The Common Threads

Greg McMillan didn’t set out to become one of the greatest running coaches in America. He started diving into the research in high school with a simple goal: to run faster. Fast forward three decades and McMillan has coached over 10,000 Boston Marathon qualifiers, 12 National Champions, and countless elite athletes competing at the Olympics and World Championships.

There’s something fundamentally different about talking to McMillan about his journey into running, coaching and exercise science. He doesn’t differentiate between his athletes running their first 5k and those competing at the Olympic Trials. To him, “extraordinary is in all of us. It just has to be pulled out.”

Maybe that’s why McMillan Running has changed the game. Because McMillan — and the coaches he’s assembled — believe in all of us, not just the few winning the medals.

Listen to our podcast with Greg McMillan on The Common Threads: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify.

The Starting Line

David Swain, @Prokit: What did you have for breakfast? 

Greg McMillan: I had a bagel because my wife bought fresh bagels. So I had a bagel with cream cheese, some sliced apples, water and a cup of tea. 

Is that your typical go-to? 

Not necessarily. I usually try not to have so much bread in the morning, but if she gets the fresh bagels, I’m gonna have one.

Let’s start with your journey to running and sport. As a kid, where were you and what were you doing? 

I grew up in rural Tennessee on a farm, so we played outside all the time. Obviously, we didn’t have neighbors right next door, and I had to get to friends on foot or on a bike. So I grew up very active. I played baseball and basketball, which I really loved.

In our elementary school, we also did a field day. We would compete in different events like the long jump, the softball throw, and the mile run. I would always win the mile run and then got to represent my school at the county championship, which is a big deal.

Greg in high school

Of course, the high school coach watched field day and picked his future team. I got invited to participate on the track team quite early because I was successful when I was young. The switch flipped for me in about 11th grade. I really fell in love with running. I was playing basketball and running, but running just became my passion. It’s been over 35 years now and I still love talking about it, love helping people with their running, and love exploring how we get the most from ourselves. 

What kind of farm did you grow up on?

We raised beef cattle, mostly for our own consumption and to raise some money. We would have one cow that we would slaughter each year and that would be our meat for the year. The rest would be sold off to pay the bills. My parents did have regular jobs, so it was more of a weekend farm. We didn’t subsist just by farming.

“Genius is everywhere.” An unsurprising phrase from someone like Ime Archibong who has had a front row seat to some of the greatest movements in tech over the past two decades.

But for Ime, the son of proud Nigerian immigrants, the phrase has a much deeper meaning. If genius is everywhere, how do we find it, empower it and spotlight it? What does it look like? Who represents it? These are the type of personal and societal questions at the core of Ime’s role at Facebook where he has worked for over ten years with community builders, entrepreneurs and nonprofits.

An eternal optimist with a fierce work-ethic I’ve seen up close, Ime is the person people want in their corner. Knowing how to hustle — something he displayed as the captain of the Yale basketball team — is not what sets him apart. It’s compassion and purpose, two things that vividly come to life within minutes of meeting him.

We sat down to dig into what he learned from his parents growing up in the South, how to lead through a pandemic where the tides have turned for tech, what he’s up to with his new team at Facebook, and of course, who would win in a running race between him and Mark Zuckerberg.

Listen to our podcast with Ime Archibong on The Common Threads: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify.

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Cookies for Breakfast

David Swain: What did you have for breakfast? 

Ime Archibong: It’s election week here in the United States, so my diet has not been one I’ve been proud of. This morning, like the last two mornings, I started my day with a cookie.

Whole Foods is right down the street in San Francisco — they have a brown butter cookie that is to die for, and it’s also dangerously addictive. 

What time of day was this wonderful cookie? 

I’m an early bird, so I’m typically up working in the six o’clock hour. 

That is my first memory of you in our early years at Facebook. I’d get into the office early thinking I was way ahead of everyone, and you had already worked out and been sitting in your computer for two hours. Have you been able to continue that work ethic?

Yeah, it’s still there. As you get older, you realize at what time you do your best work, and where you have energy. In my case, the most strategic and the most active time for me tends to be in the mornings. That hasn’t changed at all. Unpinning that is this drive to do more.

For better or worse, I have a little bit of a feeling of never being satisfied. I feel really fortunate to be in this industry and at Facebook at this moment in history. We have such an opportunity ahead of us as humanity and society are trying to figure out the internet. Knowing that I have the time to try to shape that and make sure that we get it right over the longer...

Bailey Richardson grew up with a foundational belief “that you can make any future you want.” This “naive optimism,” as she calls it, led her to the startup world, where, in her early 20s, she became one of the first dozen employees at Instagram and worked closely with Prokit co-founder, David Swain.

After leaving Instagram, Bailey started People & Company with Kai Elmer Sotto and Kevin Huynh to “help people bring their people together.” It would be challenging to find someone who thinks more about the meaning of community and the magic that goes into building it than Bailey and her co-founders. They’ve interviewed thousands of community organizers, advised startups and leading brands, and written the community-building playbook, Get Together.

We’re all pros at something. Bailey is a pro at community. Her insights won’t disappoint. Here’s the community kit.

Listen to our podcast with Bailey Richardson on The Common Threads: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify.

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David Swain, Prokit: What did you have for breakfast?

Bailey Richardson: I was away surfing in North Carolina and South Carolina for the last few weeks, and when I came home, I found out that my refrigerator had broken, which is a disgusting experience. Because I can’t keep anything in the house, I need to go out more than I normally would. This morning, I got coffee and a power berry smoothie from Food U Desire, a great bodega on Smith Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

What was your childhood like and were there indications you would become the community builder you are today?

Two words stick out when I remember who I was at 11 or 12: competitive and optimistic. Both traits were passed down to me from my mom and dad. I’ve always been competitive with myself. I played every sport growing up. Sports make me happy. I played basketball, volleyball, and softball. My dad was a semi-professional barefoot waterskier growing up, so I water skied.  My uncle surfed Mavericks, so I surfed. My mom was a competitive swimmer, so I swam. One of my uncles was a collegiate football player, and my dad’s identical twin was an Olympic bobsledder, so sports are big in my family. Sports was an outlet for my ambition and a way to push myself. I was also really driven in school. I’ve had to dial it back as I age and want to be a more chill, happy person.

Then there’s the optimistic side. I grew up in the Bay Area, near San Jose and Santa Cruz. My dad is an optimistic engineer. He believes we’re going to solve all the problems the world has and that you can figure out anyt...

Dr. Matt Smith helps the pros reach the highest levels, whether they’re competing at Ironman, chasing gold at the Mountain Bike World Championships, running Western States, or playing in the NBA or NFL. But at his training center and clinic, EverAthlete, he’s just as dedicated to training someone for an epic bucket list hike or helping another build the solid foundation they need to prevent injury and keep doing a sport they love.

Before COVID, Matt had just opened the training facility of his dreams, the next phase of EverAthlete. That all quickly changed in March, and Matt pivoted immediately. He closed the training center doors and moved to a combination of in-person therapy, online training and instructional videos. He sat down with us to talk about it all — the impact strength training and form have on performance and longevity, the power of breathwork, and what he’s learned about mindset from pros like Kate Courtney.

Listen to our podcast with Matt Smith on The Common Threads: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify. Follow Matt on Prokit @everathlete.

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The Start of EverAthlete

David Swain, Prokit: What did you have for breakfast?

Dr. Matt Smith: Every morning, I have a breakfast shake. We do a veggie box so the veggies vary, but usually what I put in my shake is either spinach, kale, or chard, and some broccoli. I try to get as many vegetables in, as possible. Today, I blended kale and broccoli, an apple, a handful of blueberries, and a scoop of the Primal Kitchen collagen protein. I’m allergic to dairy so I always go with either almond or coconut milk. 

There’s always discussion around making sure athletes get enough protein. What’s your go-to?

I usually eat meat, nuts and seeds. Occasionally, I will have a clean whey isolate protein because I’m not as sensitive to that as I am to milk or cheese. 

Tell us about your journey as an athlete moving into health and starting EverAthlete. Where did it all begin?

I grew up in the Bay Area and played baseball and football through high school. I decided to go to University of Redlands to play football, but tore my hamstring and had different injuries prior to my freshman season that caused me to fall out of organized sports.

There was always interest in becoming a chiropractor, mainly because of a mentor in high school. He was my anatomy and physiology teacher, and he was a bodybuilder and former chiropractor. He had a substantial impact on me, and I always wanted to follow in his footsteps. 

After two years,

Rebecca Rusch's nickname is the Queen of Pain -- for good reason. She has pushed herself to excel at every outdoor adventure imaginable, continuously reimagining what's possible and leaving her mark on everything from mountain biking and adventure racing to solo pursuits in the Alaskan wilderness.

But it's not just her world championships, Emmy Award winning movie, or records that inspire so many. Rebecca has found strength in honesty, vulnerability and in listening to an inner voice telling her "to see what's over the next hill."

Rebecca goes deep on her strategies for coping with pandemic, building a personal mission statement and the process she went through to articulate her "why." We also get into the business and community she's building, filming Blood Road, and the impact of the pandemic. She captures the moment perfectly: "Everyone in every country, in every corner of the world, is feeling some kind of stress, and how we manage that is more important now than ever.. I think it’s important that we call our mothers, call friends, and stick together."

Wired’s chief editor, Nicholas Thompson, has thought a lot about the intersection of technology, media and society. As a long-time journalist and editor at the The New Yorker and Wired, Nick can talk about media and tech the same way many pro athletes can recount in vivid detail a moment from an event that happened decades ago.

Nick has almost always been a runner, finding ways to log eight miles a day on his daily commute. Just enough that with some training he could get to consistent 2:40 marathons. But he never took the time to think about why he runs and how it intersects with his past, his relationship with his father, and a cancer diagnosis when Nick was 30.

After an incredible 2:29:13 at the 2019 Chicago Marathon, Nick decided to try to figure out why he ran just under 2:44 at age 30, and just under 2:30 at age 44. He joined us to talk about it all — running, media, and overcoming mental barriers you might not know exist. Listen to our podcast with Nicholas Thompson on The Common Threads: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify.

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David Swain, @prokit: What did you have for breakfast this morning?

Nick Thompson: I had the same thing I have for breakfast pretty much every morning which is oatmeal with walnuts, almonds, raisins, and a cup of coffee.

What’s your morning routine?

I get up at six, go for a run, and come back around seven. We make breakfast and around 8, we wake everybody else up in the house by screaming, “Breakfast!” Everybody comes down and has breakfast. I start my workday around 8:30.

I’ve been up in the Catskills since quarantine started. Up here, we have another routine. Almost every morning, we catch a chipmunk on the porch in a little trap we’ve made because there can be lots of chipmunks on our porch. One of the kids and I will carry that chipmunk to the top of the road and let it loose away from the house. So that is the other part of the morning routine: chipmunk release.

Navigating Two Major Moments in History

How long have you been in the Catskills? What was that adjustment like?

We came up around March 11. It’s all been very interesting. The work adjustment has been less hard than I anticipated. It’s a little bit easier to run Wired remotely than I thought, but, it’s a little harder for my kids to be without their friends than I expected. They’re certainly incredibly blessed. We have a house with a lawn, and we put up two soccer goals and basketball hoop. They have a way to be outside. If they had been in New York, we would have been stuck in a small apartment, looking out the window, and never going outside for weeks or months. They have a huge advantage, but it was really hard on them to not get to see their friends and to interact socially.

Sarah Sturm, aka Sturmy, is an all-in, full of emotion, badass. She packs a big smile with an unconventional approach that has led her to the podium of cycling’s biggest adventures on anything with two wheels. But unlike so many data-obsessed pro athletes, Sarah does things mostly by feel. So much so that when her new bike came with a power meter, she told her coach to not show her the results.

Sarah crashes hard and races harder. While 2019 podiums at Downieville, the 153 mile Belgian Waffle Ride, @sbtgrvl, Lost and Found, and Sea Otter’s pro Criterium would tell a different story, she has healthy dose of fear. Channeling that fear, emotion and competitive drive into something that works for her is what makes Sarah uniquely ‘Sturmy.’ What’s next for Sarah? You’ll have to read and listen to find out. It likely won’t follow a playbook. But it most certainly will be an adventure. And when not adventuring, you’ll find her coaching the next generation of rippers or designing the next idea with her firm Oso Creative. We caught up before the important developments to address the problems with race in America. While we couldn’t address these topics in this conversation, Sarah is taking a passionate stand with the platform she has to elevate and share the voices “of those who have been muted.” Listen to our podcast with Sarah Sturm on The Common Threads: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify.

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The Start of a Cyclist

David Swain (@swain), Prokit: What did you have for breakfast?

Sarah Sturm: I had toast, made from bread from a local bakery. This company called Trail Butter makes amazing peanut butter with all this good stuff mixed in, so I put that on top with jelly. Then I had a smoothie and a doughnut.

Is that your typical breakfast?

Always the PBJ. It’s going to become “my thing” because I made the mistake of talking about how my ride food at the Belgian Waffle Ride was a bunch of peanut butter jelly sandwiches. That said, I truly do like it. You can’t go wrong with it. 

If there was no pandemic, what would you be doing right now?

The Lost and Found Gravel Grinder would be coming up. That race was my first ever gravel race years ago. I had just signed with Specialized for cyclocross, and they handed me a gravel bike. I remember I kind of made fun of the Future Shock. As a newly-signed athlete, I didn’t know you’re not supposed to make fun of the equipment in front of the people who gave it to you. I was just joking, but 100 miles into this race, I was like, “Thank God for the thing that I made fun of.” It’s the coolest part of the Diverge bike.

Sarah Friar joined us for this podcast a few weeks before the current events related to George Floyd and race in America. While our minds and hearts are elsewhere, the common threads in Sarah’s journey on charting your path and kindness are important to spotlight.

Sarah’s story is anything but normal. A driven and inquisitive kid growing up in a war zone in Northern Ireland ends up at Oxford, and two decades later is one of the top leaders in business and technology.

Still in her thirties, Sarah became the CFO of Square and led its IPO in 2015. It is one of the most successful companies in tech over the past decade with a market cap of more than $35 billion. Today, she’s the CEO of neighborhood hub Nextdoor, sits on the boards of Slack and Walmart, and is the co-founder of Ladies Who Launch, a network to inspire and empower women entrepreneurs.

All of it feels unreachable, almost impossible. But Sarah’s story paints a different picture, one of paying attention to your strengths, not getting complacent, and building the routines, support systems and habits to keep moving forward. She reads daily, hits the trails for long walks when big decisions need to get made, and isn’t afraid to ask for help when she doesn’t know an answer.

Many people land a great job, get comfortable and watch as their passion fizzles. Or they never chase a dream because they’re simply never given their shot. Whether you’re an athlete, entrepreneur or seasoned leader, Sarah covers all angles on building a career, and the importance of kindness and community.

Sarah Piampiano-Lord (@spiampiano) is one of the top triathletes in the world, finishing first or second in 7 of the eleven 70.3 and Ironman races she entered in 2019. Ten years ago, she was a 30-year-old, cigarette-smoking investment banker who worked 100+ hour weeks and barely exercised. 

A gifted, multi-sport athlete as a kid, Sarah found her love for competition as an eight year-old at Cross Country Nationals and was a Division 1 ski racer and runner in college in Maine.

But Sarah does not credit her rise in triathlon to her athletic gifts. The common thread is hard work, grit and mental strength. She believes in the “curse of the super talented athlete” – the idea that the people who find greatness are the ones who never give up, who feel like they’re at a deficit coming in.

2020 was on-tap to have some fun twists for Sarah. She was scheduled to run the Boston Marathon in April and ride an epic 144-mile gravel bike race, the Belgian Waffle Ride, a few weeks later in May. With all races postponed, she finds joy and motivation in the little things and is taking it one day at a time, chasing Strava QOM’s and suffering through Zwift races in her living room.Listen to our podcast with Sarah on The Common Threads: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify. You can read the full interview below for a deep-dive on her learnings and insights on everything from fueling and recovery to sleep and mindset.

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From chasing her older brothers to banking and the bet that led to triathlon

David Swain, Prokit (@swain): What did you have for breakfast this morning?

Sarah Piampiano-Lord: I had a smoothie with Greek yogurt, banana, flaxseed, hemp seed, orange juice, and two hard boiled eggs. I try to mix it up. I don’t like to have the same thing every day.

How does your breakfast change based on your training or recovery plan for the day?

Usually, if I have a pretty long day on tap, I will go with a more carb-focused breakfast. I’ll have a big bowl of oatmeal with yogurt, nuts, seeds, and berries, and usually some eggs. I might have a bowl of Cheerios, as well. If I have a day like today, a lighter recovery day, I try to focus less on the carbohydrates and more on protein and fats.

One of Sarah Piampiano’s go-to breakfasts

Talk about your journey from a kid in Maine chasing cross country titles to a collegiate athlete to banking and then back to sports.

I grew up in Maine and was quite an athletic little kid. I was skiing by the age of two, water skiing and riding my bike by three. I just loved being outside, running free,

Dr. Megan Roche (@meganroche) and David Roche (@davidroche) have made their mark on the trail running world. While they have street cred through national titles and Trail Runner of the Year awards, it’s their contributions to the running community as coaches, authors and purveyors of the Happy Runner mindset where their impact extends far.

We get into it all in our interview, from self-belief and mental health to overcoming roadblocks. Megan is an MD and is working on a PhD in epidemiology at Stanford to study the genetics of sports injury; combine her experience as an athlete with deep scientific knowledge and you’ve got special insights on training, performance and finding meaning on the journey to reaching your potential. As David and Megan say many times, “a little bit of kindness goes a long way.”Listen to the podcast on The Common Threads: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify

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David Swain (@swain): What did you both have for breakfast this morning?

Megan Roche: I love that question. I’ve recently been on a toaster waffle kick. This morning, I had classic multigrain toaster waffles with a very hearty amount of maple syrup. 

David Roche: I’m a big children’s cereal fan. I had some peanut butter puffins, which are possibly the most delicious snack on the planet. Then we both had a substantial amount of coffee.

Megan: That’s very true. You can get the culinary theme of our family: children’s food.

Journey to Coaching

How did you make your way into running?

Megan: I grew up playing a lot of sports: soccer, field hockey, basketball. I ultimately went to college to play field hockey. I always knew that I loved running. When I was a field hockey player, I got pumped to do wind sprints. After I wrapped up field hockey in college, I took a fifth year to run track and cross country. That was really my first journey into running, and l met David during that time. We found running together. I loved track, but there was just something about being able to connect with nature on trail runs. Having the time to play in the mountains together was so meaningful.

David: I was a middling football player. I went to college to play football and quit. I had always been curious about endurance sports. I remember my first run coming off football. I barely got around the block before I had to stop, and I was sore for days. Fortunately for me, I met Megan right as I was starting to get a little bit more serious about pursuing my potential. I was researching everything I could. Megan is so brilliant, and it was like having a textbook next to me. We both got more serious at the same time.