Transcription
Most of the time I'm like, really fixated on how fast am I going, how hard am I breathing, how do I feel, what is my heart rate, right? And before every race, I make a spreadsheet and it's like, you know, from miles 1 through 5, I want my heart rate to be between 125 and 130. And I want to be running between 5:57 and 6:02, right? Something like that. And if I'm going faster than 5:57, I should slow. If my heart rate is above 130, I should slow, right? And so you're kind of like building in, you don't know exactly how it's going to go, but you've like, I set these domains and like for a 50-mile race, I'll do it for all 50 miles. But there are points where you have to let that go because you go crazy.
And so like in the New York Marathon, I had made a little spreadsheet, but I had this respiratory thing I didn't know. And so by about mile, I was going up the Queensboro Bridge, like mile 15. I was like, you know what? I'm not anywhere near this, right? Like I'm cooked. And so then I was like, just release it. And I click a button on my watch. So I can no longer see my heart rate. I can no longer see my pace. It just tells me the time of day. And then I start to try to think that I'm like above myself. I'm trying to like let myself release myself, like spiritually, mentally, and I'm just looking down on Nick running, right? And so I'm sort of trying to like dissociate as opposed to associate. And sometimes what I'll do is I'll then I'll like imagine that I'm a child in the woods, right? Okay, now I'm running through, I'm now running to Sergeant Mountain, right, in Acadia National Park, right? I'm not running up First Avenue, right? And that's a way to kind of release the stress because you can get, you can, you can boil over if you're like, "My god, I still have 11 miles to go. I just feel terrible." Or like in an ultra, 40 miles, oh, and I feel horrible. So, you know, there's a way of releasing yourself that's really important, too.
>> Yeah. Because it's like while you're pushing yourself to this, you know, level of excellence, it's also like, oh, you're running the New York City Marathon, you know, looking around, it's like one of the most fun marathons to run in the world, right? So, how do you balance sometimes that performance that you're pushing yourself to do, which is running a 2:30 marathon, with also enjoying a race like the New York City Marathon?
>> Well, that one's easy. The unfortunate answer is I just don't. I don't deal with the crowds. I don't focus on that. You absorb it. You take the, you take the love, you take the cheer, and you use it to push you forward. But my focus is on forward motion, right? And like, you know, I always feel, you know, again, my last marathon was a disaster, but most of the marathons have been quite good in the last 10 years. And, you know, if I'm in a pack of five people and we're running and one person is like high-fiving people on the side, that person's going to finish 10 minutes behind me, right? It's just the way it works. And so, when I'm running, you hear and you see, but you don't think about that. You're like, you're actually trying to block it in a way out. You're trying to just focus on your breath, your form, your forward motion because if you, you have every thought that is not about moving forward is eventually like energy that you're going to wish you had at the end. And so I'm very clear about what I'm doing.
>> So what are the thoughts going on in your mind when you're running a race?
>> So not much. You know, it's actually not. You, it's funny, like sometimes when I was writing the book, I would go for a run and I'd like bring my phone or I'd even bring a notepad and I would write, write down everything like, okay, just thought for the last like three minutes about my dad. I was worried about this sort of this complicated thing at work and I was worried about the subscription funnel and I was interested, you know, I was interested in how like what your shadow looks like as you pass a street light as the sun comes up, right? Like whatever I'm writing about. Um, when I'm in a race, I'm really not thinking very much. I'm just like, I'm thinking about my mantra. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. I'm thinking about pace, heart rate, but I'm not observing, processing. Like if you were to like create a movie of whatever, if you were to, you were to take the movie that runs in my mind on like a run in the woods, it would be pretty interesting, right? You take the movie that runs in my mind in a race workout, pretty dull. I mean, I do, there are some things that are interesting, right? I am trying to like, I am doing all the things to try to make myself more efficient, right? So, I'm trying to like identify what is the flattest part of the road, right? Because if you're running on an angled part of the road, you're putting more stress on one leg than the other, right? I'm trying to identify where the shade is, right? Particularly if it's a day where the temperature is above like 50. I'm trying to identify how to get in an air pocket where you have somebody in front of you and somebody behind you, right? Because they push air into you and they block air from coming into you, right? I'm trying to identify of the people near me who is actually likely to run an even pace. Like if I see an elite woman, she's probably going to run an even pace. If I see like a guy who's like, like probably not, right? And so you want to stick with people who you know are going to be like metronomes and you know, you're thinking about where your water station is. So there are like kind of boring running thoughts like what is the tangent that's so important, like what is the most efficient line I can run because you don't run efficient lines, you end up running 26.5, right, or 26.7. Um, and so I'm thinking about all of that stuff, but that's all in like to the service of how fast can I run this marathon.
So interesting. I never even thought about some of those strategies, but it's so true. It's like when they say when you're running in Central Park and you kind of are constantly going with the direction of the park, one of your bodies, one, one side of your body to the left, I guess, does become stronger than the right because Central Park is on a little bit of an angle.
>> I mean, think about a track, like you run the same way around the track, right? You know, you know, you've got your left shoulder to the curve.
>> Like you go to a track, nobody's there, you should run the other direction and try to balance yourself out. I alternate directions in Prospect Park when I run, like one way clockwise, counterclockwise.