. And so I think that's part of it.

If you write, if you spend the time, you're doing it for a purpose. You want ultimately people to read it. You want people to think well of it. And really you want people to sort of learn something about it, or at least I do. I mean, I've been a sports writer for gone on 20 years, I've been a reporter for about 25 years. And I don't think I would do what I do. I don't think I would write about sports, if it didn't help me sort of order the world, understand life a little better, understand myself, gain some insight. And hopefully, hopefully, here's the big hope, that the people that read my stuff, that it helps them gain some insight and help them get through the day and have some revelations

about what it means to be human in this world. That's honestly, I mean, without mentioning too implicitly, this book that just came out, Running to the Edge, that's what drew me to the story as we went along, that the lessons that the main character in this book, Bob Larson, the lessons he was teaching, yeah, they helped a lot of people run a lot faster, but I found them to be just at their very foundational level, something that could really help me in life and I hope would help a lot of other people in life. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance,

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new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 35% off your first subscription order at livemomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, livemomentous.com and use the the code Finding Mastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using

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off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Before we dive into the insights from the book, I want to get insights from the man who wrote the book. And what you just said is rich. It's like I am using writing in sport to help organize the world, to understand myself and others better. And I think that's really deep. And so I also hear something that is very practical. And the practical piece is, okay, I want to be read. So it's very different to me. And there's not a right or wrong, but it's very different than this thought, which is I'm looking to create a masterpiece.

I don't care if anyone sees it. I'll know. I'll know if it's beautiful, if it's true, if it's authentic, if it hit the right notes and the dissonance was just pure. That's not what you're saying. You're saying practically, I want to create something that is a good use of other people's time. Do I have that right? Definitely. You want to be relevant or I want to be relevant. Okay. Pull on that thread. What is that? If you unpack relevance to you, how do you organize that? Well, in my day job, deputy sports editor of the New York Times, I'm constantly telling reporters and telling myself, we need to write the best story about the most important thing. And there's a lot of different ways to define the most important thing, but you know it when it's in front of you.

When this whole stuff was going on last summer with Urban Meyer at Ohio State and whether he had handled the situation with his assistant coach who was allegedly involved in this domestic dispute, that was a really important story in America, and we needed to get into it, and we needed to figure out the best story about that. And we needed to write it. So in that sense, it's about being relevant in that way. There's other ways.

There's other stories that are important and relevant too. I was sitting with a reporter in December and she had written a story recently for me about a woman who was winning Courtney DeWalter, who runs these races that are more than 200 miles, ultra ultra marathons, and she wins them. And so she's beating men. And women generally do not beat men in athletic competitions. It's, you know, there are genetic reasons for this. That's not a value judgment or anything like that. It's just, you know, it's the truth. So, but she is beating them.

And so I was, you know, fascinated with the idea and people have always thought about, well, as the distance goes longer, strength and physical capabilities, the distance between men and women sort of narrows. So maybe since she was going on these 240-mile races and winning them, maybe that was far enough where it didn't matter if you were a man or a woman. It just mattered whether you were the biggest masochist. So, and then she starts telling me about this woman she knows who's a stage four lung cancer, has five children who are these crazy adventurous children. She's a crazy adventurous woman. She, you know, is an ultra marathoner and a triathlete and in her time left which she's on a drug which generally works about a year and a half and then you know the the numbers the history so far says that she will go into something of a fate she's a very serious very you know virulent version of cancer

and she was doing one last adventure with each of her five children. This is, I read the story. This is, this is outrageous. And she was going and, and, and her next adventure with her 20 year old daughter was, she was going to climb Aconcagua, the roof of the Americas, the highest mountain outside of Asia. And I said, Rebecca, why are you not pitching me this story? This is the most unbelievable thing I've ever heard. And a week later, she was on a plane to Argentina to go climb Aconcagua with this woman. And, you know, that's a really, that's, that's a

pretty relevant story in my book. What makes it relevant what are the the levers that make something relevant for you well you know that hits sort of that ticks off all the but that's about life and death um that's sort of about everything right there you know life and death and what's the legacy you're going to leave with the people who are the most important to you. And those are the things that have the most meaning to me. And when I see that playing out either not necessarily on the field of competition because a Super Bowl usually is not life and death. But there's all kinds of other issues that are coming up on the journey to the Super Bowl or to the World Cup that can feel like life and death to the people who are involved on the journey. And when we can convey that and when we can make people understand the sort of inner workings of, uh,

the people that they're watching on television or, and looking up to and understanding their fragilities and insecurities, uh, that's, that's where, that that's where I want to be. What are some of those for you? Some of those fragilities and insecurities. And cause I, I hear two things for you. One is like legacy. Like you want to build that for the people that matter most to you.

You want to honor people's time and you know, what are the parts that are difficult for you? This actually, the, you know, the writing stuff, the, the, the waking up early in the morning and sitting at my computer and working with my notes. And when it's really quiet, I'm good with that.

I can do that. That's when I feel like most under control. When the book is birthed to the world and I got to sort of put myself out there and talk about myself and promote myself. I mean, I became a reporter for a reason and probably for a couple of different reasons. But one of those reasons was probably

because I was comfortable of being a gray byline in a newspaper. It was not, you know, I didn't gravitate towards having a microphone and being on TV. I was comfortable with being sort of invisible. So this part, when you got to promote yourself, especially in 2019, when there's social media and you're supposed to have a presence on Twitter and on Instagram.

And this is the whole reason why I'm not a columnist, I'd say. I don't wake up in the morning and why I'm really bad at Twitter. I'm not that pithy. I don't wake up in the morning and want to tell everybody what I had for breakfast. I want to wake up in the morning and go for a nice quiet run for an hour, an hour and a half, and be inside my head and not wear headphones and hear my feet scratching along the cinder around the reservoir in Central Park. And that's when I feel the the reservoir in Central Park. And that's when sort of, I feel the most sort of order in my life. So knowing that you are going to talk about yourself here for this

conversation, how do you manage your relationship with yourself or your relationship with this challenge right now? If this is one of the harder things that you do, how did you prepare? How did you order it today? I think I've been thinking for a while since I finished writing the book about how I would talk about it because it's important. You're not done when you finish writing the book, unless you're Don DeLillo, who does no publicity and writes his books and puts them out there and then goes and backs and is a hermit. He's a postmodern novelist. And when you're a postmodern novelist, you're allowed to behave that way. Him and J.D. Salinger. Yes, exactly. But that's not the deal at this point when you're writing sports journalism books.

And so I've been thinking about how I want to talk about this. And I will say that this has been sort of easy because this is easier because this is a book about one of the things I love the most, which is running. I mean, you ever play that game, uh, at a dinner party where everybody gets five, five words to describe themselves? Never. No. What is this? No. So what would you say? Okay. You have five words to describe yourself. What are they? Oh God. Are we doing this now? You don't have to, but I know what my words are because I've gone through them. And one of those words has been marathoner.

Wait, hold on. I love what you just did. This is actually really important. I want to come back to your words. But when I just gave you a way to take care of me. You did. So I'm led to believe that you have a high compassion, high EQ, high social EQ, that you really care about people and you know how to take care of them because they've trusted you for a long time. And in return, somehow, uh, the way that they trust you is because you take care of them. So just now you took care of me. You don't have to. Oh yeah. It was, it was really eloquent. Good. So there's another response, which. Oh, yeah. It was really eloquent. Good. So there's another response, which is like, yeah, Mike, come on now. And you could have done something totally different.

And I'd love to answer the question with you, but I'm more fascinated about your approach, which you just did something that I think is probably so authentic and so easy to you that people trust you. Well, so much of being a journalist, a certain kind of journalist, is getting people to tell you things that they're not supposed to tell you. Oh, keep going. And the only way, I mean, whether it's giving you confidential information or whether it's telling you things that make them really sad or that they're really scared of when they're alone.

And that's all about establishing a comfort level. And so maybe that's one of the reasons I became a journalist because it was something where I felt like, okay, if people feel comfortable talking to me, then I'll be able to get something out of them. It was interesting. You recently had Abby Wambach on your show. Yeah.

And I was doing what I do, which is flipping through my phone as I'm getting ready to get on my bike to work. And because I listen to a lot of podcasts on while I'm riding. And I said, you know, who's Mike going to have on this week? And I see Abby Wambach. And I thought, oh, wow, he's got Abby on. That's, you know, I've known Abby for a while. And she wasn't really much of an interview all those years. She kind of sounded like she was always in a Gatorade commercial.

Just go back and look at the clips. There's not a great Abby Wambach story during her playing days. I started playing that interview, and I felt like such a failure listening to it because it was amazing. And there was this whole Abby that like came through in a way that either she never allowed herself to do when she was an athlete or felt she couldn't come through when she felt like she was an athlete or her sponsors told her she told her not to come through when she was when she was performing but I I really had like this sense of wow I had written about her and I just had sort of and interviewed her and I just sort of kind of failed because I had never gotten her to open up and it it honestly, it made me a little sad about sort of the state of sports journalism, or I guess journalism, but probably more sports

journalism, maybe celebrity when people are celebrities, because there was so much in there that would have been so interesting to write about when she was the best soccer player in the world. And while it's great that it's coming out now, I feel bad that it couldn't come out when she had an even bigger platform. So your response to that leads me to believe that you take things personally. You take your craft personally, like you've infused who you are with what you do to say that, oh man, I've failed. It's not so much about the other person succeeded, but it's that the way that you do you and express you, whether it's an interview with Abby or anybody, that you take it personally. And at the same time, your ability to really care about what could be for somebody. And I snap right into this with you, meaning like one of my great fears is like,

I'm going to waste your time. You know, that I'm not going to be able to really understand your genius and then deconstruct it. Genius is a lower key. Letical let's go i'm not very comfortable with the word genius i'm sorry i'm not gonna let you get away with that well okay well then how have you created such a i don't know like a a dent in journalism and sport there's like the three four five guys that you mentioned earlier, yeah. And we had Alyssa Roenick at one point, an ESPN writer, and she has a great way at getting right into the center of the action sport athlete and what makes them really unique.

But your writing picks up on things that, no, I know you're not doing a bunch of it now other than your book, but it picks up on things that I normally don't think about. I think it's because I always want the story to be about something else. Oh, keep going. I'm always sort of, what's this story really about? You know, sometimes we call it the third beat. It's that it's not actually about the thing you're writing about. A recent story I wrote about Sarah Sellers, who's a marathoner. She came in second in the Boston Marathon in 2018, which was the 37 degree rainstorm.

Crazy day. Oh, and by the way, she's also like a full-time nurse anesthetist in Arizona. So she's in the operating room for 30 hours a week and she's an elite marathoner. And she was basically an amateur, completely an amateur when she came in second in Boston on that crazy day. Since then has decided to really become a professional, but has not given up her other job because she loves it and because she thinks it makes her faster, because she feels like if she was a full-time runner

that she would be, as she says, too much of a stress case. She would be obsessing about her whole identity would be wrapped up and whether she had a good workout or not. And this way she goes to the hospital. Four victims from an auto accident come in. Their wives are in danger. She's in the OR. That's a pretty good lesson in perspective and it was and i loved writing that story because it was about first of all it was about this crazy balancing act where she's training as an elite marathoner and holding

down a full-time job uh 30 hours a week of being a nurse anesthetist that's pretty full-time um and so it's a crazy balancing act and also just the mental balancing act of what makes you respond to be at your best. So, yeah, it was about running, but it was about all these other things. And so I think that's almost always what I'm trying to write about, especially now where I'm writing a little less on the sort of daily journalism side, sort of writing when the spirit moves me. But also, you know, but, but throughout my, throughout my career, even when I was writing, you know, churning out two, three, four stories a week, I was always trying to make them as, as,

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It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Okay. So you're driven by a handful of desires, wants, which is to make it meaningful, to create a story or a third beat, as you called it, like the thing that the story inside the story, you want to make sure that you're not going to let people down by those that are reading it. Is there anything else in legacy? Those are

kind of the four main drivers right now. Is there anything else that is deep, you know, as part of the primary drivers for you? Well, I guess this sort of ties into legacy a little bit because i i want to make sure we're like have the right definition of legacy because i feel like i feel like the great lesson of middle age is um you know no one gets out of here alive for the most part it's a pretty safe bet that no one's going to be reading what we wrote in 100 years or maybe even 50 years. And what really matters most is the impact you can have to this point in your career where you're, you know, you're hyper competitive and trying to get to, you know, trying to achieve as much as you can achieve. And then at some point, I mean, maybe call it a midlife crisis or not, but you inevitably say like, oh, wait a minute, like, what's this all going to add up to? Can you pause there? Sure.

How do you answer that? What are we doing here? Well, I can tell you that I had a really interesting week last in the fall. My most beloved teacher in the world, my fourth grade teacher, Alan Falber, died. And he had all my brothers and me for fourth grade in a period in the 1970s when he was really young. My oldest brother, David, who's four years older than me, was in his first full year of teaching. So Alan was 21 years old, right out of college, and this was his job. And he stayed at the school we went to for another 37 years.

So his was actually the second funeral I had gone to. And this is what makes this. I should have started the story with the other funeral which was Dave Anderson who is the sort of legendary Pulitzer Prize winning sports columnist at the Times who my dad introduced me to when I was eight years old

and really sort of taught me how to read by showing me how to read the sports section and I got to know Dave a little bit as I got older I would run into him. I didn't overlap with him at the times, but I would see him at the occasional sporting event and shook his hand. And he died.

He had a wonderful life. He was, I think, 89 years old. Had a great run. And I went to his funeral, and there were some lovely eulogies about, you know, the great stories he did and the great people he met and Muhammad Ali and all kinds of, you know, the famous people he came into contact with. And then it was probably a week or two later that I went to Alan Falber's funeral and here he had been this elementary school teacher in my town for 38 years. Part of this is a function of someone who dies when he's in his mid-60s and someone who dies when they're in 89, when they're 89. So you can imagine

the attendance figures alone are a little different. But there were probably six or 700 people at my fourth grade teacher's funeral. And there were stories about the kid in his class whose mother died of cancer that year, and she didn't want to go to school. And so Alan on his way to school every day for the rest of the year, picked her up, and drove her to school and walked her in. And, you know, then I ran into a guy who was in my brother's class. And he said, you know, when I was in fourth grade, I broke my leg. And I had a cast from my hip to my ankle. And our class was on the third floor of the school. And every morning, Alan would come down to the first floor and put me on and literally pick me up

and carry me up the stairs into my class. And there's just like story after story about this guy who he did some tutoring as well. So the impact that he had, the legacy he had, that'll teach you something. And that'll make you question about how you're spending your time. And are you more interested in deep across few or more shallow across many, but still creating impact? So deep impact across few or shallow across many, but still creating impact. So deep impact across few or shallow across many. I guess I kind of want it all, don't I? I do too. And the first time I was asked that

question, I don't think, I don't think it's a binary choice. I mean, I think I struggle with it. Yeah. I mean, I think you can, I mean, I, I, I hopefully I write for lots of people. I hope, hopefully lots of people, you know, read what I write and they can learn something from it. Um, but hopefully the people that I get to know, uh, and that I'm close with, I mean, my closest friends in the world are, you know, a few guys i went to elementary school with and a couple guys who are my roommates from college i mean i've i've i've pretty deep relationships or on that that's if you see it as the glass being half full the other way you could see it as one i'm one of the least evolved people you know that i'm still hanging out with people from elementary school. But that's my life.

So I don't think it's necessarily a binary choice there. Where do you find the most stimulating environments? What have been some of the most stimulating over your 20 plus years as a writer? Like where are the places you've gone that you're like, man, I never thought thought and then i learned are you talking about work environments yeah oh yeah yeah sorry more articulate yes it's always when you're on a big breaking news story and it's just hyper competitive. And, you know, you're just, it's the heat of competition. And from a journalism perspective, it's just the heat of competition. And I've had that at, you know, certainly each of the places where I've been for, you know, the significant portions of my career. The first was at the Star Ledger in New Jersey when, you know, we were going up against, you know, you're

going up when local journalism was sort of different than it was now and you were, it was just hyper competitive and you were going up against much bigger publications with much bigger staffs and, you know, trying to be the scrappy underdog and, and beat them. Uh, so it was on some of those stories. I mean, when Jim McGreevy was governor of New Jersey and it was, I think people could agree reasonably corrupt, uh, and it was sort of think people could agree, reasonably corrupt. And it was sort of getting at those stories. And I was a sports writer, but I was doing a lot of stuff about the sports business and the government controlled a lot of the sports in the state.

So competing with people on those or then at the journal competing with the Times on the FIFA story. Not just competing with the Times, not just the Wall Street Journal, but you're competing with The Guardian and everybody. And it's hard. You're competing with Bild and Germany and, I mean, everybody. But you're trying to find your way. But you like those environments the most. Oh, yeah, it's great.

That's the most oh yeah it's great that's the the most electric i mean in terms in terms of just just pure adrenaline yeah and the pure sort of heroin rush of journalism i don't know i've never done heroin but i would imagine that's the sort of you know that's the cliche that you know the the thing that people get really hooked can get really hooked on when can you remember a time or story when you are over your skis when you were like how am i going to do this like i'm way over my head on this one well i can i can remember getting just absolutely killed on a story uh which was the russian doping oh yeah and um yeah walk us through you know we all knew one thing i was i had gotten pretty good at was predicting the medal count in the olympics a pretty good accuracy uh because there's there's we figured out a sort of statistical way to do it and what countries were going to win which medals and you add it up and then came 2014

and russia goes from winning you know like i think 10 medals in 2010 to like 33 and we all knew that every good olympics writer knew like well they're cheating okay like there's only one explanation like you can't you cannot create an olympics team in four years in four years you can't go from being terrible to being great like these athletes in these sports they take years to develop it just doesn't happen okay i think and the home the home ice advantage let's call it our home snow advantage that's usually only good for like a 10 to 15 percent uptake uptake in your medal count so it was like very clear they cheated and there was a number of journalists who were trying to figure out how they cheated what they did and um you know the time i woke up one morning and there or it was one afternoon when the times pushed the button and you know they had

gotten the source they'd gotten to the source who told them everything about how uh about how he had you know how they constructed the lab and cheated and swapped out the urine and all the stuff we now know to be true and uh i don't know if you'd call that being out over my skis or outgun but we just call it getting your ass kicked. Okay. So was the Icarus movie, was that pretty accurate? That guy. That's the guy. That was the guy. Yeah. And there's scenes in that movie where he's on the phone with my competitor at the Times.

That's it. Yeah. And that was as painful as it gets. Okay. So now let's snap this from writing to running. What are you running toward or what are you running away from? I'm running away from death, basically. And it's a little game I think I play, which is, I still think I can get faster. And if I'm getting faster, then doesn't that mean I'm not really getting older? It doesn't, of course. It's ridiculous. It doesn't. But it'll get you through the day,

or it'll get you through the week, or it'll keep you out on the roads looking at your watch and feeling really good about that tempo run you just pulled off. And that's sort of that's that's what I would say. I'm sort of running away from a bit. I also have a wife and three daughters and, you know, know, it's, it's, it can get a little intense in a New York city apartment. So maybe I'm running a little bit away from, uh, away from that emotional intensity. But, um, I used to, I used to love, like, this is going back to high school. And, uh, first I had a proclivity for stitching ideas together, even way back when. And so like one of my buddies, we'd be, let's say

we're talking about like elephants or something. And then one of the buddies would say, just not innocently, not kind of stitch it together. Like say, um, Hey man, how's your girlfriend? You know, like, this is sounding really insensitive, but then like everybody would laugh, you know, like, um, but it was like, oh, look how his mind works. You know, like, so I loved what you just did. You caught yourself in there, right? Right. You know, and that, that is an, I think an important question to figure out is like, how does your mind work? And that's not an easy question. Do you have a sense of how it, with the white canvas of that question, how do you work?

How do your thoughts work? How does your mind work? Things get stuck in it. Like there's a story that there's some Winston Churchill quote about if there's something you could, it's like if there's something you think about every day, then it must be worth doing. I'm totally butchering the quote. But if you're thinking about it, it's basically, you know, if you're thinking about it every day, you better get after it. So what gets stuck? So stories.

So like I'll hear a story and I'll just sort of, it won't, I'll keep thinking about it. I'll keep thinking about like what, what it means and why is it, why is it interesting to me? That's what, that, that's honestly like sort of where this, where this book came from was I heard this story about this coach and these hippie runners in the 1970s and how we, they came out and he used them as his lab rats and I knew Bob Larson for as as Mebka Flesky's coach but I didn't know his origin story and I just kept thinking about it and I'd originally talked to the editor of my previous book about it and they

were so he's sort of like lukewarm about it um but the story just sort of stuck in my head as being meaningful in some way. And I finally said, like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pursue this. It's, and often it's, if I keep thinking about it, I mean, I do my best, I'll do a lot of my best writing when I'm running. And cause I'm often thinking about things that want to write about and words just seem to sort of, or ideas order themselves, uh, when I'm in motion that way. And it's often when I'm thinking about the thing that's most important to me. And I was thinking about this story a lot in late 2016 when I really wanted to write it and I wasn't sure whether I was going to pursue it. And then I just said, oh yeah, I have to do this. I have to at least give it a shot and get it out.

Is it like a relentless rumination or is it like you're able to see the concept or central concept or even themes or streams from many different angles? Like how do, how do you organize your thinking? I try and think really hard about, uh, who is,

who's the main character? Who's the the mule who's going to carry the story who's going to carry the story and how quickly can we get to the guts of it what's the best way to get to the guts of it is that what you think about most whether you're looking at a story or thinking about your own book or story, like, or do you think about other things more? And this is just squarely about your craft. And when I say other things, I'm thinking about running technique. I'm thinking about relationships. I'm thinking about the world as you know, we know it and the afterlife and like big stuff. Like what, I guess I'm asking a really big question, which is not only what is the nature of how you think, but what do you think about in relationship? Um, most of the time when I'm running? No, just in general, just in life. Cause I heard, I heard that you say like, I work out

stories, mule and hero. You didn't say hero. What did you say? Mule and main character? Yeah. Like I heard you're sorting that out when you're running. And I'm right now trying to figure out like how your mind works. Not very well. Come on. And you said, you know, you get stuck on things. And so when I – let me help us be more precise with my question.

Is that, is it like a hamster wheel or is it like a movie camera that can see the issue from multiple angles until you kind of sort it out or something totally different? It's not the hamster wheel. It's definitely trying to work through different possibilities, play things out differently, different scenarios. What if I say this? What will that person say? Will that work? What's the outcome that I want to get to? Why do I want to get there?

How am I going to get there? Is it worth it? What are the ramifications going to be? Sort of dealing with all kinds of possibilities like that. I would say that's, that's, that's how I'm thinking about, you know, relationships. That's how I'm thinking about stories. That's how I'm thinking about, uh, how I spend next weekend. And are you using images or is it more like a grid? Not a grid. Not a grid.

Not a grid. No, I'm seeing people and hearing voices. You are. Yeah, I probably shouldn't say that, right? That doesn't sound very good. Your mom's an analyst, right? Yeah, but I'm definitely talking to myself. Okay.

And then is it so vibrant that you're actually seeing the characters? Sure. You are. Completely. So it's not like vibrant that you're actually seeing the characters? Sure. You are. Completely. So it's not like words. You're seeing images. Yeah, completely. And the problem that I have, and I go back and forth, my wife's probably main complaint about me is that I'll go through my head with all this stuff,

but I won't be speaking to her about what I'm seeing. And then I'll sort of reach a conclusion or I'll say something and I'll expect that she will have been with me the whole time in my head. And of course I feel that way. And no, it takes her by surprise. I'm less good at communicating the thoughts as they're going through my head as I'm figuring it out. That's introversion. Yeah.

It's exactly like you think and mull things over and muse internally. And that's where you gather great energy and clarity. And extroverts do the exact opposite. They're how, you know, an extrovert's thinking is when they're talking. Right. Yeah. And it drives introverts crazy. Like, well, won't this person shut up? Like they keep changing their mind midstream and introverts are like, you know, and extroverts are like, man, I can't, I can't figure out what this person thinks or feels like they keep it all in. And then at the last minute they say something like it's a declarative statement but i have no idea where they're coming from right and i think and that's what writing is

it's going through things over and over in your head and then you know printing it out on paper and crossing everything out and rewriting it you went through it one way no that doesn't work i gotta do it through i gotta go through a different way. I got to get there, get there another route. And when you make a, no, I don't want to say a mistake. When you have something that doesn't match what you're trying to say or feel or convey, what do you do internally with your thoughts? Do you say, are you really critical? Are you more accepting like what is that your relationship with

the non-beautiful articulation i'm i think i can do but you know i'll just give another shot so it's a failure is okay it's more neutral you're you're neutral yeah i'm mean, I'm totally fine with not getting there. I'm totally, it just, like the cliches are true that fail, fail, fail again, fail better. Like that's true. You just keep at it and you'll probably get there or you'll get your you'll at least be getting better i mean that's the that that to me is also sort of i think one of the things that really draws me towards running is that yeah there's like numbers in my head of you know oh that'd

be great to like get my marathon time below 310. But what it's really all about is just being a little bit better tomorrow than you were yesterday and believing that you can do that. And how committed are you to that dropping time? I mean, are you taking it into nutrition? Are you taking it into recovery and sleep?

Are you taking it into figuring out how to plan your day with work and relationships? Well, I'm real serious about the training. I do something every day, whether it's run or swim or yoga. So this is important to you? Oh, this is really important to me. Yeah, I don't remember. I honestly do not remember myself before I was a runner. I don't know.

I can't remember back to when I wasn't either running every day or I wish I could run every day. I can't anymore because it would hurt. It would hurt too much. So I have to do some other things. But, you know, whether I'm running or swimming i was oh yeah i'm real serious but that's the thing that like that that's going to be in there so man and when your body breaks down with what happens for you well i haven't knock on wood i haven't had a real serious injury although a few years ago i did something weird with my knee um but when my body breaks down i mean there's i do get really tired

sometimes uh and i just have to sleep for a while because you know that's the thing i mean look i live in manhattan we don't stop it's it's it's a problem you know uh it's a reason there's a reason why i think cardi the studies show that that cardiovascularly we're healthier because we walk a lot, but our life expectancy is shorter. Because you're yelling a lot. Well, because it's, yeah, it's just kind of stressful. It's so intense. Yeah, it's pretty intense. It's really intense.

I love the city. I think it's fantastic. And I didn't love it young. I loved it after my wife introduced it to me. And she feels as though she's a you know, she was, she feels as though she's a New Yorker. Oddly enough, we went on a trip. I think we're doing a international trip and we had some, I can't remember what it was, but we, we landed in JFK and we just got into the airport and walked around and just the vibe of the airport. She's like, I knew it. I feel like

I belong in this city. I was was like get out of here you cannot tell that she goes mike i swear and so ever since then like it is flat out her favorite city in the world and so i've come to enjoy it and like a week but then after that i'm like oh my god the garbage trucks and the you know i i you know and i got family back there that love it they're living right they're on the 84th floor they look down the whole city you know that's, you know, and I got family back there that love it and they're living right. They're on the 84th floor. They look down the whole city. You know, that's all, it's a different way of living, um, than the common folk, I should say. So I get like that beautiful, easy life in New York and also what's available for most people. And it's loud, it's intense, it's honest, it's hardworking. Like there's some attributes I love about it.

But what are the things you love about New York? I guess I just love the energy. Intensity. Do you describe it in tense? Yeah, it's intense. But what I love about it is what I hate about it also. And I need a break from that intensity. Yeah, like you're're intense. But what I love about it is what I hate about it also. I need a break from that intensity. Yeah, like you're really intense.

But you would go crazy maybe in Bali. I would definitely go crazy in Bali. Yeah, right. I don't know that I'd go crazy in Marin or Seattle. I think I could do that or Vancouver. But Bali might be a struggle for me too far but it's uh but you know it's it's it's it's new it's home it's you know the multiculturalism uh the acceptance that people have um for difference for differences uh those are all things that – and the energy.

And I don't like driving very much, so I don't have to do that very often. So that's kind of great. It's got its advantages. Into the book now. If we kind of move into the book, your book, What are you most excited for people to read? And what are you most excited that they take away and use in their life? I think what I'm most excited for them to take away, I'll start with the second question first, which is that Bob Larson is the main character, I mentioned before, he had these sort of basic foundational

principles. There were three of them, really, when you get down to it. One was become comfortable with being uncomfortable. The title of the book is Running to the Edge, and that's talking about running itself and how he wanted his runners to run. He wanted them to run at their threshold and to learn how to do that for two miles and then do it for four miles and do it for five miles and to stay there. Because he was doing this at a time where there were two schools of running. One was long, slow distance, Lyddiard, who was the Kiwi, the New Zealander who sort of created jogging, so to speak. Train, don't strain was his mantra. And then there was the interval folks who were, you know, do quarter mile after quarter mile or half mile after half mile. Really intense, you know, minute break, another one really intense. And Bob comes along and he's like, and he says, you know,

the long runs shouldn't be slow and the intervals shouldn't be short because you got to get comfortable with making your body uncomfortable and learning how to deal with it. And it's okay. And when you're exhausted and you feel like you can't go any faster, yeah, try and go like one click faster and do that for a hundred yards or 300 yards or a mile and see what that feels like. And so that's, you know, we talk about ideas that can be related to the rest of your life. That's one of them. The other one is we train as a group. It's an individual sport, but we're a team. And we run as individuals, but we run as one, because the group is more

powerful than the individual. And that's something that like you have to get used to in life you have to learn how to rely on people when i run which i don't run i'm not a good runner but i like running by myself more than i like running with someone else because of tempo and time and like skill levels and so how do you how do you sort that you're probably running with people that are i'm usually running by myself honestly i wish i wish i had and sometimes i run with groups or run with i'm nice thing about running is you're running with one buddy then you're a running group so um you know i'm running by myself just because i have a busy life and i gotta fit it in and go when i can go. But when you're

training for something and you're competing for something, you know, you're part of that group, you don't want to fall back. If you're having a bad day, you're going to work really hard to keep up with the team. And then the next day, you're going to be having a good day and the other guy is going to be struggling and he's going to work hard to keep up with you. And you lift each other. It's like the Peloton in cycling. It goes fast. You go faster when you're in that Peloton than you do when you're fighting on your own.

That's for sure. One of the great – so I did an ultra. I think I shared it with you. The stand-up paddle from Catalina Island to Redondo beach, about 22 or 25 people have done it. And it's really, it's hard. I mean, it's really, but the thing that helped, it was a, it's about eight and a half hours. It took me, it's supposed to take six and a half, but I ran into trouble out there. And the thing that I've found most valuable from the group, so to speak, we run together

to your point is that showing up. So we're all, every morning we meet at, you know, seven in the morning and just showing up. It was like, they're there, you know, I, I, they, they know I'm pulling the shoot on this thing if I don't show up. And it's like that accountability was great on days that I just didn't want to get out of bed. It means everything. Isn't it great, that little tribal thing? If someone's waiting for you, you're going to be there.

That's great. And then the third part of it is where you're born and how you're born is not your destiny. And this was really important in the 2000s because at that point, the world had become convinced that there was something different about the Kenyans and the Ethiopians. They were born in the Rift Valley. They evolved a certain way.

Their muscle people, people were doing science experiments, trying to explain like, you know, their Achilles tendons were longer. They evolved this way. And Bob was like, no, they're running at altitude and they're working harder. And we're not running 150 miles a week anymore. And they are. We've convinced ourselves that there are shortcuts and that you can compete at the highest level running 90 miles a week and not pushing yourself. And no, we're going to do what my guys did in the 70s, these Humboldt Toads.

We're going to get back to that. And he forms this Mammoth Lakes track club, and they live up at altitude. And in 2004, you know, in 2000, we qualify one man for the marathon in the Olympics. In 2004, there's six marathon medals given out at the Olympics, three women, three men. This little track club in Mammoth Lakes, they get two of them. It wasn't rocket science, and it wasn't biology. It was taking a group of people and doing what the Kenyans

and Ethiopians were doing, which was running really hard as a team at altitude. And so those sort of three things are just, I would love for people to say, yeah, I can do that. I can push myself. I can understand that I can be better next week than I am this week. And I can rely on my friends, my comrades, my running brothers and sisters or whoever, or people I work with and the rising tide will raise all boats, including mine. I love that last thought.

It was maybe a title of the book that I'm working on. Like that thought is great. The Rising Tide. The Rising Tide. Yeah. And one of the things that I think is – Because you are the tide. Yeah.

That's right. That's the thing. It's not just – the tide is not an accident. You actually make the tide. That's right. Well, collectively we do. Yeah. You win the people you're with.

That's right. Well, collectively we do. Yeah. You win the people you're with. You make the tide. And so one of the things I think is really important that you translate well is that this isn't just, it's not like, let me get the four tactics that Futterman knows and see if I can apply those and get into this high performance way of living. Bullshit on that. That's not how this works. This is a fundamental orientation toward the things that matter most to you, relentlessly committing to the substrate of that principle. And then maybe you'll understand the principle, which is writing a certain time or writing well, but it's a fundamental orientation. There is no, like, let me get the seven secrets. There aren't any, right? And so it is understanding the substrate, fundamentally orientating your world towards that aim. And sometimes there's a great cost to doing this.

High performance is way of living or execution is not for everybody although i think the message that we sell people is that it should be but then what happens realistically to the average you know one of one of our earliest conversations when you and me when i realized i really okay i really get what he's talking about and i get why he's different from the other high performance psychologists that I've spoken with. Say this again. There was all this focus on, you know, focusing. The image I think of is like Tiger Woods looking at his putt and the way he used to sort of put his hands around the bill of his cap and people would say like oh he would just shut out the whole world

and you know and what we what we later learned was like there was a lot of haunting stuff going on in Tiger Woods's life and he's a lot of stuff like he clearly was not particularly, for lack of a better term, actualized about. And when I was talking to you, you talked about, no, no, no, I don't want the people I work with to shut any of that stuff out. Like, you're afraid of the tiger? Let's invite the tiger in and have the tiger sit on the couch and let's learn how to pet the tiger and that was it i think it was felix in the suit and you the terror you know the jumping being in the suit and jumping out from what was 150 000 feet or something like that yeah just under 130 jumping out and you talking about it with him and how claustrophobic he felt in the suit and how you had to practice how he would feel in the terror that he would feel getting into that suit and working through that. Kerry Walsh Jennings and her, you know, her struggles with being a mom and being and playing volleyball and pursuing it.

When she was playing volleyball, she felt like she was being a bad mom. And when she was a mom, she felt like she was cheating her teammates. And this was like racking her, you know, this was killing her. And it was the idea of, OK, you got to work through that. We got to become comfortable that we don't, you can't like get yourself, there's no such thing as like a zone where you're not going to think about this. Like those things make you uncomfortable. Okay.

We're going to have to deal with the discomfort and it's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to be, to understand these things. It feels like you remember our conversation so i'm i'm wondering be careful what you say to me yeah like is your like that's word for word this the two of the three things that we spoke about but this was years ago like is your memory for things that are important you know like i'm writing them down i'm'm thinking about them. And they stay with me. I feel like it was yesterday I was sitting with Juergen Klinsmann. And he had just been named the U.S. National Team coach.

And we were sitting and we were having coffee in Orange County somewhere. And he was going through members of his team. And at this point, Clint Dempsey was like the star. And had scored more goals in the Premier League. And my tape recorder is running and Juergen knows my tape recorder is running. And he says, you know, Clint, you scored. Clint's not sitting there, but he's like, so you're Clint Dempsey, you scored 17 goals for Fulham.

Who cares? Go do it again. Go do it next year. You haven't done shit. Push yourself. Go do it year after year. Now go play in the Champions League and do it. And, you know, it was the idea of sort of what he's getting across. And it was what he was getting across through me because he knew I was going to write that and that everybody was going to read it or everybody on his team was eventually going to see it, was this idea of like don't be satisfied.

There's always another place where you can go to push yourself. Like your biggest, really your biggest enemy is complacency. And that's what you're battling. That's what you're battling against. And that's okay to put yourself in a situation where you're going to be uncomfortable. And, you know, I felt this yesterday or was it? Yeah, yesterday or, you know, excuse me, Saturday, I was doing a tempo run. And, you know, I know how fast I'm supposed to go on those.

I know how, I know where i start to get uncomfortable and you know i saw the numbers coming up on my watch and for me it was pretty it was i was i was trying to go 10 miles progressively faster with each mile and you know after a few miles of warming up and my first one was at like 725. And I knew I had to go. I was like, okay, now let's see if you can do it. And, you know, thinking, well, you started off pretty quick. Are you going to be able to keep going faster? And, you know, just telling yourself, like, don't be afraid of the numbers.

Like, who cares? Just try it. Keep it up. Don't be afraid of the numbers. Like, see it and just pushing yourself to be uncomfortable. And I pretty much pulled it off. It's close. That's what I'm talking about.

That inner civil war is a real deal. And I think if we don't embrace that civil war, that we miss the good stuff in life. And this idea that it's going to be eloquent and easy all the time. When it's easy, it's easy. Run with it. Like It's fine. It's great. It means you're well prepared for the challenge. Or naive. You don't understand the challenge and you got lucky. It's not sustainable that way. But that internal silver war that we have with ourselves, it really is a standing civil war. And without facing that down down i think we run into great troubles to express potential and so that civil war sometimes it's brutal and i'm not suggesting it needs to be

lethal but there is a conflict that we have with and it's a learned behavior i mean like nobody nobody wants to i mean nobody necessarily wants to make themselves uncomfortable. You have to sort of understand that there's a benefit to it and you have to push yourself to try and do it. Whether it's, I mean, the job I have right now, I left what I thought was the only job I was ever going to want. I was the senior sports writer at the Wall Street Journal. It was the job I dreamed about having when I entered journalism.

And then that crazy thing happened. Somebody actually gave me the job, my dream job, and I had it. And then after like 10 years, I just started to feel stale at it. And I just felt like, I felt like I could keep doing it, but I was just, you know, I was, I wasn't bringing the same energy to it. And it was just sort of time to, it was time to leave my dream job in a strange way. Um, it's courage over that. Or stupidity, one of the two. Okay, so beautiful segue into how do you define or articulate or think about mastery? I think it's something along the lines of trying to be your better self without fear and going at it without fear

um i think that's i think that's probably what it is it's on it's understood because you know there's a lot of talk you hear people use that phrase your best self like i don't know what my best self is like how do we ever know? There's no such thing as perfection. And one of the reasons I like doing yoga is because it's, it's your practice. I just love it that this, that it's, that it's always just practice. Yeah. I think it's a pursuit. Yeah.

It's just a pursuit. It's just, so like that's, but it's the central question. What, what are you working towards? You can call it your best. You can call it mastery or a masterpiece. But what is your best? I'm looking for, when I get glimpses of it, I'm just looking to string that together more often. Right.

And for longer. Yeah, for longer. That's what it is for me. Right. And I know, and there was, I mean, there was, I run these little races with, you know, like these, in New York, the media running challenge where it's, you know, the Times has a running team and we run against some other media companies. And, you know, there's these stupid little races with 150 people, but it's fun. You know, we compete as a team and, and you know i can sometimes win the age group medal and stuff like that and the first race of this season it came about a month after um the boston marathon and i had had a terrible boston marathon it was um it was it was just i had spent

uh you know i spent months training for it and you you're training in 30-degree weather in New York City. And then you show up on the starting line of the Boston Marathon and it's 70 degrees and humid. And I just absolutely melt in that kind of weather. And I melted that day. And I made it across the finish line, but I just sort of survived and I slogged. And I ran more than a, you know, I ran a half hour, more than a half hour slower than I had in New York in November. And it was about a month later, I was in this race, a three and a half mile race in New York. And I was running

and I was running next to a guy who I usually, or I beat all last year. And I was scared of feeling sick again. I was, I just, I was just running scared, and I was like, well, just hang next to him and then beat him in the last 70 yards. And I'm not fast. I do well when I push the pace early because I train hard. Endurance is my thing. And he cleaned my clock in the last 50 yards and I was just annoyed because I had run it

I had run it scared and two weeks later we had another race and I just told myself like whatever you're going to do you just run don't be afraid of consequences here just run as hard as you can for as long as you can

intelligently and i ran a great and i and he wasn't even in that race so it wasn't it was a different kind of thing but i you know i was faster than i had been the time before and but it was it was so satisfying just because i knew at the end of that three and a half miles, I had finished it and I hadn't been afraid. And runners are crazy about numbers. I remember my splits. It was like 625, 626, 625. And then I was running 626 in the last one. So it was like I kept up what I had done.

That's an apt metaphor for life, which is run your race. And get to the edge. Do it with people. And then what was the third variable in the book? Where you're born and how you're born is not your destiny. like nobody's paying my bills. Nobody is looking in the mirror for me and explaining who I am. That happens alone at night. That happens in my mind, you know, 18 hours awake a day. The paying the bills thing is like the artifact, you know, like, I think it's really important that journey of authenticity to run my race and to run it the best way I can sort out. My wife reminds me all the time, this thought, which is, hey, Mike, we're just, it's about our son, you know, he's 11 years old and she'll say, you know, we're all just trying to figure it out.

I just love that. I just love that concept. You know, it's so warm. Like we're all just trying to figure it out i just love that i just love that concept you know it's so warm like we're just it's such a great reminder especially like that holds true with the best in the world with those that are at the tip of the arrow of their profession they're just trying to figure it out too right i mean you were talking to julie fowdy recently yeah and julie i've known julie for a long time and uh didn't her spirit come through in the commerce in the podcast totally like totally but also but like her spirit but her her insecurity yeah oh yeah right you know that the that imposter syndrome yeah right now is the day where they're gonna figure it out yeah now they're gonna figure it out and i'm like i'm like riding my bike through central park on my way to work now and

i like i nearly i nearly wrecked because i was like fowdy feels that too how about that if she can feel it right that's like really because of all people, I mean – She's a legend. Right. She's a legend, but also she doesn't give off that vibe of having – She's so competitive. Right. But so honest. But she's also – but she also comes off as like incredibly confident in –

Did you have a chance to listen to Des Linden, that conversation? I didn't listen to that conversation, but I've talked to Des a lot. Yeah. If you get a chance, I think you'll really appreciate, like, she was so clear. It was great. She was great.

Well, runners, we spend a lot of time in our own heads. Yeah. We spend a lot of time thinking about what we're doing. Long distance running is a very intentional act. At the elite level, it's a terrible way to make a living.

The training is incredibly painful. It's incredibly time consuming. And you only get two shots at it a year. If the marathon is your race, I mean, maybe you get a third one. Maybe you get a third one inside of like 15 months or something. New York and Boston. But pretty much it's a spring-summer. You know, you got a spring marathon and a fall marathon. And, you know, if you miss one because of injury or if you wake up and you have a stomach ache, it's not your day. And so it's a brutal, brutal way to make a living. And there's something about that that makes these guys very,

and these women, very sort of ruminative and I think also very empathetic. One thing that really separates running elite runners from I think elite athletes in just about any other sport. I mean, I would never in a million years talk to Roger Federer about, I played tennis in college, I would never talk to him about his struggles returning Rafael Nadal's serve and compare those to my struggles with how I could never return the first serve of you know this guy from Middlebury or this guy from Colgate or any of the other little schools because the worlds don't really overlap but in running well they they don't

really overlap but also it's just like not in the ethos of the sport I mean Roger would laugh at me or it's like it's like talking with... They don't equate what a regular person does with what they do. Whereas it's totally in the DNA of the sport for Dez to discuss training regimens, strategies, what Boston was like that day, what New York was like in 2012, because we all line up on the same starting line.

And Abdi Rahman said a great thing to me in October, because I said to him, I was like, Abdi, I don't want to compare my race to yours. He said, what are you talking about, man? He said, we all experience the same pain. We just experience it at different times. And it was just kind of cool. On that note, that is a beautiful way to end this conversation because it's so true. It is so true about life.

We're not escaping this thing, you know, scar free. No one gets out of here alive. Okay, so where can we find you? Where can we pick up the book? this thing, you know, scar free. No one gets out of here alive. Okay. So where can we find you? Where can we pick up the book? And it's, you know, it's a beautiful artwork on it. And so, and the clarity that you write with is awesome. So thank you very much.

Yeah. And I want to say thank you for, you're one of the few journalists. Is that the right phrase writers i'm not sure exactly this is a good one yeah that that have been able to decode what i've tried to say in an interview and so i want to say thank you for that oh and thanks for being so generous yeah no with your time so you can get this book running to the edge, wherever books are sold, at your local bookstore, at all the big online retailers, Amazon, Powell's, BNN. It's out there. You can find me. You can find stories I've written at nytimes.com, probably in the archives of wsj.com. I'm on Twitter at Matt

Futterman. I'm not very good at it. I'm not on there that much, but I'm on there occasionally. I think I have an Instagram feed that I feed every couple days when I remember to. It's awful. At MattFutt1, and I'm on Facebook. And if anyone ever has questions, I'm very free with my email, matt.futterman at nytimes.com. It's awesome. You're a legend. So thank you for the time and the insight. And thank you, like I said, again, for spending the deep thinking to be able to articulate the things I think about most. And so this is great to have you on. Thanks so much for having me. Son of a psychoanalyst.

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