Episode 24: Alex Hutchinson on Achieving Maximum Performance

The Power of Bold

Adam Pascarella discusses endurance with Alex Hutchinson, a journalist for The New Yorker and Runner's World and author of Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. The interview begins with Alex describing his initial interest in running (01:42 - 04:18) and how running allowed him to learn several important things about himself (04:19 - 06:17). Alex then contextualizes the suffering that we experience while running (06:18 - 13:00) and how belief and motivational self-talk can help us push past our perceived limits, both in athletics and beyond athletics (13:01 - 22:56). The discussion then turns to Nike's Breaking2 effort to help elite athletes run a marathon in under two hours (22:57 - 31:40) and how runners will ultimately be able to break the two-hour marathon mark (31:41 - 36:48). The interview concludes with Alex explaining how we can expand our personal limits (36:49 - 43:44) and how he was able to get Malcolm Gladwell to write the foreword for his book (43:45 - 46:29). For show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit www.thepowerofbold.com.