Nicholas Thompson Birthday Run
Nicholas Thompson is a writer and editor who has served as the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker and Wired, and is currently the CEO of The Atlantic.
He also happens to be an extremely accomplished runner, having broken the American age group record in the 50K. And he lives in Brooklyn.
Thompson's latest book, The Running Ground, is a memoir about his running career and how it was shaped by his relationship with his father, college, cancer, and his own fatherhood in turn. Interspersed are stories about other remarkable runners that he has spent time with over the past few years. It's a great read, and I'd recommend it to anyone seeking inspiration. Upon the book's release, Thompson also did a book tour of sorts, which gave me an opportunity to meet him up close at a "book club run" event in fall 2025.
Suddenly, I realized that there was a (running) celebrity in my own backyard! See? That's him!
Months later, while planning a group run for my birthday (being one of those social events that activity-oriented New Yorkers in their 20s are wont to organize), an idea came up: why not try to get Thompson himself to come? The mission was set. The moment the idea arose, I knew I'd try to make it happen.
It's not easy, however, to reach out to a CEO. I found no public emails, numbers, or representatives available for contacting Thompson. Instead, my friends and I had to get creative. We'd run a guerilla campaign to try to get his attention in the wild.
With the power of technology, I spun up an event invite and landing page on this website, and created a QR code linking to the page. The aim was to print out this QR code and place copies of it in areas that Thompson was likely to traffic. The key data we had here was none other than Thompson's own publicly-viewable Strava activities, which showed a persistent pattern of commuting across the Manhattan bridge to and from The Atlantic's office somewhere in SoHo.
The obvious locations for posters, then, were on the bridges connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn. So it came to pass that on a frosty January morning, my friends Rex and Zeyi went on a small postering expedition, finding highly-visible areas to target. For just around a month these posters hung. (Thank you Rex and Zeyi!!) Thinking our job was sufficient, and being wary not to err into stalking territory, we called it a day.
The day of the run, we were eager to see if our efforts would come to fruition. We gathered at the start, waited, and waited...
And, regrettably, no luck. As we later found out, Thompson had been travelling the past few weeks, and unfortunately didn't see the posters. (The run itself was still a great time.)
But of course, the story doesn't stop there. If it did it wouldn't be worth writing about! The week after the run happened, Nicholas's Strava lit up with a smoking gun that our posters had finally caught his eye--with an accompanying Instagram post, to boot:
The jig was up. Time to reveal ourselves. A discussion ensued in which Rex and I exchanged pleasantries with Thompson in, of all places, a Strava post's comment section. All things considered, I don't think we could've expected a better response from Thompson proper. He seemed delighted to stumble upon the posters, and truly bummed that he only saw them a few days too late. It's very possible, of course, that he could have responded in a different manner. I'm happy to report that I have not become the subject of any restraining orders.
I have a few takeaways from this whole project:
- It's nice to invest in random acts of positive mischief. They might make someone's day, and they nudge you to assume and see the best in people.
- Sharing something tangible, like tacking a poster on a wall, goes a surprisingly long way.
- Analogously, sharing something online goes a surprisingly long way. Be careful of how much you post, even if it's just your daily workouts.
- Just try things for fun. Who knows? Maybe you'll end up with a new Strava follower, and a very unique birthday tiding.
