A book about running, coming in October

Dear Friends,

A few years ago, I was running across the Brooklyn Bridge, thinking about why my life as a runner had changed so profoundly in my mid-40s. I had been a decent marathoner in my 20s and 30s, but then somehow, at age 44, I ran the Chicago Marathon in 2:29, making me one of the fastest runners my age in the world. The next year I would set an American record in the 50K.

I pulled off to the side of the bridge, sat down on a metal bench, and it came to me: I hadn’t been able to run a fast marathon in the past because I hadn’t wanted to. Or, more precisely, I hadn’t really cared about going that fast because I had wanted something else. I had run a marathon at age 29 and then, right afterwards, found myself mired in a battle with thyroid cancer that made me doubt whether I would ever run again. All through my 30s, the only thing I had cared about, on some deep psychological level, was trying to be the same person I had been before I got sick.

This realization helped me understand that running has mental and emotional reverberations far beyond what I had previously thought. Eventually, I started writing a book: about why we run, about how pain works, about why we sometimes run fast and sometimes run slow. I also started to think more about my father, a profoundly complicated man who introduced me to the sport. He lived an extraordinary life, from a humble background to prominence to squalor. I’ve spent my life both trying to be like him and trying to not be like him.

What emerged was a book about running—what it is, why we do it, how it helps us both escape from and hurtle toward the primary shapers in our lives—in my case, my father. It’s about the deep connections between the habits that help in running and at work. And it’s a story about five other runners I’ve met or competed with along the way. They’ve all struggled with the sport, and they’ve all used it to process the other ways that life makes us struggle.

I didn’t tell many people that I was writing this book, and I never announced it. But now I can. It’s called The Running Ground, and it will be published by Random House on October 28. I hope that you will pre-order a copy and find something in it when it comes out.

Cheers * N

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