Nick Thompson runs to work. He runs home from the office. Sometimes he runs to his kids' soccer practice before Ubering home with them. As CEO of The Atlantic, a magazine founded in 1857, and father of three boys, he's mastered the art of weaving running into the fabric of his life rather than treating it as something separate from everything else that matters.

But running isn't just transportation or stress relief for Nick. It's been the key that unlocked understanding about his father, about himself, and about why some goals feel impossible even when the physical capability exists. His new book, The Running Ground, explores these themes through the lens of a sport so simple in its execution yet so complex in what it reveals about the human condition.

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The Psychological Block No One Saw Coming

For over a decade, Nick ran the exact same marathon time: 2:43. Not 2:42. Not 2:44. He'd run 2:43 when he was thirty years old, right before getting diagnosed with cancer. Then he'd run it again two years later. And again. And again. Twelve straight years of hitting the same mark with eerie consistency.

It wasn't until his forties that something shifted. Working with coach Steve Finley, Nick dropped fourteen minutes off his marathon time, running 2:29. The physical training improved, yes. He got better shoes, smarter workouts, and access to Nike's coaching resources. But the real breakthrough was psychological.

Nick had unknowingly decided it was impossible to run faster than six-minute miles for a marathon. The limiting belief was so deeply embedded he didn't even recognize it as a belief. It was just reality. Steve's coaching slowly dismantled that mental ceiling by making six-minute pace feel comfortable first in 200-meter repeats, then mile repeats, then five-mile tempo runs. By the time race day arrived, six-minute pace wasn't scary anymore.

The insight hit Nick hard: how many other areas of his life were constrained not by actual limits but by mental boundaries he'd accepted as truth?

What Running Teaches That Nothing Else Can

There's a beautiful brutality to running's simplicity. When you cross the finish line of a 5K, the clock tells you exactly how you performed. No teammates to share credit with. No opponent who had an off day. No referee who made a questionable call. It's just you and the truth.

Nick argues this purity makes running an exceptional teacher. Success and failure are entirely your own in a way that almost nothing else in modern life can match. As CEO of The Atlantic, he can wonder whether he got the job because of his Stanford degree or his height or his gender or his professional network. But nobody questions whether he deserved his 50K American record. He ran faster than everyone else in his age group. Period.

This clarity extends to aging in a way other sports mask. A soccer player getting slower might attribute it to the quality of their teammates or the formation their coach is running. A runner just sees the splits getting slower. The feedback is immediate and undeniable, which makes the sport remarkably good at helping you understand where you really are versus where you think you are.

The Limits That Actually Protect You

Here's something counterintuitive about elite running: you literally can't practice too much. Try to run more than about a hundred miles a week and your body will break down. It's not a matter of toughness or willpower. The human body simply has limits on how much running volume it can handle before injuries force you to stop.

Nick sees this as one of running's unexpected gifts. While a chess player who wants to become elite might need to practice fifteen hours a day, a runner's practice time is naturally capped at maybe ninety minutes to two hours. This makes running uniquely compatible with having a demanding career and being present for your family in ways that pursuing excellence in many other fields simply isn't.

The constraint actually enables the pursuit. You can become genuinely excellent at running while still being CEO of a major publication and coaching your kids' sports teams. Try doing that while training to be an elite tennis player or professional musician.

Multitasking the Right Way

Nick's approach to fitting running into his life revolves around strategic multitasking. He's quick to point out you should never multitask when something important deserves your full attention. But running for transportation? That's combining two things that need to happen anyway.

His morning routine: wake up, work, take the kids to school, run to the office. The run clears his mind and serves as a reset button between home life and work life. At the end of the day, he runs home and experiences another mental reset before engaging with his family. He's even been known to take Zoom calls while running, though he admits that's pushing the multitasking philosophy to its limits.

He'll watch something work-related during bike workouts or read Atlantic essays in the sauna. The goal isn't to never have dedicated running time but to find ways the training enhances other priorities rather than detracting from them.

When Fear Becomes the Thermostat

Brett Kirby from Nike once gave Nick advice that stuck with him before his 50K record attempt: "Just think of something you've done that's harder."

Your body has a thermostat, Nick explains. At some point during hard efforts, that thermostat clicks on and starts generating fear and doubt. As you train and push into new territory, you gradually push that thermostat back. What used to trigger the alarm at sixty minutes might not kick in until seventy or eighty minutes.

Nick no longer fears hundred-kilometer mountain runs or thirteen-hour efforts. But he's still afraid of running a hundred miles. He's never seen the sunrise twice during a single run. That's where his current thermostat sits.

The insight transfers to everything else. That four-hour work project that feels daunting? Nick has stayed focused while running for thirteen hours. Four hours of mental concentration suddenly doesn't seem quite so intimidating. He recalls one day going for an all-out mile on his run commute before a difficult conversation at work. Nothing he faced that day would be as hard as putting his hand on the stove for five and a half minutes.

The Book Behind the Run

The Running Ground emerged from two moments in Nick's life. The first was recognizing that his decade-plus psychological block about marathon pace revealed something profound about how our deepest fears constrain performance. The second was his father's death.

Nick's father introduced him to running as a young boy. His dad was going through a midlife crisis, recognizing he was gay and struggling with alcohol. Running became a way to manage those demons. Nick's early running memories are intertwined with his father's journey and his parents' eventual divorce.

After his father died, Nick started writing what he thought would be a letter to his children about what their grandfather meant to him. He couldn't stop writing. Six or seven thousand words poured out on the plane ride back from the Philippines about loss of discipline, about trying to maintain it, about the love his father gave and the example he set despite his struggles.

Those words became the foundation for a book that's ultimately about how running's simplicity opens up complexity. How the physical act of putting one foot in front of the other creates space to understand difficult things about family, mortality, fear, and what we're capable of becoming.

Trust in the Age of Unreality

As someone who runs one of America's most respected publications, Nick thinks a lot about trust. We're entering what he calls "the end of reality" where AI makes it impossible to know what's real anymore. You can't tell if a photograph is authentic. Soon you won't be able to tell if a podcast is real or synthesized.

The Atlantic's 167-year reputation matters more than ever in this environment, but that trust must be fiercely protected. Nick predicts that in the near future, podcasters might need to record in front of live audiences so humans can verify the conversation actually happened. The premium on verified, trustworthy information will only increase as synthetic content floods every channel.

One weird consequence: The Atlantic has seen fake freelancers created by AI studios send in article pitches, trying to get freelance paychecks for machine-generated content. The fight between authentic and synthetic extends to every corner of the information economy.

Running remains one of the few pursuits where none of this matters. You can't fake your splits. You can't AI-generate a marathon time. The clock and the finish line remain stubbornly, beautifully real in an increasingly synthetic world.

Why the Sport Isn't Pointless (But Might Be Selfish)

Nick enjoys making the argument that running is actively harmful. You train for months to run a 2:35 marathon. What have you accomplished? You've made everyone who finished behind you one place worse. You've added no value to the world. You've been insufferable to live with for weeks beforehand, obsessing about rest days and carb loading and whether you might be getting a cold.

But he makes an even stronger case for why that argument is completely wrong. The daily discipline running requires builds habits of mind that improve everything else you do. The mental clarity from being outside and moving creates better decision-making. The physical challenge teaches you about pacing, endurance, and managing discomfort in ways that transfer to every difficult thing you'll face.

The sport makes you a better person when done right. It gives you an example to set for others about tackling hard things. And perhaps most importantly, it creates a spiritual connection with the world that's increasingly rare in modern life.

After spending the week in his Manhattan office, Nick spends weekends running in the Catskills. The shift in mental and spiritual state is profound. That connection with nature and with his body moving through space grounds him in ways nothing else does.

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Jon is a runner, cyclist, and podcast host from Boston, MA, who now lives in Boulder, CO. For The Long Run is aimed at exploring the why behind what keeps runners running long, strong, and motivated.

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