Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 113. Knox Robinson, Writer & Runner @firstrun

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113. Knox Robinson, Writer & Runner @firstrun · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What are the things, the little things that we can
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: do in our lives to push our performance as people
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and partners as citizens forward. You know, whether that's getting
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: better sleep, or what if that's engaging in a mindfulness practice.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: You know, what if that's shifting our diet and our
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: nutrition left or right and sort of eating more sustainably
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: for our planet but also more sustainably for our bodies
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and our community. So those sort of marginal gains I
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: like to think of as things that you can sort
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of learn from elite runners or elite athletes and bring
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: that into our own lives.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Hey Hurdlers, Emily a Body bringing you Episode one thirteen
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: of Hurdle, a wellness focused podcast where I sit down
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: with inspiring individuals to talk about everything from their big
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: wins to how they've gotten through some of life's toughest moments.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: On the show, you can expect vulnerability, motivation, and candid
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: discussions with everyone from top athletes to aspiring entrepreneurs on
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: what it really takes to follow your passions. My mission
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: is simple to inspire you to be your best self,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: move with intention, and have some fun along the way.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Today's episode, I am bringing you my conversation with Knox Robinson,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: originally recorded in December twenty nineteen. To be honest, I
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: could listen to Knox talk for a while, which is
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: no wonder why this is one of my longest hurtles today.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: He's a Brooklyn based writer and runner. He's also the
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: founder of Black Roses NYC. And he's got his fair
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: share of how did that even happen? Stories from his
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: days logging miles in Ethiopia with Mo Ferra and running
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: with Elliott Kipchogi in Kenya, to heading up Fader magazine
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: and writing Kanye West's first cover article. Seriously, there's a
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: lot here. Upon sitting down with this writer and runner,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: I saw a whole other side to him that I
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: have a hunch some of his twenty eight thousand Instagram
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: followers maybe have never seen. In today's episode, Knox talks
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: to me about founding Nike Plus Run Club, and he
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: also shares a bit about his beginnings growing up in
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: San Diego. We also talk about his passions that landed
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: him running at a collegiate level at Wake Forest. He
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: gets super honest about a hurtle moment that may him
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: quit the sport for ten plus years, and he shares
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: the life changing event that reunited him with his biggest passion.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: We talk about everything from impossible training tactics and what
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: it felt like to be one of the top one
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: hundred mail finishers in the New York City Marathon twice
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: to his best advice for anyone new to la sing up.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of gems in here. I really hope
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: you like it as always at Emily a body at
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Little podcast. And if you have a hurdle moment of
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: your own to share or just want to say hi,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: you can always teach me over email. It's Emily at
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: hurdle dot us. Without further ado, let's get to hurdling.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Today.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting down with Knox Robinson. He is a writer,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: a runner. Anything else should be thrown to the tap here.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I'm a father of son, a partner, a quasi coach,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: quasi quasi coach.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Talk to me about that.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Well. In some ways, I don't believe in certifications and
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: that sort of credential making right. A lot of times
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the very certification process was used to disenfranchise underrepresented folks
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: or poor folks, black folks in this country. So, for instance,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: led abatement if you need a led abatement certification. They
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: made it inaccessible to be a lead, a lead remover
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: from from houses or schools or bridges or whatever. So
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of times these days, much respect to everybody
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: out there with you know, credentialed coaching, but for me,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I just like to do it based on my experience
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: and my inspirations and having like studied master coaches for
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: most of my life.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: And of course when we say coaching here we're talking
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: about run coaching. Sure, sure, unless is there another coaching
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: we want to talk about?
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, you know, But of course, speaking self advantageously,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I'd say that like run coaching is life coaching, you know,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: yea for better or for worse, because running is such
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: an intimate, you know, expression of who we are. That like,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: once you take up or endeavor to coach someone to
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: run a five k run a marathon, you end up
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: like with much more on your hands.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's true. I think all the time about
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: how I h One of my dearest friends is a
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: certified trainer. Talk about certifications. But I met her because
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: an agency connected us for me to work out with her.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: And after about like two months of us working out together.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: We stopped working out together and started just hanging out
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: all the time, and she became, you know, one of
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: my most respected and trusted confidants. I also don't want
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: to skip over how good of a runner you are,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: so let's talk about that a little bit. So we
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: have a marathon PR of two thirty three. Correct, that's insane.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: It felt insane at the time. I definitely was insane
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: at the time it happened.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Where were you?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I was in Berlin, and you know it was this year,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: was after breaking two, and so Kip Chog kind of
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: came into town obviously in peak condition, and before the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: race everyone's saying like, oh, he loves these conditions. It
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: was a little cool, a little rainy, and everyone's like, ah,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: this he's going to get the world record because he
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: loves running in the rain because it makes him feel like,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: you know, he's running in the forest of Capta Gat
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: back home in Kenya. So I go to my squad,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: we're all racing. I was like, this is Kip choke
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: were the We're all going to hit it today. This
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: is Everything's perfect. We all went out ran crazy in
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: the rain. I ran this PR and then afterwards Kip
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Choke said he didn't get the world record because it
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: was a raining and he hates the weather. I was
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: like I was with him.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: I think it's also important to note that you are
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: so ingrained and knowledgeable on the run culture. The typical
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: hurdler or listener may not completely be as up to
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: speed as you are, and I think that's something that's
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: really interesting about you. And definitely why I wanted to
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: sit down with you is because of your vast knowledge
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: of the sport, of the history, and and really because
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: you've you've gotten out there and run some miles with
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: some of the best of them. I mean, if we're
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: defining the best of them as the fastest of.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Them, yeah, it's interesting. You know, like at any given
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: point in my life, I've come to realize that, you know,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I've never been close to being the best, but I've
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: always bizarrely been around runners who were the best in
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: that context. So in high school I ended up training
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: with some you know, some some some tough dudes from
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: across the tracks who still hold track records in New
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: York State to this day. Ran ran with these kind
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: of uh tough, tough, tough dudes. In college. The day
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I walked into the locker room for you know, the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: first day of practice, half of the guys or half
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: of the United States Junior cross country team was presented
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: in the locker room, like we had like three guys
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: on the USA team, like those are my teammates. And
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: then later on to have had interesting and unexpected friendships
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: with Leo Manzano, who you know, got a silver medal
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: in London in twenty twelve, or Mofarra and Abdi Abdi Raman,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: incredible athletes like Shannon Rowberry, Tremier, moser Uh and so
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: it's just been Ali Keifer. So it's just been cool
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: to have been in constant conversation and proximity with some
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: of the best and really study their practices. And maybe
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: that's kind of one of the things that first sparked
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: this iteration of my personal running journey in terms of
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the intersection of running on culture is that I was
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: really starting to take some of the practices and the
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: ideas and the belief systems of some of the best
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: athletes in the world and thought about how I could
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: share that with you know, passionate everyday athletes like you know,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the kind we see here in New York.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so how are you doing that?
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Well? You know a lot of times, you know, we
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: might joke about this idea of marginal gains, and a
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: lot of times marginal gains might be euphemism for various
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: sorts of gray area cheating. Whether that's you know, Team
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Sky in the Tour de France swapping out their mattresses
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: when they're on tour, staying in different hotel rooms and that,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: or it might be sort of, as we see from
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Oregon projects, doing stuff that's not necessarily illegal but is
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: not ethical. But the idea is interesting, what are the things,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the little things that we can do in our lives
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: to push our performance as people and partners as citizens forward.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: You know, whether that's getting better sleep, or what if
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: that's engaging in a mindfulness practice. You know, what if
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: that's shifting our diet and our nutrition left or right
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and sort of eating more sustainably for our planet but
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: also more sustainably for our bodies and our community. So
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: those sort of marginal gains I like to think of
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: as things that you can sort of learn from elite
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: runners or elite athletes and bring that into our own
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: lives and then on a running level, you know, just
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: seeing what it takes to be the best. And that
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean like knocking yourself out in a workout, but like,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: how do you even like structure your pursuit of excellence?
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I guess that's what I'm saying is when you're thinking
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: about elite athletes, they have a structured approach to being
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: the best, and it's interesting to look at how that's
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: systematized and organized, and then again how we can bring
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: that into our own lives.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: So we're into running these days. Growing up in San Diego,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: were you an active kid?
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean how could you not be. I mean
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: you're just like living there between the mountains and the beach.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So growing up, it was all these childhood memories of
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you know, camping in the Onzabarigo Desert with my family obviously,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: always at the beach in La Jolla, going into the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: mountains to mining towns and exploring sort of the history
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: of California and all those respects, and so yeah, I've
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: always been sometimes I reflect like I've always been outdoors,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: getting rained.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: On from a young age to Berlin Marathon prs. All Right,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: so growing up in San Diego, you're active kid. You
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: go to college at Wake Forest, and are you running
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: in college?
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I ran for the first year, year and a half, No,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: first Yeah, first year and a half of school and yeah,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: those incredibles A D one program and again our distance
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: program was you know, one of the best in the country.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: So it was really inspiring and also incredibly daunting to
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: be you know, like a young teenager walk on trying
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: to figure out life and running.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean figuring out life is hard enough. Yeah,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: talk to me about what life was like for you
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: at that time.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, uh, there was there was uh, there was running,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and then once I stopped running for the team, there
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: was life after running and I didn't pick it up
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: again for another, you know, ten years basically, So when
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I was a college athlete, I was, you know, kind
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: of living that life where you know, you're practicing twice
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: a day. Uh, your athletic life and pursuits are the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: center of your college experience, and you kind of share
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that space, you know, sometimes absurdly with football players, basketball players.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: You know. I went to school with Tim Duncan, so
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: it was kind of like always again being around folks
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: who were the best or went on to you know,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: continue to be the best. Then after I stopped running,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: to discover an entirely different world was incredible. Obviously, you
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: have all this free time on your hands. Yes, you're
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: not going to practice, and I just fell headlong into
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: other pursuits, studying, you know, Chinese and Chinese translation, East
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Asian religion, philosophy, Buddhism and Daoism, and then a deep
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and abiding love for poetry that continues to this day.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: It's interesting the descriptors. There's life, and then there's life
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: after running, and then there's life with running again for
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: you when you stopped running, because I find it interesting
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: that you could love it so much, and then just
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: I just made a hand gesture, which is not helpful,
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: and podcasting, but I find it so interesting that you
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: can just be so enamored with the sport and do
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: it so actively and then like completely step away. So
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: was it actually like a complete step away?
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was rather poignant and of something
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I blocked out for a much of my life, starting
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: with you know, the sort of circumstances that precipitated my
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: my quitting running. Literally that's just the only way to
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: describe it. And then getting back into it and then
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: like reflecting on the whole passage of time after that.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, so at this point, I've been running most
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: of my life. I've been running more years probably than
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I than I haven't. And the ten years or so
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: that I stopped running between college and the birth of
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: my son really seems like an aberration. Yeah, and an
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: otherwise sort of continuous love affair with running.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Why did you stop?
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: You know? It was? It was? It was very nineties.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I there was like a misunderstanding with some teammates that
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I definitely overreacted to and exacerbated before we met up today,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: kind of like prompting me to think about a hurdle moment,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to talk
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: about this. But I was accused of stealing some money
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: from a party and I racialized the incident, or I
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: felt the incident was racialized and I overreacted, or I
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: reacted wildly and passionately, and the fractice that followed getting
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: into like an altercation with some teammates, I I quit
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the team after never really dealt with it until many
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: many years later, and as only through getting back into
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: running that I, you know, healed those wounds and like
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: patched up those relationships, but then also came to realize
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: how crucial running is in my life. And so times
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: more recently when I've been challenged or my love is running,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it's been challenged or or sometimes even threatened. I really
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: have these strong, visceral memories of knowing what it means
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: to lose something you love and how important it is
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: to hold on to it with both hands and never
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: let it go.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Did you feel differently without running in your life?
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it there was an ache, There was
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: an emptiness, even years years, years later when my life
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: was totally different and I was, you know, living as
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: like a bohemian writer in New York broke, you know,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: hanging out and bars and poetry cafes. Well, they say
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: there's a light that never goes out, you know, and
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: sometimes on that one fall day when like the leaves
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: turn and the air has a certain smell to it,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: and the sound of the leaves scuttling across the pavement
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: makes you think of, you know, racing cross country in
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: high school. That's something that sticks with you. And so yeah,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: running was in some ways an unshakable ghost. You know,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: you're always you know, once you're a runner, you always
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: are measuring the distance between where you're at and the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: corner and the stoplight and can I make it. Once
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: you're a runner, you're always going to feel like you
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: could run for the bus, or you're like sizing up
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: how far away the buses and if you're going to
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: run to catch it or not. So that always stuck
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: with me and it's unshakable.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Did you like actively avoid just running to run during
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: this time?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean yeah, I mean running is a commitment.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Well now I don't understand how you could how that's
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: even possible, Like how I could have loved something so
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: much and then stopped and didn't have a relationship. And
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: that's why I like sharing kind of what I'm doing
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: now with younger people who you know, follow me on
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Instagram or when I see them out at a race
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: or training or randomly like running in the woods. Is
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a life outside of running in high
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: school and college, and I think when I quit running,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: there wasn't any suggestion of that you're either like running
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: for your school team or you didn't you know, there
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't an idea that I would go out and run socially.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: There was an idea that I would go out and
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: like run for fun or for health. So it's it's
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: really awesome to suggest to folks now that running can
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: be an unlocked for travel, running can be an unlocked
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: for meeting new people. Running can be an unlock for
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: your creativity and your self expression. And when I was
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: running in school, it was just about like whipping people's asses.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: So then what gets you back into running? And I mean,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: there's so much that happens during the ten year period
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: that like it's hard to just like kind of glaze
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: over it, and I don't want to necessarily, but I'm
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: so curious to know what the catalyst is that brings
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: you back to lacing up.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: You know, honestly, it was a very specific incident. Was
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: like witnessing the birth of my son. However, many moons ago,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: sixteen years ago, I'm there in the delivery room, and
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: I was just struck by this idea, this scene of
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: you know, like, as adults, rightfully, so we walk around
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: sometimes dragging our knuckles with long faces about the state
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: of the world now more than ever, and you know,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the sky is always falling, and of course it's important
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: to sort of you know, be real about to state
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: our planet and our culture and our countries in but
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: at the same time, to watch this human claw their
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: way into the world and demand that their ticket be
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: punched to join the human community was very affecting and
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: very startling. And then to see that what it required,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a singular unity of body, mind, and spirit, was mind
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: blowing and astonishing in the moment. And then I thought,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: you know, when's the last time I did anything that
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: required this singular unity of those things? And the only
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: thing I could think of was running, and the last
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: time I had done that. I started running the very
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: next day.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Talk to me about that run.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: I was living in Fort Green, and I went across
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the street from my apartment to fork Green Park and
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: ran a loop around the park. And like everybody who
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: starts running a fork Green Park, you think it's like
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: three miles, and it's less than a mile, you know,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: But went out ran a loop one day. The next
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: day I went out and did two loops, then three loops,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and then kind of held for three loops, and then
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the park that originally seems so
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: big becomes so small, and I was like, oh, what
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: else is around here? And then I think I must
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: have looked at Google Maps and I was like, oh,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Prospect Park is nearby, I'm going to run to Prospect Park.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: And so that became a thing. And then you know,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: built by accretion, and suddenly I was like back up
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: into long distance running and rather obsessed.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask you what were you running
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: in college distance?
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I flirted with the steeplechase. So again, when it comes
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: to to hurdles, you want to ask about hurdles. I
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: have this scar. You can't see it on this podcast,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: but this.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Oh wow scar, it's a real scar.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Guys from hurdling oh wow, and steeple chase practice.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: I had squigs on the pod calling quickly, okay, my
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: only real herd largely until you Elliot.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Kipchoge's coach was a world class steeplechaser in the nineties
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: and when I met him in Berlin, who were like
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: having a chat. Turns out we have matching scars from
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: steeple chase practice.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: So I always find runners that can steeplechase very impressive
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: because it requires such a great amount of hip mobility
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: in a way that typically runners don't possess.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Right, it's rough, it's just like, wait, we didn't sign
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: up what hip flexibility? Like, I'm just trying to go
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: that way fast. That's it. Now there's something in my way.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: So you were steeple chasing and then you were doing distance, yeah,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: and that.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Kind of stuff that's contry. Yeah, ten thousand. Yeah.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: So when you start getting back reunited with this love
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: for long distance running, talk to me about what that
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: process is like for you, Like, are you the kind
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: of person that's out there running and working through your
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: thoughts or you're the kind of person that's out there
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: running and listening to music, Like what is it for
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: you at this time?
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: This is why I relate to folks and I love
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: quasi coaching or writing about running because I'm just like
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: everybody else. I kind of went off the deep end,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and so my exploits have sometimes been rather epic. But
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I was figuring out like everybody else. It was early
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: days of the internet, so like maybe there was like
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a let's run message board to kind of discover later on,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: but I was really putting one foot in front of
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the other and like figuring it out.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: So so we're in like two thousand and five, two
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: thousand and five, okay, and great math NOWO.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Thousand and four, two thousand and five. My first race
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: was the Brooklyn Half Marathon and it used to run
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: start on the boardwalk in Cony Island finishing Prospect Park,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and it was in March, I think, very cold, but
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: I ran one fifteen and I qualified for the New
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: York City Marathon automatically in that first race. So I'm like,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: oh cool, all right, I'm gonna run New York training
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: for the marathon, and you know, I was just out
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of my mind. I was eating a pint of Ben
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and Jerry's every night.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: All men can do this. I never understand.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Why young before the metabolism.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: But I feel like every guy I know trains for
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: any sort of event, whether it's a marathon or like,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: fuck it, maybe he's track like training for a mile
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: and he can eat whatever he wants. He's like, you
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: know what happened when I started running? I'm like what
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: He's like, I lost twenty five pounds and I'm like,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: I trained for a marathon every year without fail. It's
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: a weight gain season. I'm like, why is this a
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: men thing?
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, the metabolism is different. I mean totally, You've
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: you got that that Stacy Simms book Roars is an
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: incredible sort of like exploration of women's fitness endurance sports.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And I was talking with some women in Black Roses, NYC.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Last night, and I guess, you know, a lot of
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: times women at a certain volume of running, you end
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: up gaining weight just because of like the hormonal fluctuations
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and like the different you know, phases of the cycle
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: over the month or five weeks.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: So I should read the book. I should also stop
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: just being so snarky about this discrepancy that we have here. Also,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: did you say you ran it in one fifteen?
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Cash, did you go into it knowing that like that
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: was kind of the vibe?
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: No, because I hadn't rased, that's what I'm saying a
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: decade or more so. Or yeah, I hadn't raised. I
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: didn't didn't know what I was doing. You're just out
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: there again just having the muscle memory of like whipping
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: dude's asses. So I was out there. And it must
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: be said that the Brooklyn this is kind of before
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: the running boom that we're enjoying now, and so the
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn half Marathon was a much more humble affair. I
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: got like ninth place, eighth place, and uh, you know,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: now to see the race is so wild. Now I
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: can only watch it because it's just pure enjoyment. Everybody
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: from the city's out, and it's a big kind of
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: celebration beyond the New York City Marathon. It's a kind
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: of like a big celebration of running in New York.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: So I just like to watch the Brooklyn half now.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: So you get back into running. You obviously qualify for
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: New York. So then talk to me about your first marathon.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: God, it was a nightmare. I mean everything built up
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: to that, you know, because I was going at it
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: with you know, college post college row expectations. So every
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: kind of dude at a certain level who gets out
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: of college running thinks that they're going to run sub
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: to thirty in their first marathon, right, So the whole
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: time I'm training, I think I'm going to run sub
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: to thirty. I'm flying through the park, I'm trying my
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: first long run, my first long run eighteen miles. I
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: fell down after and I had to go to a
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: bodega and I ordered and I bought like cheese, its
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: more ice cream, the wafer cookies, and I was just
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: like ate every couple of twinkies ate all that, and
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: then went out and had like eight fish tacos in
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Williamsburg after and I thought I was gonna die.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I love what you said when you sat down with
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Ritual and you were talking about your training, and you said,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: in New York, it's just so different because you're just
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: dodging cabs all the time, and then you get to
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: the marathon and like there are no cabs to dodge,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: and it's just very different.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: You freak out right was like, wait, where are the stops? Yeah?
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: And then my first marathon was insane. I went through
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the half in you know, one fourteen probably and thought
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I was going to hang on. But I didn't have
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: experience really marathon training, even though I had done like
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: some some requisite long runs. And I get to mile
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: fourteen and the strangest thing happened. Like this dude from
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: France was ahead of me and started walking, and it
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: was like a scene from those old Warner Brothers cartoons
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: of the Guys stranded on a desert island and sees
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: like a beautiful woman walking but she looks like a
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: hot dog, you know. Like this dude started ahead, walking
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: ahead of me, and I swear he looked like a
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: banana split. I was like, oh, walking looks really good.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to try it to see how it feels,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and then I'll start running again.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: There's such a big contrast between the pace that you're
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: going and a walk.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Though. Oh yeah, well, I mean again, this guy turned
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: into a banana split right in front of me, and
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, that looks really good. Right now,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try it, and yeah, started walking and
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: ended up like walking and jogging over the second half
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: of the race like garbage fire. Yeah, garbage, garbage, garbage fire.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: For sure, still ran under three. I ran like two
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: fifty seven.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: But like, you know, the people that work there, I mean,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: everyone who runs a marathon works very hard. And I'm
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: just talking about like what we're getting to be, these
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: faster special humans. People work their butt off to get
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: a sub three, and just like people were, they're button
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: off to get a sub for and people also work
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: them off to subshine. You know. But you turn into
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: a mirage and still managed to do fifty seven.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but you know to that point, that's
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: why I don't know, that's why I'm in love with it.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: But That's why I respect the whole range of of
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: running of runners, you know, That's why I'm using whatever
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I have to help folks in Black Roses, NYC or
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: outside of the squad break four I mean, breaking four
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: hours in the marathon is a huge accomplishment for folks
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: now all of a sudden. Now these days, obviously, like
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: people are obsessed with not no you know, no shots
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: at anybody here, but obsessed with getting a BQ. You know,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: that wasn't even a thing a few years ago, and
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: so now to really watch the passion with which people
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: throw themselves at qualifying for the Boston Marathon is incredible.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: So whatever I can do to help people get past
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that area. Sometimes you need some insight from Ellied Kipchoge
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: and how to structure that, and sometimes you need some
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: insight from people who have broken other bearers irrespective of
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean you've mentioned Black Roses twice, so
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: let's I don't I feel like we're like jumping around
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: a little bit. But you run the first marathon and
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: you keep running, and when does your passion for running
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: that you're feeling inside, When does that passion become something
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: that you want to help other people with right.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Well, it's funny, like things used to be inverted. Running
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: used to be my personal life and my private life.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: It was something that I kind of just did on
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: the low, maybe for redemption of like how I was
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: like wilding out in other aspects of my life. But
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: at the time, you know, I was working in magazine
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: journalism and music journalism and they moved into music management
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and really had like a real wild ride in doing
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: both of those kind of career paths. And then in
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: twenty eleven, I had just come back from like a
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: long trip to South Africa and Paris, you know, out
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: at like Paris Fashion Week with Virgil and Kanye and
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: like this guy was managing and just really acting crazy.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Came back my running shoes, had didn't leave my luggage
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the entire time I was on the road, came back,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: jumped into the New York City Marathon and got a
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: hundredth place. But at the time I was telling everyone
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: in the industry or like folks on you know, homies
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, that that that was the goal. People like,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: what are you gonna do in the marathon? I was like, Oh,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get in top hundred and get into the
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Century Club and they're like, the Century Club, what's that?
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh, the Century Club is is a club
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: for people who have gotten top hundred in the marathon?
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Is it a real club?
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: No? I just made it up.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, but hey, like I would have. I want
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: to believe it. Even told me you guys get together
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: once a month, I'd be like, good to.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: The cool thing about at least at the time. The
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: cool thing about getting hundredth is that it the last
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: name on the first page of the results that's printed
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: in the New York Times special edition the day after
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: the race, And so New Yorkers, especially non runners, look
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: who's first, and then they look who's last on the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: first page, and then they turned to the last page
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: to see how long the slowest person is. So everybody
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the next day woke up and saw like Knox Robinson
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: out of the place. Yo, he's in the Centric Club.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: He said he was going to do it, and he
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: did it. So then I would see dudes at like
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: industry functions or whatever, and people are like, yo, I
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: heard you in the Centric Club. That's big. I was like, yeah,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: you know, Centric.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Club and you did that after wilding out with Kanye.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, like, you know, don't want to blame
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: it on Ye.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: But can we recap that that component of your life
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: all bite briefly? Maybe?
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you know, I once I I was
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: fired unceremoniously from being editor in chief for the Fader magazine.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: What happened with that?
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, just general theme. I was, I was
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: out of control, pushing things too far.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: When you were at Fader, that's when you did Kanye's
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: first cover, correct, correct?
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: So yeah, have kind of been around Kanye from almost
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the very beginning, for better or for worse. It's been
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: interesting to watch his journey.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: So you're at Fader, you have, I mean, and what
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: was it like for you at this time to get
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: so much exposure with like these bigger name individuals, whether
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: it be you know, Yeah or the others. And I
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: think it's I think it's interesting actually kind of to
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: set up your career in running also because it's like
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: you have this experience where you are around a lot
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: of high profile people in a very different type of industry. Yeah,
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: and then you transition into what you're doing now and
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: it's like a totally different beast.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally different beasts. On the outside. But like the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: access and the unlocks were so simple, just because I
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: had spent so many years reporting and figuring out how
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: to report. I mean, I've been like a writer since
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: age four, you know, and have been like thinking about
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: these things like on a craft level, you know, as
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: a pre teen. And so when it comes to you know,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: what we could call the craft of interviewing or how
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: to get stories out of people, and then also how
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: to like share those stories and relate those stories, reproduce
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: those stories, or reconstitute those stories, That's been something that
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: I've like always been engaged in. And so coming out
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of this time where first of all, to be at
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Fader in those early years, you know, the first five
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: years of the magazine's publication was incredibly intoxicating. You know.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: I ended up writing and then editing a lot of
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the magazine and together with you know, the other the
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: small team who was behind the book at the time,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: there were very few boundaries, for better or for worse,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: and so whether it was like the narrative devices we
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: were using to tell a story about rappers, you know,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: or we were you know, just sort of like jumping
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: on you know, an indie band from Williamsburg that just
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: moved to town that week. We recovering anything and everything
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: that our appetites dictated. Fast forwarding to now working into running.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, several years ago, running was generally perceived
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: to be the domain and the purview of you know, moneyed,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: white males. It's striking if you look at magazines from
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: those times, it's just like so homogeneous and monochromatic. And
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: now when you look in the magazines, in some ways
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: it's verse, at least on an advertising level, there's a
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: wild greater representation of different types of runners. And it's
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: been great to see the culture open up to that
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: idea of like who is a runner and who can
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: be a runner, And that's something I'm definitely proud to
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: have witnessed.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: So you get kicked out of Fader, get kicked out
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: of Fader. I feel like we need to take a
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: beat to bring up the theme of the week here,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: which is that you seem to have so much passion
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: for the things that you care about that it gets
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: you into trouble.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you got to know what there's a
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: boss you that painting that said most kings get their
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: heads chopped off, like that you just got to know.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: That's what it is that you're growing up black in America, Like,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: are so many reference points for our icons are trailblazers
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: and innovators who are taken from us too soon. So yeah,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: for me, those sort of rebuffs often come with a sting.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: But you know, if you're not pushing the boundaries, then
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: you're not doing it right.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like the follow up question then for
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: that is have you regretted pushing the boundary?
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Oh? No, That's who I am. That's like in my DNA.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: That's that's just the way I see the world, you know,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: And if anything, it's it's sometimes quaint, I guess because
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I just do that every day, you know, like to
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: the absurd coming I made earlier about like running for
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: the bus, like you're still doing that. You're still like
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: sizing up the distance and like can I make that
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: yellow light like over the crosswalk? And so when it
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: comes to running, I enjoy it. I love it. I
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: love running on a fall day without a care in
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: the world. I love running whatever kind of paces. So
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: I have, like again an overwhelming passion for it. But
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: I do when I'm in the zone, I do love
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: pushing the boundaries and see how fast I can go.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, by this point, I've run almost thirty marathons,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: almost almost thirty. I'm creeping up on thirty of twenty
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: eight twenty nine marathons, and I've never broken to thirty.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And if you ask me today, I'm going to run
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: to twenty six at the London Marathon in April. So
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I'm still just obsessed as I was fifteen sixteen years ago.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: I love that. I love that.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: You don't like it, no why? I just wish I
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: could like wake up one day and like be freed
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: from like this dream, you know, like.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't know, But isn't the pursuit of
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: the dream what keeps us like excited and alive. And
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: if you pursue it.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: An overtrain And like, look, if I wasn't running, if
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: I ryan, let's say I ran two twenty nine to
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: fifty nine, I wouldn't have to pursue the goal anymore.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: I would quit running. I could go back to eating
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: ice cream with smoking weed every night. And you know,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: like aside from perpetually having the munchies because of smoking
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: so much weed, my grocery bill would go down I
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be eating for two all the time, like a
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: marathon or does. I'd be good, so my finances would
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: be more arranged. I wouldn't be blowing money on running
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: gear and traveling to races.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: But doesn't this bring you back then to the time
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: where you left running and then you remember how that
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: felt and you don't like life really that much without running,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: So then you get back into it again, and it's
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: a cycle. It's a cycle.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite books is this, this book. I've
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: been reading it for like twenty years. It's too good
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: to finish. It's Prisoner of Love by Jean Janet, and
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: I think I'm just in love with the title. You
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: no prisoner of love, And it's an accounting of his
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: time at the end of his career when he was
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: following the It's a memoir of like following the Black
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Panthers around and also the plo and like camps in Syria, Lebanon,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Palaceline in Israel at the time. So he was just
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: like in love with people and to be a prisoner
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: of love of running and running culture is definitely a
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: way to describe it. You know, it's love, but like
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I'm trapped in it for sure.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: I feel trapped in it, for sure. I do. Okay,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: so you post Fader, what do you get into with
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: your career?
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I took my settlement and just started buying Budweiser every
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: day and like sitting around my house playing like reggae
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: records and just hanging out, like I'll figure out something.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: And I ended up producing a roots reggae compilation for
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: a UK label that took up a little bit of time.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: How does one just go about to start randomly producing
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: a roots record label?
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm like an inveterate record collector. And
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: after I left the magaz I still had like my credentials.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I still had like my my my cvs where people
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: know what I did. So a lot of folks pursued
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: me with different opportunities. I knew I couldn't very well
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: just like go and write for another magazine because I
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: already had like an editor in chief's ego. So I
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: just kind of was going to wait for another ship
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: to come in and so yeah, put this this reggae
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: compilation out that was super educational and amazing, and then
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: from there I just started managing acts. I you know,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: saw an eight piece spiritual cosmic brass band busking the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Street in New York and started working with them. That
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: was a crazy trip, that was like a brush with
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: joining a cult that was very interesting. From there, I
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: worked with a four piece indie rock band from Johannesburg
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: and Soweto, South Africa. And then after that I worked
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: with an early kind of like post Kanye rapper named
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Theophalis London, who actually was from just a few blocks
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: from here.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: I remember, yeah, yeah, you grew up right around here,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: right around here. Yeah. Knox talks about being a collector
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: of records and how many do you have that you're
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: sitting in front of right now? Probably like ten thousand records,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: ten thousand records cash. Yeah, Okay, so we're doing we're
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: doing records, We're making the hits, we're still running.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then yeah, after that, you know that that
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: twenty eleven, folks kind of saw folks kind of like
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: dragged running out of me. You know, Folks were like
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I went from just being like a dude who kind
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: of people knew on this burgeoning urban running scene to
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: folks who were kind of like asking me advice, you know, like, hey,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: is this workout legitimate? Or how do I stretch or whatever,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: And so I rather reluctantly started offering that experience and
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: acumen to folks, you know, against better judgment.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Why reluctantly, Yeah, because I was just trying to hang out,
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: like it was cool to you know, I was living
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: upstate in Beacon, and I loved really hard training.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: But then I liked coming to the city and hanging
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: out downtown in the l e s, running with Bridge
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: runners and going out for margaritas after. So I didn't
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: need to like mix that up and conflate having a
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: good time with the hard training that I was kind
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: of engaged, you know, in my personal life. But after
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: a while, the things started to get blurry and there
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: was like a greater interest in just what it takes
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: to crack long distance running. It's cool to, you know,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: sign up for your first marathon and not train for
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: it and bomb your way through it, but you know,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: ninety seven percent of people who do that finish, and
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: no matter how painful it is and so debilitating and humiliating.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: It's like this with everybody, from that person who bombs
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: their way through their first all the way to Elliott Kipchoge.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: There's something about the marathon that for almost everybody really
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: triggers you and you want to figure it out. You
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: want to go back, almost everyone, no matter how hard
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: though that first marathon is, You're like, ah, I could
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: go back and do it again and change this thing
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: or that thing and run faster. You know.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: I think it's just like an overwhelming excitement about the
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: ability to understand your true potential. Yeah and untap that.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, which is a lifelong pursuit, right, and is
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: so challenging. I mean it literally is takes so long,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: and then running long distance running is the most central
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: example we have in like our human culture of something
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: that takes a very long time with very little reward
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: that is so crucial to unlocking. And so I really
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: think that the marathon distances is so bizarrely perfect because
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: it's so long that mathematically speaking, there's so many things
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: that can go wrong. I mean, it's like Murphy's law
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: writ large, you know, like what can go wrong will
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: go wrong. And so you keep going back to the
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: marathon because you want to figure it out. You want
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: to run faster, like you want to qualify for Boston.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: You want to you know, do this or that and
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: it's the seduction is you know, complete.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: So people are coming to you asking for your advice
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: on how to get fast. Sure, all right, and it's overwhelming.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what. You know, You're like, hey, let's
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: just let's be friends, right, let's just hang out, like
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: you know, you don't need to sort of like know
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: what it's like to you know, do twenty two mile
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: runs in the mountains in like vomit after like that.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: You know what they say, like everything ain't for everybody. Yeah, yeah,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: but you know, nevertheless, it was cool to start sharing
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: those gifts and those experiences with the folks. And then
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I was a magazine guy. I'n't always been
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: a magazine guy as a writer. So then I had
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the idea to start a magazine. So I took a
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: bunch of money that I had from from uh being
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: in the music business, and I funded like eighty percent
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: of a sort of coffee table wallpapery, posh running magazine
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: called First Run. I mean, I was finding like a
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: fashion photographer into like a training camp in the deserts
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: of Mexico and like shooting athletes.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: It's like everything we did at Conde that was wrong
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: with condy.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is why you go to work at Conde
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: because you're like, this is what it's all about, and
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: you're like everything wrong. Like my magazine was about like
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: the most expensive running jacket possible, the most expensive gear.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: It was like, you know what, let's just like twist
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: this dire calculus of a formula all the way out, yeah,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: and sell it back to rich dudes. Now, I've been
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: taken to task over the years, and I realized like
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: how limited that concept is and it was and is,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: and also just like how possibly toxic you know, that
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: vision of what it could be. But nevertheless, I blew
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of money on the idea. The hard drive
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: today is pretty incredible for what's in that that magazine
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: that never was published. And then around that time, Instagram
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: took off, and I found so much more edification and
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: satisfaction by you know, writing sort of gazette style dispatches,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: abusing the length of the caption and really getting out
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: that sort of combination of image and text that like
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: for anybody who's been in love with magazines from a
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: young age, know that, like Instagram is that that is
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that for us, image and text, Image and text.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Right right, Okay, so you come back from this trip
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: to the desert to take all these about us, right,
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: so you never make the magazine no, wow, Yeah, because
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: it's like, right when I was about to push print,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: you know, at the printing press or whatever, basically like
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: had it all lined up, I was like.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but Instagram was more fun, and so yeah, the
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: magazine just sort of idled. The concept of that sort
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: of like curated lifestyle approach to running is in the
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: DNA of like what I do on Instagram and social media,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and I think, if anything, it's sort of been that
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: projection of a personal brand that I've kind of put
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: out there in the world. I mean it's real. I
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: mean I do go to these places I have trained
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: in this way, I have sort of like you know,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: all these kind of relationships and interactions and adventures are
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: are for real, for better or for worse. But I
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: do also have like a personal life and a private
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: life as well. Right, So the First Run thing is
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: has been like an extension of that magazine idea.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: I never knew that that's where First Run came from. Yeah,
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: why First Run.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: I was having a conversation with a person who is,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: you know, helping me get The project started early on
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: and she was talking about her first run when she
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: was in college, wearing like repetto flats and like just
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: jogging through the East village just to feel some sense
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: of freedom. And she was going on about her first run,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: and I was like, then it made me think about
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: what my first run was and how mad cap and
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: visceral and memorable those sort of zany experiences are. And
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: then I realized, oh man, it doesn't matter if you're
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: an Olympian or a first time or The thing about
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: a first run is that everyone has one, and that's
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: like a great connection.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: You come back and you have this Instagram platform, and
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: I'm sure as the Instagram platform builds, you are being
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: approached more and more, and perhaps reluctantly but maybe not
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: so much anymore. Are in the position to continue to
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: offer advice?
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's great because I just have had
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: the experience. And now in this running boom, there's so
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: many new runners and first time runners that like, folks
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: are going at it and you know, especially back in
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: the day, going at it in any number of ways.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, when your kids learning how to walk,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: you just got to stand back and let it happen,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: but that doesn't stop you from like kind of wringing
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: your hands when they stumble a couple of times and
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: want to reach out and help them. So I think
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: that the platform of kind of sharing a running journey,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: and early on I was kind of much more straightforward
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: about like sharing specific workouts and explaining sort of the
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: ins and outs of the approach, and then that sort
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: of grew into like a narrative voice that sort of
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: reflects on running as a healing practice and or just
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: sort of a transmutation in a way. It's how we
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: kind of convert our understanding of one experience into like
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: a resolution of that and understanding it in a different way.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: So I think running at a time, once it started
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: to build to like a fever pitch for me, I
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: was just working through a lot of things in my
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: life and was sharing that rather ardently, and I feel
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: like a lot of that Instagram following came from the
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: ways in which I was sharing those stories.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: I think it's interesting as well because so many people
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: lean into running for healing, right, like lean into it
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: to get through hard stuff, And you're saying that that's
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: what you do now, which is why it is disheartening
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: and sad for me to think about your beginnings with
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: running and that you had to literally walk away from
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: it to heal from a really negative situation. Do you
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: find that you have to battle between those two sides ever?
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Still, I don't think there's going to be a time
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: where I'm going to walk away from it because having
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: done that, you know, folks around me, my detractors will
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: definitely say that, Like I don't admit to mistakes, I
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: don't think I've made too many of my life. Definitely
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: some errors in judgment all the way along. But I
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: guess when I think back on mistakes I've made in
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: my life, quitting running was definitely the first thing that
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: leaps out, and I'm never going to do that again.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm always going to lean into it. I
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: don't always see it as a vehicle for a healing
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: for me. Sometimes a lot of times for me in
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: recent years, I found that like a mindfulness practice and
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: meditation also combined with running has been great. But if anything,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: a mindfulness practice sort of changed my approach to running
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: and like freed me up to get even deeper into
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: the pursuit.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: How do you pair the two of them.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Just in a pretty parochial fashion. You know, I think
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: at my peak, you know, I was, you know, a
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: few years ago, I was running one hundred miles a week,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: and like meditating, I was on like a ninety day
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: meditation streak or a hundred day meditation streak. And so
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: the two together really sort of were a wild cocktail,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: I guess you could say, of personal unlock. And this
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: is going to another dimension of who I knew my
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: self to be. And that precipitated some pretty eye popping
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: performances that I didn't really anticipate. The you know, two
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: thirty three in Berlin, and then I rather shockingly ran
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: broke seventy minutes and the half marathon the following spring
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: in Valencia.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, that's fast, that was you know.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I mean it's all relative, and you can't say that's
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: fast to guys who are going to the Olympic Trials
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: or whatever, but for me to run sixty nine minutes
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: in the half marathon and an advanced age was definitely.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: Shocking for sure. For sure. Okay, so when does the
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: coaching go off Instagram into real life?
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, you know, like so you know, I was,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: you know, helping folks out with with Bridge Runners, and
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: then really had a special bond with one of the
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: other captains over there, Jesse Zappo, who's a long time
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: icon of urban running in New York City and indeed
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: running cultural worldwide. Jesse and I saw an opportunity to
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: take a smaller group of runners and work with them
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: over time in a curated fashion. So say, take thirty
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: runners and sort of have regular workouts. And again, now
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: you know, five or six years on, this idea sounds
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: again quaint, but there weren't urban run crews back in
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: the day. There was one, and you know Bridge Runners
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: and Rundom Crew in London and Parafount Club, but five
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: worldwide or something like that, and maybe even in this day,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: this era, there's three or one. So nobody was doing
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: track workouts, nobody was doing long runs, nobody had an
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: idea of like how to prepare for the marathon. I mean,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: in the Bridge Runners era, preparing for the New York
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: City Marathon met going to max Fish till it closed
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: and then like jumping on the ferry and like banditing
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the race. And you can just see how much the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: culture has blossomed since, you know, just those few years ago.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: So Jesse and I started the Black Rose NYC as
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: a way to you know, more actively and activistically take
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: the learnings and the practices from elite runners and bring
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: them to everyday New Yorkers from a you know, wide
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: range of uh careers and lifestyle. So bartenders and out
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: of work bartenders and you know, architects and ex rock
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: stars and you know some elias and chefs like these
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: are all sort of true blue New Yorkers who have
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: come through the squad and to give them insights on
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: a training journey and a running culture level has been
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: you know, work that I'm super proud of.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: So are all these people shooting for that sub thirty
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: marathon or are you working on people of all pieces?
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's definitely, it's definitely definitely. The folks in
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Black Roses are folks who keep showing up, folks who
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: haven't quit. Yeah, you know, so we're not about pace,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: We're not about a real We're definitely like against, if
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: anything against, sort of a materialist acquisitional approach to running
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: and grabbing, grabbing, grabbing like I want this time or
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I want this, you know, accomplishment or I won these
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: laurels it's really about an investigation into the craft and
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: an investigation and an exploration of the self and of community.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: How big is your community now.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean our community is worldwide. We have you know,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: twenty to thirty people in the squad at any given time.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: But I like to think that the serialized nature of
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: our squad has sort of fans and followers and definitely
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: haters around the world. So I think one of the
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: interesting thing about Black Roses is like people come into
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: the squad and people leave, and people have a sharp
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: focus at point, and then they can just sort of
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: like fade away. And so I think that the episodic
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: nature of how our squad exists is feels like it's
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: content and entertainment for folks to consume, you know.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: I think it's interesting as well. I mean for a
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: lot of people listening to this, they think of a
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: run club, and they think of you know, Nike run club,
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: or maybe opportunities that might feel a lot more accessible
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: than something like this. What is it about this type
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: of structure, you know, how you guys are putting this
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: together that like jives with who you are.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's something that I've had to reflect
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: on later because like who you know, I helped found
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: Nike Plus Run Club and that that time was awesome.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: I have I like to think I have so much
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: to share and give that I'm like, you know, here
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: for the largest possible platform to do that. So yeah,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: I'm envious of those large oportunities. At the same time,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: I have to be real about who I am as
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: a person, and you know, Black Roses is so wildly
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: an extension of or an expression of, like what I
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: always thought it would be, you know, and it's only
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: getting to be that more and more. So. The training
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: is definitely intense. The level that we set for ourselves
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: is absurdly high. But in generally we refuse to do
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: that without a commensurate amount, commensurate event, a commensurate amount
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: of uh of uh of wilding out. And so there's
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: definitely not folks like sleeping in you know, oxygen tents
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: and chambers in our squad. There are folks who are
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: gonna like give it their all when they're out training
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: and then from there it's like off to a bar
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: or off to a party, and sometimes fitting all those
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: things together in a short amount of time is what
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: sort of gives our squad, the sort of mad cap
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: identity that it has.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: You said, intense talk to me about intents.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Well, again, there's a lot of games in town this
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: day these days, so I don't want to like sort
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: of you know, tout Black Roses is sort of like
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: this unparalleled performance, you know situation. But you know, we
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: do have regular folks and folks who are you know,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: training for breakthrough marathons going out on twenty two mile runs,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: finishing at the track and then doing like a series
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: of mile repeats after twenty two mile or all out
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: to the point of exhaustion or vomit or both. We
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: are training, you know, in the hills of upstate New
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: York in February in a snowstorm to get that long
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: run end for marathon that's months and months away. So
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: you know, that sort of inten density is a hallmark
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: to our training. But again that's just a direct extension
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: of like the master athletes and coaches that I've seen
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: over the course of my lifetime, and indeed, like these
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: are practices that I've sort of used in my own
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: training with you know, whatever effect and results.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: I think the question from the more recreational runner would
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: be why like why the twenty two mile are followed
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: by the track repeats, why do you have to like
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: tackle it in the snow? Like what is it about
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: this next level that drives this type of athlete?
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: You know it's that cliche, but it's just like you
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: go through so many challenging training exercises and practices that
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: you know by the time you get to your performance,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of times you meet it with excitement, but
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes melancholy because you're thinking about like all the work
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: you did and then sometimes the race is over in
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: a heartbeat compared to like how wild your journey was.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: I mean when you had your breakthrough marathon recently, you
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: were kind of like sad after because you I'm super
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: imposing on you, but like You've left so many emilies
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: behind on the way, and like those emilies were a
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: reflection of who you were at the time. Nevertheless, you know,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: to reach out and grab something and grab hold of something,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: you necessarily have to let go of your grasp of
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: whatever you were holding before, and that is a that's
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: an emotional experience, yeah, especially to reflect on after it's over.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: You're like, oh man, I know, well, then you think
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: about like what you don't have anymore. But then you
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: have to have an appreciation for what you do instead
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: of focusing on the things that you don't, sure, focus
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: on the things that you do. Yeah, I also can't
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: let us glaze over the founding of Nike Plus. Just
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: talk to me a little bit about that.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was like an interesting time, I think. Obviously,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: Nike Run Club has has been around in the city
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: for over a decade, obviously like almost twenty years, maybe
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: at this point, shortly after Black Rosa started, and I
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: think Nike was starting to see that folks wanted more.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just about you know, buying a pair of
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: running shoes, throwing them in the closet and pulling him
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: out and like slogging your way through a marathon. In
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: the personal excellence moment and in the running boom in general,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: I think Nike sort of suddenly woke up to the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: fact that folks wanted more and that we could deliver
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: that to them. So rather than just getting together for
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: like a big group run for the social aspect on
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: a Saturday or on a Tuesday, you know, you could
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: present folks with coaching resources or like top level coaching
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: resources that were informed by elite level practices, you could
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: kind of like offer a wide range of training principles
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: and practices to folks to complement their running. And so
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: in those early days of a Nike Plus Run Club,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: it was like all hands on deck sort of effort
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: to open up running to what it could be. I mean,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: one of my sort of fucaie at the time was
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: the local run and intense but like weekly runs with
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: a cultural destination that looked at some aspect of New
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: York City, whether that was Langston Hughes's homes and celebrating
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: the Harlem Renaissance, or a run out to Queen's to
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: sample three different kinds of dumplings from South Asia. You know. Yeah,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: so it was a real chance to again explore the
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: greatest city on the planet from a runner's point of view.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: And that also was part of Nike Plus Run Club.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just about like you know, long runs and workouts,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: but it was about running culture in a kind of
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: three sixty understanding of it.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: It's funny because I'm thinking about not just the evolution
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: of Nike Plus Run Club, but like how much has
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: happened since it started, and how much is different now
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: and It's like I think back to you know, when
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: I had my first Nike Plus fuel band, right, I
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: remember how excited I was to get my custom EA
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: Nike Rose Gold of course fuel band. It was definitely
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: Rose Gold, yeah, and you know, like what I did
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: with that, and then I mean even fast forward to
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: when you and I met when I was running the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: fastest mile with Nike. Just to think about like the
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: gear that we were using then and how different that
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: was versus like what's happening with ni Plus as an
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: app right now as a whole. It's like worlds away
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: from where it started. I mean, is that something that
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: you guys even really comprehended was possible at the beginning.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think there were there were there
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: were levels to it. I think on a corporate level,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I kind of got the sense that like Nike had
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: they had so much data. You know, every time you
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: went to an event or a party, they had an
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: email or like your profile, but there wasn't a unified
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: a database of the Nike consumer. Everything was in different silos, right,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: or different servers. And so I think that Nike Plus
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: run Club, a Nike run club on a back end level,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: was about unifying all that data in a way that
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: like we could better understand who that runner was, the
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: athlete was, and then also how to better serve them.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: Obviously that means like also to sell them sneakers, but
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: how to really sort of support their passion for movement
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: and and and that lifestyle. So in a way, yeah,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: it's changed so much, But I think as long as
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: the mission is going to be about making better runners
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: and making runners better, then it's going to adhere to
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: that the DNA that's been in the company since the
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: very beginning.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: What does movement and running look like for you these days?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Now? As I was saying, I'm newly inspired and fired
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: up to make another go at a personal time goal
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: that's you know, been bewitching me for for all these marathons.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: But I'm also kind of like thinking about no pun intended,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: the road ahead and what that looks like and how
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: to keep sharing this idea because in some ways culture
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: is fragile, and you know, without sort of taking a
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: pretentious view of it, we do have to continue to
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: cultivate it and protect it. And so I think a
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: lot of times in this ecosystem, it's easy to exploit
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: people's passion for running, whether that's like a brand doing
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: that or that's a social media influencer doing that. And
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: so I really want to keep shining a light for
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: what the promise and the passion or maybe the purity
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: of running, the joys that it offers for all of us.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you said passion for sharing, and obviously
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: you've shared a lot of miles with a lot of
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: different people. I'm curious to know when and kind of
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: how some of like how you found yourself in some
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: of the insane situations that you have And maybe obviously
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: you can't reflect on all of them, but if you
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: could maybe reflect on one or two where you kind
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: of just open your eyes and realize, hey, here I
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: am in far away desert doing X y Z, Like
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: how does someone just end up doing some of the
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: things that you've been so fortunate to do.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: I've always been a person to write that letter, you know,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: I've always been the person to make that trip. I've
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: always been that person to go through an unlocked door.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes sometimes I like to to to joke
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: that I'm extremely adept at like kicking down unlocked doors,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: you know, like make a lot of noise and make
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: it seem super dramatic, but the door was open the
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: whole time. But but yeah, you know, like again, all
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: the sort of experience have the same pattern. Once I
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: was at south By Southwest in the music business and
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: was running with some you know, rich music industry types
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: and lawyers there in Austin in the morning and a
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: group of young fit athletes, you know, and one of
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: my good friends just starts talking trash to like the kids.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: They're like, Oh, you think you're so fucking bad by
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: passing it, but this guy right here is showing you
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: for the Boston Marathon, and I guarantee he can kick
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: your ass. And one of the dudes turned over his
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: shoulder and he's like, oh yeah, and I was like, ah.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: They started like thinking about it, and I was like,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: why is this brown dude running with this black woman
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: running with like this white dude. This is not like
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: a group of friends, this is a team, you know.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: And that was an awesome track club and we ended
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: up getting into like a friendly banter invited them out
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: to some south By Southwest shows, so they're like backstage
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: C and Diddy and like TV on the radio. And
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: then I was asking for like a track, so I
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: could do you know, my like Boston workout while I
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: was there at south By, and they invited me to
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: like come out and train with them. So then next
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: thing you know, I'm like out on a track with
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: like Trinier Moser and and Leo Manzano and you know,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: folks who again went on who are some of the
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: best runners in the world, And so all the way along,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: I have just always kind of taken folks up on
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: an offer, just to see what's gonna happen. You're it's
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: nerve wracking, but journalism kind of like teaches you to
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: to play it off, like you know, and those interviewing
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: skills come in handy when you're just keeping a poker face, uh,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: you know, and and like walking into a training camp
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: in Ethiopia and you know, greeting Mo Farra as he's
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: like having his coffee.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about that man. Like literally, do you
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: just buy a plane ticket and you're like, well, let's
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: just see what's gonna happen here.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've just always I've always done that.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: Like you know, and there's no one like stopping you
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: from going to hang out with Molfara, no or like
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: how does Mofera feel about you wanting to go hang
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: out with him?
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not gonna know until you get kicked out,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: you know. Like sometime I just think if the only
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: thing between me and an experience, or me and a breakthrough,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: or me getting that story is a flight, that's no
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: deterrent at all.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: That's just like logistics.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just logistics. The real barrier is like having
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: the ideas in the first place. So yeah, I mean
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: training out with the guys in Ethiopia. I was hanging
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: out with abd Abdi raman four time Olympian before the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: New York City.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: Marathon, and how are you hanging out with him?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: This year? I was in good shape and so I
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: had the sub elite start. So the sub elite start
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: for the New York City Marathon is when like a
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: small group of athletes who are on the precipice of
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: having a breakthrough get almost the same treatment that the elites,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: get a bus out to the start and staying in
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: a warm room and now you know there's a warm
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: up track and all that kind of stuff. So yeah,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: I definitely jumped at the opper Henny to be in
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: the subleete start. Went out, and I'm out there stretching
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: and the rich white dudes from like New York City
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: posh clubs sitting on the bleachers and talking to each other.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: That's not really my type. So I was just thinking
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: I was gonna hang out with the brothers. So I
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: just went over and was like sat next to MEB
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: and i'bdy, you know, like what's up guys. You know,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: like not trying to like rub elbows with dudes who
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: are running two o eight, but you know, whatever I
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: think i'd be at the time, was trying to be
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: polite and nice to me for like hanging out over there,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: but also maybe trying to show off in front of
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: the other guys that he knew, me that he knew
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: like a regular person. So OBD just says like, hey, man,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna go to Ethiopia and with Mo
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: and help Moe get ready for London. You should come out.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, all right, cool. And that day,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: like I went home and told my lady, I was like, look,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: I gotta go to Ethiopia. I don't think the guys
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: really thought I was going to show up, but you know,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: obviously I stayed in touch with Abdy, bought the flight
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: and then walked into the training camp one day and
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: guys were like, what's up. I was like, what's up?
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: Ever me from the start? Hey, wow, okay, what would
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: you say that personality trait in you? This like knock
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: down the unlocked door? Yeah, what would you say that
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: that has actually just unlocked for you?
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: You know, there's this concept in meditation about like what's
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: happening behind the eyes and seeing like behind the eyes
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: when you're in that meditative state, and I like I've
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: always been I've always had this practice of like introducing
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: myself as a character just to watch what happened. It's
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: almost like you introduce a personality for people to react to,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: and then you study that reaction and you learn from that,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: and then that sort of like that's a super abstract example,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: but that's just what I would do in journalism, and
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: then that's sort of what I've just done, Like in running,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: I really was just using sort of journalistic practices of
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: just walking through the door, you know, and just to
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: find out, like all the stuff I thought, you know
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: it was true, is not. You know, for instance, if
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: you read let's run message boards, you think every elite
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: is like on wild performance enhancing drugs. And so the
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: first time I started hanging out with elites, I was
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: like didn't want to like go in the room or whatever,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: because I thought there'd be like the mini fridge full
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: of syringes. And then also I like had such a
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: high esteem for like athletes and how glamorous their lives
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: that was I thought that there was going to be
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: like groupies hanging around. I'm thinking, like I'm coming to
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: the music business. I'm thinking about like rap videos, So
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: I just think that, like there's gonna be like fridges
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: of drugs and like people shooting up and all that.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: And then you realize these are like kids out of
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: school who are making fifteen thousand dollars a year and
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: like a cup of noodles once a day just to
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: survive and like run to chase their dreams of being
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: like some of the best runners in the world. And
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: so really looking at how tough and bleak and elite
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: runners existence can be was one of the early sort
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: of illuminations that I had, And if anything, I kind
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: of I've also wanted to share that, you know with
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: folks as well.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: What would you say? And this is going to be
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: kind of twofold first fold best piece of advice that
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: maybe you've offered somebody else when it comes to that
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: first run, and then the second fold of this that
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: we'll get to after you answer that is really maybe
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: the best piece of advice that you've been offered to
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: keep going on the run.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: Lately, I've been telling folks just simply to give yourself
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: a chance. You know, I think on race day that's
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: been some advice that I've been giving over the past
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: couple of years. And it must sound super underwhelming, like
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: after you come on this epic training journey and you're
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: in the shape of your life and then all of
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: a sudden your coach is like, just go out there
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: and give yourself a chance. But I feel that, like
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: that's actually a very provocative idea. You know, we do
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: so many things to hinder ourselves and hamper ourselves with
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: self doubt and self criticism and sort of self denial
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: that after you've put in all this work, the real
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: liberation comes from just like freeing yourself from that and
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: just seeing what happens if you go outside of your
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: comfort zone and and what happens to you on the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: other side. Or what happens to you through that process.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: So again, underwhelming as it may sound, I've been suggesting
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: folks to just go out there and give yourself a
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: chance on the day and then some of the best
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: running advices. It was specific, but again, you know, I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: met this guy, Leo Manzano from from from Austin, Texas,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: one of the top runners in the world, multiple Olympian
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: and national champion, ended up getting the silver medal in London.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: I called him up and I was like, hey man,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: I'm starting this running magazine and I'd like to come
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: down to the camp, you know, for a day or
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: two with a photographer and take some photos and do
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: like a whole story for my magazine. And Leo said,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: hey man, that sounds cool, but why don't you just
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: come and stay for the whole time, stay for three weeks.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: You might learn something about running. And I think that's
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: why I got on the plane because I was so annoyed.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: I was like, learn something about running, dude, I'm starting
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: a running magazine. Of course I know everything about running.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: What do you mean learn something about running? And I
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: was so intrigued by the deft way in which my
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: man said, like, come and see that that is, so
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: you know, there's always something to learn at this craft
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: and this practice. So for me, that's what's kept me
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: humble from then. It's like the fact that, like, hey, man,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: come down and learn something. There's always something to learn.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: What would you say? And your time interacting with so
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: many of these top level performers has been one of
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: the biggest takeaways for you.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: I wish I had stuff that, like you know, you
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: could put on a T shirt was marketable, But I
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: learned that you're supposed to eat immediately following to workout,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: and so at these camps, the athletes were like making
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: sandwiches in the morning and packing them in their bag,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: and you know, they do these epic track workouts and
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: then go to the gym and like do lifts after
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: and in between the track and the gym this like
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: one hundred meter walk they were reaching into like eating
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: two sandwiches like halfway. I was like, you're eating two
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: sandwiches like halfway through a workout and then going to lift.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: So I learned. I learned always packed two sandwiches, And yeah,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: I think that's good advice for life in general. Always
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: pack two sandwiches.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: Always have them with you. Yeah, you have a great
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: platform now, and on that platform again the opportunity to
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: help a lot of people. When people come there, they
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: read your advice, they read your feedback, they read your thoughts,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: and they see, visually a guy that likes to run.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: When you look in the mirror, what is it that
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: you see looking back at you?
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: I see when I look in the mirror. I very
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: rarely look in the mirror, But on those occasions when
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: I do, I see someone who is perpetually engaged in struggle,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: and I think that that's beautiful. I am definitely in
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: a constant struggle with myself and understanding myself and my
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: motivations and my appetites. But I'm also engaged in a
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: struggle for folks to, in the words of Bob Marley,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: to you know, emancipate themselves for mental slavery. I feel
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: like so much of us have a yearning for freedom.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: It's probably one of my lifelong pursuits to investigate and
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: understand what it takes to be liberated and what it
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: means to be free, and you know, sharing that back
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: with folks, whether they want to hear it or not.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: I see someone who is troubled, but at the same
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: time someone who as the years have gone on, I
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: realize that there are things we can do to deepen
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: our understanding of ourselves and the challenges that life brings
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: us as a matter of course, and that in and of
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: itself has just made me dive deeper into you know,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: those practices and whether that's writing, running, meditating.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: You within the last few years, as you said, added
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: a regular meditation practice into your regular running routine. Do
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: you foresee there being any other unlocks that you can
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: reach for when it comes to gearing up for London
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: The unlocks are perpetual and for a long time after
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: I had this last performance peak, this unexpected, an unparalleled
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: performance peak for me a couple of years ago. You know,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: no one ever tells you about the downside of that mountain,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: and I was thoroughly unprepared for the slippery slope from
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: running fast times and whatever it took to get me
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: to that level. And it was a real walk through
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: the wilderness after. And so for a lot of that
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: time when I wasn't numb and self medicating and you know,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: turning through my life with any mistake possible I was thinking,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: I gotta get back, I gotta get back, I gotta
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: get back, And recently I came to realize that there
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: is no getting back, you know, because why would you
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: expend all that effort just to get back to where
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: you were? Why wouldn't you just keep going and go farther.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: So for me, that was a big release for me.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm I'm don't think about where I was before.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: Now I'm only thinking about where I'm going and like
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: what I'm to do when I get there.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: So the way that I close out is right now,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: what I'd love for you to do is think about
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: the guy that walked away from running, and that was
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: a really hard time for you at a hurdle moment
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: for sure. So right now you have the opportunity to
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: offer the guy back then one piece of advice. What
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: would you tell him?
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: I would say, take your time. You know, it takes
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: time to sort it all out and figure it out
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: and it's okay. So for the young person who's having
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: a tough time with running or has there you know,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: really what it is, it's about like heartbreak. To love
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: running so much and have running break your heart is crushing.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: We see like a lot of folks around us right
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: in this running ecosystem who have had their hearts broken
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: by it, And I would just say to that person
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: who finds themself challenged by it and heartbroken, just give
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: it time for that room to heal and know that
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: running is going to be there and it's going to
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: welcome you back, you know when when you're ready.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for sitting down with me.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: That's has been super special. Thanks for the opportunity.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: Please take a moment and leave a quick review by
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: clicking the link with the description to this episode. We
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: all face multiple hurdles in life. I want to hear
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at Hurdle
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: Dot you as connect with the podcast Instagram, Twitter at
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: Hurdle podcast Knox. Where do they find you? How do
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: they keep up with you?
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Uh? You can find me in the on the bike
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: paths in Prospect Park or eating with my hands in
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: Ethiopia and on Instagram at First Run.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: I am at Emily Abodi another hurdle concered. Catch you
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: guys next time.