Nicholas Thompson had a bad fall. Not the kind that leaves you scraped up on the pavement, but the kind that leaves you questioning whether you’ve still got it.
The CEO of The Atlantic — and one of America’s fastest masters runners — closed out 2025 with a string of races he’d rather forget, capped by a New York City Marathon he described simply as “grim.” It was his first marathon over three hours in 20 years. He felt old.
Then his middle son, who goes by “little Z,” told him exactly what to do about it. “You need to race hard again soon and ‘bury that garbage.'”
On Saturday, at the Mad City 50k in Madison, Wisconsin, Thompson did exactly that.
A Record on a Quiet Loop Around a Lake
The Mad City 50k is five 10-kilometer loops around Lake Wingra in Vilas Park — a USATF-certified road race that has hosted national championships for over a decade, staffed entirely by volunteers. It’s not a flashy race. It’s a hard one.
Thompson ran all 31 miles at a 6:05-per-mile pace, finishing in 3 hours and 10 minutes — a new American record for men 50 and over, a mark previously held by what Thompson called “a legend of the sport.” The weather was cold and calm. He said it was just how he likes it.
Mile 27
Thompson, 50, has a standard running mantra for when races get hard: “right foot, left foot, right foot.” Three words, three steps, on repeat — a way to stay focused and keep moving forward.
But at mile 27, with his calf cramping and the record within reach, he reached for something else entirely.
“That was the phrase that came to me the last few miles,” he wrote on Instagram. “I repeated it over and over and was able to accelerate.”
He crossed the finish in a sprint.
“Little Z texted me: ‘Congratssss!!!!!'”
The Bigger Picture
Saturday wasn’t Thompson’s first time in the record books. He ran 2:29:13 at the 2019 Chicago Marathon at age 44 — a time that put him among the fastest men in his age group in the world. In 2021, he set the American 50k record for men 45-49 with a time of 3:04:36. He also published a memoir last year, The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports, about how running shaped his relationship with his late father. It became a national bestseller.
None of that stopped him from having a rough patch. The NYC Marathon humbled him in a way he hadn’t felt in years, and by his own account, he let it get to him.
Sometimes it takes a kid telling you to get back out there.
