The Rich Roll Podcast - Matthew Futterman On The Secrets of Speed & Endurance

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

What is the secret to running impossibly fast? Or distances longer than previously imagined? Beginning in the 1960's, an unknown farm boy turned coach named Bob Larsen launched a decades-long quest to find the ‘secret sauce' of speed and endurance that would eventually revolutionize the sport and catapult American running onto the national stage. This is the story of how Larsen took turned a rag-tag group of also-ran junior college athletes called the Jamul Toads into cult-favorite national champions. Later, he would apply his secret training regimen to athletes like Meb Keflezighi and Deena Kastor to create victories at the New York and Boston Marathons as well as the Olympics. To unpack this incredible yarn, today I sit down with New York Times Deputy Sports Editor Matthew Futterman. A graduate of Union College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Matthew 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. An avid marathoner, Matthew became obsessed with the history of American distance running and the training innovations that create champions. The result of this quest is his new book, Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed. Part Bob Larsen biography and part autobiography, it's a fascinating account of how one maverick coach discovered and developed the unorthodox paradigm that would launch American runners to unprecedented breakthroughs and ultimately inform the protocols of some of today’s most fleet of foot. From Bob Bowerman and Steve Prefontaine to the quest to break the 2-hour marathon, today's exploration focuses on the science behind running performance. The ongoing quest to find the secret sauce of speed and endurance. And the evolving crusade to run faster and farther than ever before. It’s about what can be learned from Bob Larsen's example, and the methods he pioneered that led to his stature as one of the greatest running coaches of all time. And it’s about our shared love for the sport of running. Even if running isn't your thing, I think you will find this conversation compelling. The stories are legend. And the life lessons applicable across disciplines. The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube here: bit.ly/matthewfutterman455 (please subscribe!) I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange! Peace + Plants, Rich

Where you're born and how you're born and how you grew up is not your destiny. You can change your destiny. If you do the work, if you do the right things and work as hard as anyone, you can be better tomorrow than you were yesterday. And that's the thing about running, though, is there's no shortcuts. It's largely about the work. It's largely about the work it's largely about patience it's largely about being committed and it's the same thing with writing too you know it doesn't come quickly or easily uh it can be very painful it takes a lot of being honest with yourself. And I would say running and writing are

sort of the two lenses through which I approach life. I just never feel more alive than when I'm running. That's Matthew Futterman, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? It's me, Rich Roll, your host. This is a graduate of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He has written for the Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer. And he's currently the deputy sports editor of the New York Times. He's also the author of a new book. It's called Running to the Edge, A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed. and the guru who unlocked the secrets of speed.

And it's this fascinating account of this visionary American running coach called Bob Larson and the journey that he goes on, this quest really to discover the unorthodox training secrets that would lead American runners to unprecedented breakthroughs and ultimately inform the protocols of some of today's most fleet of foot. So running

is our subject today. Matthew is our agent, our instrument, our vehicle, and it's all coming up shortly. But first, we're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem.

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treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Matthew Futterman. So, today's exploration is about the science behind running performance, the ongoing quest to find the secret sauce of speed meets endurance, the crusade to run faster and run farther. And it's about this character. We're seeing this. We're exploring this terrain through this amazing, unique personality that is Bob Larson and the unorthodox training methods that this legendary coach pioneered that ultimately led to his stature as one of the

all-time great running coaches. Matthew talks about Larson's legacy, the athletes he spawned from this ragtag group of San Diego high school runners, which is a really fun story, all the way up to Olympic medalists like Meb Kofleski and Dina Castor. And it's about our shared love for this sport, this sport of running. I really enjoyed this conversation. So let's have it.

This is me and Matthew Futterman. All right, Matthew, thanks for doing the podcast. Great to be here. Yeah, it's nice to see you again. We've crossed paths a couple of times over the years. I went to college with your lovely wife. Yes. And I think I said this to you in an email,

but Amy, I have this, it's weird how memory is bizarrely selective, but I have this very vivid memory of being in a class with her freshman year. And there was an assignment to do something creative. And I made this photo exhibit. I went downtown into San Francisco and photographed all these homeless people. And I blew up these photographs and mounted them. And it was really the first thing, first time I'd ever done anything like creative. Like I was always very much like a bookish person. And I just remember her being so kind and, and considerate. Like she had all these nice things to say about it and it stuck out. I think it still is in my memory because it was really

the first time that anybody had had like put wind in my sails for anything creative that I've done and it's always stayed with me it's bizarre well I had a similar conversation with a one of my first writing teachers in college recently and because I had I have like a you know there's not one specific memory except for the fact that i was in a creative writing class in college at a little school in upstate new york and i was like trying to do this thing and writing like bad short stories and i'm sure he knew they were bad but he he was nice enough to be like, you know, these aren't all bad. There's something kind of good here. And he said it in such a way that it was sort of like he was giving me permission to pursue something that I really liked and gave me pleasure.

And I think, and that really like stuck out in my mind. There's like an ant on the mic or something. A spider, uh-oh, flick it. But we love spiders because they get rid of the mosquitoes. That's a first for the podcast. A spider crawling on the microphone. Yeah, well, they probably know that I'm a huge Charlotte's Web fan. So they know that they're in safe hands around me.

So you won't get bit. Right, but that idea that someone like gives you permission to do the thing that you really like, I think that really stays with you. And it's important. And I think as you go through life and as you sort of mature in your career, if you pass that on to a younger person who you see sort of fighting with something and trying to do something and just trying to, and working really hard at it. I think it's a really like valuable thing that you can do.

And they're really small gestures that to the person giving it might not seem like anything, but can make all the difference in a young person's life. And people come back to you like years later and they say like, I remember when you said to me, and you'll have no- I'm sure Amy has no recollection of saying that to me. You can have no recollection of this,

but things stick with you that when they sound right and when you wanna hear them, there's sort of these moments. We should probably point out, I mean, Amy is this uber successful publishing executive yeah she's done pretty well it's really amazing what

she's created and I remember her as being like really smart and intellectual and savvy she had this like like New York cool about her kind of intellectual girl from New Jersey you're telling her she had New York cool about her kind of intellectual prowess. Girl from New Jersey. You're telling her she had New York cool.

She's going to love that. But it was very sophisticated. You know what I mean? And so it's no surprise to me what she's been able to create and do. And I guess she's probably most well-known for discovering Big Little Lies and The Help, right? Like she published both of those books. Yeah, those are two big ones on the fiction side. Last year, she did Jim Comey's book,

which was an experience, I will say that. And she created her own imprint at a very young age, right? Which was like highly unusual thing. Yes, there was a time when, there's certain directions you can go in the publishing business. And that was one thing she wanted to try. And I believe it was Putnam was the company that sort of gave her own imprint.

So, yeah, on the spine of many books, it says Amy Einhorn Books, which is pretty cool. Yeah, she since has moved to another company. She's at Flatiron now, right? Yeah, Flatiron Books now. And has done a lot of great stuff there. So, do you go to her to review your work? Absolutely. Yeah, Flatiron Books now, and has done a lot of great stuff there. So do you go to her to review your work? Absolutely. How does that work?

Being married to somebody who's an editor. It's great. Well, it's great for me. I mean, she's not the publisher of my books, obviously. But it's funny. A lot of people ask me, and they ask it in the context of, oh, that must be really hard, sharing your writing with her and her going over that. And I mean, I've written two books now, both times did the exact same thing, which is before I turned in the manuscript, she got the first draft and tore it apart in her way. And people said, oh, is that really difficult?

And my reaction was, why would it be difficult? Like, here's the person who loves you and wants nothing but what's best for you. Yeah. And she's actually really good at this thing. She gets paid to do it. And here she is like, I mean, who else's hands would you rather be in? Yeah, of course.

In that situation. So you just sort of go, I mean, you go and you let yourself be vulnerable. You know, that's okay. Like you need help. Like we all need help. This is a, but you're both running and writing. You need help. We all need help. This is a, both running and writing,

people see as very sort of solitary activities, but they're both, I think, can be very collaborative arts. And at least when they're done well, it takes a team. And having your wife on your team, helping you along the way and saying, you totally lost me during these 20 pages. I have no idea what you're talking about. You know, that's something you should take to heart

and maybe say, okay, why? Well, here's what I was trying to get out there. And she said, well, you failed in that spot. It didn't work. And you're like, okay, great, let's try it again. Yeah, you just have to have a healthy ego and, you know, check yourself a little bit, I would imagine, but nobody's going to put the amount of care into it, you know, than her. Like there's this idea that, that when you publish a book, you're going to be having these midnight

three hour conversations with your editor over philosophy and life. And it just doesn't work that way. I mean, I don't know what your relationship was or has been with your editor over philosophy and life. And it just doesn't work that way. I mean, I don't know what your relationship was or has been with your editor of this book, but editors are busy. And with the consolidation of all these publishing companies, they're like project managers. They're handling so many books. And no matter how much they care about your book, they're distracted by all the other things they have to do. Yeah, you're one of a bunch of authors, and you're one of a bunch of books that's being published.

And I think it's always been that way, where people turn to other writers and say, can you look at this for me? Does this make sense? Does this work and and then once it's sort of ready to go out the door you feel like it's in a put it's in a it's in the kind of shape to go out the door then you let it go out the door i mean i know amy would never have let me put a manuscript out into the world if it just wasn't up to right the right standards if it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. And I'm pretty hard on myself too.

I have this massive fear of boring readers. It's a big ask, I think, these days with so many distractions to get people to read your 1,000-word stories, much less read your 100,000-word book. So you've got gotta put every effort into keeping the story moving, keeping it going, keeping them turning pages. And I feel like I'm a pretty good judge

of my own work at this point on when I'm falling short. I don't know if I'm my biggest critic, but I'm up there. Yeah, I had Kelly Corrigan in here yesterday who's written a slew of New York Times bestsellers, and she said something almost exactly the same, what you said. Like, if you're going to ask people to read your book, like, you better have shown up for the page 110%, because it is a big ask in this distracted age to

ask somebody to sit down and spend that kind of quiet undistracted time with something that you poured your heart and soul into. It takes a while I'm kind of a slow reader so it takes me a while to read books and it's just it's hard to get people's attention

these days. Well you did a great job. I love the book. It's definitely not boring. It's a page turner. That's good. I'm not done with it yet, but I'm well into it. And I really enjoyed it.

And that's what we're here to talk about today. We're going to talk about running. We're going to talk about this book. And I'm interested, maybe the launching point is just to ask you, like, why, like, first of all, why, what drew you to writing a book about running to begin with? And how and why did you laser in on this character, Bob Larson, as a protagonist to tell the story you wanted to tell? Well, I'll deal with the first question, which is what drew me to want to write about this. And that's really, I think the question that's been sort of battering my head the last, I don't know, five, 10 years or something like that. I mean, I've been a runner for, let me do the math,

35 years or something like that. But the question that I've sort of been going back and forth is, I've always wanted to get at the idea of, you know, why do we run? going back and forth is I've always wanted to get at the idea of, you know, why do we run? And what of all the activities we could do, why do we still do this thing? We haven't had to run for our food for a long time now,

since we became an agricultural culture and yet we still do it. And people have sort of never stopped doing it obviously they do it in much larger numbers now and wear fancy clothes when they're doing it and fancy shoes but what's going on with us uh when we go spend three miles or five miles or eight miles or 250 miles running at a time what are we running to what are we running from uh runners spend a lot of time alone often and we have a lot of time to think and i think that's one of the reasons why running sort of lends itself to some pretty good writing at times and so there was I always wanted to write a running book about some of these things,

but I didn't really want to write it about myself. I didn't think there was anything particularly outstanding about my life as a runner. I mean, it's outstanding to me, but I didn't know how to, I didn't think my, I- How to wed your own personal experience to a modern artist. I didn't think I could, you know, my,

I didn't think I could carry a whole book in like my ruminations about running. And so I was always looking around for the right running story that hadn't really been told yet. And I also have always been fascinated by the early days of long distance running. And when I say early days, it really wasn't very long ago.

Right. When we talk about it, you know, the first running boom was like in the 70s and the running culture back then, the sort of roots of running, a lot of it was very sort of rebellious, very counter-cultural. I mean, the first sort of poster boy of running

was Steve Free Fontaine, who had the mustache and the long hair. And that's what everyone wanted to be like. That was what running was. It wasn't this mainstream activity that was on the cover of magazines. And it was really sort of very niche and very fringe. And there were few things more rebellious

that you could do than wake up on a Saturday morning and go out and run 20 miles. You'd be the freak on the side of the road. Yeah, it's crazy to think about that because it wasn't so long ago. And now to reflect on the fact that running is like the most popular participation sport with, you know, hundreds of thousands of people doing marathons in some city every single weekend. of the pre-Fontaine and pre-pre-Fontaine era of these bearded guys with mustaches in the early days of Nike with the waffle shoe

and no GPS watches and just rag tag, you know, dudes who are essentially hippies, like out there doing something on the fringe. Like there's something just super punk rock and cool about that. It's great. And it really, I mean, you say, I mean, I'm sure it was a little different in some ways because you also had like Billy Mills who came out of the Marines and, you know, they did some running in the, you know, in the military. So you had sort of that wing of it, but a lot of what you just described, that's kind of what it was.

it was very fringe. And so I've always sort of liked that idea. And then I've always known Bob Larson, his main character in the book, for a while because I knew him as Meb Keflezighi's coach, which was how most people knew him, or maybe some people out here knew him as the longtime UCLA track coach. But I never really knew his backstory

until I got invited to a documentary about him that was made by one of his former runners uh and it told this story uh it sort of had this mention of his origins which was with this group of like we said these kind of hippie runners in late 1960s early 70s san diego, called themselves the Hummel Toads. And this group of runners who sort of come out of nowhere to win the 1976 National Cross Country Championship back when that was just about the biggest race other than the Boston Marathon.

And these were his lab rats. Like these were the guys that he used to come up with his theories of how to run far fast. He had done a lot of thinking about it, but it was gonna take experimentation. And he came along with these guys and he was working with them for years in terms of sort of figuring out his methods.

Right. And so I, and I just really loved that story. And I, and then I saw, and I saw a picture of these guys too. And there's a picture on like page three of the book. Right. Because that was the picture when I just remember sitting and watching this documentary. And I saw that picture and I thought,

oh, who the hell are those guys? I gotta find out who those guys are. And I thought, if they're interesting, that might be a good story. Because you need good characters. And I started calling them, the maker of the film, this guy, Robert Lusitania was incredibly generous. He said, that would be great if you wrote a book about this. Here's all my friends' phone numbers. And so I called them and,

you know, each one had just a great story. I started asking them, you know, why do you, why did you run? Why did you start running? Yeah, I think you said something like, if they had a really boring answer to that first question, you would think, well, maybe there's not a book. Right. Let's just see how boring answer to that first question, you would think, well, maybe there's not a book. Let's just see how they respond to that. Right, and not one of them said, I don't know. It was just something I was kind of good at, and I just sort of did. They all had thought really hard about what they were doing out there,

and they all had really sort of visceral emotions about how it made them feel, why they were doing it, what they would have been trying to accomplish and where it had sort of brought them in life. And I think each one of those had some reason, something that they were like, to go back to a point you made a minute ago, they were all running from something

and running towards something. Yes. The answer to that question is a combination of both of those things, I think, with most people. Most people, I would think. If you're the kind of person who's, I don't know, I guess the glass half empty person, if you're neurotic or if you're self-conscious and self-aware and you like to think about these things, then yes, there's often an interesting answer to those things. So at this moment in time,

the U.S. was certainly not known as any kind of big running power, right? Well, in the 60s and 70s? Well, no, like at the beginning of like this journey, there wasn't a lot of science and understanding about how to train. Nobody knew anything. People had ideas, but it was one of those things

that it was all, well, he did that and he won a gold medal, so we should do that. Right, but no real thought or science. There was very little science behind it, very little experimentation. And that was the thing that really sort of separated Bob Larson early on from everybody else. Because he ended up at San Diego State University, grew up in San Diego for the most part. Started in Minnesota on a farm with no running water, no electricity.

Family moves to San Diego when he was 11 years old. And so he grows up in San Diego, ends up at San Diego and runs in high school, ends up at San Diego State and is running at San Diego State and is really interested in physical education and what we now call kinesiology and ends up getting to know this professor named Fred Cash who is doing some of the first studies on human cardio health.

Because at the time, and we talk about running not being something people did, people just didn't exercise as adults. So the idea, it was thought that if you strained your heart after the age of about 35, that was like a very dangerous thing to do. That was to sort of risk massive cardiac catastrophic event. Uh-huh. And so nobody, I mean, just think about that. And this was not very long ago. This was like a little more than 50 years ago, maybe 50 years ago. And at that time, we're sending rockets to the,

we're sending people to the moon where the Russians actually have a cell phone at this point. They have invented a phone that can fit in your pocket. So it was sort of like the first cell phone. I mean, the modern map of Europe was kind of laid out. Like modernity had happened. And yet when it comes to like cardiac health, we are in the complete dark ages. I mean, to me, it's completely baffling.

And so then there's this guy, Fred Cash is doing these studies and he's having these adults in San Diego come a few evenings a week to San Diego state and he's telling them to run and he's taking their, and he's measuring their heart rates. And what he's finding is that the more they run, the more their heart rates are going down, that their hearts are becoming more efficient. And Bob at the time is a college runner and he's training in summers. And in summers, he does this really radical thing, which is he goes and he runs on trails and he runs on roads because he's not running around the track all the time. And he does that. And then he's working with Fred Cash and looking at this lab.

And he has like this aha moment where he thinks, yeah, that's actually what I'm feeling. aha moment where he thinks, yeah, that's actually what I'm feeling. I feel like the more I run, the longer I run, the more efficient I feel, the better it is. It's so hilarious because it's so self-evident and obvious now to think that that was not something that people were aware of at that time, not so long ago. I mean, like Salk had invented the polio vaccine

and yet people didn't realize the heart was a muscle like any other muscle. Like, you know, do bicep curls, your biceps get bigger, but work out your heart, it might die. Like it doesn't make sense, but that was the idea. No, the heart is just a muscle like any other muscle, exercise it and it will become stronger and it will become more efficient so conventional wisdom at this time pre you know

this epiphany was for for track and field athletes what or cross-country athletes just go to the track and do what i mean how were they training at that time you basically basically had two sort of, I mean, I would call them schools, but one of the schools was really like very much in its infancy. That would be the Lyddiard School. Lyddiard was this coach from New Zealand who Bob Bowerman at Oregon had gone to visit and had come back with, well, Lyddiard has the first sort of jogging group in New Zealand. And his idea was volume, you know, run. You got to run more than 100 miles a week,

but he wasn't really focused on intensity. He was mainly focused on the volume and his mantra was train, don't strain. So then you had that school on the one side. And then on the other side, you had the sort of traditional Europeans. Emil Zatopek was their hero because he's the only guy that won the 5,000, the 10,000, the marathon, the Olympics. And Zatopek and all the sort of Zadapak disciples were obsessed with intervals. So that was go to the track and do half mile intervals or quarter mile intervals, or at the most three quarters,

maybe every once in a while you do some mile repeats. But it was largely, Zadapak would do these crazy quarter mile training sessions where he would do like 60 or 65 quarter miles, all of them in like 65 seconds with a minute rest in between. And so Bob comes along and his idea, what he eventually happens upon is a sort of middle ground. His two questions were, why do the long runs have to be so slow?

And why do the intervals have to be so short? What if we try to go hard for a long period of time? What if you go to what he starts talking about as your threshold, your edge. Go to that spot right before you're going to become exhausted if you go at that pace for too long a time and try and stay there. Stay there for a mile today. Stay there for a mile and a half tomorrow and slowly build up.

And that becomes known what we all call today is tempo runs. Right, sort of lactate threshold training. That moment, that place where if you go any harder, it's unsustainable. But if you go just a little bit easier, it's just a little bit too comfortable. Like finding that edge and training at that for as long as possible

and trying to expand your ability to maintain that pace. Right. And it's uncomfortable. I mean, the idea is the worst, right? You're at a, you're at a place, you're at a place where you're not comfortable, but the idea is to teach your body and teach your mind really how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and, and that that's okay. Right. It's okay. If you're afraid, you're not going to die. It's okay. If

you're afraid of it, um, because we're all probably afraid of it. It's not, you know, it's a learned behavior to go to the place that makes you uncomfortable and to stay there and to think, don't slow down, actually try and go a little bit faster. See if there's one more click I can get to. And that was really, that's sort of the central revelation of what he had his runners doing. And it was all measured. I mean, he would take in their pulse rates.

It wasn't, he would have groups of runners. He would do, you know, he had a control group and then he had the experimental group and he'd take their pulses, you know, in the middle of their runs, he would see how much they were straining, how much these guys were straining and they would look at the results

and who was getting better. And that's what he came upon. So his methodology, he was seeing bigger gains in more compressed periods of time than control groups or people that were training in accordance with these other methodologies. Definitely, yeah. It's interesting because all three of those modalities,

there's wisdom to all of them. I mean, the sort of initial volume concept, I mean, that's sort of the legacy of that is kind of the Maffetone method. Like that's, I train with that like all the time, like building that efficiency from the ground up as opposed to the top down, which is what happens when you're threshold training.

And the interval training, like now I feel like in modern times, the best, you know, approach, I mean, depending upon distance and, you know, what level you're at is some combination of all of those. Yes. And that's the thing you have to do. I mean, and now everybody says, you know, you gotta have three elements to your training.

You gotta, you know, you have to have, you gotta have volume, you gotta have, you know, those threshold runs, or I'm sure if you're cycling, same thing, or if you're swimming, the same thing, threshold swims. And then you have to do some of those short intervals, the workouts and stuff. You have to build it from all three.

But while you're doing that, if you're interested in distance running, if that's your thing, the intervals probably shouldn't be too short. Yeah. And the long runs shouldn't be too slow. If you have goal, I mean, if your goal is just to finish, then, you know, go as slow as you want. Yeah. Who cares? I mean, but if you are really focused on, or even slightly focused on improvement and getting faster,

and I will say I've never met someone who ran a race and then didn't say, I wonder if I could do it faster. That's just like a very, I just feel like that's a- It's a very human thing. that's a very human thing. And so if you ever have that thought, I mean, that's the kind of thing I'm speaking to here, that drive that we have. Well, the other radical thing that Larson did is he took them off the track, which at the time was anathema, right? Like every day you're supposed to go to the track and try to be better than you were the day before, just hammering these repeats on the clock. And I know just from my history of being a swimmer, there's a huge mental toll that comes with that because you're in a swimming pool, it's a fixed distance, there's a pace clock. And if you're not hitting these repeats at times that are better than you were the week before or even the day before, you start to think, am I making any progress?

It's very hard to – you just can't go hard every day. And there was a period of time where that was the philosophy, just go in and just like go as hard as you can every single day. And for him to take these athletes off the track, get onto the trails, you know, you don't really, there's no GPS watches. They don't know exactly what pace they're running. And just to learn how to go on feel and practice these surges and being at that edge had to be some mental reprieve. Well, the track and the pool probably is really, really good for one person, and that's the coach. Because they can monitor everything perfectly. Because the coach can stand in the middle of the track or can stand on the pool deck and can have the watch

and they can monitor everything. And he or she is not the one going around in circles like a hamster all afternoon or going back and forth in the water all day and driving them, slowly going mad. But when you get off the track or you get out of the pool, it's just, I mean, for obvious reasons, it's liberating. You feel free.

You can go. You're going from point A to point B. And the good thing about Bob is that he started coaching when he was really young so you know this first team of runners he coached at mona vista high school in san diego you know they show up for cross-country practice on the first day and they're looking around for the coach and the windbreaker and now he's actually the guy wearing shorts and a t-shirt and running shoes. And he says, let's go. And they run together. And he was running with his runners until he couldn't keep up anymore.

And even when he was in his 30s and certainly slower than the people that he was training, he would run the warm-up with them. He would run the first five, six the warm-up with him he would run the first five six miles with them and then let them go uh-huh uh he was like a 420 miler yeah right at one point he was a 420 miler um and a 20 and a 24 second 200 runner i mean he's he had some wheels uh but you know he so he would sort of build that trust equation that way and you know he he's still he's 80 years old he still runs he lives on you know he lives on on top of one of the Brentwood hills and it's it's about two miles up the hill to get up to his house and I was sitting

on his deck with him last night having a beer and he said and he says yeah it's hell of a workout i did it a couple weeks ago uh-huh and i sort of said you ran up the hill a couple weeks ago and he's like oh yeah it's pretty cool that's awesome like he still run you know he still runs most days usually drives his car down to the bottom of the hill and runs on the flats but uh i mean it's that idea that he runs, you know, straight up a tiger tail road or whatever it is. Yeah, I know that. It's steep.

It's pretty darn steep, yeah. When he was coaching UCLA, he would, on Sunday mornings, he would tell his runners, you know, run up to my house and, you know, there'll be pancakes waiting for you. And he did it sort of as bonding but also it was good hill what does he what does he think of the book like he has to be thrilled uh he it took it took some getting used to for him he is you know he has these he has these um minnesota roots and uh when I was, I was working on this book and I,

you know, from the beginning and you've got to sort of figure out what the book is about and you have to sort of figure out, you know, sometimes we call it the mule, you know, who's going to carry the book, who's the character is going to carry the story.

And that wasn't immediately apparent to me in terms of how it was going to be structured you know i thought maybe it would be about all these different characters and it is about all these different characters but um at some point it became clear to me you know what this story needs to stay as close to Bob Larson as possible. It's really his story. He's the only guy in America who was present at the birth of the running boom, the collapse of American distance running and the person who brought it back and resuscitated it. And, you know And that's really like an incredible story. And that's what sort of the book was about.

But in the same way, I don't have any business relationship with him. I was just interviewing him along the way and I wasn't sharing drafts of it with him. So, I mean, Billy Bean, the Oakland A's president, he didn't know Moneyball was really about him until he got sent, you know, a galley, an advanced copy of it.

And- A little shell shock. It was a little shell shock that he was the main character. And so then when I sent it to Bob, once it was sort of in book form, I sent it to him to have a look. And also I needed him to fact check it, make sure I wasn't getting stuff wrong.

It took a little, he was sort of a little surprised. And he was a little, he was just sort of take, he was just, he's just not, he's a very humble person. The reason nobody has heard about him is because even though he would have had every right to 25 years ago or however many years ago when he's producing like gold medalist after gold medalist to have written a book and called it The Larson Way or something like that and gone on any number of talk shows or gone on the circuit and become a franchise into himself. He's never thought of, he's not the kind of person who would ever think of doing something like that.

So it was my great good fortune that he's sort of this unknown guru of American music running. And so he loves the book now, but it took him a little while to get used to it. Right. Is he doing like events with you? Will he come out and speak about this time?

He was with me last week. We did an event with New York Roadrunners. And while I'm in LA, we're doing something with the LA Running Club and South Bay Runners at one of the schools in Santa Monica during their weekly workout. And so, yeah, I think he's having a pretty good time with this. It's a bit of a kick for him. My favorite part of the book is just the kind of bad news bears story of these toads, right? This ragtag group of young runners

who don't sort of cut this image of elite athletes and how he shapes these young minds and athletes into champions. And the story of them going to the AAU championships without any money and they show up, they don't really have uniforms or, you know, they're just fish out of water kind of thing. I mean, how can you not like root for these guys?

Yeah, that's what it was. I mean, they have no, they had been turned down by the early version of Nike. Bob knew Jeff Hollister and had said, I got a pretty good team here. Can you give me some money to get them to Philadelphia? And he said, who's on the team? And he basically said, eh, I'm not really impressed.

I've never really heard of those guys. Sorry, not into it. And yeah, they were a bunch of, these were not like the elite of the elite. Look, they were fast. They were great natural runners and they had good careers uh you know ed mendoza ran a 210 marathon in boston on a really hot day and he was on the olympic team in 1976 so there were some good runners there but they weren't sort of the blue blood runner in terms of they weren't the sort of chosen,

the chosen ones who I'm sure you grew up with those guys in swimming, you know, they're the guys who are always good as teenagers and some of them go on to be very good as adults. And also just the, these, there are these programs that you know, like, oh,

well, the good people come out of these programs, like in, you know, in running, it's Oregon or, you know,

what, what have you, there's certainly, you know, that exists in swimming and here you have, you know, Larson with this,

with this group, they're unknown. They're not, there's no legacy. No, he was a, he was a Grossmont Junior College. Right.

That's where they are. That's basically where most of them started. Yeah. he was at Grossmont Junior College. Right. That's where they are. That's basically where most of them started. Yeah. Grossmont Junior College in San Diego. He was only allowed to, the community college system, you aren't allowed to recruit. It's like a public high school.

Your district is drawn and he could draw kids from eight schools and eight high schools in the region. And, of course, once he had some success, some people start moving into the region so they can go and run for him. But it was basically whoever shows up on day one. And, of course, he would look in the local high schools. whoever shows up on day one.

Right. And of course he would look in the local high schools. But his recruiting amounted to, he would have a barbecue at his house and buy a keg of beer and invite the local track coaches over once a year and say like, so who do you got? Who's coming in? Who should I keep my eye on?

Yeah. That was it. And they came to him, but they worked differently and they worked harder. And so he would show up to these invitational meets with all the big four-year schools and they were better than them. They were beating all of them

because they had happened onto the sort of secret sauce. You talk about them as a team. And I think we mentioned before that people think of this as a very sort of solitary activity and individual sport. But, you know, we talked about Larson's first principle of going to your edge. The second one was you got to train. You cannot train alone. Like you are part of a team.

The group is more powerful than the individual. You know, lean on your teammates they will pick you up on the days when you are slacking off when you're falling out of the pack you're going to try and run harder to keep up with the pack and you know tomorrow you're going to be the one that's leading the pack and someone else is going to be falling off and they're going to try and keep up with you um it's a you know it's like the i think i've mentioned it's like the Peloton in cycling that big clump it's really powerful

there's aerodynamic reasons in cycling why it's really powerful but psychologically it's really powerful too the last thing you want to do is get chewed up and spit out and left behind and then the third idea was just that where you're born and how you're born and how you grew up is not your destiny. You can change your destiny. If you do the work, if you do the right things and work as hard as anyone, you can be better tomorrow than you were yesterday. I love that because it would be easy to say

that his philosophy is lactate threshold training. But in truth, his philosophy is a philosophy of life. It's applicable to running and being excellent in running, but those are principles and rules to live by no matter what it is that you do or seek. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, that's honestly, like that's really the main thing that sort of drew me to this story. You know, I wanted to write a running book that was, yeah,

it was about running, but, you know, running is sort of the lens. I would say running and writing are sort of the two lenses through which I approach life. And I don't have been a sports writer for about 20 years. I've been a journalist for 25 years. I don't think I would do this if, and I wouldn't have sort of gravitated towards sports if I didn't think it had a lot of stories that would convey sort of these lessons and not morals. And I say that, it sounds sort of preachy and stuff,

but I'm very drawn to stories that can speak to things beyond the playing field and beyond the field of competition. Because these are the stories that sort of helped me get through my day and provide me with like i said that that sort of lens of which of which i can sort of have some revelations and epiphanies about what's important how to approach things um and so in when i'm doing my job right you know readers are getting that benefit as well and It's very Murakami. Yeah.

That's sort of, that's the hope is to sort of convey that and hope that people, you know, if this book makes you love running and be faster, terrific. But if it makes you think it's okay to be uncomfortable, I actually really wanna push myself to a kind of threshold, whether it's in my relationships or in my job, or even just, I wanna start painting, I've never painted before. And I'd really like to try that, even though I know I'm gonna to be terrible at it uh then

great and that that's that then that would be the the greatest thing yeah having the courage to approach that edge and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is where you meet yourself and where the growth occurs yeah that's where the man, I mean, that was the whole idea with Bob when he, because where you are, when you feel like you're gonna collapse and you don't, that's where the magic is. Like that's where you find truth about yourself. That's where you can take that moment into a race and know that when you're really hurting,

you can think back to, no, no, no, I've been here. I've actually been here before. I can do this. I can keep at this for another mile or two and I can keep up with this guy. And it spills over into everything that you do. You develop this resiliency and this willingness to confront that edge in other areas of your life. And as a result, your life expands.

Hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully. It definitely does. And you just can't, whether you're a runner or not, whether it's running or swimming or whatever it is that you do, where you can kind of find that flow state sense, you return from that more complete, like with clarity that you didn't have beforehand. we're wrestling with by allowing it to kind of exist in your subconscious while you're running, you come back with a solution to it. And I don't know how that works or why that works,

but it works. No, I definitely do a lot of my best writing while I'm running. There's no question about that. I can tell you exactly where I was when I figured out the subtitle of the book, which is, you know, a band of misfits and the guru who unlocked the secrets of speed.

I was having a really hard time with like that verb, like searching for the secrets of speed or searching. And then like, you know, I was in Central Park and I was just about on the North end, like at 102nd Street. And all of a sudden, and I'd been thinking about it for like an hour as I was an hour into my run. Right before the hill back up to the west side. Yeah, right.

Exactly. And all of a sudden it was like unlocked came from me. And I was like, yes, unlocked. And it was there. And, you know, everybody, you know, my family at this point is quite used to me, the image of me, like coming back into the apartment from a run and sort of grabbing the closest pen and paper and scribbling things down before I forget them.

Yeah. Things that I've thought of, things I want to pursue, lines and stories that I want to use, just- Do you ever have to stop in the middle of the run to like record a voice memo or something like that? Well, I don't run on my phone because I hate carrying things. And I run to get away from stuff, especially my phone. And so I got nothing to record on.

I don't have a Apple Watch. I've had that thing, though, where I'll have some idea mid-run. And it's like, please don't let me forget Watch. I've had that thing though, where I'll have some idea mid run. Yeah. And it's like, please don't let me forget this. Right. Sometimes I do, you know, because I don't want to stop and make a note or something like that.

I'm sure. I'm sure that I lose some of it, but I feel like your mind can be a pretty good filter. And if it's really, if it is important, you'll remember it. Or if you really, or if you play a game and you think about ways to remember it, you will. One of the things you do in the book is you also weave in your own personal relationship with running. And I like that. it allows the reader to, you know, connect with why you're writing the book and, you know, identify

some aspect of themselves in, in yourself because you're relatable in your relationship to running. So the, the question that I have is that you ask all of these other people is why do you run? Like, how do you answer that for yourself? Well, I mean, the, this sort of funny, I mean, this sort of funny, well, it's funny to me at least, answer is I've run 23 marathons at this point, and I've grown kind of obsessed with trying to complete that distance as quickly as possible and see where I can get to within the confines of a full-time job and raising children and reading books and writing books. And the reason I thought I'd have come upon as to why I'm focused on my time is because I guess I kind of feel like if I can keep getting faster, then I'm not really getting older. Right. Or you're not going to die. Or I'm not going to older. Right, or you're not going to die. Or I'm not going to die, right. Which is ridiculous, of course.

But it's a fun little game to distract me from. It makes you feel good. It makes you get out of bed in the morning. So there's that reason. It's a little sort of existential game. But a few other reasons why I run, I just never feel more alive. Um, then when I'm running, I never feel, uh, I never, my thoughts never feel as sort of ordered. Uh, there's a sense of peace that I'm getting even when, um, you know, doing half mile intervals, you know,

and that sort of dreaded eight by 800 workout that everybody has to do at some point when you're trying to go faster. What is that called, like the Michigan 800s? Yeah, there's an editor at Runner's World, I think it's Bart Yasso. Oh yeah, the Yasso 800s. Yeah, they really work. I mean, it's bart yasso oh yeah the yasso 800s yeah um they really work uh i mean it's

it's torture it's i don't know i was curious what what's the swimming equivalent of the eight of like the 800 is it is it 200 i mean i think it depends on what what discipline like what stroke you swim what your event is i mean i would do these crazy sets of like 10 times 200 fly. That probably would be the most similar version of that on some level. It's funny you say that because my 800 time in running is about, I think my 200 time in swimming. So I sort of get curious and when I'm swimming,

I sometimes do sets of 200, because I can't run every day. Right, it's the same amount of time. It's a similar amount of time you're pushing yourself. But so even when I'm like pushing myself like that, I'm very conscious of like there is a kind of peace to this. There's a quiet that happens. And I think it's sort of getting to that quiet and getting to that you know it's just it's it's just very elemental uh you know it's just you and your shoes and the

road and uh maybe sometimes there's 10 000 people surrounding you um but it just it just feels right. It's like, it feels, I don't want to say I'm like, I am my best self when I'm running because that just doesn't sound right. But it's one of those- There's truth to that. It's one of those, it's a thing that I do where I feel really comfortable with who I am. And other people have other things that they do

where they feel that way. And that's a spot where I'm just in a good place. Yeah, I had an opportunity many years ago, my family, we were in Santa Fe just for a couple of days to get away. And it was during a period of time when Ryan Hall and Sarah Hall were living there. And Ryan's like, hey, we're going to be down at the track, like doing a workout. Like, why don't you come down? And I got to watch him do Yasso 800s while I was like on the outer lane plotting, doing my eight minute miles around the track.

And I've just never seen anything like that. Like I was just, you know, marveling at what a specimen he was at that period of time running around the track. It was unbelievable. And his pulse probably went not going higher. It didn't seem like any big deal. Yeah, it's like 155 or something. Yeah, it's an amazing thing.

But having said that, did you talk to him after? And was he like talking about your running also? Well, he's a very generous, curious person. But runners- And incredibly humble. Well, runners, well, yes, he is. All those things. Terrific person.

Yes, he is. All those things. Terrific person. But one of the things I love about running is in the DNA of the sport is there's not much of a gulf between the elites and the workaday runners in terms of talking to each other about what they do there's this understanding that we're all sort of doing the same thing in a way that if you went to try if you were a golfer and you went to try and talk to phil mickelson and you started talking about like you know the match you were playing at your club the other day, he would laugh at you. He would make some joke about your drive or your putter or something like that.

Whereas I've honestly never met an elite runner who wasn't interested about how you were training, was interested in hearing how you felt or how somebody else felt during Boston in 2014 when it was kind of hot, or in 2018, what was your experiencing of it when it was 37 degrees and pouring rain? That's just part of the culture.

Abdi Abdi Rahman said to me, like, last year when I said, like, Abdi, I'm not comparing what I do to what you do. And he said, what do you mean, man? We all experience the same pain. We just experience it at different times. That's amazing. There's this scene in the book where you get a text from Meb the night before. Was it Boston? It was for New York. For New York, yeah. And he's like, you know, suffering on the horizon tomorrow or something like that. Pain is in the forecast for all of us.

Right. And I just thought like, how cool is that? Like, here's the guy who's lining up, you know, for the race of his life. He's trying to win. And he had the mindset to like check in with you and see how you were doing. Yeah, that's like, and that's just not me and Meb because I was a reporter. I mean, you could find all kinds of people who the night before the marathon

are trading Instagram messages with, you fill in the elite runner. They're passing time. Everybody's nervous about the race. And you're all running the same course at essentially the same time, which makes it really beautifully unique. Right.

So there's a camaraderie there. We all, it may be somewhat rooted in a sort of common affection for it because being, being a long distance runner, uh, and being an elite marathoner is a very, you know, intentional career choice. Being any kind of elite athlete is obviously going to take a lot of pain and a lot of suffering. Um, but being an elite marathoner, I mean, that is a lot of time, a lot of time alone, a lot of really hard workouts, um, a lot of pain and you only get two cracks at it a year if you're a marathoner, because you can't really, your body can't really perform well more than twice a year in a marathon. Maybe three times in like 14 months or something, but not more than that.

So the payoff, who knows if it's going to pay off. Yeah, stakes are pretty high. So to do it, you really better love it. do it you really better love it uh you you got it's a it's a thing that it's a thing that you're going to be passionate about so larson helps usher in this new era of running and contributes to the boom that we see occur in the 70s with this kind of embrace of long distance running and the kind of gym fix era and pre-fontaine and all of that there's this explosion in popularity with running but it's not long after that the united states like takes this dip right and we kind of disappear. I think it's a note. It's like a death spiral. Yeah, like what, explain what happened

and then how it was resuscitated. Because we're in this amazing period right now where we're seeing the resurgence of the Americans on the world stage in a way that we haven't seen since that era. So, I mean, it's hard to say exactly what happened, but here's two things that definitely did happen. I mean, it's hard to draw the exact cause and effect relationship, but two things that definitely did happen.

One is Alberto Salazar, who, you know, is just about the greatest american distance runner ever uh you know won new york three times won boston and is just absolutely flying in his career in the early 1980s and everybody expects he's going to win the gold medal in the 84 olympics and that'll be sort of a crowning achievement for him and on the way to the the 84 Olympics, he essentially just hits a wall. He cannot run fast anymore. He's just, he's not getting slower. He's not getting faster. He's getting slower. And he should be at the prime of his career. He's like 26 years old. And I mean, only later would you find out that he was dealing poorly with some nagging injuries and not getting the right treatment. He was also suffering from depression.

So that was a problem. But the lesson that everybody took from Salazar, and nobody trained harder than Salazar. And Larson didn't train Salazar. He was on the other side of the country, but Salazar was definitely from the Larson school of threshold running. I mean, he went beyond the threshold. He nearly died in the Falmouth race, uh, in Cape Cod.

He, you know, he, the, the Boston marathon, the one that's known as the duel in the sun between him and Dick Beardsley is sort of this just epic race, epic race on an incredibly hot day. And he was just completely fearless.

And then, like I said, he ran into a wall and the false lesson that everyone took from that was he probably was training too hard. He over-trained, outran himself. Maybe we only get a certain number of steps in life before our bodies start to break down. So don't use up too many of your steps in training or else you're gonna be done at 26.

Is this when people are starting to realize for the very first time that over-training could be a thing? I mean, probably. Yeah, overtraining becomes a big topic of discussion at that point. But in the long-distance community, the idea is don't overtrain. How about we only run like 90 miles a week? Uh-huh.

And we go back to that train don't strain idea and and that just craters the whole craters the whole thing i mean i think i mean the numbers of people i mean there were dozens i think scores of american who could run a marathon faster than 215 in the 70s and early 80s. And by the 90s, there was like one. 215 is not that fast. I mean, it's crazy fast for you and me. But nowadays, 215, you're three miles behind Elliot Kupchoge in the Berlin Marathon. So to give you an idea, you're certainly not world class at 215.

So Bob Larson is sitting there. At this point, he's coaching UCLA. And as a college coach, he is focused on recruiting. The way you win national championships in college, which is what your mission is as a college coach, is you get these very versatile quarter milers, essentially. These just absolute specimens who can run quarter miles, they can run 200s, they can run relays.

They're so fast that they can, if you need them to do a long jump or a triple jump, they can get points in those events as well. So he's very focused on those folks and winning national championships. And he's winning a bunch of them and doing quite well and producing lots of Olympic gold medalists. And he's not so focused on long distance running. And it's his original love. It's his original passion, but he's not paying that much attention to it. And then he happens upon this high school senior

named Meb Kefleski. And he has this incredible story. His family moved here from Eritrea when he was in seventh grade. And his father was a refugee and escaped the civil war there. So the war with Ethiopia. And he's this immigrant kid and Larson gives him a full scholarship to UCLA and brings him there.

And Meb becomes his vehicle for this project that basically takes up his post-retirement life from UCLA, which is to resuscitate American long-distance running. He has the tools, he has the discipline, he has the willingness where he thinks he can, he has the talent where he thinks he can take him and turn him into a champion. It's gonna take some time, but what it's mainly gonna take is it's mainly gonna take doing the workouts that he was doing with the Humboldt Toads back in the 1970s

with one extra wrinkle, which is elevation. And that's, cause that has become all the rage. And that's what the Kenyans and Ethiopians are doing. Right. Did he have a conscious sense that he was trying to resuscitate American running? Absolutely. Or did you just see, so it wasn't just Meb.

He's like, we need to bring this whole thing back and Meb is gonna be my cipher. Yeah, he was horrified by it. I mean, the 2000 Olympics, he had already been named, I think, the distance coach for the 2004 Olympics. And the 2000 Olympics, the Americans could only qualify one man for that race in the marathon. And it was, you know, instead of three spots, which used to be, it had been in the 70s, it had been like a real battle to get one of those three spots in the Olympics. And now we couldn't even meet the qualifying standard to get more than one person.

And just to get back to the earlier question, because I said there was two things that happened. The other thing that happened in the 80s was Sebastian Coe became like the biggest figure in track and field. And his father wrote this book. And a lot of what his father focused on with training Sebastian and raising him was interval training and not so much volume and not so much threshold running. Even though Coe had been doing a lot of that training, but just with like a small group that his father wasn't really involved with. And so that didn't get a lot of attention.

So people were very focused in the same way that you'd be very focused now on, you know, how Roger Federer, you know, develops his tennis game. People became very focused on how Sebastian Coe had become a good player. Right, which was antithetical to Larson's whole trip. Right, exactly. So in the late 90s, when he's trying to revive this, you know, his idea is, no, and this

is also what's going on at this time is the East Africans are starting to dominate everything. And so there's these people who are sort of doing these studies and putting out these theories about, well, they've evolved from the Serengeti to have longer Achilles tendons or their muscle fibers are different. And that was it. Their lung capacity is larger.

And because they're so thin, they're able to cool themselves. Right, there's all kinds of theories that are out there. And Larson's idea is, no, they're just working really hard and they're living in the Rift Valley at 7,000 feet and they're training in groups and they're doing, and like, you know, he traveled and got their notes, took notes on what their training regimens were.

And he said, this is what we were doing. They're doing what we were doing. They're out like I had, you must know Knox Robinson. Do you know Knox? I don't know Knox. Black Roses, NYC, Running Club. Oh, yes, okay. So I had him on the podcast

and he spent a lot of time in Africa, like hanging out with those guys and training with them. And he tells crazy, amazing stories. But when you were recounting, you know, the philosophy of Larson, I was thinking like, yeah, that's exactly what those guys are doing. They run in a group there. There's a lot of joy. There's a lot of camaraderie. They do put in a lot of easy, slow miles that they're running together. And then when they, they choose their moments on the track and when they hit the track, it's like full on, full on. But they're living this lifestyle at altitude

where there's no distractions. And this is just, it's a lifestyle. It's not like what they do when they're not doing other things. And that's not, and the American distance runners at the time were training off on their own, mostly at sea level, and they just weren't putting in the hard work. And so Larson creates this group called the Mammoth Track Club, mainly so that Meb has a group to train with. And they go up to Mammoth Lakes and they camp out there at 8,000 feet. And four years later,

there's six marathon medals that are given out every Olympics. Everyone's going up to Mammoth, like training in the snow. Right. But four years later, when there's six marathon medals given out, this little group at Mammoth gets two of them. Meb gets the silver and Dina Castor gets the bronze. And that's a pretty good ratio for when you had, when you weren't even close to having any four years before, then you create this little group. And over that period of time, these groups start to pop up. And, you know, Brooks Hanson runners, Nike has the Oregon project and also Schumacher's group. runners nike has the oregon project and also uh schumacher's group now you would just never become a professional runner in america without choosing a sponsor and moving to a place where

other people are training and they're like these little fife domes these little cults almost yeah colts makes it sound i don't know without I don't know. Without the pejorative. Right, without the pejorative, but it's like, it's the training group, it's the gang, and they work together. They're pretty inspiring. You know, Hoka has a group in Flagstaff. There's a couple, there's a few people

still up at Mammoth. Dina Castro still lives at Mammoth. Lexi Pappas went up there to train with her, and so there's a group, there are some runners that are still up there, but they're, you know, Alberto has his Oregon project group and Shalane Flanagan has a group, another group of runners in Portland

and they do altitude camp. They go for altitude camps. I think you're probably better off if you go live at altitude. I'm sort of a big believer in that live high, train low philosophy. It seems to work pretty well for the people who do it. I understand why you wouldn't want to live at altitude just because there's not a lot of civilization in America at 8,000 feet.

It's a lifestyle. Like you said, there's some sacrifice involved. So Larson takes Meb up to Mammoth. And at the time he's like, what is he like 39th in the world at the 10K or something like that? Like he's not, it's not like he's on everyone's radar as the next great thing. When he gets on the starting line of the Olympic marathon in 2004, he has the 39th best marathon time in the field. Uh-huh. You know, there's 80 runners in the field or something like that.

But he's done some pretty hard work the last year in terms of getting ready for that race. Larson had done, Larson and Joe Vigil, who he had recruited up to Mammoth. Joe Vigil was sort of, running readers might know him because he's a character in Born to Run. In the study, he had done a lot of study of the ultramarathoners and he had led this team at North Adams State to an ungodly number of championships.

to an ungodly number of championships. But he's really sort of the nation's foremost authority on elevation training. And Bob recruits him to run the Mammoth Track Club with him. And they knew that Athens Marathon course backwards and forwards. They knew the weather. They had had Meb and Dina training, you know, in the middle of summer in black tights and turtlenecks and hats to make them uncomfortable,

make them understand like just how ungodly hot it was going to be during the Olympic marathon. And then the search for the ultimate ice vest and how to cool them and like both Dina and Meb showing up at the starting line with ice vests. Yeah. Until the very last moment. Right. It's a game, you know, his whole theory was,

this is a game to keep your core as cool as possible for as long as possible. That's the ultimate limiter at the highest level. Is it? I think it is. Yeah. There's been studies on that. The people that are able to, you know, avoid that boiling over point

or who are more efficient or effective at maintaining a lower core temperature are able to maintain the efficiency and the high level output for a longer period of time. But once you kind of tip the scale and you start overheating and you can't regulate that anymore, that's when performance declines, right? So the longer you can kind of keep that at base level, it's been shown to be a huge factor in performance. I can imagine. Cause I mean, just for, I mean, I'm the furthest thing from an elite runner, but I mean, I melt in the heat. Like it's heat and humidity is just absolute kryptonite.

And it affects different people in different ways. which is I keep getting bad luck or I've had several moments of bad luck where I train all winter for the Boston Marathon and then I show up at the start line and I'm training in 30 degree weather in New York and then it ends up being the first beautiful spring day in Boston. And like today, I mean, this year,

it was 70 degrees and humid. But not the year before. The year before. You ran that one. I ran that one really well. That was my best race. The 20 mile an hour headwind and 37 degrees freezing rain. That was absolute heaven.

But, you know, I was in as good shape as I've ever been this year. And I've never felt more sick in a race. And I just, I guess, I knew four miles in, I was just so out of breath on this tiny little incline. And it was just, 20 miles later, I was limping, basically. And I was so sunburned. And I was like, it looked like the rest of the week that I had, like that first day you go to the beach in the spring,

like when you're pale as a ghost and then you come home and you're just fried. That's what I looked like the day after the Boston Marathon. But yeah, it's getting back to what we were talking about. I mean, if you can stay cool, it's a great thing. And he had these vests at the Athens Olympics that Meb and Dina were wearing those ice vests until the very last minute.

And now it's ubiquitous. You see Tour de France riders wearing them when they're warming up before the time trials. Like you see this happening across many disciplines of sport now. It's gotta start somewhere. Yeah, but it's amazing when you look back on it though, because all of these things are very elemental and simple.

Like, hey, let's seclude you. Let's put you at altitude, no distractions. We're going to get a hardcore group of people and I'm going to be a bit of a dictator and you're going to do what I say and you're going to trust me and you guys are going to get through this together and I'm going to push you harder

than you've ever been pushed before, but you're going to be ready and you guys are going to get through this together and I'm going to push you harder than you've ever been pushed before. But you're going to be ready and the proof is in the pudding. I mean, that's kind of what he did, right? Yeah, it's not that. It's not like he had some super crazy philosophy about training that, you know, I mean, maybe it was at the time, but it doesn't feel like it. And that's the thing about running though, is like there's no shortcuts. You know, there's no, it's largely about the work. It's largely about patience.

It's largely about being committed. And that's, you know, a lot of this is, it's the same thing with writing too. You know, it doesn't come quickly or easily. It takes a lot. It can be very painful. Right. It takes a lot of being honest with yourself.

I think it's true of trying to do anything well. I would think so. I only do two things. I only truly try hard at two things which is running and writing so uh but I imagine you know electrical engineering is probably that way too I've never I mean I do I I do think you know getting back to that thing we talked about earlier about pushing yourself and doing the thing that's uncomfortable I have have never met the, you know, really kind of like happy person, peaceful person, successful person,

either financially or just has done something really well, who has said, you know what was the key for me? The key for me was planet Safe and not taking the risk, not taking any risks. I just never, you know, like you never hear that. It's almost always, you know, there was this thing I did and I wasn't really sure, but I kind of rolled the dice and it was uncomfortable and I struggled for a

while at it, but it kind of worked out. I know. So why is it so hard for us to take risks then knowing that? Because the default, because it's uncomfortable because the, because we like want, cause you want to be at equilibrium, right? You know, right. You want to, you want to be comfortable. You don't, it's, you know, it's this, it's, why is it hard to, when you're in a new environment,

to go up to a stranger and talk to them and introduce yourself? It's a learned behavior because that's uncomfortable. That's risky. That's weird. You know, that's, and, but if you do that, you might make a buddy. And we know that intellectually. And we know that if we never do that,

we'll never make another friend. We don't wanna do that. It's a practice in the same way that they discovered the heart is a muscle that can be trained to be stronger. Discipline and your willingness to put yourself in those uncomfortable positions is a practice as well. You start with small things, you acclimate, and then you have to always be kind of increasing the temperature or the volume on that. And it doesn't mean that it necessarily gets easier, but it kind of does get easier.

Or it just gets, or it just- You're used to it. You get used to it. It becomes your norm. Or it just gets, or it just- You're used to it. You get used to it. It becomes your norm. Yeah, you sort of understand it. And I love that. I mean, the thing I love about, I'm kind of a hot yoga addict,

and a thing I love about that is that, and I guess this is true for all yoga, whether it's hot or whatever temperature you're doing it at, is that it's always referred to as your practice. And, you know, there's no, I just love that idea. There's no end. There's no end. It's just practice. It's just your practice.

You know, it was practice for what? Well, it's for tomorrow's practice. Right, right, right. And I feel like if we, it's a good, it's a good idea. You know, no one gets out of here alive, right, right. And I feel like it's a good idea. No one gets out of here alive, right? So what are we doing? We're just practicing. Right.

We're just seeing if we can figure it out a little better, a little easier, a little smarter, and not make the same mistakes, because Lord knows we've all made a lot of them. Well, let me know if you discover the secret. Which one? I don't know, wherever this is all heading. All right, well, to what do you attribute

this incredible resurgence in women's long distance running that we're seeing now? Like we're in this golden age right now where we're just seeing performances that we haven't seen in kind of the history of long distance running on the women's front in terms of American performers. I mean, do you track that to Larson as well?

I mean, there has to be other factors. Well, I track it not so much to Larson, but I track it to someone that he coached, although he wasn't her main coach. Dina? Dina, yeah. I mean, it helps when you see someone doing, when someone breaks through and does something well.

It's sort of like where our conversation started with, it's almost like she gave fast young american women permission to pursue this thing and showed them that if you can if you pursue it the right way you can be as fast as anyone you can win chicago you can win london you can be on the medal stand. And that really helps. Imagine there's a lot more kids in China trying to make the NBA after Yao Ming. Right. That really helps. So, but, you know, and that was, you know, we're going back now to her, the heyday of her success was 15 years ago. But, you know what?

Like, Shalane Flanagan wins New York in her mid thirties. Des finally wins Boston in her mid thirties. You know, they had been close before. But if you think about how old were they when Dina was having her success, that's an influential moment. That's an influential time. Having said that, there is an infrastructure

that has been built for women. To develop and support them. To develop and support them. Now, are the people who are- Unless they get pregnant. Right. Which I want to talk about, but go ahead. Great series of stories from my friend and colleague,

Lindsey Krauss. Lindsey Krauss, right? She's doing, can I just say, she's done an incredible job. She does great stuff. She does amazing reporting. And it's so refreshing and great to see interesting in-depth stories

about running in the New York Times. Well, that's, I mean, I didn, I had, I didn't have anything. I didn't have anything to do with the pregnancy stuff. Right, but she broke that story. But I did, right. But I did, when I got to the times in November of 2017, I sort of read her stuff for a while and she's in a different department.

She's not in the sports department. So she, you know, to use the loose term, she kind of freelances with us. You know, one of the first things I did when I was there is I, you know, reached out to her and grabbed her for a cup of coffee. And I said, you know, you're, you have a really good voice and I'm gonna do everything I can to try

and turn the New York Times sports section into runner's world. So you've done a pretty good job. There's a lot of running stories. I'm very happy about that. So I was going to ask you like, how much of that is you're doing? Pretty much. Pretty much me. Yeah. And also expanding that, that, that lens a little bit more just to adventure stories in general, like we're going off on a tangent right now, but like Adam Skolnick's reporting on Colin O'Brady's Antarctica attempt was astounding. Astounding. And the amount of geography that you gave for telling that story in real time and in depth and the kind of multimedia layout, at least digitally, as well as in print. I mean, it was fantastic.

Yeah, and we take a lot of crap from sort of traditionalists, readers, fans of stick and ball sports when we do stories like that. Like the Bill Simmons crowd. Yeah, and we take it we you know we take it seriously you know like we we don't want to turn off readers we want as many readers and subscribers as we can as we can get um you know having said that you know if there was a cooler story out

there than two guys ski racing across antarctica in december, I want you to show it. I want to show it to me. Like, come on, like, what was going on in the NBA that was so fascinating? Like, I don't know. There were two guys ski racing across Antarctica. I've never heard it described that way, but that's what it was.

That's what it was. It was a ski race. It was a ski race between these two guys across Antarctica. And I mean, I'm a huge Nordic skiing fan as well. But we generally are only able to cover that during the Olympics. And we do occasional story about that, but there's just not a huge readership for it. But that's what, so he had this race. So yeah, so whenever we're in, whenever these stories come across our desk that are,

or we have these possibilities of writing about big themes, big moments, epic battles, life and death. It's just stories that sort of raise all the big questions. That's where I want us to be. That's cool. And Lindsay was someone that I really liked her writing. Am I allowed to curse on this? Yeah, of course.

She is fucking fast. Yeah, she's really fast runner. She ran a 257 marathon at CIM in December. And she's trying to qualify for the Olympic trials, which is a pretty huge endeavor to go from 257 down to 245. But she's working at it uh so um and yeah she's uh super talented yeah so she broke this story for people that are listening that aren't familiar um about how i mean you could say it better than i can but essentially how nike um how Nike was not providing paid, essentially leave for their athletes on their roster

who became pregnant. It was, it's almost kind of worse than that because it's common in the shoe industry, unfortunately, to have these reduction classes. And what they would tell you is, well, we need them because if we don't have incentives for runners to keep running, then they're just going to sign these contracts and we're going to have to pay them and then they're going to get injured and then they're not going to want to come back and they're just going to collect our money. So

we need them to keep performing at a certain standard and a certain level in the same way that, you know, if you played for, excuse me, if you played for the New York Yankees and you know, if you weren't playing well, you'd get cut. Now you probably, you'd have a guaranteed contract if you're in baseball, but in football, there's no guaranteed contracts. You get cut, you start getting paid anymore. So they're saying, you know, they would say it's not different from that. However, those contracts, they really, even at the highest level, you know, like even Meb, after he won the 2009 New York Marathon, if he had gotten hurt and had to sit out for nine months, they would, you they would cut his pay drastically.

And to get back to talking about the women, pregnancy was sort of seen, put in the same bucket as injury or disability. I mean, and actually even in our healthcare system today, I think when you go on maternity leave, after your pregnancy, you go on disability, which is a strange categorization for it, but that's the way, right. But that's sort of the, that's how the healthcare system actually deals with it. Or at least it was when my wife was having her maternity leaves.

And so they were, like I said, they were equating pregnancy with injury, which is about as big a disincentive as you can get. And it's really unfortunate. It's a real challenge for female athletes who, it's a real challenge for female athletes who a lot of them are sort of, you know, reaching their, their athletic primes as their biological clocks are ticking pretty loudly. You know, it's, it's, it's not a great, plenty of people have children and flourishing families after the age of, let's say 35,

which is when you see a lot of women retire from professional athletes. I don't think you would find a lot of OBGYNs to say, that's a great time to think about starting to have a family. My sense just from a 10,000 foot view on this story is that, well, first of all, there's been so many developments in terms of nutrition and training technology and money being funneled into the sport that is promoting the longevity of these careers, allowing athletes, females and males, to compete at the highest level later and later and later so there was a time not too long ago where the idea that you would be you know world class after age 25

just seemed impossible but we now know that's no longer the case so i had this thought like well this contractual provision in these Nike contracts or in probably other, you know, apparel contracts or whatever. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. These, those contracts also had nondisclosure agreements. Okay. So not only were they in there, but the runners, Nike had protected itself because the runners weren't allowed to talk about them because if they talked about it publicly, then I don't know, you're the lawyer. Right. What's the, you know, if you sign a contract and you're not supposed to talk about it and you talk about it publicly.

Well, you're open to damages. Yeah. It's not good. Right. It's not a good thing. You're not going to do that. So, it took, so, you know, I'm sorry I interrupted you, but that was the thing when Lindsay had gotten these women to talk about. She'd been able to expose that.

Yeah, which I can't imagine how she was able to, you know, get them comfortable enough to take that risk. It's being a reporter. It's being a really good journalist. But back to my thought, I mean, I had this sense that this is probably antiquated language that's been in these contracts for a very long time. They were drafted initially when things were very different. And it's just one of those things where, well, this is the way we do it. And the general counsel's office or whoever drafted that just never really went back and looked at like, should we really still be doing this until it finally got called

out? And from a revenue perspective, had Nike or whoever else was doing this gotten out in front of it before any of this happened and said, why are we doing this? This is crazy. We need to support our women during pregnancy. We believe in them for the long haul. and the storytelling and the goodwill that they could engender by demonstrating that kind of support for the athletes on their roster would have benefited them in such a dramatic way. But now they can't do it. Like now it just, it will seem- Well, they did it. Opportunistic.

Yeah, they have to do it. They did it. But it's not gonna make anyone feel good about that. Right, they did it. They announced it on a Friday afternoon at 5 o'clock. Well, they have to. It was sort of, you know, I mean, so in that sense, it's great that it's different, but nobody's patting them on the back. Of course.

For doing that. But, you know, this is. And they're taking a huge hit. Yeah, but this is the, right. And the amazing thing is the revenue perspective because, I mean, we could. It's nothing. And the amazing thing is the revenue perspective because, I mean, we could – It's nothing. With three keystrokes, we could see what Nike's annual revenues were last year.

Many, many billions of dollars. And to track what they spend on women's running and the handful of women's running is like a tiny fraction of LeBron James' contract. So we're not talking about a lot of money there. But, you know, this is sort of the history of sports and sports business. And that was my first book was How Sports Became a Business. It was athletes. It was not a bunch of white guys in suits coming up with great revelations about free agency and free markets and competition and things like that. It was a bunch of athletes rising up and saying,

we're not going to be exploited anymore. And you know what? You want to exploit professional athletes? Fine. Go find them. We're not going to play. And then, you know, owners, commissioners, general counsels, whatever, they realize very quickly that, ooh, you know, if we don't have the best in the world playing for us, we don't really have a business anymore. And nobody's buying, nobody's buying tickets to the Yankees to see George Steinbrenner play. They're buying tickets to the Yankees to see Aaron Judge or Derek Jeter play.

So this is what it takes. It takes, you know, basically these athletes rising up and saying, no, we're not gonna do it. We're not gonna deal with this anymore and embarrassing them and shaming people into not exploiting their labor. Yeah. Well, I think we're at another event horizon with this right now that we're, it seems like, you know, in the NBA and the NFL with players getting together and, and in a way that, you know, is pretty powerful, I think. I think we're gonna see some more changes. Yeah, and certainly from the social standpoint,

political social standpoint, I think it's very clear that, yeah, athletes have voices and they have to be- Now more than ever. Right, and they have to be allowed to express those voices. It's really important. And when they try and suppress them, it does not go well. Right, also, was it the New York Times

that broke this story about the NBA players who are experiencing depression because of social media and all the pressures that come with trying to basically have that voice. Yeah. You're familiar with this story, right? I can't remember who reported that. I don't know who reported it first.

It's been, when you talk about, I mean, this whole idea of athletes and depression, and there's multiple causes for it. I don't think it's just necessarily the social media and having a voice. At Stanford, for instance, they recently, I think they recently hired a psychologist for just the athletic department. Uh-huh. Oh, wow. From the counseling center. and was like immediately completely overrun with, just did not have enough time in her day or his day, I'm not sure who it was.

To treat all of these athletes. To treat all of these athletes. And it's just a tremendous amount of pressure at the high level. And I would put Stanford athletics at a pretty high level of performance in addition to the academic pressures that are there. And these, it sounds cheesy to say,

like they're people just like us, but the frailties, human frailties are not exclusive to journalists and lawyers and teachers and things like that. Women who play on the women's national soccer team, they suffer from imposter syndrome. They're worried when they step onto the practice field

that the coach is gonna figure out that they're a farce, that they've been faking it all along. And this is the day they're gonna be exposed as not being good enough not being fast enough i mean that's that's as common at the highest level of the sport as it is in any other walk of life and then imagine a top draft pick for the nba some young kid who comes into a ridiculous amount of money is put into the spotlight in a in a in into the spotlight in a way that's hard to comprehend, and has the added pressure not only of having to perform week after week to keep the job and

maintain his position on the roster, but also develop his like, quote unquote unquote brand via social media because now everybody has to be their own brand and the responsibility that comes with that on top of just being an athlete and it's not surprising that we're seeing all kinds of psychological crises that you know we're having to confront with and by the way shoot uh shoot 43 percent from three-point land right or else right or else you're Or else you're done. Night after night after night. Night after night, you know, hit nothing but net from 25 feet with the clock running out.

Yeah, it's not easy. I had a girlfriend from college who, and things did not end so well. A few years ago, I was in contact with her and I sort of apologized for acting like an idiot. And she said, oh, please, if we were all held responsible for our 20-year-old selves, we'd be completely screwed.

And it was honestly like one of the most generous things somebody has ever said. And it's a nice way to think about your acquaintances and things like that, or people who were jerks at one point. You get older, things are not that big a deal. But at the same time, as a sports writer who has spent a lot of time with elite athletes in their 20s who have maybe not behaved great, I just imagine what it must be like.

And we are holding them responsible for their 20-year-old selves. I think we're holding almost everybody responsible now for their behavior all the time. And if you're a 20-something, everything is now filmed and documented and shared. And we're in a culture that's hypersensitive that is holding people to account for things they did long in the past. And that concerns me. I think we need to be able to be forgiving of people and allow them the space to grow and evolve. And when we can't do that, I think we're creating a culture of fear that is making people afraid to connect with other human beings, among other things. I'm just glad I'm not.

I'm just glad I wasn't on film when I was 24 years old. Trust me. Yes. Preaching to the converted. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to talk to you about is your thoughts on the sub two hour Kipchoge thing. Like, what do you think about that whole,

that Nike project where, you know, at Monza, they tried to go under two hours and how close he's now, you know, getting to that point. And you know, how long do you think it's gonna be before that actually happens? Well, I mean, I absolutely worship Kipchoge, of course. Did you go to Monza? Were you there? I did not go to Monza, no.

But Ed Caesar gave you a blurb for the book. Yeah, so I had read his book. Spoken to him quite a bit about it. I've known Ed for a while and I loved his book, Two Hours, which was really, you know, had a lot of foresight because he wrote the book a couple of years before Kipchoge made that attempt.

wrote the book a couple of years before, before the Kipchoge made that attempt. And so I will say that going into that first event, I was sort of dismissive of it, but then it just looked so cool. And it was so great the way you had all these other elite marathoners supporting it and trying to make it happen uh you know forming the cone around him to try and break the wind and it it was it's completely kind of fascinating and you know he's gonna he has another the british chemical company is sponsoring

him to try and do it try it make another go at it and you know if he does it it won't go in the record books because it's not an official race right but it's still a completely unbelievable thing yeah for him to pull off uh it's just absolutely incredible and what's even more amazing is probably the fact that he's got the world record down to two, two Oh one 30 and a regular, you know, in a regular race in Berlin. And I don't, I don't really know how much longer it's going to be. I mean, can he, can he get there, you know, right course, right day, right training block. I'm not going to say no, even though, you know, right course, right day, right training block? I'm not gonna say no, even though, you know,

if you do the math and he still has to go 90 seconds faster and, you know, 90 seconds over 26 miles, you say, oh, it's just, you know, four seconds a mile or a little less than four seconds a mile. When you're talking about like running at the edge, you're already running at the edge another four seconds every mile. But he's running at the edge. Right, but when you're running- You're already running at the edge for another four seconds every mile. Right, but he's running 440 miles.

You're telling, and now he's got to run 436s? I mean, it's completely insane. So- Everybody's seen those videos of the treadmill that they set up at the run expos where you have to jump on and run his pace. Yeah, it's a- People can't do it for more than five seconds.

Right, it's completely impossible. Yeah. Right, it's a good way to. People can't do it for more than five seconds. Right, it's completely impossible. Yeah. Right, it's a good way to break your neck by getting on one of those treadmills. So, but I love anything that gets people fascinated with running movement activity. It's, like I said, it's like the most elemental of sports in some ways.

I wanted to be, I was, I wanted to be cynical and snarky about that whole thing. And then I started watching it and I was like captivated. I was like, similar to what you said, I was like, oh no, this is actually really cool. Like, yeah, it's a stunt and all of that. And it's a branding thing. But at the same time, I couldn't help but just be riveted and amazed.

And I think he's gonna do it. I think he will. I'm not gonna say he won't, but I mean, what does he run? He's won, I think 10 of his 11 marathons that he's run. Right. That's probably more amazing than even breaking two hours. I mean, that just doesn't happen.

And marathons are like golf tournaments. Tiger Woods, at his best, I think, was winning one out of three that he entered, which was an unheard of rate of success. And marathons, if you win three or four in your entire career, you're in the Hall of Fame. And this guy's won 10 out of 11 of the fastest marathons. He's winning Berlin and London every year.

He seems like such a gentleman too. And he's a gentleman. Yeah. And he's kind of like a Zen. He's kind of like very Zen about things. He's really supportive. very zen about things he's really supportive he's never there's never been a whiff of uh of of drug stuff around him um so so when you completely superhuman when you look at him how do you account for why he's so great or so much better or perhaps why does why would have you asked larson what what he thinks why he thinks kipchoge is the best well i i think most people for i mean you start with how he lives and how he works which is he adheres to the three he adheres to those principles three principles and he you know lives in the rift valley and trains with his group and trains as

hard as anybody so there's that and uh you know he's blessed with this unbelievably efficient motor some people are born you know some people are born with this unbelievable motor and you know clearly he's the complete outlaw he's the outlier of outliers. He's, you know, he seems to have the perfect body type. It's one of those things that you could analyze his stride and say, see, it's the perfect stride, but it's also the perfect stride for the body that he has. I'm not sure, you know, you and I could do everything.

We could spend hours looking at tape and imitating his stride. It's not going to matter. We're not going to run. We're not going to break five minutes in a while. I'm not going to break six minutes in a while if I do that. So, but I don't, and that's one of the really cool things about running is people don't, in some ways, people still don't really know exactly what creates a superhuman like that. Yeah. But that's what makes sports magical.

It can. In the best of circumstances, absolutely. Yeah, in the best of circumstances, absolutely. So in the process of researching and writing this book, how has it affected your own relationship with running? Like, has it changed how you train or think about your relationship to the sport? Well, I definitely PR'd while I was running. Yeah, in 2017, right?

In 2017, which was great. You run with a group? I wish I ran with a group more. I do occasionally run with it. I do. It's one of the things like I really have to get with because, you know, sometimes the New York Times has a little running team that I run with sometimes. Sometimes I run with a friend and, you know, but busy schedules, stuff like that. Children, schools, dinners, stuff like that, children, schools, dinners,

things like that sometimes. I can't always. Is there a shower at your office? Can you duck out? There is no shower at my office. I belong to a gym not far away. But I'm an early morning runner. Yeah, I go early morning.

So it's the start of my day. So that's, that's not a problem, but it's just the, but although a lot of running groups actually in the city meet in the evenings and that's just like, doesn't work so much for me, but there are early morning running groups that I could get with. The nice thing about running is if you run, you meet one other person and you run with them, like that's your group. Yeah. You should run with Lindsay. Yes. i would love i i well she's on the team that uh we

run together sometimes in races so that's pretty cool and if you do you work with a coach at all or you create your own training program you know i interview so many coaches i'm sort of constantly trying other things pick picking up stuff. That's one of the things I love about my job is I'll do a story and I'll be in Flagstaff for a couple of days, hanging out with the Hoka runners and I'll do one of the, and they'll come back with a notebook filled with Ben Rosario's workouts.

So I'll do those for a month or so. Or I'll have one of my series of endless conversations with Bob and he'll say, here's one you could try. How about doing this? And so I'll do that for a while. Just have him coach you. Right. Well, he basically does.

He just doesn't realize it. Yeah. So yeah. Well, he basically does. He just doesn't realize it. Yeah. So, yeah. So in that sense, it's fun bringing myself open to, it's made me aware of all kinds of different training.

So that's part of it. It has recently, I feel like it's brought a certain, a little more pressure than I would like to my running. I came out with this running book and all of a sudden- Now everyone's eyes on you. Yeah, well, now I sort of almost feel like there's this pressure for me to be like this running guy. Yeah, I can relate to that.

You can relate to that, right. We can have a conversation about that. Yeah, and I'm not even on the cover of my book. So there is a little bit of sense of, is this not a job that I do? Or am I still doing it for my right reasons? And I am still doing it because I love to do it. But it's a weird thought process that I've never had because I've never written a running book before. How do you account for this explosion in interest in ultra running and ultra endurance sports that we're seeing? Like this was, you know, talk about another fringe movement that has really kind of tipped into the mainstream.

the mainstream. It's interesting to see these races go from, you know, a dozen people in tents, you know, the night before a race to selling out and creating all this kind of, you know, interest. I think it's, I think it's, it seems completely natural to me that, I don't know that it's necessarily people wanting to one-up each other as much as they want to sort of one-up themselves. What's the next thing? Yeah, what's the next thing I can do? And then they hear about something, and yeah, I'd like to try that. Also, I think part of it has to do with, you know,

we're talking about a somewhat rarefied socioeconomic set when you're in that group. Yeah. There's a fair amount of disposable income available to people. And that seems like a cool way to do it. I think social media has some element of it. Now there's the ultra you did, but it doesn't actually exist until you post about it. And then it exists. Yeah, so I think people want to,

people are really into that part, that self-promotion aspect to it. And, you know, there's a certain group of people for whom there's a limit to how much enjoyment they can get from their mobile device or their computer and, you know, who just want to get out and push themselves and do things that are different. And, you know, the picture and who wouldn't want to?

To me, it's like, who wouldn't want to? I haven't done it yet. Yeah, I'm curious as to why you haven't. I mean, you've done 23 marathons, but like why no 50K or 50 mile or a trail, you know, something else? I think it's because for some reason I've fallen down this rabbit hole

of numbers and speed and distance. And first it was like qualifying for Boston and then, wow, let's see if I can still get. But here's the thing. See, this is from a very Bob Larson perspective. This is why you need to shake it up. Like you need to get off, like what he would call the track.

Like if you get off that, you're so wed to these numbers and holding yourself to account for these performance goals, you might actually be able to crash through this plateau by, um, by, you know, doing something completely different that's longer where it's not about numbers and then return to the marathon in a year or two or whatever with a refreshed perspective on it.

And I would, I would venture to bet that you would see a big performance gain. I think you're right. And I'd like to try it. And I just, and it's like, it's one of the, it's probably the thing that lately, and a bunch of like friends that I know who do them and keep asking me about it as well.

It's lately become the thing that, A, I'm afraid of, B, I'm starting to think about a little too much, C, when I'm afraid of something and I'm thinking about it a lot, I know I'm gonna have to try it at some point. So you're gonna have to get comfortable with that discomfort.

So I'm gonna be, so there is, and it's 50K, you think a good distance to start out? I would urge you to go like find a trail race, you know, just do something totally different. Well, I really wanna do a trail marathon. Yeah. There's one outside Chicago. But forget about the marathon.

Like do something where you can't, it's just so apples and oranges that it gets you out of that paradigm that you're in. Okay, let's do it. Yeah. All right. I'm ready for it. I'm ready for it.

You're committing right here. I got it. All right. It's on the record. It's on the record. I'm fine. I'll do a trail run. Have you ever covered the 3100?

Do you know the Sri Chinmoy run in Queens? I know about it, but I have not. I think it's about to start. I think it starts in June. It might've already started. I don't know. Right. I know, I've seen pictures of them doing it.

So no, I've never covered that. You should just go out there and check it out. I had Sanjay Rawal on who made a documentary called 3100 Run and Become that I think he would enjoy. And it follows a couple different people, but in particular, one guy who's like, I think he's from Finland, I can't remember, but he's like a mailman and he does this race every year.

And they literally run around this one mile block in Queens until they've reached 3 it's like the course is open from 6 a.m to midnight every day they run as much as they can every day they go to sleep they come back the next day and just keep doing it and there's just something so bananas and fascinating and beautiful and insane about the whole thing yes that is the ultra that i definitely will not be doing. I can tell you that much. But maybe just take a subway ride out there and watch for an afternoon. Right, yeah, that's what I would like to do. That would be a good story for the New York Times too.

I'm sure you've covered that race in the past, the paper house. Yes, we definitely have. I will say the one thing about trail running that does make me nervous is one of your college classmates, Peter Graff. Oh, yeah. Last year, I think it was 2017, I was out in Boulder and I'd never been on the Mesa Trail and I wanted to run on the Mesa Trail. And Peter's kind of an insane trail runner.

I didn't know that. I was like, yeah, I got an interview at 10 or 10.30. I'll come by your house. He's like, sure, come by in the morning, we'll go. And like two hours and 15 minutes later, I'm stumbling down the Mesa Trail with Peter. I mean, I was tired, yes, but the main thing I was afraid of was losing my front teeth. So that's part of the fear of the trail run is the tripping over the roots and the rocks and stuff like that. But you're working different muscles.

It's a different discipline. You're shaking it up, and it's making you stronger in areas that don't get worked, just running the loop in Central Park. Absolutely. And you're not looking at your garment and worried about your pace because it doesn't matter. Right. It's completely separate from it. No, I totally, I'm totally with it intellectually.

The one thing I don't wanna do is I don't wanna carry my water. I don't wanna, I don't like that whole self-supporting idea and the backpack. I have no interest in it. From an aesthetic point of view or uh just honestly from a uh a sort of flow point of view like i'm part of the reason i love running is i love the sort of feeling of being liberated and unencumbered and the idea of having a pack on my back and running seems unpleasant yeah but you could

just do the little waist strap with the one bottle or something like that. You'll get used to it. Yeah, okay. You're gonna acclimate to it. All right, let's do it. Cool, well, I wanna close this down with one final thing, which is your thoughts on running culture. Like the book is about the rebelliousness,

the kind of rock and roll sensibility that accompanied this burst, this new kind of revelation that took place as a result of Larson's work. How do you think about running culture now? Is it still, Knox Robinson said, running is an act of rebellion. I've heard you say something similar. Is that still the case? How do we connect with that rebelliousness now when it is such a mainstream Lululemon type of activity? that running has undergone, certainly in the last 15, 20 years, is that it has really gone from being a solitary activity to a group activity. When I'm running in Central Park, there were plenty of runners in the 90s in Central Park, but now there are just these clumps.

You just, everybody is running seemingly with a group and not everybody but a lot of people and you just keep passing these clumps and everybody's talking to each other and it's it's a really social thing and i think that's terrific because i know the performance benefits of it and i know that if you're making plans to run Thursday, you're a lot more likely to skip it if you don't have to meet someone on the corner of 81st and 3rd at 6 in the morning. So that is sort of where running culture is right now. And yes, it's mainstream, but I do continue to think that even though there's hundreds of thousands of people who line up on the start lines of marathons every year, that's still a pretty small fraction of the population.

And most people, when you say to them, yeah, I'm running New York next Saturday or I'm running Boston in a month, most people say, wow, that's amazing, you're crazy. And that's a real kick for me. I know it is. And I think it's a real kick for a lot of people that, that, that, that idea that this is still, yes, it's mainstream, but it's to a lot of people, it's still a little, it's a little nuts. And it still feels a little rebellious.

It still feels like you're sort of, I don't know, cheating is the wrong word, but you're doing something different. That's one of the reasons the Boston Marathon is so great because it takes place on a Monday, and the entire rest of the world is at work. Working, I know. And this is Monday morning, and all of Boston is off for the day. Essentially, yes, it's Patriots Day, but what is Patriots Day even? Essentially, it's Marathon Day, and it just feels like you're playing hooky from life.

And dialing into that sort of playing hooky from life thing on a daily run is something that's still possible and still certainly brings me a great deal of joy and I think brings a lot of people a lot of joy. Yeah, I think it's freedom. It's sort of railing against the gestalt of time and gravity. There's something about it that is uniquely liberating that I don't feel when I'm riding a bike.

I mean, riding a bike is amazing for different reasons and swimming as well, but there's something specific about running that I don't get or find in either other endurance pursuits that I can't quite put my finger on. But it does feel nonetheless like an act of rebellion for some strange reason, even though everyone's doing it. Or not everyone, but a lot of people. And not having the answer is probably the best thing. Right. I think if you are too articulate about the answer,

you haven't thought deeply enough about it, maybe. Right, and then you'll end up stopping. Right. Because the search will be over. That's right. And who wants that? Yeah, nobody wants that. I wanna run as long as I possibly can.

Basically. So thank you, that was fantastic. Thanks so much for having me. Running to the Edge is the book. Congratulations, you were named by Time Magazine, like one of the reads you gotta read this summer. One of the 32 must reads for this summer exactly how's that how's that recall though as i was scrolling through it i think it was pretty

high in the list i don't know if they rank them in any particular order but it showed up pretty soon yeah i'm not supposed to mention this i should say like it comes out at the beginning of the summer and in with it was like by release date and alphabetical, so that's what I think put me ahead of Elizabeth Gilbert. But I think I was fourth on the list, and Amy was very pleased with that. All right, cool. So what did we learn here?

A couple things. One, you're going to sign up for some Trail 50K. I need to run with groups more. I'm such a a solo guy so that's actually a change that i'm going to make as a result of talking to you and reading this book and third next time i'm in new york let's go running absolutely deal absolutely and i'm going to keep up all this running and adventure coverage in the new york times yeah keep pleasing yeah please please continue to expand that it's been great to be able to read more and more about these more obscure athletes

and the fact that you're introducing them in the grandest way possible to the world is a really cool thing. So I commend you for that. Thanks. All right, man. Thanks so much for having me. All right, Matthew.

Peace. So that was it. That was me and Matthew. Hope you guys enjoyed that. I like that dude. I thought that was a really cool, interesting conversation. Do me a favor, pick up a copy of his new book, Running to the Edge.

You won't regret it. It's a great read. And let Matthew know what you thought of today's conversation. You can hit him up on Twitter at Matt Futterman and at Matt Futt, F-U-T-T-1 on Instagram. And please check out the show notes to do a deeper dive on Matthew's work, his life, and all the kind of running personalities that we explored today. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the podcast, just tell your friends about your favorite episode.

Hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube, on Google Podcasts. Share your favorite episode or whatever you're listening to on social media. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you can support the show and the work we do here on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the show. Jessica Miranda for her graphics wizardry.

Allie Rogers for portraits, photographs that we take after every episode. DK for advertiser relationships. Chris Swan for Assistance at Large, and Theme Music, as always, by Annalema. Appreciate you guys. I don't take your attention for granted. It means all the world to me that you tune in week after week, and I will see you back here in a couple days with a hotly, highly anticipated round number three with the great Zach Bush. Zach Bush is back. This one was recorded live at our retreat in Italy. It's a bit of a mind blower and you're not going to want to

miss it. Until then, get out there, go outside, go running. Why not, right? Peace, plants, namaste. Thank you.