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

Summary

The Rich Roll Podcast

Episode: Malcolm Gladwell & Chris Chavez Think We're Selling Running All Wrong
Date: July 23, 2026
Host: Rich Roll
Guests: Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Chavez (Citius Mag)

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Episode Overview

In this lively and insightful episode, Rich Roll is joined by renowned writer Malcolm Gladwell and Citius Mag's Chris Chavez for a wide-ranging discussion on the evolving culture of running and how the sport is marketed and experienced. They dissect the split between racing and training, the financial realities for runners, generational changes, the importance of fan engagement, and how running can learn from other sports. The trio uses personal anecdotes, industry insight, and sharp critique, resulting in a master-class on the past, present, and potential future of running culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Running is Sold: Racing vs. Training

• Malcolm Gladwell's Core Argument:
  • We're "selling it all wrong... don't sell to racing, sell the training." (01:47)
  • Racing is a tiny part of an athlete's experience; the joy and depth are in the training and process.
• Rich Roll & Chris Chavez's Perspective:
  • Rich wonders if the inside drama and sharing of athletes’ personalities, like in Formula 1, is a bigger key than focusing solely on training or racing. (21:29)
  • Chris highlights how elite marathoners' popularity is often tied to their relatability with mass participants. (06:14)
  • The "inside baseball" mentality has limited running’s outreach compared to sports like basketball or Formula 1, which thrive on off-field drama and personalities.

"Performance is an individual act. Actual racing is just a tiny part of the experience of being an athlete."
— Malcolm Gladwell [01:28]

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2. The Ultra vs. Marathon Divide & Elite Transitions

• Molly Seidel’s Ultra Experience:
  • Rich recounts Olympic marathoner Molly Seidel's first Western States 100, sparking questions about whether top marathoners can step into ultras and dominate, or if the disciplines are fundamentally different. (02:06–03:26)
  • Chris discusses how the ultra scene is "getting younger and faster," in part due to more financial investment and evolving brand interest. (04:11)
• Philosophical Divide:
  • Is ultra an extension of distance running or a distinct discipline? Malcolm leans toward the latter:

    "I don't see anything... What does running for 2 hours and 20 minutes have in common with running for 24 hours?" [05:18]

  • Discusses the mental and psychological toll—e.g., sleep deprivation—in ultras that separates it from standard marathons or track.

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3. Financial Realities & Athlete Incentives

• Earnings for Runners:
  • Despite some increased sponsorship and prize money, most mid-tier elite marathoners can make more at major marathons (through appearance fees and bonuses) than podiuming at prestigious ultras. (08:22)
  • Lack of financial transparency: "so many of these numbers are under NDAs." (08:22)
  • The difficult tradeoff: financial stability vs. notoriety and impact within the sport.

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4. Fan Engagement: Transparency, Data Sharing, and Narrative

• Comparisons to Other Sports:
  • Basketball is fueled by fan conversations and statistical analysis, often separate from actual game-watching. Malcolm suggests running should engage more with training data and stories, not just racing. (13:14)
  • The idea: Mandate elite athletes share their full training data to allow fans and analysts to become more engaged. (14:46)
• Culture of Secrecy:
  • The obsession with "IP" (intellectual property) is counter-productive; fan interest depends on access to athlete routines, not secrecy. (15:02)
  • Cycling has begun to embrace this, sharing rider data via platforms like Strava and Whoop, but running is lagging behind. (15:36)
• Personality Types:
  • Not every athlete wants to be a content creator or social media influencer, yet Gladwell argues even the introverted elite have a responsibility to the sport’s culture and their own financial value. (16:36)

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5. What Running Can Learn from Other Sports

• Distinctive Identity for Races:
  • Tennis and golf majors have unique "personalities"; this is missing in marathons and needs to change. (25:43)
  • Gladwell’s tongue-in-cheek solution: "One marathon major should go old school... no super shoes, no watches, no pacers, just water." (26:12)
• Enhanced Games & Spectacle:
  • The group dissects the Enhanced Games, coming to the conclusion that such "freed from the rules" formats are big on marketing but often under-deliver on actual competitive drama. (27:28–28:42)
• Over-Emphasis on Times:
  • Chris laments commentary that fixates on records and world leads at the expense of actual race narratives and athlete rivalries. (29:07–31:53)
• Golf and Longevity:
  • The British Open is structured so a 59-year-old (like Tom Watson once was) could almost win—a concept that captivates and creates unique storylines. (32:16)

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6. Longevity, Late Bloomers & the Masters Phenomenon

• Masters Athletes Inspiration:
  • Nick Thompson is hailed as the best runner in publishing, with his age-group records and peak performance into his 40s and 50s. (37:16–38:51)
  • Discussion of athletes like Alex Kostich who never truly "retired" and have dominated in smaller age-group events for decades due to lifelong consistency. (39:41–41:00)
• Changing Expectations:
  • Sports science and a better understanding of health, combined with new tech (super shoes), have shifted expectations for what's possible as we age. (41:42)

"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."
— Rich Roll [41:42]

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7. Youth Breakouts & Sorting Mechanisms

• The Next Generation:
  • Unprecedented numbers of world-class teenage runners, e.g., Cooper Lichenhaus, Cam Myers, suggesting the emergence of genuine global stars in their teens. (44:33–46:00)
  • Questioning why teens now can compete at the highest level—a mix of genetics, better shoes, improved training/fueling, but with some mystery still lingering. (47:48–49:17)

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8. Scale vs. Exploitation: The Real Roots of Sporting Excellence

• Gladwell on the American "Scale" Myth:
  • The U.S. obsession with being the best at everything is based on misunderstandings about how excellence emerges. (51:41)
  • Most performance breakthroughs happen in small, "exploitive" cultures—like Norway or Kenya/Ethiopia—where intense focus and community support matter more than mass numbers. (53:18–55:00)
  • Exploitation in youth sports: Norway's delayed scoring, Germany’s small-sided soccer, Australia’s biological age handicapping in swimming as models for maximizing potential and retaining talent. (56:21–59:54)

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9. Current State & Evolution of Track and Field

• Upcoming Competitions:
  • The new World Athletics Ultimate Championships in Budapest, designed to create more high-stakes competitions outside Olympic/World Championship cycles. (59:57–60:50)
  • Efforts to prioritize consistent elite performance across a season, not just one-off wins. (60:50–65:08)
• How to Celebrate Achievement:
  • Advocating for “body of work” recognition (e.g., decade-long performance awards), not simply peak records. (63:12–66:01)
  • In distance running, longevity and versatility—such as Yami Kajelcha’s prowess from mile to marathon—deserve more recognition. (65:08–66:36)

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10. Longevity in Sprints vs. Endurance Events

• Outliers and Legends:
  • Discussing those, like Jamaican sprinter Johann Blake and Merlene Ottey, who have enjoyed unexpected longevity in power events. (70:11–72:09)
  • Noel Lyles as the current embodiment of long-term sprint dominance, but the window for such sustained success remains tight in sprints compared to distance events. (72:20–74:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Selling Running:

  "Don't sell the racing. Sell the training."
  — Malcolm Gladwell [21:07]

• On Training Transparency:

  "If I knew exactly what Josh Kerr was doing over the last month, that would so enhance my interest in the sport and allow a whole class of people into the sport... This culture of secrecy is so self-defeating."
  — Malcolm Gladwell [13:14–14:46]

• On Scale vs Exploitation:

  "Our assumption in America is that all of these problems are scale problems... But the truth is that... It's exploitation, not scale. It's about what kind of cultures do you create around excellence in very, very small cohorts of people."
  — Malcolm Gladwell [51:50–54:56]

• On Masters Athletes:

  "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?"
  — Rich Roll [39:41]

• On Early Specialization and Sorting:

  "One possible explanation for what’s going on now is maybe for reasons we don’t entirely understand, sorting mechanisms are getting a lot more efficient early on."
  — Malcolm Gladwell [50:14]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:28 – Malcolm Gladwell’s intro: Performance is individual; racing is just a tiny part
• 02:06–03:26 – Molly Seidel’s Western States debut and the myth of easy ultra transitions
• 05:02–05:30 – Is ultra its own discipline?
• 13:14–14:46 – Gladwell on data transparency and fan engagement
• 21:07 – On marketing the training, not just racing
• 26:12–27:20 – "Old school" marathon concept: no super shoes, no clocks, just competition
• 38:10–39:41 – Nick Thompson and the psychology of Masters athletes
• 44:33–46:00 – The rise of teenage phenoms in global running
• 51:41–54:56 – Scale vs. exploitation in sporting excellence
• 59:57 – The new World Athletics Ultimate Championships
• 63:12–66:01 – Celebrating lasting excellence over peak performances

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Conclusion

This episode is a passionate, critical, and hopeful dissection of the running world, rich with personal experience and bold ideas. Gladwell and Chavez push for a sport that values transparency, narrative, diversity of personalities, and ongoing excellence—not just winning races or breaking records. For anyone interested in how running (and sport in general) can evolve to capture more hearts and minds, this episode is essential listening.

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Guests:

• Malcolm Gladwell
• Chris Chavez – Citius Mag
• Rich Roll (host)

(Timestamps correspond to the podcast's main content, excluding ads and promos.)

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Roll I think it's going to be fantastic. Performance is an individual act. Actual racing is just a tiny part of the experience of being an athlete.

[C]

The Boston Marathon or the New York City Marathon relied more on pure competition. We need to kind of bring that back.

[B]

The idea of having us, one of your tentpole events, something where there's a realistic chance of a grizzled, previous generation guy can come and win it all is fantastic. We're selling it all wrong. Like, don't sell to racing. Sell the training.

[A]

I had dinner with some friends several months ago, but one of the people at this dinner was Molly Seidel, who I met for the very first time. And we had this really interesting conversation because she was, you know, she had just signed with Satisfy and she had just announced that she was going to be running western states. And I was like, man, this is like, this is signaling perhaps a new era. Like, I've always wondered what happens when somebody who is that good, like an elite marathoner, like an Olympian, decides, you know, what I'm going to. Before we've seen elite athletes in the twilight of their career or post retirement drop into this world. But what happens when somebody who's still in that zone of elite high performance decides, you know what, maybe there's something for me over here. And I was like, you might just drop in and just rewrite the record books. Perhaps. All of these times that we're seeing in these really long races are just low hanging fruit for somebody who's really good. Like, what happens if Kipchoge decides he wants to do Leadville or something? And the question of course is, will that translate? And then Molly drops in and she struggled. It was her first time. Perhaps with a little bit of experience, this is still something that could happen. But what did you think about that?

[B]

Like, how did she account for struggling? Did she have an explanation?

[A]

I don't. I don't know. I don't know the details of it. I think it kind of all started to fall apart a handful of hours into it. And she, to her credit, you know, didn't drop out. She decided to like really push through and was celebrated for that. But she came in at like 24 hours or something, you know.

[C]

You know, I think it goes back just sort of like, I think for a long time. Probably a lot of track and running folks would look at just sort of like, oh, what's the average pace that that person ran for? 100 miles, 50 miles or whatever it is. And they would just think, oh, like that' not that fast, all things considered. Because we're used to seeing all these crazy fast times on the track and then seeing the performances that someone like Jim Walmsley has just put together. Both holding the Western States course record for as long as he did. But then you take a couple steps back and he wasn't the most accomplished track athlete. He attempted the steeplechase way back in the day and he wasn't all that great. And so I think for a period of time people just thought it was like, all right, well, trail is. And ultra is where the not so great track will go. Yeah. And now it's really cool to see someone like Molly go in at this point where she's still very young, arguably in her prime. And I think there's still that kind of a little bit of unfinished business when it comes to just the traditional marathon that she won an Olympic bronze medal in five years ago at this point. But yeah, I think trail and the ultra scene is getting younger and faster. Part of that also probably does come with what you brought up before, which was like this investment from the brands to, you know, now that they're. There's money, there's like so much more money.

[A]

Make a Living in this world.

[B]

This raises an interesting question. I always wondered about ultra.

[C]

Which is.

[B]

Is ultra an extension of distance running or is it. Is it its own category?

[A]

Yeah, it's one of two things and I don't think we really have the answer to that.

[B]

My gut would be that it's, it's.

[A]

It's its own thing.

[B]

I don't think. I don't see anything. What does running for 2 hours and 20 minutes have in common with running for 24 hours? Yeah, very, very little. And also psychologically tolerate.

[A]

Sleep deprivation is not a factor in track and field or marathon running.

[B]

We've gotten to the stage now where for the mentality of the marathoners is a lot closer to the mentality of 10k runners, the 10k runners of a generation ago, than it is to the. No one's thinking of this as this kind of like, you know, insuperable psychological obstacle. They're like, it's routine. Whereas Leadville and Western states are like insuperable psychological obstacles. What I don't know is whether Molly Seidel and it's a good chance you can. Has this the psychological makeup to do to transition from two hours to 24.

[A]

We've seen Des Linden.

[C]

She's given it in the world as well.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And yeah, I mean the thing with Molly is just also sort of. She's still just so early on and sort of like this next chapter in this foray into trail that I don't follow it as closely to know how many people just nail it on that first go and so give it a couple years. And I think that that's sort of like when we could probably make the assessment of whether this move was the right one. But it is exciting and I think it does draw more eyeballs because like, yeah, I look at it sometimes through podcast analytics at times that the top marathoners in the United States are some of the most popular athletes in distance running. And that kind of pairs with the fact that the masses are sharing the same race and they can sort of relate to the idea of running a marathon. Whereas someone like Noel Lyles doesn't generate as much traffic as I could do a one on one interview with Noel Lyles. And it does way fewer downloads and all that kind of stuff than someone like Connor Manz or Clayton Young. And so I think that it's really cool to see that there's sort of that popularity that these people have generated from running traditional marathons. They're bringing that to the ultra scene as well.

[A]

Yeah. If you are on the world stage as a marathoner, you're an elite marathoner, but in every prestigious race, you're coming between 5th and 10th. Why are you not thinking, maybe I should go give it a shot over in this other world? Maybe I have a better chance of distinguishing myself. When you saw what happened with Rachel and Trenkin at Cocodona, it went globally viral, what she did. There is an upside there that might not be available to that. Like elite, but just below the top, you know, the highest tier of. Of performance.

[C]

Yeah. Well, I think maybe the money is one factor that maybe hasn't caught up, even if you're like, is that person

[A]

who's getting fifth or tenth at those marathons, like, making a good living?

[C]

I don't even know for an American, probably because they get some heavy appearance fees to show up to the race. So, like, you don't necessarily. So a lot of the crazy thing about running is that so many of these numbers are under NDAs. And so, like, we don't necessarily know what exact numbers are, but some of these folks do get six figures to show up to the New York City Marathon. And then from there there are bonus structures in place where it's. If you make it to 20 miles, if you're top American or whatever it is, that you can trigger more money into your contract. And so even if the person is finishing seventh, you know that that probably was a better payday than they would have got if they podiumed at something like Western states. So I think the average person has

[A]

no idea who that person is.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. It's sort of like, would you trade in just sort of like the financial stability versus, you know, the popularity? And then how do you kind of take that popularity to translate to dollars? And that's kind of like the next thing, so. Yeah, but the. The financial side of running is still kind of a little bit taboo to talk about, just because it's been that way for so many years.

[A]

Yeah. What do you think about that?

[B]

Think about whether people should be switching out? Yeah, well, I mean, I think there probably. There's such a great unknown about that by the time you're 25 and you've invested so heavily in being a marathoner and thinking about the marathon. It's quite a transition.

[A]

Yeah. I would think there's also all these little, like, subcultures within subcultures. Like, the person who does really well at the backyard ultras is not the same person who's going to distinguish themselves at bad water.

[C]

Yeah. Then there's what mountain running. There's all the different. I couldn't tell you what all the different racing disciplines are at something like utmb. But yeah, so it's like there's so many different ways to also I think. But you know, separate yourself as a champion and as a really good athlete in ultra trail where as in the marathon at a major, it's only really the winners in the podium and the top Americans who generate I think a lot of the attention. And so how different is the training?

[A]

I think that it's still very much an unknown. Like I've interviewed so many of these people and they all have such different approaches to their training. Some of them really go on intuition and feel and they don't even have a coach and they go out and they just run as long as they feel like they should that day and kind of make adjustments along the way.

[B]

Who's the super analytical one who got a hard interview with him on Science of Sport? Ultra Guy posts all of his workouts, has all this very clearly worked out things about fueling. Oh, David Roche.

[A]

Oh, David Roche. Yeah. He's fascinating. He had him on the show.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's the one I listened to. So Roach. What surprised me about Roach was his training did not seem that dissimilar from a marathon training. Right. He's not doing insane.

[A]

He was experimenting with tons of threshold work and also training like a competitive eater. His whole thing was to see how many carbohydrates per hour he could train his body to absorb. And he's convinced that that is the limiter. You like, that is what's limiting so many of these athletes because they can't sustain a threshold pace. Because they can't. They, they have gut issues and, and they're not able to absorb enough calories.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So. And he's had success but you know, then he got injured and he's had, you know, it hasn't been a perfect like trajectory for him but I think him transparently sharing all of these experiments is sort of the ultra running version of Brian Johnson trying to live forever, you know, and it creates a lot of public intrigue and interest and affection for him and controversy for sure. And you know, maybe we need a little bit more of that in this world if we want to capture people's interest and fascination. Like when what Rachel and Trenkin did went global, like what are the lessons that we can learn from that that would make people more interested in track and field? Like I went to my first track and field World championships a couple years ago in Tokyo. We tried to connect and we never were able to. You were like podcasting every day. And I was really surprised at the pageantry of it. Like, oh, like I thought I knew what to expect. I'd never been to a real legit like big track and field meet. And it was really a unique experience. And I can, after that I can understand why somebody is like reluctant to leave that world to try something, some experiment in the ultra world to the point of Roach.

[B]

So if you look up basketball, an enormous amount of fan involvement in basketball is around the game, not of the game. So huge numbers of basketball fans don't even watch much basketball. I would be one of them. What I do is I listen to people talk about basketball, think about basketball, read about basketball and follow it through statistics. Right. And I'm a model for a lot of people follow basketball the way I do. Running doesn't have. We have way too little conversation around running. We're still way too focused on performance itself. And someone like Roach is attacking that problem by being so open and transparent about in the way that he trained. And I've often thought that one solution to this would be that the Garmins and Whoops and Oura Rings of the World should sponsor athletes on the condition that they post all of their data. If I knew exactly what Josh Kerr was doing over the last month, you know, in preparation for this run at the world record, if I knew exactly how saw I trained leading up to what you know, that would be. That would so enhance my interest in the sport and allow a whole class of people into the sport who aren't there in all these sports. This, this culture of secrecy is so self defeating. And the notion that somehow if I'm an elite athlete and I share my workouts, I'm compromising my ability to win.

[A]

Somebody knows what I'm doing or that

[C]

it's your coach's IP or whatever.

[B]

Yeah, I'm sorry, this is a separate obsession of mine with the craziness of our obsession with ip. I've had it with that term ip. It is totally fucking useless. Who cares?

[A]

Does that apply to AI scraping on everything that you've ever done and then giving it to people for free? Like making your books. Nobody want to buy your books anymore.

[B]

So who owns the IP of my last book? I don't care. I care where the. I care who gets the money from the sale. Right. Or who gets enjoyment out of it or. Anyway, this is quite a. This note. We have applied this ludicrous notion to sports. And how can you follow running if you don't know what the runners are doing? We, I see them, I see them 16 minutes a year. Right. And I'm supposed to be a fan of the, of the sport.

[A]

I, I think cycling is doing a better job of this. Like, whoop. Is posting what Tade's like strain score. Like just, I think yesterday it was like, oh, he had a 20.8 strain score and he had a max heart rate of 198. I don't know that he's, you know, on Strava. These cyclists, they'll post their workouts. I don't know how meaningful that is to people.

[B]

So selective.

[A]

But yeah, right. Like the mega ride or the coffee ride.

[B]

Psych out your. That's why Strava, I've neglected. Strava is the natural person for this. The condition should be, you have to post. You have to record everything and post everything. That's interesting to me.

[A]

But it takes a certain type of personality, it takes a David Roche type personality for that to translate. And not all athletes are wired for that, nor should they be. Like, it's okay to just want to be an athlete and perform. It's different when you're that entrepreneurial, extroverted athlete who's like, who can be a social media influencer at the same time.

[B]

I disagree. So if I'm a basketball player, I play 82 games a year and I might play if I'm a starter, whatever, 32 minutes. So I don't know how many. 82 times 32 minutes, I don't know what that is. It's a very large number. That is a body of work that basketball fans have unlimited access to. They can watch me play, they can analyze to their hearts content every aspect of my performance. And every year more and more and more analysis based on that body of work is available to the fan. Right? So it didn't matter. There are very shy NBA players, but they don't shield the world from seeing how many, you know, what their particular statistical profile was in a given game or so. In running, we just have to get past this fact. If you're shy, whatever, your livelihood in this sport depends on fan engagement. And if you are an elite athlete, you are de facto public figure in the world of athletics. You're an entertainer, you're an entertainer.

[C]

The problem is, I guess the contracts aren't written in that way in running. And so that's what.

[A]

Well, they're still living in a different era where bonuses are based on podiums and things like that, which aren't necessarily calibrated to what is going to move the product. The whole, the whole like, kind of value proposition of paying these athletes in the first place, which is to like sell more of whatever.

[C]

Yeah, I think a perfect example for something like this is, you know, someone like Sharon Lochetti, who's the Kenyan marathoner who's won the Boston Marathon two of the last three years, I believe, or back the last, back to back years. And I saw someone just do like a public audit of like her social media channels and it's like, well, this doesn't really match up with just sort of like the level of athlete that she is. She's won New York, she's won Boston, she was fourth at the Olympic Games. And I think just barely has like over 10,000 followers or anything. And I was like, well, yeah, I mean, you're assessing their social media posts. Their job is to train really hard to be able to run a 1435, 5K in the late stages of the Boston Marathon, not necessarily to hit post on Instagram. And it's just sort of like the contracts for these athletes don't have those structures in place where it's like, hey, you have this budget for, you know, a social media person or a photographer to be at every practice or anything like that. And so it's a shame because we do want these people to be bigger stars so that others can, you know, recognize just like, oh, yeah. I mean, I was rooting for that really big move in the late stages of the race because I know what this person's been up to this whole entire time.

[A]

But aren't most runners kind of quiet, introverted athletes living a somewhat monastic lifestyle? Like when you think of Noah Lyle showing up and he's got the Pokemon and the brief case and the, you know, the whole like, yeah, like that's a whole, like these people are like, they are performers. You know, there is a performance to that, a theatricality to that that is you know, not the typical kind of mindset of the average, you know, outstanding runner.

[B]

I have tons of conversations with teenagers or preteeners trying to convince them to join their school's cross country team. It's like one of my little things that I do constantly. And the thing they don't understand is they think that they're like, why would I do it? It's so solitary. And my point is. No, no, no. It's insanely socially cross country. You go for like an 8 mile run with your best friends and you're running at a pace where you can chat. You just. You're just basically gossiping for an hour and a half with your best friends who are all fit and cute and like, this is perfect. This is like. And then you get in a bus and you go for an hour and a half to attract me, and then you're flirting with the person next to you, and this is like, what do you want? And then you go to the meet and you run for like six minutes, and the rest of the time you're lying in the infield with other cute people. This is like a dream. This is so much better than basketball in every way.

[A]

You've been hired as a chief marketing officer.

[C]

Cross country.

[B]

Cross country performance is an individual act, but performance, actual racing is such a tiny part of, you know, we all know this, of the experience of being an athlete. And, like, we're selling it all wrong. Like, don't sell the. Don't sell the. The. The racing. Sell the training. Training is. I love straight.

[A]

I don't know. I think I. I don't know if the training is the skeleton key to unlock, like, public fascination or broadening public

[B]

interest, just getting kids.

[A]

But I think, like, when you were talking about basketball or just athletes sharing their. Their training as a way into penetrating, like, public interest. When I think of basketball, isn't it.

[C]

Isn't.

[A]

Isn't it really as much the drama off the court as it is what's happening during the games? Like, the perfect example would be Formula one. Like, Tyler over here, he's. He always says, like, oh, the reason everyone's interested in Formula one is it's like the Bachelor for guys. Like, there's so much drop, like, interpersonal drama around these drivers and the teams, all that kind of stuff. It, like, has nothing to do with what happens on race day, you know, and that somehow has captured the fascination of, you know, millions, if not billions of people across the world. Like, that's something that is lacking in these smaller sports. Like, we don't really know who these people are.

[C]

No. And I think it's. Even those circles, I think are so small that even some of that little friction that sometimes makes, you know, creates attention in something like Formula one or the NBA, where there's a player who unfollowed this team and that kind of stuff that generates headlines, like in running. I think it's. So the problem is that it's so small among the people who are covering it, who are participating in it, the top 1%, the coaches, the agents, that someone's bound to get upset if you frame something wrong. And so that's what kind of detracts some of those things from getting traction. But to your point, like it is what would make it, I think, a bit more fun. Yeah.

[A]

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[B]

I wish that this is a particularly true of marathons, but. And this is not a new suggestion, but the thing about tennis is how much individual personality, each distinctive personality, each Grand Slam has. Same with golf and we don't have that same.

[C]

I know where he's going with this.

[B]

This is. You know that I'm not the only one to say this, but we've talked

[C]

about this on a run before.

[B]

One of the of the marathon majors should be old school.

[A]

What does that mean?

[B]

No one can wear a watch. There should be no super shoes at all. You get your shoes from the event, they're old school shoes. There's no clocks during the course and there's no pacers. Just do it old school. Like let's see people. And the fueling, just water. Let's make it a hilly course.

[A]

Yeah. Like this is 1975.

[B]

Yeah, 1975. The winner can be 214. And a bunch of guys are going to bonk in like in mile 21, which we haven't seen at an elite level in quite some time. And that will be.

[A]

Maybe somebody will take a subway train. Yeah, right.

[C]

Rosie Ruiz would be.

[B]

And if I knew. If I knew that every year that's what I'm picking a city. That's what Barcelona was. Barcelona was like.

[A]

I'd be much more interested in watching that.

[B]

So much more. But then Berlin could be. Go for it. Like every single thing. And London could be some. And some of them. There's two secondarily the courses themselves should be more interesting. All this flat stuff. Give me a break. It should not.

[A]

It's like, well, this is the flip side of the Enhanced Games. Like this is the other side of that coin. Right. Did you guys watch that?

[C]

Yeah, I like curiosity to get the best of me. And I watch. I was on a plane actually and I just like jumped on the WI fi and I was like, you know what? I just going to tune in and watch it live. And 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 I think if you watched it for knowing this is a big marketing vehicle for what they're trying to push, then you saw them do that. But I from a sporting spectacle, there really wasn't, I think, too much to it.

[A]

Did you watch it, Malcolm? You didn't, you didn't even watch it, did you? Did you consciously boycott it or just

[B]

it didn't even rise, like, what am I doing here?

[C]

Like those track times were just abysmal.

[A]

Well, it was, yeah, it was terrible. Which left people with one of two theories. Either this just means that everyone at the elite level is doping or these were not, you know, the right people or they hadn't been on their doping protocol long enough or that like these, these compounds don't actually work in the

[B]

way that we shoes are more important.

[A]

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 sub. 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 gonna like, let the swimmers we suits. What is the technical gear advantage in track and field?

[C]

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. Right. 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 2 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. With last year, Faith kapiegon Attempting the four minute mile. Didn't come close. I 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. There's the marketing side to it will 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 market around the sport. The 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. I think that is sort of 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 just are tougher courses with the bridges and the hills. And so that one relies more on pure competition. You 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. And that goes to the marathon and also 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 this is what the meet record is or the world record or the world lead. And when the athletes deliver on a really thrilling finish or a race, they'll still bring up the fact that, oh, they miss 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 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. Swimming probably also has that too.

[B]

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 Stuart Sink. Maybe if I'm remembering correctly, I don't

[A]

follow it that closely.

[B]

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, could 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. And that was. I mean, I'm still talking. This is 25 years ago. I'm still talking about it. I'm not the only.

[A]

Well, another example of that is the race between the two of you guys. Guys, I've spoken to you both individually about this, but like, what was that, like four or five years ago?

[C]

Five years ago?

[A]

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 than. 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.

[B]

It was brilliant. Chris brilliantly hyped it up. I got to say.

[C]

That was to my own demise, I think. Yeah, so.

[A]

So you were the Tom Watson in this equation.

[B]

I was the grizzle vet who came through.

[A]

What did you run? 5:15 or something like that?

[C]

He ran 5:13 and I just was off the back 5:20 something. But I think the biggest takeaway I had from. From that race is one, probably go into in better shape. But two, I think I overextended myself on. I think moments before that race was even going off, I had to rush up to the broadcast booth to make sure that the stream was working properly. Barely I think got a warmup in. So these are my excuses coming out five years later. But 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 personally I think I've strayed away from doing that 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. I 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 with just 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.

[B]

Is that right? I never saw that.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Are we. Can we. Can we expect a rematch at some point? He's gonna kill him. This is done.

[B]

No, he's way, way, way. I have no. I don't belong in the same track as Chris. I got. I had a very fortunate set of circumstances break my way. And 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.

[C]

He was 57. I was 27.

[A]

Yeah, but you're quietly training hard, I would imagine. The word on you out there is that you're the ultimate sandbagger. True or false?

[B]

I'm not even gonna answer that.

[A]

Down at that track down like, you know, along the east river there where all the. All the Manhattanites go to, you know, match.

[B]

I don't run there anymore. No, I have. 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. My. I do little things on my part of the sandbagging. Yeah.

[A]

Extra psychological warfare.

[B]

I've thought a lot about it. What I would really like to do is the one. The one event I think I could in my advanced age do well in 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 at like a decent, you know, post 60 half mile time. Yeah. I think I still have a little bit of speed. That's what I would need for that. But I can't beat Chris. Not that's. That's.

[C]

There was a much more under the radar rematch that did happen. We. We did run a 3k against each other indoors. This one we didn't like, really tell people about before him. But he kicked my butt again, so I'm 02 against Malcolm in a race.

[B]

I forgot about that race.

[A]

This tradition of running well in publishing needs to be extended. We have Nick Thompson right now who's breaking all these masters records.

[B]

Yeah, Nick is the real deal.

[A]

Yeah. He's definitely the best runner in publishing right now, I think, isn't he?

[C]

I 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. I. If we disqualify any Former professional athletes. Then I would say, yeah, Nick is

[A]

definitely also being the CEO of the Atlantic and being by all accounts like a very good dad, you know, who's.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Who's there for his kids? So this is possible. Malcolm, he's.

[B]

Nick is really. So I know I've known Nick for a long time, have run with him, and it's like a revelation. He's just on another. You know, I quit committed competitive running when I was in my teens because I, I was running against a 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

[C]

the world

[B]

for his age. Does 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, 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.

[C]

Yeah, well, I think the other thing to also maybe remember, we do have a way of kind of assessing it when he goes out and he's done it, I think a couple times and gone out to run like the world marathon majors, masters championship race or whatever it is. And someone like Ken Rideout, I think has also run those and fared well. But I guess 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 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.

[A]

But 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 and 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, like he'll get third. And everyone else is like, between the ages of 16 and 19. It's insane.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think this is like a very sub, subculture of like, like open water swimming. Like, nobody pays attention to this, but this guy is like, he's just the most, like, it's consistency over decades.

[B]

This is a great PhD thesis for a sports physiologist, I'm sure. So they've done versions of it, but like, like identifying a category, a number of examples of these kinds of, of. He's not like a late bloomer, he's just a continuous bloomer. He's a perennial.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Not a late bloomer.

[A]

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, they still were younger than him.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

And I think it's just also a statement on culture and people's interest in longevity and maintaining their health. 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. I think about this all the time, especially when I use Squarespace because it's kind of insane how completely that is flipped. Squarespace is the all in one platform for building a beautiful professional website and you're the one who's driving it. You start with Blueprint, their AI design partner or one of their award winning templates and you shape the whole thing yourself with drag and drop. No code, no designer on retainer, no experience required. And it doesn't look diy, it looks like you meant it. Squarespace makes claiming your name simple, one fair, all inclusive price, privacy and security built in. None of the hidden add on nonsense. The barrier I paid through the nose to get past it basically doesn't exist anymore. So there's really no reason to wait. Head to squarespace.com richroll for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code Richroll to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. I've spent a lot of time talking about my Rivian, driving my Rivian, obsessively sharing photos of my Rivian on Instagram. But the best is when I hand the key fob over to someone who's never driven, driven one. And there's always this moment, that instant where they feel the acceleration, silent, immediate, and they just start laughing because it doesn't feel like any car they've ever driven before. And it reminds me this is one of those things you really have to experience. It's not just fast, it's smooth, it's quiet, it's focused. It's the kind of movement that makes everything else feel a little outdated. And Rivian makes it easy to try for yourself. You can book a demo, drive online, pick a time, show up and just get out on the road. No pressure. So if you've ever been curious, don't just take my word for it. Go to rivian.com and feel it for yourself.

[B]

What 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're seeing is extension at the top end, older athletes lasting longer. But the big story in running in the last competitor in the last couple of years has been the opposite that we've got genuine world class performers emerging in their teens like Cooper, Lichenhouse, Luckenhaus, 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 miler in the world right now. Who. Who nonchalanted his way to 331 the other day. Like, was it 3:32? I just.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. 328.

[B]

328. Sorry. 328. I watched that and I was like, he just went out for a run and it was 3:28 and he's 20 years old. I couldn't. I was watching. It's like. And he just kind of like eased away and. And then there's Sam, Ruthie and there's.

[A]

Who's the kid who's in high school right now?

[B]

Cooper. Lucky.

[A]

Cooper. Lucky. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

He's. I mean he's. It's at 17 and so how do

[A]

you account for that?

[B]

I don't know why running is suddenly. And he's. We could come up with other examples.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

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 is. This seems new and kind of interesting.

[C]

Yeah. 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 just the all time list. But we love just kind of looking back as Jakob Ingebritzen tends to be the example that a lot of people point to. So 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 Kardashian style TV show that followed them around for several years. And 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 careers, 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. But 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, 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.

[B]

Chris none of 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. 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?

[C]

I think it just goes. I mean, there's probably the genetic factor also that kind of goes into it too. It just sort of he. 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. And 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.

[A]

But it's cool that in 2026 we can still be amazed and surprised when we think we're just kind of of nearing the end of what is possible athletically. I mean, look at what Tate Pagaccia is doing in the, in the tour right now. Like, if you tune into Lance's the Move podcast, like, there's a lot of talk 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.

[B]

The only thing that I can think of for these is that David Epstein talks in one of his books a lot about 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. And one of the arguments against early specialization is it. 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. 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 were still sorting. Federer's still playing football at 16, so we don't know whether he could have obliterated every tennis thing but one. One possible explanation what's going on now is maybe we're. For reasons we don't entirely understand, sorting mechanisms are getting a lot more efficient early on that we just have a clearer idea about where people belong.

[A]

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, compete at the highest level in this sport. Everybody's got a theory.

[B]

My theory is we're using the wrong theory. So there's.

[A]

I knew he would have it. This is something. Okay, go ahead.

[B]

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. Path, the skill 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. If I go from a thousand people running a marathon every year to a hundred thousand, 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. We have scale in everything. We should be succeeding at 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 about 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. If I go down the list of elite performance, it's always exploitation. No. 1. 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 for. 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. Like, 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. 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. It's just like Americans had this thing which just drives me crazy. We're big, we 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.

[A]

Yeah. It would require rewriting our culture completely.

[B]

Exactly. I like the fact that America is a scale country because it benefits us in a mil. There are a million other things where I think scale really, really works.

[A]

Well, Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman were talking about this the other day and Chuck had a. He was. I was very humored by his take. Which is basically like this arrogance that Americans have. Like that we should be why aren't we should be exceptional at everything like this expectation that we have.

[B]

But 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.

[A]

Norway's come up a couple times. How are we making sense of Norway's ascendancy as a sports superpower?

[B]

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 in distance running, we're seeing it in football. We just watched the World cup. With chess we've got like Magnus Carlsen and others. It's like they triathlon.

[A]

We have Eden and Blumenfeld.

[B]

Yeah, 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.

[A]

Well, you have a lot of thoughts on youth sports and they have a very unique approach to that. This idea that kids are not allowed to keep score until age 13 or whatever, which just completely upends all of our, our assumptions about what drives performance.

[B]

The Germans, I think maybe the notions. But the Germans, you know, 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. And then there's also a really nerdy thing that they do that we don't do which is pay huge amount of attention to relative age effect, to the great inefficiency.

[A]

This goes back to some of your earliest writings on.

[B]

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. Well, you know what they do in. You know what the Australians in swimming, you know what this, 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. One 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 have a, 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 a kid who is, you know, maybe a year and a half ahead of his, of his age 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. So 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, 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. And if we do that adjustment, you were the best. And suddenly Rich is no longer rich, goes home to his mom and says, I'm actually great at this, I'm going to keep going for another two years. If you do that, your capitalization, your exploitation strategy becomes way more significant.

[A]

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 it's like it's, it's nothing, you

[B]

know, is it very low? I would say it's 40 million.

[A]

And you know, they've produced, you know, time and time again like Olympic championship.

[B]

The size of Canada. It's basically Canada down. Yeah, yeah. No, they're a great example of the specificity of expertise in these areas, these cultural specificities.

[A]

Yeah. What's going on in track and field this summer?

[C]

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 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. So they did form what they're calling the World Athletics Ultimate Championships. Sounds like a Frisbee contest, but big prize money, three day competition. That is basically, you know, 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.

[B]

Where's that going to be?

[C]

So it'll be in Budapest and so September 11th to the 13th. So yeah, I'll go, that'll be fun. So a fun three days and it works off of like the world athletics rankings. So you have to race a certain amount of times and have some good performances to up your ranking. And so they've kind of gamified it so it's not necessarily about the 12 fastest people will be running. And so it's basically emphasizing I think a bit of consistency over the course of a season. And so that's what I think a lot of the top athletes have to look forward to. But then other than that there's you know, people trying to break world records this year and so a lot of athletes putting, you know, a target date of they want to go after someone like Josh Kerr is going after the mile world record in just a couple days. But there's other athletes like Keely Hodgkinson from, from Great Britain has had her sights set on the women's 800 meter world record which is has stood for a very long time since the should

[B]

have been expunged a long time ago record.

[C]

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 days ago that Malcolm a couple years ago had this idea of instead of keeping track of these all time world records, decade records was I think the direction that you went because you can't necessarily go out if you're world athletics or the swimming federation and be like we're going to erase all these times because we think that they're sketchy or dodgy from the Eastern bloc or 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 like 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.

[B]

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. So 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's a non Olympic year. The last year decades always a non Olympic year. So you'd have this kind of track needs more of these kind of artificial.

[A]

Well, that also plays into. I think we talked about this, this the last time you were on my podcast. This, this idea that it's not about a singular breakthrough performance. The real, you know, the real athletic champion is the person who can sustain high performance over time. And so that would, that accounts for that.

[B]

Well, I'm.

[A]

You're valuing that.

[B]

The older you get, the more you become biased in favor of body of work arguments over peak performance arguments.

[C]

That's, that's like, you know, to, to your point, you look at someone like, like Sebastian Saue who just broke the two hour marathon in London and he runs 159 and 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 a long way for someone like Sebastian Sawhe to go to achieve sort of that level of two Olympic gold medals, many world marathon major titles. And so yeah, I mean I think that's like the perfect example of assessing someone over the course of their career versus just sort of the one off performance. He could maybe never run faster again. But if he goes out and wins 10 more Marathon Majors and an Olympic gold medal in LA, then he could start to make the case.

[B]

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.

[A]

Well, I mean I, I think Phelps would still be up there because he sustained his high performance over so many Olympias.

[B]

I mean that's a great, that's a great. In track. It would be,

[C]

yeah. Yami Kadalcha who's like what he's been Mr. Runner up so many times and like has run so many world class times and I think last year was the first time he got a world championship or he got a silver medal at the world championships on the track, and then basically has been one of

[B]

the best in the world in every distance from a mile through a marathon over the course.

[A]

It's not only longevity, it's dexterity.

[B]

Over the course of six, seven, eight years. Yeah. And he, he's actually, he's like really tall and he has this slightly odd. The way he runs. You expect him to be wearing a top hat. Like it's a kind of like he's just lanky. He's kind of lanky and he has a kind of stiffness and it's just. He's kind of a character. And I know nothing about him. I just know that every time he runs a race, doesn't matter what the length is or whether It's. Whether it's 2019 or 2026, he's in the mix. So kind of a.

[C]

He's a mile all the way to the marathon. He's the. 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.

[A]

I know, that's the craziest thing. Yeah, like just the idea that you would run under two hours and not win. It's like, who would have ever thought that, you know.

[C]

So crazy. Yeah. I've been trying to, you know, dive deep into that race and it's been really cool. You know, I had the chance to chat with Sebastian Saway just a couple weeks ago a bit and you know, scheduled to talk to his coach, I think. But yeah, that, that day just the stars align 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 not only just win, but get under two hours. I think the one side of the sub two that I'm kind of very interested to explore, and it feels like an Alex Hutchinson or Steve Magnus angle is just sort of. Everyone's talked about the shoes and the fueling and the pacing, but I think that there was something subconscious that happened that not enough people are talking about is that they had this huge clock on the car ahead of the 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 in that span of time where they looked at whatever their split was at 40k and suddenly that clock showed you that you were now under two hour pace. And. 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 his brain in that moment is something that you can't really measure in the shoes and all that kind of stuff. So I got Sawy's take, but it's Kajelcha who 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 to be in contention and to see something like that happen. What happened internally is just sort of what my biggest curiosity is and how that race unfolded.

[A]

Also knowing kilometer by kilometer how much you are ahead of or behind breaking the world record pace, you can make those micro adjustments totally in real time.

[C]

Yeah. Having that car, there's drafting also that's happening there. The rules say you can't get super close to it. We saw a half marathon world record not count because Jacob pipeline, 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.

[A]

Yeah. Wow.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, this, this conversation around valuing high performance over time is also sport dependent. 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?

[B]

What's an example of a sport where you can't do high performance over time?

[A]

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. Wouldn't those be treated differently or considered differently?

[B]

I mean we have seen examples of. I mean a really good example would be Johann Blake, the Jamaican 100 meter runner who has. Is exactly what we're talking about, has won very few international, big, big deal international competitions, but has been one of the top two or three sprinters in the world for an astonishingly long time. Same with a.

[A]

But nobody's going to be 59 years old like they are in golf.

[B]

No, no, but remember there was a woman named Merlin Otti, Jamaican again. I mean I'm repping Jamaica repeatedly here since it is greatest country in the world. Home to so many of my relatives. She ran, she was world class into her late 30s and those kinds. So it's not impossible. And those people are. Do you remember there was a. This dates me even more. There was a New Zealand marathon. A marathoner from New Zealand named Jack Foster, who was running 216 in the 70s, was running 216, 217 into his late 40s. 40s, which back then was just astonishing because you could win flat out win marathons at that pace. So I think you're right, it's harder in certain fields. But that just makes me feel 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 in the.

[A]

His 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.

[C]

Yeah, I was just thinking about that because I think Noel 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. Just he. He's someone who's wanted to push for track, being a bit more popular. And so he's one of those guys, 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 the US Olympic trials. And so now he's trying to position himself, he's the reigning Olympic champion. To potentially go into the Los Angeles Olympics as a favorite for a gold medal. 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, he isn't racing a ton, but every time that he gets out there, he's still winning these races and there are these younger folks coming up in the sprints and he's managed to hold them off. And so right now, I guess for the people listening or watching and who are curious about track and wanting to get into it in the lead up to the LA Olympics, now's the time to really Appreciate and enjoy a talent like Noel Lyles, because it's not a given that he's going to be at this level in two years. And so I had that just kind of like, moment. It's like, even though he's like, in his late 20s, I was like, we got to appreciate what we're seeing right now because it's not. It could change so quickly. That's the cool part to track too, is that there are these newer, younger faces who are just popping up left and right who can easily supplant the Olympic champions and world champions that we saw in the last two years. Mm.

[A]

Chris, you have a book coming out.

[B]

Yeah, this fall.

[C]

Yeah, next fall. Yeah.

[A]

So next fall.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

A whole other year. A whole other year. You're waiting on it?

[C]

Yeah, I guess, like, I handed it, turned in the manuscript back in June. And so I think now we're going through a very long editing and revision phase. It ended up. I definitely went over my word count, so. 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 and. Yeah. But I think the one funny part to it is that I did ask the publishers at Penguin Random Houses, like, what's the latest we can update some of these times and performances? 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.

[A]

That's exciting, man. Congrats.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

Please come back and talk to me about it when the book comes out.

[C]

I would love to. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And in the meantime, 800 meter showdown between you guys.

[B]

He's going to destroy me.

[A]

He's commit now.

[B]

No, no. Didn't you recently run 220something for the 800?

[A]

Here comes the sandbag.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

No, no, no, no. I can't.

[C]

Well, 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, we do start to see, I think, a couple retired runners move into the media as photographers or videographers. So they end up winning. And the winning time is like 1:54, 1:52. 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 coach me. 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 while trying to pull it in through the front door. And so I had time trialed, I think, two days before that. And I did run 216. So I was looking for a big performance in Tokyo. I ended up just watching the race with a knee brace on. And so, yeah, I guess, like, I'm. I'm in for 800 meter training, but I won't make it easy for Malcolm.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

In a rematch.

[A]

And you have something to prove.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, this was fun, guys. Thanks, man.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

Very fun.

[A]

Rich. I'd love to do. Do more of this kind of thing. I appreciate you guys.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I, I, I guess I don't need to prep for these as long as I have people like you.

[B]

Don't do it. Don't do it.

[C]

Preparation's overrated.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, guys. Thanks.

[B]

Thank you.