Off-the-Record: Wait, You Ran THAT Boston Marathon?

0:03Happy Friday, Slatesters. This is the time when we go off the record just for you, our Slate Plus friends and neighbors. And this week was a ride. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went to Capitol Hill to demand an enhanced budget for the war in Iran. We watched the world's richest man have a meltdown about a movie. Elon Musk freaking out about Christopher Nolan's latest epic, The Odyssey. Sea. And we are also seeing oil prices jump dramatically once again after the Houthis took credit for attacks on tankers in the Red Sea. But we're going to set all that aside today because today is the day when we go off the record, kind of inside the demented minds of the people who make this show and how we think about the news and our world.

0:46And today I have Rob Gunther. We're here to talk about running. Hello, Rob.

0:51Rob Gunther: Hello, Lizzie. Tell me about your running background. and why we're going to talk about running today. Yeah, so we're going to talk about running because there's a couple of different running-inspired stories that have been in the news. You and I were both chatting on Slack, as we normally do, and we sort of came to these articles together, and it sort of just clicked, like, why don't we talk about this? I've been a runner since about 2007. You have a running background as well. Okay, how many marathons have you run? I've run, I believe, 16 or 17. That's psychotic. Yeah, yeah, it is. Like what do you have left to do?

1:28Like is there a marathon that is in your mind like I want to go run the original marathon?

1:33Rob Gunther: Yeah. You know, I got into running because my dad and my aunt signed up to run a marathon. I was in zero running shape. I never ran. This is like the year after I graduated college. And I kind of said, yeah, I could do that too. And everybody laughed at me. And I did it sort of like, you know, out of spite. And it just propelled me into the next stage of my life. I sort of have never stopped. Oh, my God. There was a guy. So I ran track in college. Not well, small division three school. But there was a guy on my track team who ran the Boston Marathon out of spite with no preparation. Wow. Boston's like a hard one.

2:08He was on my track team. But have you done Boston? I've done Boston.

2:11Rob Gunther: I beat the bombs that year that the bombs went off by like 20 minutes. It was a crazy, a crazy experience. I finished running the race. and you know when you finish running they corral you this long slow march you're trying to like jostle past everybody to meet my parents were with me my wife joanna was there and we were probably about like two or three blocks away from the finish line at that point when the bomb went off and my mom immediately was like that's a bomb we got to get out of here and i'm just like you know probably being an annoying son but i'm like mom that's not a bomb you're embarrassing me it to me it sounded like when you're in new york city and a giant truck flies down a side street and goes over a bump and crashes down very hard.

2:49Rob Gunther: But as soon as, like, you know, like wildfire had spread. Obviously, it was a bump. And we just, like, hightailed it to our hotel and immediately drove out of the city before, you know, they locked down. So you just got the hell out of there? Yep, we just got out. Wow. Crazy time. Okay, so let's talk about running where we live. I live in Brooklyn. I live very close to Prospect Park. That is my spot. And I would not say I run so much anymore. I sort of like hobble because I think I damaged my body when I was a competitive runner. You live in Queens. Where do you run? Yeah, I live in it. I live right close to Astoria Park.

3:24Rob Gunther: I have to admit that, you know, I'm getting up in years, too, and running doesn't feel always as great as it used to. But I still try to get out at minimum once a week to do a five mile run when I'm not training for marathons. Wow. OK, that's really impressive. I run like I'm in I'm in a run club. I can admit it. It's actually, it's not just a run club. It's like a movement thing, mostly for middle-aged women, though we have one woman in the club who's 79. We walk, we run, we do workouts in the park. It's all outside. The whole point is to just be like outside having fun like our children do and have that kind of joyous movement.

4:04It's kind of awesome.

4:05Rob Gunther: No, I mean, I feel you. Like, I still love to be moving. You know, what's really supplemented my running. Lately, I just do fitness classes. like hit classes, I get the cardio, I get a little strength training, which I never used to do. But once I turned 40, I really felt like you need to have it. So yeah, I'm I am trying I am 50. And turning 50 was a big like, Oh, God, I have to lift weights. And so now I do now a large man like yells at me and tells me what to do. And I find it very motivating. I want to talk about these two stories. So there is this one story from Brendan Kerner over at Wired.

4:39It is about trackflation, like the idea that teenagers are becoming insanely fast. So the writer of this piece, Brendan Kerner, first noticed kids becoming unbelievably fast watching his own son's track meet. But this is happening all across the country, across genders, age groups, etc. What is going on here? Why are kids so fast?

5:03Rob Gunther: You know, I got a few different points of view reading this story. The first one that struck out to me because I'm a parent of three kids who play sports, play competitive sports. And a lot of people chose to have their kids run track because regular team sports are too competitive. There's too much pressure. They're too expensive. And so they think, you know what? Let's go to track. There are no cuts in track. Exactly. But I think when you put all of that pressure into a different area, it's not just going to go away and conform to what you think it's going to conform to. So I think a lot of what you're seeing is a lot of competitive kids that normally would have played a team sport in a different era, they're now going to track and they're just getting insanely competitive with each other.

5:46Rob Gunther: And you see that competition amplified via social media. That's it for now. And if you want to hear the rest of this episode, the way to do it is to subscribe to Slate Plus. Unlock Slate Plus now by going to slate.com forward slash whatnextplus.