CEO Nicholas Thompson on how running helped him find his footing

One of the first things you realize about Nick Thompson is how busy he is as CEO of The Atlantic; as a speaker; and on top of that, like a family man. But he is also a world-class distance runner.

He came running into the office the day we spoke. “Of course I did,” he said.

“Why do you like it?” I asked.

“Every time I run, I open my mind, I connect with nature,” he said. “I have the opportunity to think. I like my body to be in motion. It's a break from the rest of life. This is what I've always loved.”

And if you can imagine, Thompson has gotten faster as he's aged, shaving 14 minutes off his best marathon time at age 44—and just this year he posted the fastest 50-mile time in the world for his age group.

If you're wondering how he does it and why, he explains in “Running area” is part memoir, part appeal to the runner in all of us.

“Anyone can run,” he said. “Go to Prospect Park, right, and see the incredible, beautiful diversity. Short people, tall people, very thin people, wide people. Everyone can run. Humans are made to run.”

Thompson says he started running because his father was a runner. “There was always energy and chaos and life around him,” he said. “He never slowed down, he never stopped.”

But in a life filled with professional success—teaching and working in both the Ford and Reagan administrations—Scott Thompson also experienced personal turmoil.

Thompson writes that one of his father's refrains was to tell him that his life would fall apart when he turned 40. “He told me that all the time,” he said. “You know, his father, at the age of 40 his life became much harder and sort of fell apart. And then my father felt that at the age of 40 his life had kind of fallen apart.”

Scott left his family when Nick was still a child and then struggled with almost everything. “He was an alcoholic and a sex addict,” Thompson said. “But he was not a hard drinker, a heavy drinker. He simply drank too much. And then later in life, after he came out of the closet—in his 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s—he had a terrible sex addiction problem.”

For Nick, running became both a way to be like his father and at the same time reject the chaos that followed. “In a way, running is a way of mourning him after his death,” he said. “I am also very aware that he could not control his emotions. He couldn't control what he did during the day. I felt one way to prevent this from happening to me was to run, and that running gave me discipline for the rest of my life.”

So Thompson ran. He ran track in high school and briefly attended college at Stanford. And after a break, he got sick again in his mid-20s, and then he got the news: “I just ran my first really good marathon and I felt on top of the world. And two weeks passed, next week I go to the doctor and he’s like, “I feel something.”

It turned out that it was thyroid cancer. “I was diagnosed when I was 30 and it was just a shock,” he said.

As shocking as it was, it was treatable and gave Thompson new purpose. He said: “One of the reasons I continued running marathons into my 30s and 40s was because I wanted to feel like the person I was before I got sick.”

As he got faster, his career took off too. He joined Condé Nast, where he eventually became the magazine's editor. newyorker.com and editor-in-chief of the magazine Wired. Longtime Sunday Morning viewers may remember that he even appeared on the show in stories on QAnon, 2020 electionsAnd Wikipedia.

I asked, “Do you think you would be where you are professionally if you weren’t running?”

“Definitely not,” he replied. “I think running has become a great professional tool. For me, it's a way to add discipline to my days, to give me time where my mind can just wander, where I can think things through.”

But for Thompson, now 50, what really came as a surprise was what happened next. He's faster today than he was at 35. “I like to think of it as the aging process, like a moving sidewalk, you know, pushing you back, right? Every year I get a little weaker. But you can do things to move forward faster than the moving sidewalk moves backward. You can figure out how to train smarter.

That doesn't mean it's easy.

I asked, “If you're trying to encourage people to run, why do you occasionally post pictures of you looking in absolute agony? Like crossing the finish line? I mean terrible photos. Some of the worst photos anyone has ever voluntarily released to the public!”

“So this race was really tough,” he said. “It was a 50-mile race on Lake Waramooge, and I wanted to set an American record for my age group. And I ran 45, 46 miles at speed. And then in the last few miles I knew I would be close, so I pushed as hard as I could. I just… it hurt so much everywhere. But I still won the race. I still ran the fastest time in the world this year. It was still a pretty good result.”

Running continues to be a family tradition for the Thompsons. Nick runs with his three sons and coaches his youngest son's soccer and track team weekly. He said: “It's like coming full circle – I learned the sport from my dad when I was about 5 or 6 and now I can pass it on to my kids – James is 11, Zachary is 15, Ellis is 17. It's great. And there are all these other children!”

And as it turned out, life doesn't have fell apart, just as his father warned.

“Looks like you did it!” I said.

“Well, I mean, I keep going because I enjoy it, right?” Thompson laughed. “I keep running because, you know, my life didn't fall apart at 40 because I didn't lose discipline at 40, but I could still fall apart at 50, which I just turned. And that's why I don't want to let it go. The really interesting transition in my life will happen at some point when I can’t do it, and then I’ll have to figure out how to hang on.”

READ REST: “Running Ground” by Nicholas Thompson

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Story produced by Wonbo W. Editor: Jennifer Falk.