Malcolm Gladwell & Chris Chavez Think We're Selling Running All Wrong

27:32And I just like jumped on the wifi and I was like, you know what, just gonna tune in and watch it live and um i didn't i wasn't expecting world records but i wanted to see just sort of what the presentation of this was going to be like and they were far from delivering on world records and even the one that they got has been met with just a bunch of scrutiny i'm sure from the swimming community on the size of the pool and all that kind of stuff but um i think if you watched it for knowing this is a big marketing vehicle for what they're trying of push um then you saw them do that but i from a sporting spectacle there really wasn't i think too much to it did you watch it malcolm no you didn't you didn't even watch it did you did you consciously boycott it or just it didn't even rise to a level of like what am i doing here like those track times were just abysmal well it was yeah it was terrible which left people with one of two theories either this just means that everyone uh at the elite level is doping or these were not the right people or they hadn't been on their doping protocol long enough or that like these compounds don't actually work in the way that we think they do.

28:41Shoes are more important. Yeah. But they let the swimmers wear the skin suits. And I think that was the real differentiator and whatever kind of like, you know, on the better end of those performances. I mean, it was like underwhelming across the board. But why not let the track guys put springs in their shoes, do some crazy thing with their shoes? You know, if they're going to like let the swimmers wear these suits, what is the technical gear advantage in track and field? Yeah, I think we'll see that. I think the toughest part with running and track is that it just lives so much around the Olympic cycle.

29:16Right. And so at some point you get too close to trying to experiment with these off events or these exhibitions where you try to get a little bit freaky and bend the rules a little bit. But it's not out of the question. We saw Kipchoge attempt the sub two marathon twice, didn't get it the first time. But that first one was similar in the sense of they knew it wasn't going to be world record eligible. So let's optimize it for trying to see how close you can get to two hours. And I think it did open so many people's eyes to like, oh, this could be possible. And so, yeah, I mean, like I with last year, Faith Kip-Yagon attempting the four minute mile didn't come close.

29:58I think 406 was good, but similarly to the swimmers at the enhanced games, you don't know what exactly was. I mean, it's a time that I think that she could have run in a regular race, but they outfitted her with it. There's the marketing side to it. We'll say it's the spikes or the suit that she was wearing, the pacing formations. And when you throw too many of those things into a record attempt, then it's really hard to quantify. Well, how much did they actually get from this versus that? And so, yeah, I'm sure we'll see other ones. There are other made up barriers that I think people can try and, you know, market around the sport.

30:33The sport loves around numbers. But yeah, going back to Malcolm's point about just sort of making these events feel, I think, a little bit more important and unique. Like, I think that is sort of like the beauty to something like the Boston Marathon or the New York City Marathon, where those are the ones that don't have pacemakers. They, you know, they just are tougher courses with the bridges and the hills. And so that one relies more on pure competition. And we need to kind of bring that back. I think there's just such a over fixation on times. And this is something I think I feel like I talk about weekly with just sort of all of these.

31:10And that goes to the marathon and also to to track where you tune into so many of these broadcasts. And this is my one gripe is that the announcers will just get so fixated on like this is what the meat record is or the world record or the world lead. And when the athletes deliver on a really thrilling finish or a race, like they'll still bring up the fact that like, oh, but they missed the meet record or the world lead or whatever it is. And it's like, no, let's focus on the fact that we just had a really good race between these, you know, phenomenal athletes. And so it's just the framing around competition, I think, is what needs some work across probably a variety of different Olympic sports.

31:51Swimming probably also has that. The best example of this, golf does this better than anybody. And the best example of this was, I don't know what year it was, but you remember when Tom Watson nearly won the British Open at the age of, was he 59, 58, 59? He lost in a playoff to Stewart's sink, maybe, if I'm remembering correctly. I don't follow it that closely. That's because golf has one of the four majors, the British Open is played on a course that is set up in such a way that a 59-year-old can compete against a 25-year-old or a 30-year-old. And you could not have that happen. That couldn't happen at the Masters.

32:32Could not happen at the US Open. But it can happen at the British Open. So like it's a completely different. And the idea of having as one of your tentpole events, something where there's a realistic chance of a savvy, grizzled, you know, previous generation guy can come and win it all is fantastic. Like, and that's because they have paid attention to what Chris is just talking about. Tom Watson in no way at that time was the greatest golfer in the world. In no way, if you would just want to do an abstract comparison of golfers, but they were smart enough to know that we can construct a competitive environment where he can compete with the best.

33:13and that was i mean i'm still talking this is 25 years ago i'm still talking about it i'm not another example of that is the race between the two of you guys i've spoken to you both about this but like what was that like four or five years ago years ago yeah at a legit track meet here in new york city where chris and malcolm faced off in the mile and that was one of the like i was more excited to watch that then i'm like i like track and field i'm not like insane about it like you guys but i was not going to miss watching that it was brilliant chris brilliantly hyped it up i gotta say that was to my own demise i think yeah so you were the tom watson in this equation i was the grizzle vet who came through what what did you run 5 15 or something like that he ran 5 13 and i just was off the back 5 20 something but um i think the biggest takeaway way I had from, from that race is one, probably go into it in better shape.

34:11Uh, but two, I think I overextended myself on, I think moments before that race was even going off. I had to like rush up to the broadcast booth to make sure that like, uh, the stream was working properly. Barely, I think got a warmup in. So these are my excuses coming out five years later, but, um, it was, uh, it, it, it was a lot of fun. I don't do well now when I put a big goal out there and drive some attention. So like personally, I think I've strayed away from doing that. You know, if I want to go attempt a marathon PR, I think when I finally did break three hours in the marathon, that was something I was after for a long time.

34:49I went to Houston, didn't really tell too many people and just went out and did it. And so that was the biggest lesson I had from that race with Malcolm is just I don't do so well, which is sort of like the pressure and attention in the lead up. And that thing ended up getting, I think, a quarter million views on YouTube and a men's health article that hyped him up and then bashed me. Is that right? Yeah. Can we expect a rematch at some point? No, he's going to kill me. No, this is done. No, he's way, way, way. I don't belong in the same track as Chris. I had a very fortunate set of circumstances break my way.

35:24And also, there's something, you know this, Rich. something happens between five years ago when you're 62 five years is a long is like a big i am nowhere close to the runner i was in my late 50s he's 57 i was 27 yeah but you're quietly training hard i would imagine i you the word on you out there is that you're the ultimate sandbagger true or false i'm not even gonna answer that track down like a you know along the east river there where all the Manhattanites go to match woods. I don't run there anymore. No, I can't do the kind of training because I now live upstate and I have kids and I can't, you know, so I do little things on my own.

36:13This is part of the sandbag. Yeah, it's psychological warfare. I've thought a lot about it. What I would really like to do is, the one event I think I could in my advanced age, dwelling at this point is the 800 and i would like if i could configure my family obligations in such a way i'd love to make a run of like a decent you know post 60 half mile time yeah i think i still have a little speed that's what i would need for that but uh i can't be chris not there was a much more under the radar rematch that did happen we we did run a 3k against each other indoors at the armory this one we didn't like really tell people about before him but he kicked my butt again so i'm oh and two against malcolm in a race yeah this uh tradition uh of running well in publishing uh needs to be extended we have like nick thompson right now who's like breaking all these masters records yeah nick is a real deal yeah he you know he's definitely the best runner in publishing right now, I think, isn't he?

37:22I would think so. Yeah. And then especially when you take into account just sort of like the age group records and stuff that he goes for. Yeah. If we disqualify any former professional athletes, then I would say, yeah, Nick is definitely. Well, also being the CEO of the Atlantic and being by all accounts, like a very good dad, you know, who's there for his kids. So this is possible, Malcolm. him he's nick is really so i don't know nick for a long time have run with him and it's like a revelation he's just on another you know i quit competitive running when i was in my teens because i i was running against the guy and i understood that i would never be at his level you just sort of know right you meet these people who are and what interests me about nick is so he's one of the best in the world for his age?

38:16Does this mean he could have been one of the best in the world when he was 25? Or is it, again, are we talking about a separate category of achievement? Is there a whole different class of people who come into their own in their 40s and 50s? I wish there was a good explanation. Is his aging curve just different from everyone else's? Is he somehow managed to stay healthier than like, what's the exponent? Like, how do we, how do we account for somebody who was a good, but not great D1 runner and then becomes flat out world-class in his forties? Yeah. Well, I think the other thing to also maybe remember, we do, we do have a way of kind of assessing it when he goes out and he's done it, I think a couple of times and gone out to run like the world marathon majors, masters championship race or whatever it is.

39:03And someone like ken rideout i think has also run those and and fared well but i guess the the problem would be just sort of we don't really see all that many what 40 late 40 year old kenyans and ethiopians still going at it in the sport everyone kind of makes their money and their the most of their opportunity in their 20s and 30s and then kind of ride off into the sunset whereas like here in the states like there's so many people just like nick who have kind of they don't have all the heavy mileage on their legs from those 20s that it kind of allows for them to and plus super shoes and all that kind of stuff has allowed them to extend their careers by so many more years.

39:41But it's also the psychological factor. A lot of these people are people that feel they're motivated by the fact that they know that they for whatever reason or life circumstance were not able to achieve their potential as an athlete in their prime. And so there's something to prove there's an animating energy to the master's athlete whereas the person who achieved all of their goals they're like why would i keep doing this you know it's a different it's a different mentality i mean i have a friend from my college swimming days alex kostich he never retired he just continued to train swimming as if he was still you know at stanford in 1987 or whatever and he's gone on to dominate open water swimming like throughout his 40s.

40:30And even now in his mid 50s, like he's slowed down a little bit, but he still pops into like the Waikiki rough water swim and maybe he won't win, but like he'll get third and everyone else is like between the ages of 16 and 19. It's insane. Yeah. I think this is like a very sub sub culture of like open water swimming, like nobody pays attention to this but this guy is like he just the most like it's consistency over decades this is a great phd thesis for a sports physiologist i'm sure so they've done versions of it but like identifying a category a number of examples of these kinds of of he's not he doesn't sound like a late bloomer he's just a continuous bloomer he's a perennial yeah not a late bloomer yeah i think i can't remember how like there was a group chat of me and some of my swimmers from back in that day and we're like did you see what alex did and then when you when you added up like the top like i think maybe he was fourth i don't know in this race and if you add up the ages of the top three like they still were younger than him i love that you know and i think it's just also a statement on culture and people's interest in longevity and maintaining their health like we're just we're just rewriting our expectations around human possibility because we're treating our bodies differently and we have a better understanding about how to do that and you know when i was it was like oh if you're 21 years old like you're toast you're done like you'll never you know like like go to the trails that was the thing you know and it's like oh no that was just because like it just wasn't possible to extend your athletic career beyond those beyond college so years ago before any of this i needed a website so i did what you did back then i hired a designer i waited months i paid a small fortune and ended up with something i couldn't change a word of without calling them paying again waiting again because it was impossible to do any of this stuff yourself.

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44:33Well, what's happened in running in the last, and I love, this is something that Chris can, you know, we've had the op, like in a lot of sports, what we've seen is extension at the top end, older athletes lasting longer. But the big story in running in the last, competitive in the last couple of years has been the opposite. That we've got genuine world-class performers emerging in their teens like cooper lukenhouse yeah who's arguably the best half mile in the world at 17 we've got the cam myers at 20 who's maybe the best mile in the world right now who who nonchalanted his way to 331 the other day like was it i just yeah yeah 328 328 sorry right, 328.

45:18I watched that and I was like, he just went out for a run and it was 328 and he's 20 years old. I couldn't, I was watching, it's like, and he just kind of like eased away. And then there's Sam Ruthie and there's - Who's the kid who's in high school? Cooper Luck. Cooper Luck. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's, I mean, he's at 17. Right. And so how do you account for that? I don't know why running is suddenly, and we could come up with other examples. Women have had that for a while, but that's just sound physiological reasons why you might expect women to peak earlier than men. But this seems new and kind of interesting.

46:00Yeah. And I think the biggest thing, because right now I guess I've been looking at it a lot with Cam Myers in particular, where he's an Australian middle distance runner who's just rewriting not only his national record books, but slowly moving up in, you know, just the all-time list. But we love just kind of looking back as Jakob Ingebrigtsen tends to be, like the example that a lot of people point to. So, you know, grew up in maybe one of the most competitive Norwegian families where his older brothers were both runners. His dad was a renowned coach for a bit. They had a whole like Kardashian-style TV show that followed them around for several years.

46:41And you saw this kid grow up and then become an Olympic champion in Tokyo. But all of his times that he was running as a kid were record setting. And now we look at just sort of Cam and we can kind of see just sort of he's already trending faster than someone than Jakob was back in the day. And I think part of that, I think, is one, we keep bringing up just sort of like footwear and shoes, but that is just kind of a big part to it. Like these athletes are growing up at a time where they've had it their whole career. where for a period of time there were athletes who competed in the non-super shoe or super spike era and then had to kind of adjust and cross over these two eras.

47:23But these high schoolers have had it this whole entire time. I think it's the accessibility to training, like everything's on the internet nowadays. And when you hear of the trendy double threshold Norwegian method that is out there, like that catches on and high school coaches or college coaches will adjust it to their programs. And so the training has gotten better. The fueling is a whole nother side to it too, whereas it's not just in the marathon. Chris, none of these, these are all plausible explanations, but they don't explain, they would explain why everyone's getting faster. They don't explain this particular phenomenon that a 17 year old or a 19 year old or whatever can be world-class in a way that was simply unthinkable for most of the history.

48:10Like everyone's getting benefit of the shoes. Everyone's getting access to these better training things. Everyone's getting better fueling. The 25-year-old gets exactly the same advantages. So why are they being destroyed all of a sudden by kids? I think it just goes, I mean, there's probably the genetic factor also that kind of goes into it too. Someone like Cooper comes from like a family of athletes, But then you can also point to several other people who have had just sort of like that athletic background. But yeah, I mean, every now and then there just comes those, you know, freak talents.

48:40And I guess like track isn't in the same, you know, kind of level as it was maybe back in the Jim Ryan days. But everyone kind of argues that he Jim Ryan is the greatest high school athlete ever in history. And you can argue LeBron and all that kind of stuff. But Cooper's already surpassed what someone like Jim Ryan did back in the day. And it's not as mainstream nowadays. But come something like 2028, I think a lot of people will take note. And maybe that's around the time we start to learn a bit more. We've got plenty of time, I think, to still learn more about just sort of what it is that's made him this good.

49:17But it's cool that, you know, in 2026, we can still be amazed and surprised, you know, when we think we're just, you know, kind of nearing the end of what is possible athletically. I mean, look at what Tade Pogacar is doing in the tour right now. Like if you tune into Lance's The Move podcast, like there's a lot of talk of like, oh, this is like he's he is the best athlete in the world right now. He's so dominant, like perhaps greater than Eddie Merckx ever was. it would be the analogy that lance used was it would be like somebody winning the new york city marathon by 10 minutes like like the margin that separates him and everybody else is so dramatic and like how do we account for this when everybody's training super hard and you know this sport is so globally popular like you know anybody who would show the potential would end up you know in this race and yet he is so much better than everybody else the only thing that i can think of for these is that, you know, and David Epstein talks in one of his books a lot about this sorting, which is in any kind of situation where someone has a lot of athletic potential, there is a process in which they try and figure out where they belong, right?

50:38And one of the arguments against early specialization is it impairs your sorting. You can think you're a good swimmer at nine. But actually, no, you should have done volleyball. But you couldn't figure that out. You can't figure that out unless you play volleyball until you're whatever. So that was a significant constraint on early great performances that we're still sorting. Federer's still playing football at 16. So we don't know whether he could have obliterated every tennis thing. But one possible explanation of what's going on now is maybe for reasons we don't entirely understand, sorting mechanisms are getting a lot more efficient early on.

51:22That we just have a clearer idea about where people belong. Not efficient enough for the United States to be competitive in the World Cup at the level of expectations. There's a lot of discussion right now. How come we can't compete at the highest level in this sport? Everybody's got a theory. My theory is we're using the wrong theory. So there's - I knew he would have. I knew this is something - I want to hear this. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. I thought a lot about this. And the discussion sort of drives me crazy. There are two paths to excellence in any kind of community. There's a scale path and there's an exploitation path.

52:03The scale path is you play the numbers. If I increase the number of people participating in said activity, I will, by definition, improve my chances of getting a superstar, right? If I go from 1 ,000 people running a marathon every year to 100 ,000, I'm going to get 10x more elite athletes. The other route is exploitation, which is, it's not about increasing the size of the pool. It's about increasing the quality of the pool, looking at who's there and somehow bringing them to the next level. Our assumption in America is that all of these problems are scale problems. So we say we're the biggest country in the world.

52:44We have scale in everything. We should be succeeding in everything. But the truth is that at the very highest level of not just athletic performance, but all performance, it's almost never scale. It's exploitation. You know, the classic example would be, I forgot what the exact number is, something like 60 % of Nobel Prizes were won by Jews between 1920 and 2020. There are no Jews in the world. It's not like there was 100 million Jewish physicists. It's a tiny number, but it was never about, it's supposed to exploitation, not scale. It's about that they had a culture that allowed people to develop a level of intellectual excellence that put other cultures to shame.

53:25If I go down the list of elite performance, It's always exploitation. No one, the greatest tennis players almost never come from the biggest tennis playing cultures. They come from tiny tennis, chess. You know, when was the last time America had a bona fide chess grandmaster? I mean, Bobby Fischer, right? It's been right now the best chess player in the world is from Norway, a tiny, tiny, tiny country. The Netherlands has been one of the best football playing countries since Brilliant Orange in the 70s. The Netherlands is a postage stamp. You could bury the Netherlands in the city of Chicago and not even notice it.

54:02Like, there's no evidence for this notion that scale is a reasonable strategy for producing excellence in any, you know, only in a small number of sports. But most sports, if we do distance running, what is it? It's Japan, Kenya, and Ethiopia. I looked this up, actually, this morning because I was thinking about this. 68, if you look at the top 200 marathon performances in 2025, 68 % of them came from Kenya, Ethiopia, and Japan, which collectively represent what? Some insanely tiny fraction of the world population, right? It's just like Americans have this thing, which just drives me crazy. We're big.

54:45We should be good. No, got nothing to do with that. It has to do with What kind of attention do you pay and what kind of cultures do you create around excellence in very, very small cohorts of people? Yeah, it would require rewriting our culture completely. Exactly. It's not a sorting mechanism. I like the fact that America is a scale country because it benefits us. There are a million other things where I think scale really, really works well. Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman were talking about this the other day. and Chuck had a, you know, he was, I was very humored by his take, which is basically like this arrogance that Americans have, like that we should be, like, why aren't, like, we're, you know, we should be exceptional at everything, like this expectation, you know, that we have.

55:28No, not, not. But they're, like I said, the things that do require scale are the things that America excels at, and they're really, really important. Scale, entrepreneurial success is a scale problem. Norway's come up a couple times. How are we making sense of Norway's ascendancy as a sports superpower? It's exploitation. It is the greatest example. It's a very wealthy country that has developed cultures that are really brilliant at exploding talent, right? We're seeing it in distance running. We're seeing it in football. We just got like, you know, Magnus Carlsen and others. It's like they're just - Triathlon, we have Eden and Blumenfeld.

56:12Yeah, they have, and I don't, what, a better question is what exactly is the secret sauce to their exploitation strategy? I don't have a good answer to that. Well, you have a lot of thoughts on youth sports and they have a very unique, you know, approach to that. This idea that like kids are not allowed to keep score until age 13 or whatever, which just completely upends all of our assumptions about what drives performance over time. I think maybe the Germans do this thing where they don't even play full-strength soccer until they're into their teens. They play four-on-four and then six-on-six.

56:50And then there's also a really nerdy thing that they do that we don't do, which is pay a huge amount of attention to relative age effect, to the great inefficiency. This goes back to some of your earliest writing. Yeah, yeah. They take it. Do you know that the Dutch especially are obsessed with this, that looking at their elite performers in soccer a generation ago and realizing they were all born in the first half of the year, which meant that they were losing 50 % of their – do you know what the Australians in swimming, do you know what this? Uh-uh. Where there's this move now where they go one step further, which is they do in these experiments with, in age class swimming, they have two measures of the give.

57:36One is your age, so you compete in your age class. And then second is you can do these relatively sophisticated calculations of your biological age. And so they develop a handicap. So I have a bunch of 12-year-olds doing a 100-meter freestyle. I use the biological age to have a built-in statistical handicap so that the kid who is relatively the youngest biologically has a level playing field with the kid who is maybe a year and a half ahead of his or her age group. And then I adjust the times. So I have two sets of results that result from the race. I have the standard results, and then I have the adjusted results.

58:25So you could come in last in a standard results, but after I do the age class adjustment, you could be first. And what that does is it radically improves the sorting mechanism because what they were finding in Australian swimming is that huge numbers of kids quit in the 12, 13 range because they think they're not good. And you're losing all these kids who are simply late bloomers or young for their age. So this is a mechanism that says, is actually, I know, Rich, you came last, but if we do it, you're a year behind maturity-wise with the other kids in this year. And if we do that adjustment, you were the best.

59:04And suddenly Rich is no longer, Rich goes home to his mom and says, I'm actually great at this. I'm gonna keep going for another two years. Like if you do that, your capitalization, your exploitation strategy becomes way more significant. But Australians' dominance in swimming is another example of exploitation over sorting because it's a culture. You know, it's a water culture. Like how many people live in Australia? Like, I don't know, 20 million or something? It's like, it's nothing, you know. It's funny that you don't know. It's very low. I would say it's very low. And, you know, they've produced, you know, time and time again, like Olympic champions.

59:40It's the size of Canada. It's basically Canada down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, they're a great example of the specificity of expertise in these areas, these cultural specificities. Yeah. What's going on in track and field this summer? So it's an off year technically from, this is the first one we've had since the pandemic where there isn't a traditional world championship or an Olympics. And so we got into a really good cadence where Tokyo Olympics 2021, and then we had two world championships, Paris Olympics, world championships. And so world athletics, the governing body decided, well, that was pretty fun to have a pretty big high stakes competition.

1:00:25So they did form what they're calling the World Athletics Ultimate Championships. Sounds like a Frisbee contest, but it's a big prize money, three-day competition that is basically a mini world championships. Not every event is featured there. And so that's coming up in September. And so they're going to start doing that, I think, every even year going forward. Where is that going to be? So it'll be in Budapest. And so September 11th to the 13th. Yeah, I'll go. Um, that'll be fun. So a fun three days and, uh, it works off of like the world athletics rankings. So like you have to race a certain amount of times and have some good performances to up your ranking.

1:01:07And so they've kind of gamified it. So it's not necessarily about, you know, the 12 fastest people, uh, will be running. And so, um, it's basically emphasizing, I think a big, a bit of a consistency over the course of a, of a season. And so, um, that's what I think a lot of the top athletes have to look forward to, but But then other than that, there's people trying to break world records this year. And so a lot of athletes putting a target date of they want to go after someone like Josh Kerr is going after the mile world record in just a couple of days. But there's other athletes like a Keely Hodgkinson from Great Britain has had her sights set on the women's 800 meter world record, which has stood for a very long time since the - Should have been expunged a long time ago.

1:01:54Yeah. It's a bogus record. And so, you know, it's pretty cool. I think that we're getting to that point now where because of all of these things that have created marginal gains for the athletes that for that time period that before the athlete biological passport came in and we were able to kind of crack down on doping a bit better, a lot of those marks are finally starting to get erased. But it took a while. I brought this up a couple of days ago that Malcolm a couple of years ago had this idea of instead of, you know, keeping track of, you know, these all time world records, decade records was I think like the direction that you went because you can't necessarily go out if you're, you know, world athletics or, you know, the swimming, you know, federation and be like, we're going to erase all these times because we think that they're, you know, sketchy or dodgy from the Eastern block.

1:02:45or there was that period where there were Chinese dopers. It's like because you open yourself up to a bunch of lawsuits probably from those countries, those athletes, and so you can't necessarily have this blanket erasure. But to Malcolm's point, I think if you were to just keep track of like, here's what the records have been since 2020, and we're going to keep track of that until 2030, and then we'll reset, it's I think a fun way that hasn't really been as good. There's a wrinkle you do. You raise a bunch of money. like whatever,$50 million. And then suddenly 2029 becomes this crazy year because you say, I'm going to give a million dollars to the best performer over the course of the previous decade.

1:03:29So everyone's just like, and the dollar figure is huge. So you create this artificial frenzy. Like in 2029, everyone's like maxing out to do it. It's a non-Olympic year. The last year or three decades, always a non-Olympic year. So you'd have this kind of, track needs more of these kind of artificial well that also plays into i think we talked about this the last time you were on my podcast this this idea that it's not about a singular breakthrough performance the real uh you know the real athletic champion is the person who can sustain high performance over time and so that would that accounts for that well you're valuing the older you get the more you become biased in favor of body of work arguments over peak performance arguments.

1:04:13That's like, you know, to your point, you look at someone like Sebastian Salway, who just broke, you know, the two hour marathon in London and he runs 159. And, you know, a lot of people would see a time like that and it's the world record now. But is he really the greatest marathoner of all time? I don't think so. I think you still have to give that edge to someone like Elliot Kipchoge, who was able to sustain the career that he had over the course of 10 years. So there's still like a long way for someone like Sebastian Saway to go to achieve sort of like that level of two Olympic gold medals, many world marathon major titles.

1:04:50And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's like the perfect example of assessing someone over, you know, the course of their career versus just sort of the one-off performance. He could, you know, maybe never run faster again. But if he, you know, goes out and wins 10 more marathon majors and an Olympic gold medal in LA, then it's, you know, he could start to make the case. Who's the quintessential example of someone who gets overlooked in peak performance, but would be a giant if we considered body of work? Is there a swimming example, for example? Or I don't know what the... Well, I mean, I think Phelps would still be up there because he sustained his high performance over so many Olympians.

1:05:32I mean, that's a great question. That's a great question. In track, it would be Kajelcha. Yeah, Yomif Kijelche, who's like what? He's been Mr. Runner-Up so many times and has run so many world-class times. And I think last year was the first time he got a silver medal at the world championships on the track. Basically, he's been one of the best in the world in every distance from a mile through a marathon. So it's not only longevity, it's dexterity. Over the course of six, seven, eight years. Yeah. And he's like really tall and he has this slightly odd, the way he runs, you expect him to be wearing a top hat.

1:06:16Like it's a kind of like. He's lanky. He's kind of lanky and he has a kind of stiffness and it's just, he's kind of a character. I know nothing about him. I mean, I just know that every time he runs a race, it doesn't matter what the length is or whether it's 2019 or 2026, he's in the mix. It's a kind of a - He's a mile all the way to the marathon. I guess the joke now is that he's the only guy who's never run, he's run a marathon, but never run over two hours because he ran 159 and finished second in London. Yeah, that's insane. I know. That's the craziest thing. Yeah. Like just the idea that you would run under two hours and not win.

1:06:55Yeah. It's like, who would have ever thought that, you know? So crazy. Yeah, I've been trying to dive deep into that race and it's been really cool. I had the chance to chat with Sebastian Solway just a couple of weeks ago a bit and I'm scheduled to talk to his coach, I think. But yeah, that day, just the stars aligned and you needed just sort of those two guys to be on and have that, you know, head to head 40K, you know, 35K into the race where, you know, you're on world record pace, but someone's still breathing down your neck. I think that's ultimately, I think, what did push Sebastian Salway to, you know, not only just win, but get under two hours.

1:07:38I think the one side of the sub two that I'm kind of very interested to explore, and it feels like a Alex Hutchison or Steve Magnus angle, is just sort of everyone's talked about the shoes and, you know, the fueling and the pacing. But I think that there was something subconscious that happened at not enough people are talking about is that they had this huge clock on the car ahead of them that showed them the projected finish time and also the pace of the last kilometer. and psychologically i feel like something happens that you can't necessarily measure uh you know in that you know span of time where they looked at whatever their split was at 40k and suddenly like that clock showed you that you were now under two hour pace and it's just sort of what happened in that moment is like you can't just take someone's blood or whatever it is to measure what it was but that adrenaline it's like what happened in that in his brain in that moment is something that you know you can't really measure in the shoes and all that kind of stuff so i got saw his take but it's kajelcha who you know i need to talk to still and figure out just sort of like he's someone who has famously loved closing long runs really hard and um to be in contention and to see something like that happen what happened internally is just sort of uh um what my biggest curiosity is and how that race unfolded.

1:09:00Also knowing kilometer by kilometer, how much you are, uh, ahead of or behind, uh, breaking the world record pace. You can make those micro adjustments in real time. Yeah. Having that car, you know, there's drafting, you know, also that's happening there. You can't, the rules say you can't get super close to it. We saw a half marathon world record not count because Jacob Uplimo, he ran 56.47 or something like that. Just an insane time. But doesn't count toward the record books because he was too close to the lead car. And they said that that gave him too much of an advantage from drafting. And so in the marathon, I think they were pretty dialed in to not have that be the case in London as well.

1:09:47Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, this conversation around valuing high performance over time is also sport dependent, right? Like some sports and some specialties within sport are going to lend themselves to being able to perform at a high level over time versus other ones where it's going to be less possible. So you would have to take that into account as well, wouldn't you? What's an example of a sport where you can't do high performance over time? is it not different to be able to compete at the highest level in the 100 meter dash over time versus the marathon or being a 200 mile ultra runner like wouldn't those be treated differently or considered i mean we have seen examples of uh i mean a really a really good example would be um uh johan blake the jamaican 100 meter runner who has, is exactly what we're talking about, has won very few international, big deal international competitions, but has been one of the top two or three sprinters in the world for an astonishingly long time.

1:11:00Same with a - But nobody's going to be 59 years old like they are in golf. No, no, no. In the sprints. But remember there was a woman named Merlin Adi, Jamaican again. I mean, I'm repping Jamaica repeatedly here since it is the greatest country in the world, home to so many of my relatives. She was world-class into her late 30s. And those kinds. So it's not impossible. And those people are, do you remember, this dates me even more, there was a marathoner from New Zealand named Jack Foster, who was running 216, in the 70s, was running 216, 217 into his late 40s, which back then was just astonishing because you could win, flat out win marathons at that pace.

1:11:45So like, I just think, I think you're right. It's harder in certain fields, but that just makes me feel like, like Johan Blake does no way gets enough love. I mean, sprinting is something where you would expect a real age-related drop-off, right? And it did not happen with him. And that should mean we should say that he should be spoken of in the same breath as some of the greatest sprinters who ever lived. Because top-end speed gets eroded with age. whereas you can continue to develop your aerobic capacity and compete at a high level in an endurance type race. I was just thinking about that because I think Noah Lyles is someone who has been sort of like the de facto voice and face of sprinting over the last couple years because he kind of wanted to assume that mantle.

1:12:33Just he's someone who's wanted to push for track being a bit more popular. And so he's one of those guys that you either hate him or you love him. And that's kind of a good thing. But I was thinking to the point of longevity in the sprints, he was a high school phenom back in 2016, finishing fourth at like the US Olympic trials. And so now, you know, he's trying to position himself. He's the reigning Olympic champion to potentially go into the Los Angeles Olympics, you know, as a favorite for gold medal. It's like, it's a long time to stay at the top of the sprints. And so even what we're seeing now, like this current season, like he isn't racing a ton But every time that he gets out there, he's still winning these races.

1:13:14And there are like these these younger folks coming up in the sprints and he's managed to hold them off. And so we're right now, I guess, like for the people listening or watching and who are curious about track and wanting to get into it in the lead up to the L.A. Olympics. Now's the time to really appreciate and enjoy a talent like Noah Lyles, because it's not a given that he's going to be at this level in two years. uh and so i had that just kind of like moment it's like even though this he's like in his late 20s i was like we gotta appreciate what we're seeing right now because it's not it could it could change so quickly that's the cool part to track too is that um there are these newer younger faces who are just popping up left and right um who can easily supplant the olympic champions and world champions that we saw in the last two years chris you have a uh book coming out yeah this fall yeah next fall yeah so next fall yeah yeah a whole other year a whole other year you're waiting on it yeah i guess like uh i handed it turned in the manuscript back in june and so i think now we're going through a very long uh editing and revision phase uh it ended up i definitely went over my word count uh so uh but i'm excited for it so it's the marathon book is the working title although i kind of want the title to stick uh and yeah but it i think the one funny part to it is that I did ask like the publishers at Penguin Random House, I was like, what's the latest we can, you know, update some of these times and performances?

1:14:45Because like, I've got a couple chapters in here that reference world records and American records. I'm like, what are they going to be in summer 2027 before this thing goes to print? So that's the challenge, I guess, with tackling a subject like the marathon. That's exciting, man. Congrats. Thank you. Please come back and talk to me about it when the book comes out. I would love to, yeah. Yeah. And in the meantime, 800 meter showdown between you guys. He's going to destroy me. Commit now. No, no. Didn't you recently run 220 something? For the 800? Here comes the sandbag. No, no, no, no. I can't.

1:15:20Well, so the fun part is that at every world championships, they do a media 800. And so if you have a credential, you can go and run on the same track that they're hosting the world championships at. And so over the years, you know, we do start to see, I think, a couple of retired runners move into the media as photographers or videographers. So they they end up winning and the winning time is like 154, 152, pretty legit. But I've been to a couple of world championships now. And so I wanted to run it last year in Tokyo and training was going really, really well. I recruited Mark Coogan, one of the best miler coaches in America to to coach me.

1:15:59And, um, and then one day I was moving into my new apartment and I was trying to move a dresser and I just dislocated my kneecap, uh, while trying to pull it in through the front door. And so, uh, I had time trial, I think two, two days before that. And I did run two 16. So I was looking for a big performance in Tokyo and I'm just watching the race with a knee brace on. And so, um, yeah, I guess like I'm, I'm in for 800 meter training, but, um, I won't make it easy for Malcolm. Yeah. And a rematch. And you have something to prove. Yeah. uh well this was fun guys thanks man thank you so much yeah i'd love to do do more of this kind of thing i appreciate you guys yeah and uh i i guess i don't need to prep for these as long as i'm now i have people like you don't do it don't do it preparation's overrated yeah all right guys thanks thank you