Runners I Know: Louisa Thomas

Running for friendship, inspiration, and being a mom

One of the things I love about this interview series is that every runner has a unique relationship with the activity. Take New Yorker staff writer Louisa Thomas, who runs almost every day with her three-year-old daughter. When Louisa needs to run an errand, she will literally run the errand. 

“People think I’m weird, but I actually run to get places,” she says. “When people feel like they don't have time for a run, I’m like, ‘Do you ever run an errand?’ I run to the grocery store and load up the bottom of the stroller with groceries. I run to the pharmacy. If I have coffee with a friend, I run. Yes, I look sweaty and weird when I sit down to have coffee, but who cares?” 

Despite all that running, Louisa has never run an actual race. Instead, she uses the time to connect with friends, her work, and her daughter. During our conversation, we touched on all those elements along with the almost surreal difficulties she experienced with running while she was pregnant. 

Running Probably: When did you start running? 

Louisa Thomas: I had compulsory running in high school because I played sports. I was very bad at it and disliked it. I never ran farther than two miles and only under duress. When I got to college I started running with friends. One of my best friends had run cross country in high school and I started running with her. 

I also ran on a treadmill for the first time. I discovered that I hate treadmills and also that I was much faster than I thought I was. I’d start on a 10.0 pace. Oh I bet I could do nine, and then eight, and seven. I could run two miles under 16 minutes in like, a week. 

RP: You had some untapped talent waiting to come out.  

LT: I had just never tried! I also do have a will, so I could set a pace and hold on for dear life.  

I started running with friends, and this has been true my whole running life, I made some of my best friends through running. I had another running partner who ran cross country in high school and I had to run pretty fast to keep up with her. 

She had friends who were running cross country at Harvard. My senior year, I would run with them occasionally if they missed practice and one of the other runners wasn’t available. 

RP: So you got a crash course in training? 

LT: I did get a crash course. In fact, they said, ’Oh you should run indoor track.’ I had never run a race before and I was like, ‘Sure, that sounds like fun.’ 

So I did, for a month and half. That was my real education as a runner because I did the mileage buildup and I loved the workouts. Kind of. I loved the communal part. 

RP: What was your event? 

LT: The 3K, but I never raced because I quit.

RP: You quit?

LT: Yeah. (laughs) 

One of the things I learned was that I hurt all the time, which is not true when you’re running occasionally with fast people as opposed to running all the time with fast runners. Harvard has a serious track program -- shoutout to Gabby Thomas, Olympic silver medalist. One of my teammates was Lindsey Crouse, who is a big running writer. 

We were doing 800 intervals and I was writing my thesis and in pain. I just walked off in the middle and told the coach, ‘I’m done.’ And he said, ‘You’re done with practice?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m done, done.’ He shook my hand and was like, ‘It’s been nice having you.’ 

I was the second slowest person on the team, I thought. I’m qualifying that because two years after I graduated from college, I was watching the New York City Marathon and I was standing at the finish line waiting for a friend to cross. And I saw the one person who I’d thought was slower than me cross in around three hours. 

The only person I thought was slower than me finished the New York City Marathon in three hours. So I guess, she was not the slowest person on the team.

RP: That’s hilarious. 

LT: Great for her, very humbling for me. 

RP: I take it you like running with other people.

LT: I do like running with other people. That exists to this day. I have another mom running partner. I didn't have that last year during the pandemic, and I missed it. 

RP: What do you get out of having a regular running partner? 

LT: Several things. I’m not going to say accountability because I do run every day anyway, or pretty much every day. I just find that daily contact with someone outside your household is really nice. Not daily, but three times a week. You just get in a regular rhythm with someone. 

The conversations that you have when you’re running are often fruitful. I’ve thought about this a lot. One, you’re not facing each other and I think people have a certain freedom when they’re able to talk into the void. Two, it’s not unnatural to fall into silence. You need to fall into silence because you’re tired. 

There’s something really nice about being in the space with someone and not feeling pressured to say something in a certain way or fill the silence. You can just run. 

RP: I always have a hard time finding the right pace with someone. 

LT: I'm pretty adaptable. In my 20s I ran with people who were faster than me and they were running a little bit slower, but they seemed happy enough to do it. It was good for me. It made me a lot faster. You do have to be comfortable running slower. 

RP: You run every day or almost every day? 

LT: Before I got pregnant, I ran 4-5 days a week. After my daughter was six months old, I ran every day with her in a stroller. There was a blizzard where I missed a few days. I do have certain limits. I don’t run if it’s hotter than 90 degrees and I don’t run if it's colder than 20 because that’s not fair to her. 

I do run every day, but I run short. I used to have one day a week where I would run 8-10 miles and take an off day around that. But I don’t think it’s fair to ask her to be in the stroller for more than an hour. 

Running laps at the park.

RP: Do you train for specific races? 

LT: No. I’ve still never had a race. 

RP: So, what’s the motivation? 

LT: Friendship, having a running buddy. Health, I feel better and I like running. Oh, I also do a lot of work when I run. When I’m not with someone, I do a lot of my work while running. That has been a big part of post-pregnancy running, actually having time to think. I do a lot of writing in my head where I work through troublesome thoughts, or work out ledes. 

RP: I do that all the time and somewhere between miles 2-3, I will have composed a perfect story in my head and then I’ll lose it by the time I’m done. 

LT: Yep, and then it’s not there. Totally. I leave myself some voice notes. I will stop and record something. 

RP: That’s smart. My dad does the same thing on his walks. 

LT: I do think it helps. It’s just a little bit of time and space for me. 

During the pandemic, that moment in April or May (of 2020), I think that’s when we got in touch and I was wondering if it was OK to run on the bike path. There were those animations of people spewing COVID all over. People kept sending this to me because they know I’m a runner. 

I was like, ‘You don’t understand.’ Running is my time to cry and not worry about feeling things in front of my child that they have to process. It’s a way to be by yourself, even though I just talked about running for friendship, when I’m not running with someone, I like this real sense of being by myself. 

And when I’m not working, it's pretty meditative. I don’t do meditation. I’ve tried many times, but running is my form of it. Also, I’ve found a pretty good balance between being competitive and noncompetitive with myself. 

RP: How so?

LT: I don’t set goals. I sometimes run intervals or pick up the pace, but I don’t internally punish myself if I don’t. If I don’t feel good, I don’t push myself to do it. Conversely, if I’m feeling good, I do it. I feel like I can push myself sometimes and I’m more generous with myself than I am with other parts of my life. 

RP: That sounds like you’ve developed a really strong intuitive approach. You mentioned running with your child, do you run with her on every run?  

LT: Yes, I do. Anything I can do with her, I do, and running is the first thing. Our running stroller is our main stroller. We don’t have any other strollers. 

RP: This is a big one for parents. What’s the running stroller of choice? 

LT: It’s a Thule and I'm totally partisan. I can not say enough about this stroller. It’s easy to run with, it’s light. I’m obsessed with this stroller. 

RP: When I used to run with my son, he’d constantly yell, ‘Run faster, daddy.’ 

LT: Sometimes if I’m walking up a hill, my daughter will say, ‘You’re not a lazy bum!’ We’ve had stages. We’ve now been running together for three years. There were times when she was a baby where she did not want to run and she would scream and cry the whole time. 

I was with her all day. I’d say, The rest of the day is for you, I will make you happy. This, we’re doing for me. She’d be screaming and people would be staring at me, or whatever. It was fine. Those were short runs. 

Now we’re at the point where she’s pretty over it. She either wants to get out and run with me, which she does sometimes. Or, I have to bribe her, which I do by stopping at a park. There are also a lot of blueberry muffins. I’m sort of wondering how long she’ll let me do it. But she’s also starting school. Once she starts school, I will go running by myself.  

RP: How did being pregnant affect your running? 

LT: Sometimes I wonder if this is psychosomatic, I went on a six-mile run the day before I found out I was pregnant. By the end of the week, I could not run. Some combination of fatigue and nausea, but it was also something different. Physiologically, I couldn’t accelerate, I couldn’t breathe properly.

When I was visibly pregnant, it was massively uncomfortable for me to run. I was not expecting that because I subscribe to the ‘You go girl’ school, that you will be able to do anything when you’re pregnant. You will be able to run marathons and win the Australian Open. 

I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it was. I really struggled with that because I thought if I was a better runner or a stronger person or something, it would be easier for me. It was also hard to give up something that I relied on, emotionally and physically, to then realize I just can’t do it anymore. 

During my first trimester I would still get out and run one or two miles, very slowly. Really, like quite slowly, but just to get out and feel like I’m still a runner. That was so important for me. 

I was still active. I played a lot of tennis. I went to the gym. I could do the elliptical. I just couldn’t run. It was this weird thing. I asked my doctor about it and they just kind of shrugged their shoulders. The cliche about pregnancy is true, every body is different and every experience is different. 

I do think there’s generally not enough grace given when you’re pregnant. It went from being something that would take over your life with bedrest and all that, to something that people forget, it’s such a physical undertaking and it affects your body in all sorts of ways. People who are pregnant don’t forget that. 

Pregnancy is its own athletic event. It changes your heart rate. It changes your hormones. It changes your whole body. It is a marathon in a real way. I wanted to train for delivery. It helped me to think about pregnancy that way as an athletic undertaking. 

RP: There’s some fascinating research from ultra endurance events that women suffer much better than men do. 

LT: I read that too, and I believe it. Delivery is an ultra marathon. You're awake for a really long period of time, you’re not eating properly, and you're doing something incredibly physical. 

RP: Is it important for you to be a runner for your daughter?

LT: Yes. One thing I cultivate and encourage, she’s going to be whatever she’s going to be. I suspect she’s going to be pretty athletic, not because of me, but because of her father. Because of her, I should say. She calls herself Runner Girl and she likes to go on runs with me.  

We’ll go to a park and she’ll ask to go for a run and we’ll go around and around and around. On runs she asks to get out and run with me. She’ll dress for runs. We call her sneakers, ‘runners’ and that’s how we refer to them. She has a very strong sense of herself as a runner. 

And she will say, we went for a run. She includes herself in the activity so it’s not something I’m doing, but something we’re doing together.