It’s time for the NYC Marathon.

It’s that time of year. It’s the NYC Marathon – the greatest event in the marathon runner’s calendar. Yes, nobody can get a bib, and there are too many events, but the pizza is delicious and plentiful, and the people in attendance on both sides of the barrier are absolutely scrumptious.

I’ll be staying at the rabbit Clubhouse at the Walker Hotel in Tribeca. It’s the perfect home base from which to see the city. Do drop me a line if you want to meet me there for a coffee or a bite.

On Friday afternoon, I’ll be leading a creative session at the Clubhouse. Creativity is one of two cultural strands that I’m pulling on this week. I’m also hosting a panel with four brilliant NYC-based creatives at the Rec Room on Thursday afternoon, you see.

The other half of what I’m doing concerns my diaspora. First, on Friday evening, I’ll be hosting a celebratory conversation around the South Asian running community in New York, and on Saturday morning, I am honored to lead the inaugural Bengalis of New York 5K run.

Thu 29 Oct

• 5:00pm – Running Creatives @ Rec Room, 301 Grand St [SIGN UP]

Fri 30 Oct

• 7:00am – Crossing Cultures @ White Noise Coffee, 829 11th Avenue

• 4:00pm – Creative Session @ rabbit Clubhouse, 77 Walker St [SIGN UP]

• 6:30pm – South Asians in NYC @ Perfect Stride, 32 Union Sq [SIGN UP]

Sat 31 Oct

• 9:45am – Bengalis of New York 5K @ Hello Bangladesh, Astoria [SIGN UP]

Go check out Marathon-Weekend.com for all the info in one place. I met the founder Michel in Boston, and he’s worked really hard to make this the best platform for runners looking for what to do and when.

Running Sucks on Marathon Weekend

I’ll be in a couple hundred other places over the week. Come find me, and I may be able to bestow some Running Sucks merch onto your good person.

Also get in touch if you want to jump the line with me at MoMA (half the days are taken already, so chop chop) or watch the Arsenal match with me on Sunday. More info on my IG, if that’s your vibe.

Last week on Running Sucks

You really loved last week’s piece on Pit Lane Shakeout. I got so many more messages and texts than normal about it. Maybe it’s the F1 effect. Maybe it’s how human the story is.

Go read it if you haven’t yet, and don’t forget to click the heart at the bottom. It really helps other people find my work. (That’s the algorithm that everyone talks about.)

Another place to chat MORE?

There’s a new chat function that I’m keen to try out. Very early on in the Running Sucks journey, I started a Discord channel. It’s still there, with probably around 30 people still in it, but now Substack has introduced more complex features – similar to Discord’s channels – in the Chat function.

I think this is a pretty cool community. Tuned in, thoughtful, open to sharing with each other. I have often been led to new things via conversations that I’ve had with some of you. Maybe it’s time to try this again.

Please leave a comment about what Chat channels you would want, and I’ll make them!

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How to run a sub-3 hour marathon by Dan Dalton

I had the pleasure of meeting earlier this year when I popped up to Leeds from London en route to my university reunion weekend, but I picked up on his work a year earlier. I love writing, and I do a lot of it, but my real superpower is being able to spot a more talented writer a mile off. Dan is certainly that.

Sadly, he’s been somewhat sporadic with his writing on this year (for reasons you’ll discover when you read this piece), but it was worth the wait. Take a dive into his older work as well. It’s good stuff.

tangents.

How to run a sub-3 hour marathon

Here’s how it will go: For starters you’ll lose your job…

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5 days ago · 41 likes · 13 comments · Dan Dalton

Conversations about running culture

A new ultra-glossy podcast on run culture just launched. It’s called Running Mouths and it’s from Gordon Clark, who I profiled back in 2023.

Gordon and I sat down and discussed the LA running scene for almost 3hrs back then, so this episode being 2hrs long isn’t a surprise. There are three guests, though, so it’s more like three concurrent 40-minute episodes of deep, esoteric conversation around modern running.

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Andy is a Formula 1 mechanic, you see. He’s been “in some sort of pit lane” since he was 16, when he attended the National College of Motorsport and duly got an apprenticeship after three months.

A generally fit and active guy, he’s only been running for a couple of years, but he got the bug quickly. With 24 Grand Prix races in a season, where he’s away from home for over a week at a time tinkering with gearboxes, it was impossible for him to keep his parkrun record intact.

While he was with the team around the world, the friends that Andy started going to Banbury parkrun with started a healthy bet to see who could get the fastest parkrun time. A competitive bunch. Andy was feeling left out, especially because he thought he was faster, but couldn’t prove it. So he started training. From 5Ks to 10Ks to running the Cleveland half marathon in-between the Miami and Montreal marathons in May.

Happier taking his running shoes with him rather than searching for a decent gym, Andy soon noticed other members of the F1 paddock crew – the people in the pit lanes poring over data or frantically changing tires in seconds during those races chronicled on Drive to Survive – were running. At the same time, upon hitting 30 years of age, Andy realized that the way he interacted with a new city was more run club than nightclub.

I’ve written plenty of times about how running through a new city is the best way of getting to know it, and that’s what Andy did. Getting the runners among the pit lane crew together for a social run around the city was the plan for race six: the Canadian Grand Prix.

The result is Pit Lane Shakeout, a traveling race-week social run club that connects Formula 1 crew with the cities and communities that they find themselves in.

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The rabbit x Running Sucks event was so good in Chamonix that we’re officially running it back in New York City.

The rabbit Clubhouse was one of the most talked about locations at the UTMB in August. The calm was part of it but the community-oriented programming was key. I’m really pleased to be part of rabbit’s schedule again in Tribeca next week.

Sign up for snacks and deep discussion about creativity and running.

rabbit x Running Sucks in NYC

Directly after the rabbit events, I’ll be zooming up to Union Square for a special event celebrating the South Asian community. Please come! There will be samosas, beer, and good conversation that you likely haven’t had before.

South Asians in NYC

Expect the full rundown of places to find me in NYC in next Monday’s newsletter. Yes, there’s more.

San Francisco! Last week!

I was in SF last week.

First I was invited to chat with Vivek Gowri in front of some very cool people at SF Run Co. It’s a historic store in Mill Valley, CA — home to some of the best trail running in the USA. Signed copies of This is Running are available at SFRC!

Just before heading back to LA, I joined Katie Douglas of Running Wylder as she organized a run along Sunset Dunes to help stop the two miles of pedestrianized, beach-adjacent road from being turned back into something for cars.

Katie’s was the first running store to carry my book, and she’s still doing that.

Here are a couple of pics. Get the full gallery from my excursion over on IG.

Get your copy of This is Running (my book)

USA - Bookshop.org US | Amazon US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Bookshop.org UK | Amazon UK | Waterstones
Review This is Running - Goodreads

Think Different

Long-time readers of this newsletter know that I prefer the underdog story to that of the big guns. Sure, I interviewed Kilian Jornet, but it was the story about Preston Hopkins that resonated with me the most, and with a lot of you.

I get prominent athletes in my inbox all the time. It’s the job of their sponsors to try and get some coverage for the brand using the athletes they pay. Sometimes the pitches are from a thoughtful, engaged publicist, but they’re usually so far off the mark. I’ll take a look and see if I can see a story.

That was the case for Ben Dhiman earlier this year, of course. His watch sponsor Amazfit facilitated my 15 minutes of video time, but we I had a different angle on his historic UTMB win to all by Ultra Running Magazine. Respect to them.

When the email about Ryan Montgomery landed in my inbox with the subject, “The Fastest American Runner in Western States History,” it got my attention enough to think about what else interested me about Ultra Ryan.

However, as runners, we do still care about an elite runner’s human perspective on their performance and progress, so here’s a little extra from my chat with Ryan Montgomery about how his running has progressed over the past decade. (And it’s really cool.)

What have you learned over 10 years of running ultras?

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This is a man who contains powerful, and seemingly disparate multitudes, you see. He’s a corporate strategy consultant, he’s queer, and yes, he’s also the fastest American runner in Western States history.

That last bit happened back in June when he finished 3rd in the men’s division, clocking those 100 miles almost two hours faster than his previous record in 13:53:55, but the other two parts are core to both the idea and to the athletic progress of Ryan Montgomery.

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I will be traveling up to San Francisco Running Company this week for a Friday happy hour conversation with owner If you’re in Mill Valley, please stop by for that.

At the end of October, I’ll be in New York City. I’ll be staying at the rabbit Clubhouse in Tribeca. My event there will be announced very soon, I have no doubt.

But you may have seen…

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1. The University of Portland invited me to talk about launching a running product with a bunch of very tuned-in marketing graduate students.

2. I spoke at the Burbank Book Festival about transforming research into narrative non-fiction.

The vast majority of the events that…

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A whole host of local authors are going to be featured at the Buena Vista Branch Library, so if you are nearby, come on down. I’ll be talking about how I’ve…

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The issue of sustainability and how brands show up for the planet since UTMB, where there was news of a glacial flood in Nepal at the exact same moment of a deluge of big brands branding the Chamonix-Mont-Blanc resort. That included the boisterous, self-appointedly radical Nike ACG helicoptering a pickle juice vending machine up …

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Winning UTMB four times is impressive, but what does Kilian think about diversity in trail? Winning Zegama 11 times is incredible, but how does Kilian reconcile all the travel he has to do? Winning Sierre-Zinal 10 times is quite the achievement, but how does…

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I thought it might’ve been a challenge to talk about running to a room filled with non-runners, but it turned out that half the room wer…

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Growing up in a family of endurance athletes (cross-continental cyclist, triathlete marathoner, national team rower, elite cross-country skier) Alyssa really had no choice in falling in love with the great outdoors. But it wasn’t always running.

She read Dean Karnazes’ book Ultramarathon Man when she was just 10 years old, and thought, ‘I’m going to do that one day.’ It’s not classic reading material for a 5th grader, but there was another surprising aspect to her reading that book at that age.

“I hated running at this point. I wanted to be on a sports field.”

That all changed over the next couple of years as Alyssa was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. A very competitive Nordic skier, she had to think about her relationship with sport as repeated hospitalizations and surgeries impacted her ability to place well. She had to relearn her approach to being outdoors – a place deeply entrenched in her soul.

“Running became the constant throughout all that, and has been the thing that I view as my freedom. For a long time, running was my way of escaping confinement, and to prove that I wasn’t sick.”

“I had to learn how to run with it. I’m really grateful that I’ve gotten to learn that. There have been rocky moments, but I’ve gotten to run through that transformation from a pretty negative place to a much more positive place.”

You don’t get much more positive than finishing on the podium during UTMB week, and that’s what Alyssa did at the end of August when she finished third in the Sur les Traces des Ducs de Savoie AKA TDS, a 95-mile / 150km trip through the Alps.

It’s far from her first achievement, of course.

2020 - 95 consecutive days running a marathon before contracting Covid
2022 - finished third overall at Moab 240
2023 - first female in the Canyons 100-miler
2024 - finished an agonizing 11th in the UTMB 100-miler
2025 - first female to complete the HURT 100 in Hawaii in under 24 hours
2026 - third female at TDS UTMB

It’s an impressive list, but when I met her in Palisades Tahoe, she was getting ready to crew fellow On athlete, Jeff Mogavero. Her role this time was to be in charge of filling pantyhose with ice. It’s a seemingly innocuous job, if not a little absurd, but cooling a trail runner down during the height of summer in the American West is a full-time job performed in short bursts over 14 hours. Jeff finished 7th at UTMB.

Alyssa explains exactly how and why that offering of community is key to what makes trail unique.

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I got some world exclusive quotes from UTMB 2026 winner Ben Dhiman about his Indian heritage. Go and read it if you haven’t yet.

Thanks again to Amazfit for helping to schedule that time with Ben.

Are influencers really that important?

Ask any of the publicists in my inbox: I’m not really susceptible to being sold things. That mea…

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I was dot-watching a couple of friends who were running OCC, but for me, it was really quite singu…

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I spent the last week in Chamonix in the French Alps. I was experiencing the glory of the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc for the first time, and it truly was glorious.

Everything from spotting the white peak of Mont Blanc appearing through an alleyway or across a vista as I turned a corner to the food to seeing the first non-white winner of UTMB since the very first edition on Saturday afternoon.

All week, Ben Dhiman winning the 100-mile event was top of my conversation of what I hoped to happen. A man with heritage from the Indian subcontinent winning the most prestigious race on the trail calendar? Yes. Please.

And then he did it. What a moment it was seeing him cross the finish line at 2:04pm on Saturday. Just like Rachel Entrekin winning Cocodona, however, it doesn’t mean we’ve solved everything. It doesn’t mean we’ve solved anything.

A huge part of that is that I haven’t actually seen Ben discuss his heritage in interviews. He’s widely celebrated as a boy from Cincinnati who moved to France with his wife and got this deep into mountain running partly due to French employment laws leaving him redundant for two years.

Maybe that lack of discussion comes from a lack of interest or knowledge from the interviewers, but it might also come from within. Maybe Ben simply wants to be known as the winner of UTMB. Maybe as an American. Maybe as an Ohioan. Primarily as the man who finished running around Mont Blanc 81 minutes faster than anyone else ever has. 7% faster? Crazy fast.

As a boy from northeast London, I primarily used to fall asleep dreaming of scoring last-minute winners for current Premier League champions Arsenal. Helping my parents’ home nation qualify for the World Cup wasn’t my priority, even though I knew that would be cool.

In the same way, South Asian representation in running wasn’t always a focus for me. I used to just run a lot. Sure, I was the only Bangladeshi at run club 99.9% of the time, but I wasn’t really thinking about it because there were plenty of other immigrant kids. More recently, I’ve been somewhat radicalized by seeing how the running industry sausage is made (and who exactly makes it).

Searching for someone, anyone who looks like me Western States, The Running Event, TrailCon, and, most recently, the Global Majority Meet-Up in Chamonix has kept flipping the same switch for me. And I’ve been party to increasing numbers of conversations to know that I’m not alone in that.

I would love to primarily be known as the Substack guy who wrote a running book, and that people enjoyed the book, and that the book was even good enough to be stocked by the best department store in the world. That stuff doesn’t put people off as much as being the guy relentlessly writing about getting more South Asian representation in the running world.

Personally, I love it when other people are organizing something that I can join in with. For example, there was a Global Majority Meet-Up1 organized by Sabrina Pace-Humphreys who founded the UK charity, Black Trail Runners2. It’s so great that UTMB made space for such a wonderful event.

I wrote about the Black experience in Chamonix back in March 2025, so I knew that this gathering was an excellent opportunity to push the conversation along. However, upon arriving, I found that I really didn’t see myself among the 100 or so attendees. A similar sentiment to Sabrina’s in her film, We Are Here3.

Take a moment to consider how many South Asian-origin athletes represent the British or American Olympic teams. In 2026, I really, really should not be one of the very first South Asian authors of a running book. I want there to be 100 more so it ceases to even be something to mention.

In my book, I outline the inexorable rise of ultramarathoning in China, and there was a huge, visible East Asian contingent in Chamonix for all of UTMB week, so I was surprised to see even fewer people from that section of the Global Majority at the meet-up.

When I pointed out on IG that I felt like a statistical minority even at a Global Majority Meet-Up, I received a few slightly defensive responses reminiscent of when I’ve highlighted the incredibly white demographic stats in trail running. Yes, there may have been another couple of South Asian people at the meetup, but I would maintain my position that 3% rather than 1% is far from a success in representation of South Asian people, who make up 30% of the Global Majority.

I care much more about working together to achieve that success in parity. My dream would be to be actively invited to something like that. Having a sign-up link is a great middle ground of being able to say it was open to everybody, but I believe directly inviting people to a party is the best practice, and the onus is on the most powerful: UTMB.

One method – and maybe they did do this (which makes the situation worse) – if UTMB invited the gazillions of brands in attendance to send someone to the event, it would be a great start. If the brand doesn’t employ anyone from the Global Majority or simply doesn’t care, that says a lot. Word will spread one way or the other.

For me, a large issue is that I don’t really believe that intersectionality exists. And if that makes you bristle: good. I want it to change.

Some believe that a lot of the big names who rise to the top of campaigning for diversity, equity, and inclusion are largely out to make a name (and money) for themselves. I have a slightly kinder view where many really only think about uplifting others who are exactly like themselves.

When I see how women and Black people have climbed the closest, but still haven’t achieved anything approaching true equity despite the years of constant campaigning, I know that my kinfolk are far behind. It’s one of the reasons why I write about those topics so frequently. I see us all as having the same fight, and I don’t want any of us to be behind. Regardless, reciprocation and unity among allies pulling for the same thing – intersectionally or as part of a Global Majority – would be magnificent and helpful, but feels at least a half-step away.

Like I said: this win doesn’t mean that we’ve solved anything, but I’d love to see more progress next year. Maybe Ben Dhiman’s record-breaking effort can be the next catalyst.

Thank you, HOKA

Eternal thanks to Hoka for getting me on that finish line VIP platform to see that historic moment. What a view.

Chamonix was taken over by UTMB and its title sponsor, Hoka. With the influx of 100,000 visitors, I fully understand the Mayor’s promise to make it better for residents. It’s a local race that’s been commercialized and co-opted by the world.

Hoka in particular had their bright blue, yellow, and orange fingerprints on seemingly every part of the city. From a brand strategy perspective (one that I love), it was a masterpiece. Read this from for an excellent rundown. Did I see some of the photos in this article being taken? Yes, I did.

PEOPLE BRANDS AND THINGS

They didn’t just sponsor a race - they took over a town.

We agree - sometimes, you really do have to see it to believe it…

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2 months ago · 12 likes · 1 comment

The common feature of the best brand activations in Chamonix

As I mentioned, Chamonix was 100% Hoka-town last week, but four other brands managed to stick out to me, and they all had one thing in common.

First, there was the rabbit Clubhouse with Halo, with its slap bang centre ville location and carefully-curated programming, it was a dream to host a book event there. Thanks so much to the readers who came down! It was so lovely to meet you.

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Things I’m looking forward to:

• Hoka very kindly showing me the ropes

• Meeting a lot of friends in an unfamiliar place

• Running on the track with Mont Blanc as a backdrop

• Hosting …

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In March 2024, Camille broke a dozen world records1 by running 560 miles over 6 days in California’s Coachella Valley as part of the Lululemon Further spectacle. Later that year, Lululemon dropped her as an athlete2 following a bizarre Wikipedia-editing controversy, and she was later diagnosed with ADHD and autism3.

Now, essentially retired from the sport that gave her so much, Camille Herron is in a state of flux. With multiple lawsuits in progress as she attempts to clear her name, she’s also navigating a new stage of life as a neurodiverse athlete.

The Diagnosis

That diagnosis has gone a long way to completing the jigsaw of Camille Herron’s life. It’s well documented that as a child, she was diagnosed with Central Auditory Processing Disorder and took speech therapy until she was nine years old but autism was never really considered. Why? Because – as with so much in the medical fields – diagnostic criteria was built around men4, and only men. Even now, women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and other disorders before the underlying autism is recognized.

We spoke via video call back in June. It just so happened to be a Tuesday. Taco Tuesday. She’s fueled ultras with tacos, and it’s something that Camille celebrates online with videos of her dancing most weeks. It’s part of her brand but not everyone loves it. She talks to me about being misunderstood, mistreated, bullied “for being different, for being colorful, for being happy, for being successful, for being a woman.” For being herself.

“In neurodivergence, you hear about masking and trying to hide your authentic self, but for the most part I think that I’ve stayed pretty true to my little girl Camille self. Dancing and being crazy and not really caring what people think. I’m 44 and I’m still wearing colorful clothes.”

The journey to her AuDHD diagnosis started at 40 years old, when she realized she needed to take better care of herself. She started going to the gym, of course, but it was working with a dietician who noticed chronic stress markers in her bloodwork that led to a focus on her mental health. The diagnosis was a revelation.

“When you get the diagnosis, it feels like relief and it feels like grief. You’re finally able to explain why you feel like an alien. I just had never felt like I fit into this world. I’ve known that I’m not like everybody else since I was two.”

She talks about identifying with Forrest Gump’s difficulties enough to start running as a young girl; about being both gifted and having disabilities; about being reassured by her parents when she struggled. Despite all this, she was Valedictorian, received academic scholarships and 4.0s, and her work in further education was published multiple times.

Despite all that high achievement, Camille has lived a lifetime of feeling like she’s never fitted in.

The Tall Poppy

The funny thing is that a very recent study has shown that distance runners in particular are three times more likely to show ADHD traits5. I’ve been interested in this particular sub-topic for a while now, and had a passage on neurodiversity in running in the first draft of my book but it wasn’t quite right, so didn’t make the final cut. Many of the new studies over the past 12 months would’ve helped. I’d be interested to see if there are any further increases in incidence as you move into elite distance running, for instance.

Interestingly, higher education also reports a higher incidence of neurodiversity6, so maybe Camille has always been in the best place to fit in. Camille also excelled in her previous career in biochemical research. Her work in bone imaging was published many times, and she used that work to inarguably become one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time.

The accepted wisdom for training to run 100s of miles in one go is that you have to run 100s of miles per week in long runs, but her research said otherwise. She found that short frequent bouts of low intensity running combined with infrequent bouts of high intensity exercise were better for gaming the recovery windows for skeletal stress7, optimizing adaptations to high mileage. It was something that experienced people in the sport vocally opposed. Regardless, she stuck to her guns and has those 12 world records to show for it.

The Curse of Being Terminally Online

Camille talks about protecting her peace over the last couple of years, but she’s also attracted some of that attention whether she likes it or not.

In September 2024, Camille was apparently caught deleting accolades and accomplishments from the Wikipedia pages of Kilian Jornet and Courtney Dauwalter. Unsporting behavior. Her husband Conor Holt later took full blame8, and it probably kinda checks out, but I honestly do not have the wherewithal to adjudicate this kind of petty nonsense. I already spend too much time on god’s internet.

Camille lost her Lululemon partnership in the immediate aftermath of this scandal, which has led to finger-pointing and defamation lawsuits. Here are a few Reddit and LetsRun threads from 2024 if you’ve got too much time on your hands.

• Canadian Running broke the news

• LetsRun thread

• Reddit thread

• LetsRun - Conor Holt’s admission of guilt

Most recently, Camille chimed in when Sage Canaday reported Cam Hanes’ doping when he used illegal, unregulated peptide BPC-157 to accelerate healing in his body enough to win a marathon. She shared Sage’s desire for a clean sport and supported him very openly online.

“I told Sage to report it. It shouldn’t be up to us as athletes to smear a person. It’s about following the rules and it needs to be reported to the authorities to let them decide how to handle it. Sport has to be both, and it has to be safe.”

Camille and I discuss her justice sensitivity9 – another well-documented trait of autistic individuals that isn’t more widely understood. It’s the kind of thinking that prizes the idea of true equity over socially accepted norms that are often less proper. It’s what we want, right?

A Bunch of Cowboys?

For me, it speaks to a need for better governance in ultra. It can often feel like the Wild West, even when there are premium prices to participate. It’s obviously impossible to test every single runner, but if they podium, make sure they ran a clean race. Pretty simple, but Camille says it goes further than that.

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I’ve not written a long-read interview for over two months now. Yes, first I was busy on the road promoting my book (decent excuse), and then I watched every match of the World Cup with my son (excellent excuse), but I had planned to get back to it in August.

My next piece with Camille Herron has been transcribed and has been in…

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1. Chamonix, cheese, creativity

The newest one is a wine and cheese reception in Chamonix with rabbit. I’ll be giving a presentation on the links between running and creativity, and you can get a copy of my book to spill some wine and/or c…

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