Jess McClain just got 2nd at the NYC Marathon. In 2020, she walked away from professional running when it became “all about making the podiums and teams at all costs.” Now, she becomes the first American to make the podium since 2018.
Sometimes you have to let go to get the most out of yourself.
This is my NYC marathon edition, but it’s about more than running. The lessons we can take from those who tackle one of sport’s great challenges, transcend that of putting two feet in front of the other for a really long time. This is about life.
McClain was a phenom. She was an Arizona high school star. She won over a dozen state championships and was one of the rare individuals to qualify for the Footlocker national cross-country championships four times. She followed that up with a great career at Stanford, becoming a 7-time All-American. And as a result, she got to achieve every runner’s dream, getting a pro contract with Brooks.
But then the dream ended. She was chasing making teams, and the joy started to dissipate. “There was a point earlier in my career where it was all about making the podiums and teams at all costs. But I realized that was not the best approach...It’s a fun-sucker when it’s all about pace and you’re focusing on splits every 200 meters.”
So after being a star, who got the “dream” of a pro contract, she stepped away. She didn’t race for essentially two years from 2020 to 2022. And when she came back, she started at low key races, with a full time job at a non-profit, and a goal to stay busy in life instead of letting running take over.
“I’ve lived the life of having running be my full-time job day in and day out. And personally, I just can’t operate in the sport in a healthy way with that approach. I just need something else to focus on.”
The job gave her a safety net: “I knew at the end of the day I could blow up, but I would still have my job and my family.”
She came back on her own terms and paved her own way to participating in the sport she loved and wrote her own definition of success. One with more perspective than we’re sold online, “I realized, ‘Ok, on this giant planet, running is a very, very small part of it...My friends and family love me because I’m Jess. And not because I’m an elite runner…As silly as it sounds, my personal mission with running is just to keep it fun—to control what I can control and enjoy getting to the starting line. And I’m having a total blast.”
This weekend, she went toe to toe with the best marathoners on the planet, battled all the way to the finish. At the line, she caught Hellen Obiri, a multiple time Olympic medalist, world champion, and Boston and NYC marathon winner.
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Too often, we paint the picture that there’s only one way to the top. You’ve got to be obsessed, all-in, serious, no fun, win at all costs. We’re sold a very narrow caricature of what it means to be the best. And it’s just simply not true.
There are multiple ways to the top. Sure, for a select few, burning the boats and going all-in works. But for many, it suffocates them, draining them of the very ingredients that fueled their rise in the first place. Yes, we always need to work hard and be dedicated, but we can find ways to do it without losing the fun that fuels the pursuit.
It reminds me of the revelation that the late Patrick Stewart had about fear and joy. After seeing the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation goofing off, Stewart called a meeting and dressed them down for not being serious enough. He told one cast mate, “We’re not here to have fun.” When they laughed him off, he stormed out.
But what he came to realize is that he was using the ideas of a ‘serious’ Shakespearean actor as a kind of mask for anxiety. It was a protective mechanism. It took him much of the first season, but he eventually realized that fun and dedication to the craft can and should co-exist. As he later wrote, “Have fun. It is possible to do great work and have fun. I spent too many years being an uptight arsehole.”
There’s a paradox when it comes to performance. You have to care deeply, but that care can become the thing that gets in the way. It starts to suffocate you, to take away the joy that made you fall in love with the pursuit in the first place.
The best performers learn how to care deeply, but to hold it loose enough to keep the joy. To make it where it doesn’t feel like do or die, but instead that they are free to explore their pursuit.
Before the race, McClain said, “We need an American on the podium, so if it’s not me, it’s going to be somebody else.” It ended up being her. But that quote tells us a lot about McClain and how she sees the sport. It’s not win at all costs, it’s not me versus the world. It’s about lifting each other up.
T.S. Eliot once said, “teach us to care and not to care.”
He might as well have been talking about racing.
Jess McClain just showed us that super power. She’s a both/and competitor, instead of the single-speed one that looks good on Instagram but is fragile in the real world.
Care deeply, but don’t let it steal your joy. We are at our best when we are doing what we love, together, with others by our side, and when it’s an expression of who we are. Not a verdict on who we are.
A New Kind of Marathoner
The Swedish runner Andreas Almgren won the men’s side of the NYC marathon in his debut. A remarkable performance, but one made even crazier by his backstory. Almgren started as an 800 meter runner. He was 3rd at the World Junior championships in the two lap event back in 2014. He even ran the senior world championships in the event in 2015. Then, he stagnated. Lots of stress fractures from 2016 to 2019 prevented him from training and competing.
He eventually switched his approach, adopting a more controlled threshold model, and made his return to the track in the longer events, moving up to the 5k and 10k during the Covid years. He eventually became the bronze medalist in the 10,000 at the 2025 world championships. And now he’s a marathon champion. This September, he quipped, “Ten years ago, we joked that maybe one day I would run a 5km race.”
Until recently in the sport, such a drastic move, from an event lasting less than 2 minutes to one lasting 2 hours was unthinkable. Their physiology was too different, went the argument. It made those who came close to such range, such as Rod Dixon who was a world class miler who became a world class marathoner, a rare breed. But increasingly we’re seeing the speedsters take on the marathon with success.
Why?
I had a brief text exchange with physiologist and mentor Mike Joyner, and we agreed on a few things. First, a former marathon world record holder predicted this. Buddy Edelen, an American who held the world record in the 1960s, is quoted as saying wait until a runner has the “God-given talent to run a 4-minute mile,” and the tenacity to develop the endurance for the marathon. He predicted a much faster world record.
For much of running history, the marathon held firm against that prediction. The marathon exploited the weak points of the middle-distance runners. They didn’t quite have as good running economy, fuel efficiency, or durability to withstand the pounding. They might be economical early in the race, but their bodies and form tended to breakdown as their more elastic strides gave way to more of a shuffle.
But a slew of recent innovations has attacked those very weak points.
First, we have the super shoes which give a boost in not only economy, but also potentially economy under fatigue. Those former middle distance runners get to hold on to their poppy stride for much longer. So their running economy doesn’t fall off a cliff like it used to.
Second, fueling is no longer as big of a limiting factor. We now push carb intake to 80, 100, maybe even 120g an hour with recent nutrition advances. That means that becoming incredibly fuel efficient isn’t quite as big of a deal anymore, as you can supplement more of the carbs you’ll need to handle the pace.
Third, high end aerobic ability. The rise in threshold style training, of which Almgren has been a huge proponent, allows you to get more bang for your buck out of the training volume you are putting in. It means we can boost that threshold or high end aerobic ability much quicker than we used to with lots of easy or even steady miles.
The marathon has changed. Edelen’s prediction was spot on, it just needed a few innovations to help those speedsters with the ‘tenacity’ to dare to take on the distance.
Redefining Aging
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out two other remarkable performances. Edna Kiplagat got 4th at the age of 46. Read that again. Missed the podium of one of the world’s best marathons at 46. Roberta Groner got her Olympic Trials qualifier at the age of 48. I had the pleasure of coaching Roberta for a number of years previously, and she’s remarkable. And still getting it done.
Aging is inevitable. But what these ladies are showing is that with lots of care and hard work, the decline does not have to be steep. You can still do insane things well past what we used to see as your athletic peak.
The Point
The beauty of an event like a marathon is that there’s no hiding away, there’s no faking it, there’s no putting a filter on it. Regardless of how fast you are, you’ve got to take the leap into the unknown and navigate all of the discomfort and doubts to see what’s on the other side.
That realness is why I believe it resonates now, more than ever. We are desperate to feel and do something real. Whether you finished in 2 hours or 5, whether you met your goal or had to drop out, the beauty of such challenges is that they make us feel alive. They force us to reckon with the messy stuff in taking on a challenge. And even if we fall short, we look back and realize that the journey to get to that point shaped us far beyond whatever the result was.
That’s the point. So go take on your own marathon, be it big or small. Choose to do something real.
-Steve Magness
Watch: A Breakdown of the NYC Marathon and what it teaches us about pursuing excellence, while having fun doing it:
To watch this on YouTube, go here.
Thanks for reading. My goal is to make this the best place on the planet for performance and chasing excellence. I’ll cover the mental and physical side, as well as in sport, business, and life.
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Steve-you don't mention Sifan Hassan, the most versatile runner and successful runner across distances from the mile to marathon in the past two decades