The Rich Roll Podcast - Malcolm Gladwell & Chris Chavez Think We're Selling Running All Wrong

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at The New Yorker, bestselling author, and podcaster. Chris Chavez is a journalist, podcaster, and the founder of CITIUS MAG. I just passed a thousand episodes, which has me rethinking what I want this to feel like. So for this one, no agenda, no notes. Just three podcasters rolling the dice. Where it went: the art of the interview. Farming attention with integrity. The state of running. Why America loses at the sports it thinks it should dominate. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Gusto: Get three months free when you run your first payroll👉🏼https://www.gusto.com/RICHROLL  Momentous: Get up to 35% off your first order👉🏼https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll  Freaks of Nature: Save 20% with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.freaksofnature.com  Squarespace: Use code RichRoll to save 10% off your first order of a website or domain👉🏼https://www.squarespace.com/RichRoll  Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://www.rivian.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors  Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Gusto. For all of you, entrepreneurs and small business owners out there, I don't know about you and maybe I didn't get the memo, but there's just a lot more to the work than the work itself. In addition to the mission, you also have to manage being the hiring manager, the benefits department, and the payroll team, all operation stuff that if you're not careful is going to eat you alive. It doesn't have to be that way because Gusto is here to save you. the day. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. We use it here and we love it. It's all in one. It's remote friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire, onboard and support your team from anywhere. It files your payroll taxes automatically. It handles direct deposits and it gives you unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price. No

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Performance is an individual act. Actual racing is such a tiny part of the experience of being an athlete. The Boston Marathon or the New York City Marathon relied more on pure competition. We need to kind of bring that back. The idea of having us one of your tent pole events, something where there's a realistic chance of a grizzled previous generation guy can come and win it all is fantastic. We're selling it all wrong. Like, don't sound.

To racing, sell the training. I had dinner with some friends several months ago. But one of the people at this dinner was Molly Seidel, who I met for the very first time. And we had this really interesting conversation because she was, you know, she had just signed with Satisfi. And she had just announced that she was going to be running Western States. And I was like, man, this is like, this is signaling perhaps a new era. Like, I've always wondered what happens when somebody who is. is that good, like an elite marathoner, like an Olympian, decides, you know what? I'm going to, before,

you know, we've seen elite athletes in the twilight of their career or post-retirement, like drop into this world. But what happens when somebody who's still in that zone of elite high performance decides, you know what, maybe there's something for me over here. And I was like, you might just drop in and just rewrite the record books. Like, perhaps all of these times that we're seeing in these really long races are just low-hanging fruit for somebody who's really good. Like, what happens if Kipchogi decides he wants to, like, do Leadville or something? You know, like, and the question, of course, is like, will that translate? And then Molly drops in and, you know, she struggled. It was her first time, you know, perhaps with a little bit of experience. This is

still something that could happen. But like, do you think about that like? How did she account for struggling? Does she have an explanation? I don't, I don't know. I don't know the details of it. I think it kind of all started to fall apart a handful of hours into it. And, and And she, to her credit, you know, didn't drop out. She decided to like really push through and was celebrated for that. But she came in at like 24 hours or something, you know. You know, I think it goes back just sort of like I think for a long time probably a lot of track and running folks would look at just sort of like, oh, what's the average pace that that person ran for 100 miles, 50 miles or whatever it is? And they would just think, oh, like, that's not that fast all things considered because we're used to seeing all these crazy fast times on the track.

And then, you know, seeing the performances that someone like Jim Wai. has just put together, both, you know, holding the Western States course record for as long as he did. But then you take a couple steps back. And he wasn't like the most accomplished track athlete. Like he attempted the steeple chase way back in the day. And like it was, he wasn't all that great. And so I think for a period of time, people just thought it was like, all right, well, like, Trail is an ultra is where, you know, the not so great track. He also rounds. Yeah. And now it's, it's really cool to see someone like Molly. go in at this point where she's still very young, arguably in her prime. And I think like there's still, you know, that kind of a little bit of unfinished business when it comes to just the traditional marathon that she won an Olympic bronze medal in, you know, five years ago at this point. But yeah, there, I think trail and the ultracean is getting younger and, and faster. Part of that also probably does come with what you brought up before, which was like this investment from the brands to, you know, now that there's money. There's like, you know, there's like,

So much more money. You can make a living in this world. This raises this question. I've always wondered about Ultra, which is, is Ultra an extension of distance running, or is it its own category? Yeah, it's one of two things. And I don't think we really have the answer to that. Because my gut would be that it's own. It's its own.

Yeah. I don't see anything. What does running for two hours and 20 minutes have in common with running for 24 hours? Yeah. Very, very little. And also, psychologically. How do you tolerate sleep deprivation? It's not a factor in track and field or marathon running.

We've gotten to the stage now where for the mentality of the marathoners is a lot closer to the mentality of 10K runners, the 10K runners of a generation ago, than it is to the, no one's thinking of this is this kind of like insuperable psychological obstacle. They're like, it's routine, whereas Leadville and Western states are like insuperable psychological obstacles. What I don't know is whether Molly Seidel

and it's a good chance you can, has this the psychological makeup to do, to transition from two hours to 24. We've seen Deslinden. She's giving a shot. In the world as well.

Yeah. And yeah, I mean, the thing with Molly is just also sort of, she's still just so early on and sort of like this next chapter and this foray into trail that I don't follow it as closely to know how many people

just nail it on that first go. And so give it a couple couple years and I think that that's sort of like when we could probably make the assessment of whether this move was, you know, the right one. But it is, it is exciting. And I think it does draw more eyeballs because like, you know, I look at it sometimes through podcast analytics at times that, you know, these, the marathon, the top marathoners in, in the United States are some of the most popular athletes in distance running. Yeah. And that, you know, kind of pairs with the fact that the masses are sharing the same race and they can sort of relate to the idea of, you know,

running a marathon, whereas like someone like Noel Liles doesn't generate as much traffic as I could do a one-on-one interview with Noah Liles and it does way fewer downloads and all that kind of stuff than someone like Connor Mance or Clayton Young. And so I think that it's really cool to see that there's sort of that popularity that these people have generated from running traditional marathons, they're bringing that to the ultracean as well. Yeah. If you are on the world stage as a marathoner, you're an elite marathoner, but in every prestigious race, you're coming between like fifth and tenth. Like, why are you not thinking like, maybe I'm, maybe I should go, you know, give it a shot over in this other world.

maybe I have a better chance of distinguishing myself. Like when you saw what happened with Rachel and Trincan at Cocodona, like it went globally viral what she did. Like the ups, there is an upside there that might not be available to that like elite, but just below the top, you know, the highest tier of performance.

Yeah. Well, I think maybe the money is one factor that maybe hasn't caught up. Even if you're like, is that person who's getting fifth or tenth that those, marathons like making a good living they don't even know uh for an American probably like because they they get some heavy appearance fees to show up to the race so like you don't necessarily so a lot of and the crazy about uh thing about running is that so many of these numbers are under

nDAs and so like we don't necessarily know what exact numbers are but some of these folks do get six figures to show up to the new york city marathon and then from there there are you know bonus structures in place where it's if you make it to you know 20 miles if you're top American or whatever it is like that you can trigger more money into your contract and so even if the person is finishing seventh you know that that probably was a better payday than they would have got if they podiumed at something like Western States so I think the average person has no idea no no yeah yeah that's the thing it's sort of like would you trade in just

sort of like the financial stability versus you know know the popularity and then how do you kind of take that popularity to translate to dollars and that's kind of like the next day so yeah but the the financial side of running is still kind of a little bit taboo to talk about just because it's been that way for so many years yeah what do you think about that think about whether people should be switching out yeah well i mean i think there probably there's such a great unknown about that. By the time you're 25 and you've invested so heavily in being a marathon or in thinking about the marathon, it's quite a transition, I would think.

There's also all these little like subcultures within subcultures. Like the person who does really well at the backyard ultras is not the same person who's going to distinguish themselves at, you know, bad water. Yeah. Then there's what, mount running. There's, you know, all the different. I couldn't tell you what all the different racing disciplines are at something like UTMB. But yeah, so it's like there's so many different ways to also, I think, but, you know, separate yourself as a champion and as a really good athlete in Ultra Trail, where as in the marathon, at a major, it's only really the winners in the podium and the top Americans who generate, I think, a lot of the attention.

And so how different is the training? I think that it's still very much an unknown. Like I've interviewed so many of these people and they all have such different approaches to their training. Some of them really go on intuition and feel and they don't even have a coach and they go out and they just run as long as they feel like they should that day and kind of make adjustments along the way.

Who's the super analytical one who, got I heard an interview with him on Science of Sport. Ultra guy, posts all of his workouts, has all this very clearly worked out things about fueling. Oh, David Roche. Yeah, he's fascinating. He's fascinating. He's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's the one I listened to. So Roach, what surprised me about Roche was his training did not seem that dissimilar from a marathonist training, right? He's not doing insane. He was experimenting with tons of threshold work and also training like a competitive. Heardative eater. His whole thing was to see how many carbohydrates per hour he could train his body to absorb. And he's convinced that that is the limiter. You know, like that is what's limiting somebody these athletes because they can't sustain a threshold pace because they can't, they have gut issues. And they're not able to absorb enough calories. Yeah. Yeah. And he's had success. But, you know,

then he got injured and he's, you know, it hasn't been a perfect like trajectory for him. But I think him transparently sharing all of these experiments is sort of the ultra-running version of Brian Johnson trying to live forever, you know, and it creates a lot of public intrigue and interest and affection for him and controversy. For sure. And, you know, maybe we need a little bit more of that in this world if we want to capture people's interest and fascination. Like when what Rachel and Trankin did went global, like what are the lessons that we can

learn from that that would make people more interested in tracking people? Like, I went to my first track and field world championships a couple of years ago in Tokyo. We tried to connect and we never were able to. You were, like, podcasting every day. And I was really surprised at the pageantry of it. Like, oh, like, I thought I knew what to expect. I'd never been to a real, legit, like, big track and field meet. And it was really a unique experience.

Like, and I can understand, after that, I can understand why somebody is, like, reluctant to leave that world to try something, you know, some experiment in the ultra world. To the point of Roach, so if you look at basketball, an enormous amount of fan involvement in basketball is around the game, not of the game. So huge numbers of basketball fans don't even watch much basketball. I would be one of them. What I do is I, listening to people talk about basketball, think about basketball, read about basketball, and follow it through statistics, right? And I'm a model for a lot of people follow basketball the way I do. Running doesn't have, we have way too little conversation around running. We're still way too focused on performance

itself. And someone like Roach is attacking that problem by being so open and transparent about in the way that he trained. And I often thought that one solution to this would be that, you know, the garments and uh whoops and aura rings of the world should sponsor athletes on the condition that they post all of their data. If I knew exactly what Josh Kerr was doing over the last month, you know, in preparation for this run at the world record, if I knew exactly how Saway trained leading up to what, you know, that would be, that would so enhance my interest in the sport and allow a whole class of people into the sport who aren't there. In all these sports, this, this culture of secrecy is so self-defeating. And the notion that somehow, if I'm an elite athlete and I share my

workouts, I'm compromising my ability to win the race. Somebody knows what I'm doing. Or that it just coaches IP or whatever, yeah. I'm sorry, this is a separate obsession of mine with the craziness of our obsession with IP. I've had it with that term IP. It is totally fucking useless. Who cares? Does that apply to AI scraping everything that you've ever done? Just this IP obsession. Just this IP obsession. Nobody

want to buy your books anymore? So who owns the IP of my last book? I don't care. I care where the... I care who gets the money from the sale. Right? Or who gets enjoyment out of it? Or anyway, this is quite a set. Anyway, this note, we have applied this ludicrous notion to sports. And how can you follow running if you don't know

the runners are doing. I see them, I see them 16 minutes a year. Right? I'm supposed to be a fan of the sport. I think cycling is doing a better job of this. Like Woop is posting what Tade is like strain score like just, I think yesterday it was like, oh, he had a 20.8 strain score and he had a max heart rate of 198. I don't know that he's, you know, on Strava, these cyclists, they'll post their workouts. I don't know how meaningful that is to people. So selective. But yeah, right. Like the like the big, the mega ride or Or the coffee ride. You psych out your. That's what Strava.

I've neglected. Strava is the natural person for this. The condition should be you have to post, you have to record everything and post everything. No, that's interesting to me. But it takes a certain type of personality. It takes a David Roche type personality for that to translate. And not all athletes are wired for that. And where should they be?

Like it's okay to just want to be an athlete and perform. It's different. when you're that entrepreneurial extroverted athlete who can be a social media influencer at the same time. I disagree. So if I'm a basketball player, I play 82 games a year and I might play if I'm a starter, whatever, 32 minutes. So I don't know how many, 82 times 32 minutes.

I don't know what that is. It's a very large number. That is a body of work that basketball fans have unlimited access to. They can watch me play. They can analyze to their hearts content every aspect of my performance. And every year more and more and more analysis based on that body of work is available to the fan. Right. So it doesn't matter.

There are very shy NBA players, but they don't shield the world from seeing how many, you know, what their particular statistical profile was in a given game. So in running, we just have to get past this fact. If you're shy, whatever. But your livelihood in a sport depends on. fan engagement and you are, if you are an elite athlete, you are de facto public figure in the world of athletics. You're an entertainer. You're an entertainer. The problem is I guess the contracts aren't written in that way in running. And so that's what the... Well, they're still living in a

different era where, you know, bonuses are based on podiums and things like that, which aren't necessarily calibrated to what is going to move the product, like the whole, the whole like kind of value proposition of paying these athletes in the first place, which is to like sell more of whatever. Yeah. I think a perfect example for something like this is, you know, someone like Sharon Loketti, who's the Kenyan marathoner, who's won the Boston Marathon two of the last three years, I believe,

or the last back-to-back years. And I saw someone just do like a public audit of like her social media channels. And it's like, well, this doesn't really match up with just sort of like the level of athlete that she is. She's won New York. She's one Boston. She was fourth at the Olympic Games. And I think just barely has.

like over 10,000 followers or anything. And I was like, well, yeah, I mean, you're assessing their social media post. Their job is to train really hard to be able to run a 1435 5K in the late stages of the Boston marathon, not necessarily to hit post on Instagram. And it's just sort of like the contracts for these athletes don't have those structures in place where it's like, hey, like you have this budget for, you know, a social media person or a photographer to be at every practice or anything like that. And so it's a shame because we do want these people to be bigger stars so that others can, you know, recognize just like, oh, yeah, I mean, I was rooting for that, you know, really big move in the late stages of the race because I know what this person's been up to this whole time.

Yeah, yeah. But our most runners kind of quiet, introverted, you know, athletes living a somewhat monastic lifestyle. Like when you think of Noah Lyle showing up and he's got the Pokemon and the briefcase and the, you know, the whole. Those are sprinters. Yeah. Like that's a whole, like these people are like they are performers, you know. There is a performance to that, a theatricality to that, that is, you know, not the typical kind of mindset of the average, you know, outstanding runner. I have tons of conversations with teenagers or pre-teeners trying to convince them to join their schools cross-country team.

It's like one of my little things that I do constantly. And the thing they don't understand is they think that they're like, why would I do it? It's so solitary. And my point is, no, no, no, no, no. It's insanely social, particularly cross-country. You go for like an eight-mile run with your best friends and you're running at a pace where you can chat. You just basically gossiping for an hour and a half with your best friends who are all fit and cute. And like, this is perfect.

This is like, and then you get in a bus. us and you go for an hour and a half to attract me and then you're flirting with this person next to you and this is like what do you want and then you go to the meet and you run for like six minutes and the rest of the time you're lying in the infield with other cute people this is like a dream this is this is so much better than basketball in every way you've been hired as chief marketing officer across country across country performance is an individual act But performance actual racing is such a tiny part of, you know, we don't know this, of the experience of being an athlete.

And like, we're selling it all wrong. Like, don't sell the, don't sell the, the racing. Sell the training. Training is, I love training. I don't know. I think, I don't know if the training is the skeleton key to unlock, like, public fascination or broadening public interest in this. No, I'm talking just getting kids.

But I think, like, when you were talking about basketball or just athletes sharing their training as a way into penetrating like public interest. When I think of basketball, isn't it, isn't, isn't, isn't it really as much the drama off the court as it is what's happening during the games? Like the perfect example would be Formula One. Like Tyler over here, he's, he always says like, oh, the reason everyone's interested in Formula One is it's like the bachelor for guys. Like there's so much, like interpersonal drama.

Yeah. around these drivers and the teams and all that kind of stuff. It like has nothing to do with what happens on race day, you know. And that somehow has captured the fascination of, you know, millions, if not billions of people across the world. Like, that's something that is lacking in these smaller sports. Like, we don't really know who these people are. No.

And I think it's, even those circles, I think, are so small that even some of that little friction that sometimes makes, you know, creates attention in something like Formula One or the NBA where there's a player who unfollowed this team and that kind of stuff, that generates headlines. Like in running, I think it's so, the problem is that it's so small among the people who are covering it, who are participating in it, the top 1%, the coaches, the agents that someone's bound to get upset if you frame something wrong. And so that's what kind of detracts some of those things from getting traction.

But to your point, like it is what would make it, I think, a bit more fun. Yeah. Not all creatine is created equal. which is why I'm here reminding you once again why I trust Momentous and why I take their creatine specifically. They already made one of the best on the market and instead of leaving it there, they went further and built this, signature spec creatine. It's one of the only creatines manufactured in a pharmaceutical facility with reverse osmosis purification and then run through a six-stage testing process across four. four independent agencies, four independent agencies. And that has resulted in this, a creatine with ten times fewer impurities, far tighter limits on heavy metals, even screening for Phaas and microplastics.

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Everything is in stock right now, though. So make sure you get it before it sells out. Go to freaksofnature.com and use the code Richroll. to save 20% when you order now. So right now we've got World Cup happening. Wimbledon. There's so much sports happening right now. Tour de France.

Are you watching all of this? What can the running world or track and field learn from the most globally popular sports in the world? I wish that this is particularly true of marathons, but, and this is not a new suggestion, but the thing about tennis is how much individual personality, each distinctive personality, each Grand Slam has, same with golf,

and we don't have that same. I know where he's going with this. This is, you know, I'm not the only one to say this, but we've talked about this on a run before. One of the marathon majors should be old school. What does that mean? It should be,

no one can wear a watch. There should be no, no super shoes at all. You get your shoes from the event. They're old school shoes. There's no clocks during the course, and there's no pacer's. Just do it.

Old school, like let's see people, and the fueling, just water. And let's make it a hilly course. Yeah, like this is 1975. Yeah, yeah. 1975. The winner can be 2.14, and a bunch of guys are going to bong in, like, a mile 21,

which we haven't seen at an elite level. quite some time. And that will be... Maybe somebody will take a subway train. Yeah, right, Rosie Ruiz. It would be... If I knew, if I knew that every year, that's what... I'm picking a city ramp, that's what Barcelona was. Barcelona was like... I'd be much more interested in watching that.

So much more. But then Berlin could be go for it. Like every single thing. And London could be some... And some of them, there's two... Secondarily, the course of... themselves should be more interesting. All this flat stuff.

Give me a break. It should not, it's like... Well, this is the flip side of the enhanced games. Like, this is the other side of that coin, right? Did you guys watch that? Yeah, I like curiosity to get the best of me. And I watch it. I was on a plane, actually, and I just, like, jumped on the Wi-Fi.

And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to tune in and watch it live. And I didn't... I wasn't expecting World Records, but I wanted to see just sort of what the presentation of this was going to be like. and they were far from delivering on world records and even the one that they got has been met with just a bunch of scrutiny, I'm sure, from the swimming community on the size of the pool and all that kind of stuff. But I think if you watched it for knowing this is a big marketing vehicle for what they're trying to push, then you saw them do that. But from a sporting spectacle, there really wasn't, I think, too much to it.

Did you watch it, Malcolm? No. You didn't even watch it. Did you consciously boycott it or just it didn't even rise to the level of like what am I doing here? Like those track times were just abysmal. Well, it was terrible. Yeah, it was terrible, which left people with one of two theories. Either this just means that everyone at the elite level is doping or these were not, you know, the right people or they hadn't been on their doping protocol long enough or that like these these compounds don't actually work in the way that we think they do.

Shoes are more important. Yeah. But they let the swimmers wear the skin suits. And I think that was the real differentiator and whatever kind of like, you know, on the better end of those performances. I mean, it was sub, it was like underwhelming across the board. But why not let the track guys put springs in their shoes, do some crazy thing with their shoes? You know, if they're going to like let the swimmers wear these suits,

what is the technical gear advantage in track and field? Yeah, I think we'll see that. I think the toughest part with running and track is that it just, it lives so much around the Olympic cycle, right? And so at some point you get too close to trying to experiment with these off events or these exhibitions where you try to get a little bit freaky and bend the rules a little bit. But it's not out of the question. We saw Kipchogi attempt the sub two marathon twice, didn't get it the first time.

But that first one was similar in the sense of they knew it wasn't going to be world record eligible. So let's optimize it for trying to be. trying to see how close you can get to two hours. And I think it did open so many people's eyes to like, oh, this could be possible. And so, yeah, I mean, like, I, with last year, Faith Capiaig on attempting the four-minute mile didn't come close. I think 406 was good, but similarly to the swimmers at the enhanced games, you don't know what exactly was, I mean, it's a time that I think that she could have run in a regular race,

but they outfitted her with, there's the marketing side to it, we'll say it's. the spikes or the suit that she was wearing, the pacing formations. And when you throw too many of those things into a record attempt, then it's really hard to quantify, well, how much did they actually get from this versus that? And so, yeah, I'm sure we'll see other ones. There are other made-up barriers that I think people can try and, you know, market around the sport. The sport loves around numbers.

But, yeah, going back to Malcolm's point about just sort of making these events feel, I think, a little bit more important and unique. Like, I think that is sort of like the beauty to something like the Boston Marathon or the New York City Marathon, where those are the ones that don't have pacemakers. They, you know, they just are tougher courses with the bridges and the hills. And so that one relies more on pure competition. And we need to kind of bring that back, I think. There's just such a overfixation on times. And this is something I think I feel like I talk about weekly with just sort of all of these.

And that goes to the marathon and also to track where you tune into so many of these broadcasts. And my one gripe is that the announcers will just get so fixated on like, this is what the meat record is or the world record or the world lead. And when the athletes deliver on a really thrilling finish or a race, they'll still bring up the fact that like, oh, but they miss the meat record or the world lead or whatever it is. And it's like, no, let's focus on the fact that we just had a really good race between these. you know, phenomenal athletes. And so it's just, I, the framing around competition, I think, is what needs some work across probably a variety of different Olympic sports. Swimming probably also has that too.

The best example of this, golf does this better than anybody. And the best example of this was, I don't know what year it was, but you remember when Tom Watson nearly won the British Open at the age of, was he 59? 58, 59. He lost in a playoff, Stewart's, Stewart's Sink, maybe, if I'm remembering correctly. I don't follow it that closely. That's because golf has one of the four majors, the British Open, is played on a course

that is set up in such a way that a 59-year-old can compete against a 25-year-old or a 30-year-old. And it's not, you could not have that happen. That couldn't happen at the Masters. It could not happen at the U.S. Open, but it can happen with the British Open. So, like, it's a completely different. And the idea of having us one of your tent pole events, something where there's a realistic chance of a savvy, grizzled, you know, previous generation guy can come and win it all is fantastic. And that's because they have paid attention to what Chris is just talking about. Tom Watson, in no way at that time was the greatest golfer in the world.

In no way, if you would just want to do an abstract comparison of golfers. but they were smart enough to know that we can construct a competitive environment where he can compete with the best. And that was, I mean, I'm still talking about it. This is 25 years ago. I'm still talking about it. Well, another example of that is the race between the two of you guys. I've spoken to you both individually about this, but like, what was that like four or five years ago?

Five years ago, yeah. At a legit track meet here in New York City where Chris and Malcolm faced off in the mile. And that was one of the, like, I was more excited. to watch that, then I'm like, I like track and field. I'm not like insane about it, like you guys, but I was not going to miss watching that. It was brilliant. Chris brilliantly hyped it up. I got to say. To my own demise. I think, yeah, so. So you were the Tom Watson in this equation.

I was the grizzle vet who came through. What did you run? 15 or something like that? He ran 513 and I just was off the back 520 something. but I think the biggest takeaway I had from that race is one, probably go into it in better shape. But two, I think I over-extended myself on, I think moments before that race was even going off, I had to like rush up to the broadcast booth to make sure that like the stream was working properly, barely, I think, got a warm-up in. So these are my excuses coming out five years later. But it was a lot of fun.

I don't do well now when I put a big goal out there and drive some attention. So, like, personally, I think I've straight away from doing that, you know, if I want to go attempt a marathon PR. I think when I finally did break three hours in the marathon, that was something I was after for a long time. I went to Houston, didn't really tell too many people and just went out and did it. And so that was the biggest lesson I had from that race with Malcolm is just, I don't do so well with just sort of like the pressure and attention and the lead-up. And that thing ended up getting, I think, a quarter million views on YouTube and a men's health article that hyped him up and then bashed me. Is that right? Yeah.

Are we, can we expect a rematch at some point? No, no, he's going to kill me. No, this is done. No, wait, wait, wait. I have no, I don't belong in the same track as Chris. I got, I had a very fortunate set of circumstances break my way. And also, there's something, you know this, Rich. Something happens between five years ago when you're seeing.

62, five years is a long, is like a big, I am nowhere close to the runner I was in my late 50s. He was 57. Yeah, but you're quietly training hard, I would imagine. The word on you out there is that you're the ultimate sandbagger. True or false? I'm not even going to answer that question. Down at that track down along the East River there where all the Manhattanites go to, you know, match. I don't run there anymore.

No, I can't do the kind of training because I now live upstate and I have kids and I can't. So I do little things on my own. This is part of the sandbaggy. Yeah, extra psychological warfare. I've thought a lot about it. What I would really like to do is the one event I think I could in my advanced age, do well then at this point is the 800. and I would like if I could configure my family obligations in such a way, I'd love to make a run of like a decent, you know, post-60 half-mile time.

Yeah. I think I still have a little of speed. That's what I would need for that. But I can't be Chris. There was a much more under the radar rematch that did happen. We did run a 3K against each other indoors at the armory. this one we didn't like really tell people about before him but he kicked my butt again so i'm oh and two against malcolm in a race yeah this uh tradition uh of running well in publishing

uh needs to be extended we have like nick thompson right now who's like breaking all these master's records yeah nick is a real deal yeah he you know he's definitely the best runner in publishing right now i think isn't he i would think so yeah uh and then especially when you take into account just sort of like the age group records and stuff that he goes for. Yeah, I would, if we disqualify any former professional athletes, then I would say, yeah, Nick is definitely. Well, also being the CEO of the Atlantic and being, by all accounts, like a very good dad, you know, who's there for his kids. So this is possible, Malcolm. He's, Nick is really, so I've known Nick for a long time, have run with him and it's like a revelation. He's just on

another. You know, I quit competitive running when I was in my teens because I was running against the guy and I understood that I would never be at this level. You just sort of know, right? You meet these people who are. And what interests me about Nick is, so he's one of the best in the world for his age. Does this mean he could have been one of the best in the world when he was 25? Or is it, again, are we talking about a separate category of achievement? Is there a whole different class of people who come into their own in their 40s and 50s. I wish there was a good explanation. Is his aging curve just different from everyone else's? Is he somehow managed to stay healthier than, like, what's the explanation? Like, how do we, how do we account for somebody

who was a good but not great D1 runner and then becomes flat out world class in his 40s? Yeah. Well, I think the other thing to also maybe remember, we do, We do have a way of kind of assessing it when he goes out, and he's done it, I think, a couple times and gone out to run like the World Marathon Majors, Masters Championship race or whatever it is. And someone like Ken Wrightout, I think, has also run those and fared well. But I guess the problem would be just sort of we don't really see all that many, what, 40, late 40-year-old Kenyans and Ethiopians still going at it in the sport.

Everyone kind of makes their money and the most of their opportunity in their 20s and 30s and then kind of right off into the sunset. Whereas, like, here in the States, like there's so many people just like Nick who have kind of, they don't have all the heavy mileage on their legs from those 20s that it kind of allows for them to, and plus super shoes and all that kind of stuff,

has allowed them to extend their careers by so many more years. But it's also the psychological factor. A lot of these people are people that feel, they're motivated by the fact that they know that they, for whatever reason or life circumstance were not able to achieve their potential as an athlete in their prime. And so there's something to prove there's an animating energy to the master's athlete. Whereas the person who achieved all of their goals, they're like, why would I keep doing this?

You know, it's a different mentality. I mean, I have a friend from my college swimming days, Alex Costich. He never retired. He just continued to train swimming as if he was still, you know, at Stanford in 1987. or whatever. And he's gone on to dominate open water swimming, like, throughout his 40s. And even now in his mid-50s, like, he slowed down a little bit, but he still pops into, like, the Waikiki Roughwater Swim. And maybe he won't win, but, like, he'll get third. And everyone else is, like, between the ages of 16 and 19. It's insane. Yeah. I think it's... This is, like, a very sub-sub-culture.

of like open water swimming, like nobody pays attention to this. But this guy is like he just the most, like it's consistency over decades. This is a great PhD thesis for a sports physiologist. I'm sure so they've done versions of it, but like identifying a category, a number of examples of these kinds of, he's not like a late bloomer. He's just a continuous blumer. He's a perennial. Yeah.

Not a late bloomer. Yeah. I think I can't remember how like there was a group chat of me and some of my swimmers from back in that day and were like, did you see what Alex did? And then when you when you added up like the top like I think maybe he was fourth, I don't know, in this race. And if you add up the ages of the top three, like they still were younger than him. I love that. You know. And I think it's just also a statement on culture and people's interest in longevity and maintaining their health.

Like we're just we're just rewriting our expectations around human possibility because we're treating our bodies differently and we have a better understanding about how to do that. And, you know, when I was, it was like, oh, if you're 21 years old, like, you're toast, you're done. Like you'll never, you know, like, go to the trails. That was the thing, you know? And it's like, oh, no, that was just because like it just wasn't possible to extend your athletic career beyond those, beyond college. So years ago before any of this, I needed. a website. So I did what you did back then. I hired a designer. I waited months. I paid a small fortune and ended up with something I couldn't change a word of without calling them, paying again,

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it basically doesn't exist anymore. So there's really no reason to wait. Head to Squarespace.com slash richroll for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, you use offer code Richroll to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. I've spent a lot of time talking about my Rivian, driving my Rivian, obsessively sharing photos of my Rivian on Instagram.

But the best is when I hand the key fob over to someone who's never driven one. And there's always this moment, that instant, where they feel the acceleration, silent, immediate, and they just start laughing because it doesn't feel like any car they've ever driven before. And it reminds me, this is one of those things you really have to experience. It's not just fast, it's smooth, it's quiet, it's focused.

It's the kind of movement that makes everything else feel a little outdated. And Rivian makes it easy to try for yourself. You can book a demo drive online, pick a time, show up, and just get out on the road, no pressure. So if you've ever been curious, don't just take my word for it. Go to rivian.com and feel it for yourself. What's happened in running in the last, I love, this is something that Chris can, you know, we've had the op, like in a lot of sports, what we've seen is extension

at the top end, older athletes lasting longer. But the big story in running in the last competitor in the last couple of years has been the opposite. that we've got genuine world-class performers emerging in their teens. Like Cooper, Lucking House, who's arguably the best half-mile in the world at 17. We've got the Cam Myers at 20, who's maybe the best mile in the world right now, who nonchalanted his way to 331 the other day. Like, was it 3rd?

Yeah, yeah, 328. 328. I'm sorry, 2, 28. I watched that, I was like, he just went out for a round. run and it was 328 and he's 20 years old. I couldn't. I was watching. It's like, and he just kind of like eased away. And then there's Sam Ruthie and there's. Who's the kid who's in high school? Right. Cooper luck. Cooper. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's at 17. Right. And so how do you account for that? I don't know why running is suddenly,

and he's, we could come up with other examples. Yeah. Women have had that for a while, but that's just sound physiological reasons why you might expect women to peek earlier than men. But this is, this seems new and kind of interesting. Yeah. And I think the biggest thing, because right now I I've been looking at it a lot with Cam Myers in particular where, you know, he's an Australian middle distance runner who's just rewriting, you know, not only his national record books, but slowly moving up in, you know, just the all-time list. But we love just kind of looking back as Yaka Bingabritz intends to be like the example that a lot of people point to. So, you know, grew up in maybe one of the most competitive Norwegian families where he's, his older brothers were

both runners. His dad was a renowned coach for, for a bit. They had a whole like Kardashian style TV show that followed them around for several years. And you saw this kid grow up and then become an Olympic champion in Tokyo. But all of his times, that he was running as a kid were record setting and now we look at just sort of cam and we can kind of see just sort of he's already trending faster than someone than than Jacob was back in the day and I think part of that I think is one we keep bringing up just sort of like footwear and shoes but that is just kind of a big part to it like these athletes are growing up at a time where they've had it their whole careers where for a period of time there were athletes who

competed in the non-super shoe or super spike era and then had to kind of adjust. and cross over these two eras. But these high schoolers have had it this whole entire time. I think it's the accessibility to training. Like everything's on the internet nowadays. And when you hear of the trendy double threshold Norwegian method that is out there, like that catches on and high school coaches or college coaches will adjust it to their programs. And so the training has gotten better.

The fueling is a whole other side to it too, whereas it's not just in the marathon. Chris, none of these, these are all plausible explanations, but they don't explain, they would explain why everyone's getting faster. They don't explain this particular phenomenon that a 17-year-old or a 19-year-old or whatever can be world-class in a way that was simply unthinkable for most of the history. Like everyone's getting benefit of the shoes. Everyone's getting access to these better training things. Everyone's getting better fueling. the 25-year-old gets exactly the same advantages. So why are they being destroyed all of a sudden by kids?

I think it just goes, I mean, there's probably the genetic factor also that kind of goes into it too. Someone like Cooper comes from like a family of athletes, but then you can also point to several other people who have had just sort of like that athletic background. But yeah, I mean, every now and then there just comes those, you know, freak talents. And I guess like track isn't in the same, you know, kind of level. as it was maybe back in the Jim Ryan days, but everyone kind of argues that he, Jim Ryan is the greatest high school athlete ever in history and you can argue LeBron and all that kind of stuff. But Cooper's already surpassed what someone like Jim Ryan did back in the day.

And it's not as mainstream nowadays, but come something like 2028, I think a lot of people will take note. And maybe that's around the time we start to learn a bit more. We've got plenty of time, I think, to still learn more, but just sort of what it is that's made him this good. But it's cool that in 2026, we can still be amazed and surprised, you know, when we think we're just, you know, kind of nearing the end of what is possible athletically. I mean, look at what Tade Pagotcha is doing in the tour right now.

Like if you tune into Lance's The Move podcast, like there's a lot of talk like, oh, this is like, he is the best athlete in the world right now. he's so dominant, like perhaps greater than Eddie Merck's ever was, it would be the analogy that Lance used was it would be like somebody winning the New York City Marathon by 10 minutes. Like the margin that separates him and everybody else is so dramatic. And like, how do we account for this when everybody's training super hard and, you know, this sport is so globally popular. Like, you know, anybody who would show the potential would end up, you know, in this race. and yet he is so much better than everybody else. The only thing that I can think of for these is that,

and David Epstein talks in one of his books a lot about this sorting, which is in any kind of situation where someone has a lot of athletic potential, there is a process in which they try and figure out where they belong, right? And one of the arguments against early specialization is it impairs your sorting. You can think you're a good swimmer at nine, but actually no, you should have done volleyball. But you couldn't figure that out. You can't figure that out unless you play volleyball until you're whatever. So that was a significant constraint on early great performances that were still sorting.

Federer still playing football at 16. So we don't know whether he could have obliterated every, you know, tennis thing. But one possible explanation of what's going on now is maybe for reasons we don't entirely understand, sorting mechanisms are getting a lot more efficient early on, that we just have a clearer idea about where people belong in. Not efficient enough for the United States to be competitive in the World Cup at the level of expectations. You know, there's a lot of discussion right now. Like, how come we can't compete at the highest level in this sport? Everybody's got a theory.

My theory is we're using the wrong theory. So there's... I knew he would have... I knew this is something clearly... Okay, go ahead. Talk a lot about this. And the discussion sort of drives me crazy. There are two paths to excellence in any kind of community.

There's a scale path and there's an exploitation path. The scale path is you play the numbers. If I increase the number of people participating in said activity, I will, by definition, improve my chances of getting a superstar. Right. If I go from 1,000 people running a marathon every year to 100,000, I'm going to get 10x more elite athletes. The other route is exploitation, which is it's not about increasing the size of the pool. It's about increasing the quality of the pool.

looking at who's there and somehow bringing them to the next level. Our assumption in America is that all of these problems are scale problems. So we say we're the biggest country in the world. We have scale on everything. We should be succeeding at everything. But the truth is that at the very highest level

of not just athletic performance, but all performance, it's almost never scale. It's exploitation. You know, the classic example would be, I forgot what the exact number is, something like 60% of Nobel Prizes were won by Jews between 19, you know, 20 and 2020.

There are no Jews in the world. It's not like there was a hundred million Jewish physicists. It's a tiny number, but it wasn't ever about, it's supposed to exploitation, not scale. It's about that they had a culture that allowed people to develop a level of intellectual excellence that put other cultures to shame. If I go down the list of elite performance, it's always exploitation. No one, the greatest tennis players almost never come from the biggest tennis players.

playing cultures. They come from tiny tennis, chess. When was the last time America had a bona fide chess grandmaster? I mean, Bobby Fisher, right? It's been, right now the best chess brand was from Norway, a tiny, tiny, tiny country. The Netherlands has been one of the best football playing countries for, since Brilliant Orange in the 70s. The Netherlands is a postage stamp. You could bury the Netherlands in the city of Chicago and not even notice it. Like, there's no evidence for notion that scale is a reasonable strategy for producing excellence in any, you know, only in a small number of sports, but most sports, if we do distance running, what is it? It's Japan, Kenya, and Ethiopia. I looked this up, actually, this morning, because I was thinking about this. If you look at

the top 200 marathon performances in 2025, 68% of them came from Kenya, Kenya, Ethiopia, in Japan, who, which collectively represent what, some insanely tiny fraction of the world population. It's just like Americans had this thing, which just drives me crazy. We're big, we should be good. No, got nothing to do with that. That's to do with what kind of attention do you pay

and what kind of cultures do you create around excellence in very, very small cohorts of people. Yeah, it would require rewriting our culture completely. Exactly. And I don't want to, by the fact that America's a scale country. because it benefits us in a million. There are a million other things where I think scale really, really works well.

Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman were talking about this the other day and Chuck had a, you know, he was, I was very humored by his take, which is basically like this, this arrogance that Americans have, like that we should be, like, why aren't, like we're, you know, we should be exceptional at everything,

like this expectation, you know. No, not, not. But they're, like I said, the things that do require scale are the things that America excels at, and they're really, really important. Scale, entrepreneurial success is a scale problem. Norway's come up a couple times.

How are we making sense of Norway's ascendancy as a sports superpower? It's exploitation. It is the greatest example. It's a very wealthy country that has developed cultures that are really brilliant at exploding talent. We're seeing in distance running,

we're seeing it in football, we just watch the New World Cup. With chess, we've got like, you know, Magnus Carlson and others. It's like they have- Triathlon, we have Eden and Blumenfeld. Yeah, they have, and I don't, what a better question is, what exactly is the secret sauce to their exploitation strategy? I don't have a good answer to that.

Well, you have a lot of thoughts on U-Sports, and they have a very unique, you know, approach to that. This idea that, like, kids are not allowed to keep score until age 13 or whatever, which just completely upends all of our assumptions about what drives performance over time. I think maybe the Norwegian ship, but the Germans, you know, do this thing where they don't even play full-strength soccer until they're into their teens. They play four-on-four and then six-on-six, and then there's also a really nerdy thing that

they do that we don't do, which is pay huge amount of attention to relative age effect, to the great inefficiency. This goes back to some of your earliest writings on. They take it, do you know that the Dutch especially are obsessed with this, that looking at their elite performers in soccer a generation ago and realizing they were all born in the first half of the year, which meant that they were losing 50% of their... Well, you know what they do, do you know what the Australians in swimming?

Do you know what this? Where there's this move now where they go one step further, which is they do in these experiments, with an age class swimming, they have two measures of the give. One is your age, so you compete in your age class. And then second is you can do these relatively sophisticated calculations of your biological age. And so they develop a handicap. So I have a bunch of 12-year-olds doing a 100-meter freestyle. I have a, I use the biological age to to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, have a built-in statistical handicap so that the kid who is relatively the youngest biologically

has a level playing field with a kid who is, you know, maybe a year and a half ahead of his, of his age group or her age group. And then I adjust the times. So I have two sets of results that result from the race. I have the standard results. And then I have the adjusted results. So you could come in last in his standard results. But after I do the age class adjustment, you could be first. And what that does is it radically improves the sorting mechanism because what they were finding in Australian swimming is that huge numbers of kids quit in the 12-13 range

because they think they're not good. And you're losing all these kids who are simply late bloomers or young for their age. So this is a mechanism that says, actually, I know Rich you came last, but if we do a year, you're a year behind maturity-wise with the other kids in this, and if we do that adjustment,

you were the best. And suddenly Rich is no longer, Rich goes home to his mom and says, I'm actually great at this. I'm going to keep going for another two years. Like, if you do that, your capitalization, your exploitation strategy becomes way more significant.

But Australians' dominance in swimming is another example of exploitation over sorting because it's a culture. You know, it's a water culture. Like how many people live in Australia? Like, I don't know, 20 million or something? It's like, it's nothing, you know. It's funny.

You know, I don't know. It's very low. I would say it's very low. And, you know, they've produced, you know, time and time again, like Olympic champions. It's a size of Canada. It's basically Canada down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, they're a great example of the specificity of, of expertise in these areas, these cultural specificities.

Yeah. What's going on in track and field this summer? So it's an off year, technically, from this is the first one we've had since the, since the pandemic where there isn't a traditional world championship or in Olympics. And so we got into really good cadence where Tokyo Olympics 2021 and then we had two world championships, Paris Olympics, Paris Olympics, world championships. And so world athletics, the governing body, decided, well, that was pretty fun to have, you know, a pretty big high stakes competition. So they did form what they're calling the world athletics ultimate championships.

It sounds like a like a frisbee contest, but it's a big prize money, three-day competition that is basically, you know, a mini world championships. Not every event is featured there. And so that's coming up in September. And so they're going to start doing that, I think, every even year going forward. Where is that going to be? So it'll be in Budapest. And so September 11th to the 13th.

So, yeah, I'll go. that'll be fun. So a fun three days. And it works off of like the World Athletics rankings. So like you have to race a certain amount of times and have some good performances to up your ranking. And so they've kind of gamified it. So it's not necessarily about, you know, the 12 fastest people will be running. And so it's basically emphasizing, I think, a bit of consistency over the course of a season.

And so that's what I think a lot of the top athletes have to look forward to. But then other than that, there's people trying, you know, to break world records this year. And so a lot of athletes putting, you know, a target date of they want to go after someone like Josh Kerr is going after the mile world record in just a couple days. But there's other athletes like a Keely Hutchinson from Great Britain has had her site set on the women's 800 meter world record, which is stood for a very long time since the 80s. Should have been expunged a long time ago. It's a bogus record.

And so, you know, it's pretty cool. I think that we're getting to that point now where because of all of these things that have created marginal gains for the athletes that for that time period that before the athlete biological passport came in and we were able to kind of crack down on doping a bit better, a lot of those marks are finally starting to get erased. But it took a while. I brought this up a couple days ago that Malcolm a couple years ago had this idea. of, instead of, you know, keeping track of, you know, these all-time world records, decade records was, I think, like, the direction that you went. Because you can't necessarily go out if you're, you know, world athletics or, you know, the swimming, you know, federation and be like, we're going to erase all these times

because we think that they're, you know, sketchy or dodgy from the Eastern block or, you know, there was that period where there were Chinese dopers. It's like, because you open yourself up to a bunch of lawsuits probably from those countries, those athletes and so you can't necessarily have this blanket erasure but it to to malcolm's point i think like if you were to just keep track of like here's what the records have been since 2020 and we're going to keep track of that until 2030 and then we'll reset like it's i think a fun way that hasn't really does a wrinkle you do you raise a bunch of money like whatever 50 million dollars. And then suddenly 2029 becomes this crazy year because you say I'm going to give a million

dollars to the best performer over the course of the previous decade. So everyone's just like, and the dollar figure is huge. So you keep this artificial frenzy like in 2029, everyone's like maxing out to do it. It's a non-Olympic year. The last year of the decade's always a non-Olympic year. So you'd have this kind of track needs more of these kind of artificial. Well, that also plays And I think we talked about this the last time you were on my podcast, this idea that it's not about a singular breakthrough performance. The real, you know, the real athletic champion is the person who can sustain high performance over time. And so that accounts for that. Well, you're valuing that.

The older you get, the more you become biased in favor of body of work arguments over peak performance arguments. That's like, you know, to your point, so you look at someone like, Sebastian Sawway who just broke, you know, the two-hour marathon in London and he runs 159. And, you know, a lot of people would see a time like that. And it's the world record now. But is he really the greatest marathoner of all time? I don't think so. I think you still have to give that edge to someone like Elliot Kipchogi who was able to sustain the career that he had over the course of 10 years.

So there's still like a long way for someone like Sebastian Saway to go to achieve sort of like that level of two Olympic gold medals, many world marathon major titles. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's like the perfect example of assessing someone over, you know, the course of their career versus just sort of the one-off performance. He could, you know, maybe never run faster again. But if he, you know, goes out and wins 10 more marathon majors and an Olympic gold medal in L.A., then it's, you know, he could start to make the case. A quintessential example of someone who gets overlooked in peak performance, but would be a giant. considered body of work.

Is there a swimming example, for example, or I don't know what the... Well, I mean, I think Phelps would still be up there because he sustained his high performance over so many Olympians. I mean, that's a great, that's a great question. In track, it would be Kajalka, Kajalja. Yeah, you mean Kajalja, who's like what, he's been Mr. Runner Up so many times and like, has run so many world class times. And I think last year was the first.

time he got a world championship or he got a silver medal at the world championships on the track and then basically has been one of the best in the world in every distance from a mile through a marathon over the course of longevity it's dexterity yeah over the course of six seven eight years yeah and he uh he's actually he's like really tall and he has this slightly odd you the way he runs you expect him to be wearing a top hat like it's a kind of like he's just he's kind of lanky he's kind of lanky and he has a kind of stiffness and it's just he's kind of a character I know nothing about I mean I just know that every time he runs a race doesn't matter what the length is or whether it's whether it's 2019 or 2026 he's in the

mix so kind of he's a mile all the way to the marathon he's the I guess the joke now is that he's the only guy who's never run he's run a marathon but never run over two hours Because you ran 159 and finished second in London. I know. That's the craziest thing. Yeah. Like just the idea that you would run under two hours and not win. Yeah.

It's just like who would have ever thought that, you know. So crazy. Yeah, I've been trying to, you know, dive deep into that race. And it's been really cool. You know, I had the chance to chat with Sebastian Sawway just a couple weeks ago a bit. And, you know, I'm scheduled to talk to his coach, I think. But yeah, that day, just the stars aligned. And you needed just sort of those two guys to be on and have that, you know, head to head 40K, you know, 35K into the race where, you know, you're on world record pace, but someone's still breathing down your neck.

I think that's ultimately, I think what did push Sebastian Soway to, you know, not only just win, but get under two hours. I think the one side of the sub two that I'm kind of very interested to explore. and it feels like an Alex Hutchison or a Steve Magnus angle is just sort of everyone's talked about the shoes and, you know, the fueling and the pacing. But I think that there was something subconscious that happened at not enough people are talking about is that they had this huge clock on the car ahead of them that showed them the projected finish time and also the pace of the last kilometer. And psychologically, I feel like something happens that you can't necessarily measure. you know, in that, you know, span of time where they looked at whatever the split was at 40K and suddenly like that clock showed you that you were now under two-hour pace. And it's just sort of what happened in that moment is like you can't just take someone's

blood or whatever it is to measure what it was, but that adrenaline. It's like what happened in that, in his brain in that moment is something that, you know, you can't really measure in the shoes and all that kind of stuff. So I got Sawyer's take, but it's Kajalja who, you know, I need to talk to. still and figure out just sort of like he's someone who is famously loved closing long runs really hard and to be in contention and to see something like that happened what happened internally is just sort of what my biggest curiosity is and how that race unfolded also knowing kilometer by kilometer how much you are ahead of or behind breaking the world record pace you can make those

micro adjustments totally in real time yeah having that car you know there's drafting, you know, also that's happening there. You can't, the rules say you can't get super close to it. We saw a half marathon world record not count because Jacob Eplemo, he ran 56, 47 or something like that, just an insane time. But doesn't count toward the record books because he was too close to the lead car. And they said that, you know, that gave him too much of an advantage from drafting. And so in the marathon, I think they were pretty, you know, dialed. to not have that be the case in London as well.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, this conversation around valuing high performance over time is also sport dependent, right? Like some sports and some specialties within sport are going to lend themselves to being able to perform at a high level over time versus other ones where it's going to be less possible. So you would have to take that into account as well, wouldn't you? What's an example of a sport where you can't do high level?

performance over time? Is it not different to be able to compete at the highest level in the 100 meter dash over time versus the marathon or being a 200-mile ultra-runner? Like, wouldn't those be treated differently or considered? I mean, we have seen examples of, I mean, a really, really good example would be Johann Blake, the Jamaican 100-meter runner. who has exactly what we're talking about, has won very few international, big deal international competitions, but has been one of the top two or three sprinters in the world

for an astonishing long time. Same with a... But nobody's going to be 59 years old, like they are in golf. No, in the stress. But remember there was a woman named Merlinotti, Jamaican again. I mean, I'm wrapping Jamaica repeatedly here

since it is greatest country in the world, home to so many of my relatives. She ran, she was royal class into her late 30s. And those kinds. So it's not impossible. And those people are, do you remember, there was a, this dates me even more, there was a New Zealand marathoner from New Zealand

named Jack Foster, who was running 216, in the 70s, was running 216, 217 into his late 40s, which back then was just astonishing, because you could win, flat-out win marathons at that pace. So, like, I just think, I think you're right. It's harder in certain fields, but that just makes me feel like, like, Johan Blake, does no way get enough love?

I mean, sprinting is something where you would expect a real age-related drop-off, right? Yeah. And it did not happen with him. And that should mean we should say that he should be spoken of in the same breath as some of the greatest sprinters who ever live. Because top-end speed gets eroded with age. Yeah.

Whereas you can continue to develop your aerobic capacity and compete at a high level in an endurance type race. I was just thinking about that because, you know, I think Noel Liles is someone who has been sort of like the de facto voice and face of sprinting over the last like couple years because he kind of wanted to assume that mantle. Just he's someone who's wanted to push for, you know, track being a bit more popular. And so he's one of those guys that you either hate him or you love them. And that's kind of a good thing. But I was thinking to the point of longevity in the sprints, he was a high school phenom back in 2016, finishing fourth at like the U.S. Olympic trials. And so now, you know, he's trying to position himself. He's the reigning Olympic champion to potentially go into the Los Angeles Olympics, you know, as a favorite for gold medal.

It's like it's a long time to stay at the top of the sprints. And so even what we're seeing now, like this current season, like he isn't racing a ton. but every time that he gets out there, he's still winning these races. And there are like these younger folks coming up in the sprints. And he's managed to hold them off. And so right now, I guess like for the people listening or watching and who are curious about track and wanting to get into it in the lead up to the L.A. Olympics, now is the time to really appreciate and enjoy a talent like Noah Liles because it's not a given that he's going to be

at this level in two years. And so I had that just kind of like moment. It's like even though this he's like in his late 20s, I was like, we got to appreciate what we're seeing right now because it's not it could change so quickly. That's the cool part to track too is that there are these newer younger faces who are just popping up left and right who can easily supplant the Olympic champions and world champions that we saw in the last two years. Chris, you have a book coming out this fall. Yeah. Next fall. Yeah.

A whole other year. A whole other year you're waiting on it? Yeah. I guess like a handed, it turned in the manuscript back in June. And so I think now we're going through a very long editing and revision phase. It ended up, I definitely went over my word count. So, but I'm excited for it. So it's the marathon book is the working title, although I kind of want the title to stick.

And yeah, but I think the one funny part to. to it is that I did ask like the publishers at Penguin Random House. I was like, what's the latest we can, you know, update some of these times and performance? Because they're like, I've got a couple chapters in here that reference world records and American records. I'm like, what are they going to be in summer 2027 before this thing goes to print? So that's the challenge, I guess, with tackling a subject like the marathon. That's exciting, man.

Congrats. Thank you. Please come back and talk to me about it when the book comes out. Oh, would love to, yeah. Yeah. And in the meantime, 800 meter. Showdown between you guys. He's going to destroy me.

Commit now. No, no. He didn't you recently run 220 something? For the 800? Here comes to the sandbag. Yeah. No, no, no, no. I can't.

Well, so the fun part is that at every world championships, they do a media 800. And so if you have a credential, you can go and run on the same track that they're hosting the world championships at. And so over the years, you know, we do start to see, I think, a couple of retired runners move into the media as photographers or videographers. So they end up winning. And the winning time is like 154, 152. Pretty legit.

But I've been to a couple of world championships now. And so I wanted to run it last year in Tokyo. And training was going really, really well. I recruited Mark Coogan, one of the best Miler coaches in America to coach me. And then one day I was moving into my new apartment. And I was trying to move a dresser. and I just dislocated my kneecap while trying to pull it in through the front door. And so I had time trial, I think, two days before that, and I did run 216.

So I was looking for a big performance in Tokyo. I ended up just watching the race with a knee brace on. And so, yeah, I guess like I'm in for 800 meter training, but I won't make it easy for Malcolm in a rematch. And you have something to prove. Yeah. Well, this was fun, guys. Thanks, man. Thank you so much.

It's great fun, Rich. Yeah, I'd love to do more of this kind of thing. I appreciate you guys. That would be great. Yeah. And I guess I don't need to prep for these as long as I have people like you. Don't do it, bitch. Don't do it.

Preparations overrated. Yeah. All right, guys. Thanks. Thank you.