McNally Jackson X Tracksmith November Run Club ft. Nicholas Thompson

Lace up your running shoes! NYC-based independent bookstore McNally Jackson and Tracksmith — an independent running brand focused on "the amateur spirit"— have launched a monthly run club for the literary minded!

This month, we will be joined by Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, who will discuss his book The Running Ground, in conversation with Knox Robinson.

For the November run, we will meet at the Tracksmith SoHo Pop-up (262G Mott St., New York, NY 10012). Doors will open at 10am, and we will go out on a 5k run at 10:30am. Afterwards, Nicholas Thompson will present his book, followed by a book signing until noon. There will be coffee and treats available as well.

Nicholas Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic, an American magazine founded in 1857, which earned the top honor for magazines, General Excellence, at the National Magazine Awards in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Before joining The Atlantic, he was the editor in chief of Wired and an editor at The New Yorker. He has long been a competitive runner; in 2021, he set the American record for men 45+ in the 50K race. In 2025, he became the top-ranked runner in the world in his age group for the 50-mile run. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and three sons.

Knox Robinson is the founder of the BLACK ROSES NYC running collective, creator of the curated trail running experience # BEEN TRAIL # and a founding coach of Nike+ Run Club. In an earlier life he edited the Fader magazine, managed musicians, produced a reggae compilation and wrote The African Game, an unprecedented look at soccer culture on the continent with filmmaker/photographer Andrew Dosunmu. Today he splits time between NYC and LA where he trains, coaches and occasionally writes on culture for publication—most recently with a widely circulated GQ feature on the greatest marathoner of all time Eliud Kipchoge. He has placed 100th in the NYC Marathon and is currently racing to pick his daughter up from third grade.

To sign up for future updates, follow @mcnallyjackson on Instagram, sign up for the McNally Jackson newsletter, and follow Tracksmith's Strava page for route information.

If you'd like to purchase Nicholas' book with your ticket, follow this link.

Book Description

A profound meditation on what running can teach us about our limits and our lives by a record-setting distance runner who is now the CEO of The Atlantic.

“This is not just an engaging memoir about running. It’s a meditation on what it takes to marshal and maintain motivation.”—ADAM GRANT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again

“Endlessly surprising, revelatory, and heart-rending.”—ANNA WINTOUR

For Nicholas Thompson, running has always been about something more than putting one foot in front of another. He ran his first mile at age five, using it as a way to connect with his father as his family fell apart. As a young man, it was a sport that transformed, and then shook, his sense of self-worth. In his 30s, it was a way of coping with a profound medical scare.

By his early 40s, Thompson had many accomplishments. He was the Editor in Chief of a major magazine; a devoted husband and father; and a passionate runner. But he was haunted by the recent death of his brilliant, complicated father and the crack-up that derailed his father’s life. Had the intensity and ambition he’d inherited made a personal crisis inevitable for him as well?

Then a chance offer gave him the opportunity to train for the Chicago Marathon with elite coaches. Giving himself over to the sport more fully than ever before, he discovered that aging didn’t necessarily put you on an unbroken trajectory of decline. For seven years after his father died, Thompson transforms his body to perform at its highest capacity, and the profound discipline and awareness he builds along the way changes every aspect of his life. Throughout the narrative, he weaves in stories of remarkable men and women who have used the sport to transcend some of the hardest moments in life.

The Running Ground is a story about fathers, sons, and the most basic and most beautiful of sports.