Pace Setter : October 2025

Finding Our Stride: On Nicholas Thompson’s The Running Ground

Last summer, on the trails deep in the Finger Lakes, my headlamp sputtered and died as I clawed my way up a muddy incline at the Twisted Branch 100K. The sky was still dark, the trail unforgiving, and I found myself half-blind, grasping for tree roots to steady my climb. By the time I reached the ridge, dawn was beginning to break—and that’s when Nicholas Thompson caught me.

“Boss move,” he joked, having watched me run with no light through the dark woods. I laughed and admitted my headlamp hadn’t heroically been switched off—it had simply quit. And I had been eagerly waiting for the morning sun. Over the ensuing miles, we shared silence, footfalls, and, eventually, stories. I learned that Thompson wasn’t just a fellow runner but the CEO of The Atlantic. I also learned after the race that the life he sketched in fragments on that trail—the cancer diagnosis, the comeback, the love of a sport that can simultaneously break and build you—was the very life he would commit to the page in his extraordinary new memoir, The Running Ground (Penguin Random House, October 2025).

Reading Thompson’s book, a year later, felt eerily like reliving our shared miles. He writes of running as a form of renewal, as a discipline forged in youth and redefined with age, as a bridge between father and son, and as a map for navigating the hardest terrain of life. In one passage, early in the book, he recalls his first breakthrough as a high schooler: “If I had understood how fast I was running, I wouldn’t have been able to run that fast. To do it, I had to first forget that I couldn’t do it.” That paradox, the way running can reveal strength only when you release doubt, resonates with every athlete who has surprised themselves on the road, track, or trail. Similar lessons and quotes are included in nearly every chapter that follows and make connections between Nick’s life, running, and some larger aspect of life that has likely impacted each of us at some point.

The memoir’s narrative is as much about resilience as it is about training and finding balance between family, career, and running ambitions and goals. Thompson recounts how, after surviving thyroid cancer in 2007, he returned to the New York City Marathon and ran 13 seconds faster than his pre-diagnosis time. Later, grief would propel him and bring him closer to his father through running. After his father died, Nick leaned into running with the same intensity he brought to his professional life—but with one important caveat: he would train smarter, not harder, ensuring that running never took away from his work or from time with his wife and children. Under the guidance of elite coaches, Thompson set lifetime bests in his 40s, culminating in a 2:29 marathon in Chicago (age 44) and age-group records at ultra-distances. He was, in essence, proving wrong the story so many runners tell themselves or silently fear. The one where we all learn that improvement must end with youth.

For me, Thompson’s arc wasn’t just compelling, it was catalytic. I am exactly ten years younger than Nick. After tearing my Achilles tendon in my early thirties, and then entering my mid-30’s,  I, too, had resigned myself to the fact that I would likely be forever running slower times. It was to be a slow athletic decline that must have felt inevitable to so many other aging athletes. Listening to Thompson talk about the rejuvenation he had seen in his performances on the run last summer pushed me to believe again in the possibility of faster miles. This past year, I ran some of my best races in nearly a decade, culminating in a 2:32:15 at the 2025 Boston Marathon at 39. Like Thompson, I discovered that running can surprise you, even—or especially—when you think your best days are behind you. Then in August, after reaching out to congratulate Nick on his strong performance at this year’s Twisted Branch and to thank him for the inspiration that carried me into the Boston Marathon, I learned about his new book, and once again I relived those same feelings while reading his reflections in The Running Ground.

Thompson’s book has already earned praise from voices as varied and regarded as Kilian Jornet, Ken Burns, and Anna Wintour. And, for good reason. It’s more than a memoir about running, it’s a meditation on endurance, family, and the discipline required to keep moving when life denies what you ask for and instead confronts you with challenges that seem to demand retreat. He writes with candor about his father’s brilliance and flaws, about unraveling and rebuilding, about what it means to “seek the storm” rather than run from it.

The Running Ground is, first and foremost, a runner’s book, but it is also more than that. It’s a human book. It will speak to anyone who has found themselves at the edge of exhaustion, whether in miles or life, and then chosen to press on. For runners, it’s an essential reading; equal parts fuel, reflection, and reminder of why we lace up in the first place.

A little past the 50K mark last summer, Nick remarked that this was the farthest he had ever run, yet we still had more than 30 miles ahead. Around that time, fueling issues slowed me down, and I gradually lost pace with him. Still, the impression of those shared miles lingered, and I was grateful we reconnected after the race. When I thanked Thompson, it was for his company on a long, grueling stretch of trail, and for the motivation he gave me to keep pushing forward in my own efforts to defy age for a little longer. Now, after reading his memoir, my gratitude runs deeper. His story is a testament to the simple truth that the ground beneath us—mile after mile—can be the place we lose ourselves, and the place we also find ourselves again.

The Running Ground is written with the wit and cadence you would expect from someone with Nick Thompson’s academic and professional pedigree. But what makes it remarkable is not the polish, it’s the heart. Thompson shows, again and again, how running can break you down and then build you back stronger, how it can serve as a constant companion that teaches discipline and reveals heights you never imagined possible. Running, in his telling, is not just a hobby but a means of connection: to friends, to a father, to your children, and perhaps most importantly to oneself. Each chapter offers a lesson drawn from miles on the road and in life, paired with memorable lines, like the one I shared earlier, that will linger with readers long after they’ve turned the final page.

Final Review - Highly recommended.