In Praise of Tangents
Beau Miles’ odd marathon, trail running tastemakers, how to make running smaller, and more.
Hey there,
Every month or so I do a round up of stories that catch my eye and imagination. On tap today: a peculiar form of marathon, debate about taste and running, how an American record-holder uses AI, and more. Let’s go!
1) Running a different kind of marathon (YouTube)
A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon this 6-year-old video from Australian YouTuber Beau Miles. Miles, a crafty outdoorsman, documents a marathon broken up into 26 mile-long laps of the rural block near his barn. At least one lap every hour. For 24 hours.
In between laps, Miles fills his time doing as much as possible. He makes things, completes odd jobs, fixes stuff. During his day-long marathon, he carves a paddle, picks up trash, plays Scrabble, plants a bunch of trees, builds a table, makes soup, mows the lawn, shaves, and paints a fence among many other things.
While it’s a wacky video designed for virality, you can tease out deeper perspective. Miles refers to his little jobs between miles as “tangents.” And watching his wide-roving intentionality prompted me to consider how much of life is about balancing Purpose, with a capital P, with many smaller, but also important endeavors.
Maybe part of leading a meaningful life is balancing “big” obligations with many hobbies, friendships, tasks, and curiosities. Watch now
2) Tastemakers in trail running (MoB)
surveyed his Instagram followers as to who were “tastemakers in trail running.” He defined this as the trendsetters shaping popular culture and trends, defining what’s cool, valuable, or worthy of attention. The results are worth a look.
It’s an interesting question. But does making taste mean that newly created taste is good? What, exactly, might good taste be for trail running? Is it just a question of fashion and style?
I tried to juxtapose Trappe’s question with this piece from
on how to have good taste. Oliver argues that taste is essentially a question of knowledge. The broader and deeper our understanding about a type of art or form of aesthetic activity, the better we’re able to understand what we are reading, watching, or experiencing:“The better we know a piece of art, the more we can see it for it is, and not have our judgement clouded by our pre-existing feelings. The more we have read, the better we know where a new book fits. The more ignorant we are, the more likely it is that we will be dazzled by mediocrity. Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul, as Alexander Pope said.1 Good taste is accumulated through wide knowledge.”
What then is taste for trail running?
Trappe’s definition considers taste as helping drive eyeballs and thus purchases in one direction or another. It’s very transactional. But those surveyed seem to value something more essential and authentic to sport.
That may be why so many names on Trappe’s list are people who’ve been involved with trail running for a long time—like Anton Krupicka, Rickey Gates, and Sally McRae. (I might add folks from earlier generations like Buzz Burrell and Hal Koerner too!).
Who would you add to the list of trail running tastemakers?
3) Avoiding cognitive offloading (Beyond the Prompt)
These days I spend a lot of time with AI models at The Day Job. From my view, it’s pretty clear generative AI will change creative and knowledge work over the next few years. So I appreciated
’s pragmatic perspective on the podcast Beyond the Prompt with , the director of Stanford’s d.school, and , founder of Barkbox.Thompson is not only CEO of The Atlantic, he’s also the American 45+ age-group record holder in the 50K (3:04:36). Here were tidbits I took away from from their thoughtful convo:
Be cautious about cognitive offloading onto AI, i.e. using AI to avoid thinking through problems and challenges in your work:
“The biggest risk is that we get sucked into these … and that cognitive offloading becomes this real phenomenon and we become kind of helpless without these tools.”
Strengthening analog skills makes your AI use stronger
“The organic self has a real effect on how well they can use AI. So if you can bench 225, when you attach an AI, you bench a thousand, If you can bench 150, when you attach an AI, you can bench 800, right? There's no point I've seen [where] I imagine that strengthening our unwired facilities won't matter.”
Training a GPT on your Strava data probably works best if you’re doing predictable training
Don’t use AI for writing; use it for strategy related to marketing, business, and growth
“I can say, I don't like the storm and I can go stand out there naked and I can yell at it, right? Or, I can put on a raincoat, I can get an umbrella and I can try to figure out the path of the storm and how best to protect what I do, right?”
—Nicholas Thompson
4) Cultivating a student mindset (Creative. Inspired. Happy.)
There are many great nuggets in this conversation with
, author of the popular science newsletter :
What stood out to me in Snowden’s chat with
is his effusive curiosity. His super power is turning his lack of knowledge on a subject into accessible questions and stories that almost anyone can dig into. (Take for example, this riveting story about ballooning pioneers.)Snowden does this by adopting a student mindset:
“It helps with imposter syndrome because, first of all, you don’t take yourself too seriously, and, secondly, you present yourself as somebody who’s just learning in public. Then those two things really help because they take the pressure off. All of a sudden it’s like, okay, well, I can get things wrong and I can look an idiot publicly. And it’s definitely not the end of the world.”
I love this perspective of blending humility with curiosity. Snowden’s conversation reminded me of an older Atlantic piece about Joe Rogan. I’m not a Rogan fan, but his podcast’s success rests on his wide-ranging curiosity and autodidactism.
Both Rogan and Snowden are reminders that successful media doesn’t pretend to knowledge. It mainly asks good questions. Watch now
5) When the competitive days end (iRunFar)
’s reflection on how running is becoming smaller in her life hit a chord, and not just because I’ve been dealing with an injury. She argues her changing mindset gives focus to new aspects of the sport, like racing shorter distances or the ability to become a fan of other competitors.Making running smaller also affords new freedom, which she frames in terms of “freedom to” and “freedom from”—sometimes called positive and negative conceptions of liberty. While she lacks the ability to compete internationally with sponsored support, she’s also now free from restrictive race calendars, social media requirements, and brand loyalty.
If you’re going through the experience of moving away from an activity that’s central in your life, Sabrina provides great perspective. Read here
One last thing.
I was honored to chat with
of the great Half Marathoner newsletter last week. It was fun to share about my recent struggles with injury, life as a new parent, and my distance running story. Read it hereTweets of the week
That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading.
Thanks, Sam!
Right back at you, Sam! The honor was all mine, my friend 🙌