Future Bodies:
Rethinking Running
with Nils Arend
It’s believed that around two million years ago our bodies made an evolutionary leap towards long distance running, enabling us to track and out-endure other species. Endurance is a human trait.
Fast forward to today and we continue to explore our range, now for more modern feats of the imagination. This is where we find Nils Arend.
Nils is a countercultural beacon. From brothel raves to unsanctioned running events, Nils periodically sheds the normal trappings of life, freeing him to push sport away from the norm and into spaces he feels serve a wilder, more real form of running.
The Speed Project started as a fun idea between Nils and his friends, to run from Venice Beach to the Vegas sign; 340 miles through hostile roads and desert terrain. This has become one of the most coveted races around — all without any formal setup — and it continues to expand into new formats and new locations.
This is dream material for Future Bodies — a series of discussions from forpeople that explore the perspectives of creatives who are rethinking our relationship with the human body. Simon (our Creative Director for The Body) caught up with Nils to discuss how his offbeat approach is giving us a new vision of running. Moving away from the brightly coloured uniformity of the marathon and into a space of pace innovation, authentic community and recovery hacks.
Each Future Bodies discussion delves into four chapters across Performance, Balance, Expression and Bodyhacking.
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Performance
Five Dollar Bills
Hey, Nils. I’d love to start at the end. The Speed Project, an unsanctioned, no-rules race across 340 miles of brutal desert, from LA to Vegas. What do you do after you’ve finished the run and achieved something like that?
Hey, Simon. Right, we have what we call a side bet that we set out before the race starts, everybody takes a $5 bill and guesses the winning time. They write their time on the $5 bill with their name and it all goes into a pot. The pot is pretty significant as we have a few hundred people involved. Then the race comes, the race finishes and we go through the $5 bills to see who got the closest.
This one time, our mutual friend, Emily is here with the Tracksmith team. It’s a tight race with Tracksmith and this French team battling out head-to-head for 80 miles through Death Valley. Tracksmith come second but the French team’s time is closest to Emily’s $5 bill.
She wins the pot.
But she can't just take the pot, we’re in Vegas. We go to a roulette table with everyone and the winner of the pot needs to place a bet with the pot. So Emily and I and 300 other people from the race stand at this roll. It’s absolute chaos and the house calls security. We bring this case of cash and pour it out. It's a spectacle.
And so I say to Emily, "what do you put your bet on?" This is a rhetorical question, you can go black or red, but TSP’s leading colour and everything TSP is black. We always put it on black. Emily's like, "I wanna put it on red". I’m like, "no, you don't understand. This is not how we do it". And Emily is very adamant on red and red wins.
Then she takes the chips over to the winning team, who were not sponsored and guts-out won against the favourite of the race. And so she acknowledges them and is like, "hey, you guys deserve this". It was just such a cool move, you know?
The Start
The Speed Project goes against a lot of running conventions. How do you dream up something like that? What’s the origin of your take on running?
Oh yeah. I was born in Germany, and both of my parents are creatives, architects, artists, and my dad in particular has been a very adventurous and nomadic human. And so that really influenced my upbringing. We moved a lot — Germany, France, Africa. I had a very turbulent school career and all kinds of clear signs that I didn’t fit into the system. And so I quit at 18, travelled for a year and then found this early 2000’s pop-up club culture that grew in Germany.
And so that was the start of my career, and my first moment thinking I'm potentially talented in a certain aspect of life.
It was all going really well, but I guess I dislike feeling comfortable, so I tore it up and decided to move to LA. I ran my first marathon as a going away celebration with my roommate at the time. And I was like, "okay, this endurance sport thing is kind of cool". I really enjoy the challenge mentally as well as physically.
Then I found myself in LA, barely speaking the language. When my phone was ringing, I was afraid to pick it up because I might not understand what they were saying on the other side of the line. And I didn't know anybody.
Running allowed me to explore the city without being forced to talk to anybody. It took up a really good amount of space to give me sanity.
Then I met a couple of runners. I saw they were wearing notches — not board shorts, like I was wearing. At my first race, I realised that I wasn’t running the way other people were. For me, it was like creative free flow, roaming adventures.
This race was so regimented. I was screamed at because I was in the wrong place with the wrong colour bib.
You weren't allowed to do this and you weren't allowed to do that. No one was speaking to me. I felt like the odd one out. And I'm a visual person, I thrive in beautiful environments and everything was neon and weird-looking and just dorky. I put running on such a pedestal for what it gave me, but none of that took place within that type of environment. So I walked away from it. I decided to go on my own adventures.
Then I was hanging with a friend during the holidays and he was like "let's do a cool run". I was like, "I don't know what's cool, but let's run from your house to my house". So we ran 60 miles or something. It was the contrast of Long Beach Harbour to the cliffs of Palos Verdes to the beach towns. I always feel drawn to bring things together that naturally don't go together. But if you find the angle or take the time to let them settle, they go together, you know?
I was leaning into this world, starting to brainstorm. After running from his house to my house, from the beach to the Hollywood sign, I was like, what would be next? Let's run from LA to Vegas.
Right, and The Speed Project comes out of that moment?
Yeah, that run with friends, through such an extreme environment, it bonds you. We found a real experience in the desert that counterbalances what a traditional race should look like. And all of a sudden there was this momentum and this counterculture movement within running. I wouldn't say we created it, but we were part of it. We just wanted to share that with people. That’s The Speed Project.
Free Flow
So then you’re organising this event that has no spectators and no rules... what does that mean? How does it work?
We gather a group of people and we run from LA to Vegas. The first run was with friends, who were absolutely not runners.
They were skateboarders, surfers, photographers, but they all jumped in and contributed in their own way.
We’re in this beautiful flow state of everybody contributing and being on an equal playing field, because all of a sudden, the top athlete is as important as the person driving the damn campervan. We're contributing to this one goal, which is getting us from A to B. You can’t hide, you need to find a role. Everybody is a small but important piece of this operation, and it wouldn't work with one piece missing.
As event organisers, we’re the ones who bring people together. And then when the actual event takes place, we take a step back and this idea of no rules is really like allowing creativity take over. We remove as many guardrails as possible, initiating things, and then let participants take it from there. So we're not in control. They are.
Yeah, we're not telling you what to do. There is quite literally an open space. Go do something with it.
Yeah, yeah, love that.
One of the really interesting things about TSP’s growth is how you maintain the no-rules spirit whilst organising something that continues to get bigger. I guess you need to put more structure around it. Now there are more participants, there are more logistics. How are you keeping that same level of creativity and openness? How do you find the balance?
Yeah, it's an interesting question. We have a team now and I'm mega protective with certain aspects. I think the good news is I'm an entrepreneur who has checked the box of making something quote-unquote-big. So now I approach this like a big pot of soup I put on the stove and I let simmer.
We have to create the best substance we can get. That's the objective.
Not to make this the next fucking Ironman thing. We’re all about substance. Growth is not one of our critical measures, but it is definitely happening.
There are certain times where I question if something is an evolution, or if it’s watering down what we're going to do in the future.
For example, we don't have a website. Because in my mind, the actual race experience starts when you sit at home and you come across the piece of content from The Speed Project. This is really our start line. And then you finagle your way in and ideally have friends or friends of friends who’ve participated. And you have conversations and this leads you to get in touch with us.
There wasn't a system for that conversation in the past. And my team was telling me we needed one. I was like, “no, it should be free flowing”. At the time, we had 20 teams. Now we have several experiences a year, with 80, 90 teams. We have three times as many applicants.
So, we now have a system for the application process. I always thought it would take the flavour away, but it didn't. This is an example of where I've been extremely protective and critical of what can we do to continue loving the experience, without taking the creativity away, without making it feel rinse-and-repeat. We always challenge ourselves.
This comes back to your organised marathon experience. Taking all of the codes that were straight-jacketing you and removing those, to the point where you get the essence of what's great about running, while still having enough structure to get people from A to B. Right. No website, just a very human way to connect with teams and bring people’s passion into it.
Innovation in the Desert
From a pure performance point of view, I'd be curious to know how an event like TSP really pushes the limits of the body. What happens during that process and what kind of things do you learn during an experience in the desert?
The interesting thing is the evolution from a performance perspective. When we first did it, speed wasn't really a thing within my relationship with the sport. But I met this guy, a 2:20 marathoner, who’d ran 30 marathons before. When I told him I want to run to Vegas his immediate response was, "let's do it, but let's do it as fast as we can". I was like, "your fast might be different than mine, but we can try hard, equally hard, you know?" We then looked at the 340 miles. No idea how long it was is going to take.
What increments should we run? I was thinking I wouldn't want to run less than 10k. I'm a distance runner, I need a couple of k to get into the groove and then I find it, lean into it and then push the pace. So 10k efforts felt right.
20 or so hours in, I finished my last 10k and everyone gathered and said, "hey, Nils, we want to do less". It was a discussion. Eventually, later in the race, we noticed we were so fatigued. So we shortened the intervals to 1k each. So this is the way you run The Speed Project. You run 10k in the beginning, until you can't anymore, then you run 5k and then 3k. So it's positive splits almost all the way.
If you fast forward a few years to when Tracksmith and the French team raced head-to-head, I heard a rumour that the French team were going to do 90-second intervals. They're triathletes. They weren’t going to go into a car, they were going to jump on a bike. Active recovery.
I was like, “Give them 10 hours, they're gonna fall apart. Give me the popcorn”
They didn't. It became really apparent that the 90-second effort worked. They took six runners and broke it into two teams of three. Each team of three worked for two hours, then handed it over to the next team. When you're on, you run 90 seconds and you rest 180 seconds. They had two bikes on the road and one runner, and they swapped.
90 seconds is kind of interesting. It’s a couple hundred metres of effort. And they go all out. All out.
Oh wow, so at that point it’s not about pacing yourself for the distance. It's really going for it right now.
Really going for it. Spikes of performance and recovery. Fuelling and rest then becomes critical because the total time is probably 30 hours. There’s lack of sleep, heat, different kinds of environments. You're in open traffic, right? There's stress factors of coordinating where you're going. You need to remember there's a turn. Plus, with having so many handovers, one mistake crumbles everyone and morale tanks. There's a lot of pressure on that team to function. And then if it functions, you can really flow. In out, in, out, in, out. It's almost like riding a wave.
Parts are on-road, off-road, parts of it are soft sand. Day and night. It's not just like a road marathon where you click into your pace. Every time there might be different aspects that influence your pace. And you always need to check in, is this the right type of effort?
It requires a seasoned athlete to create a flow state within this chaos.
It’s a really innovative approach. It feels intrinsically wrong somehow, but it works. Do you now find that teams default to that approach as the standard? Or are people trying to find other ways to do it? Is there still creativity coming through in the approach?
Yeah, totally. During the pandemic we organised a decentralised race, where you could run the 31 hours wherever and however you wanted. There was a team in California who went on a track and were going to do 200-metre intervals. Their theory was that maybe 90 seconds was too long. Maybe 200 metres is the sweet spot. And they fell apart, brutally fell apart after 13-14 hours. It wasn't because the athletes weren’t good. They pushed it too far. So that's kind of interesting to see.
It’s great that there's space to test the approach and runners who are willing to risk failing really hard to find those boundaries. Brutal for them, but fascinating from a human athleticism perspective.
Exactly. Route finding. How do you set up your teams? How much support do you have? Which kind of vehicles? How do you fuel over such a long period of time? We're going into year twelve for the original race experience and
I don't think we know the fastest way to run from LA to Vegas yet.
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Expression
Running as a Way of Life
Running has been with us for a long time. Suddenly it has captivated such a broad audience, but in a new way. It's no longer a sport, it's like a way of life. How do you see that evolution? You’re part of it with TSP. There are brands like Satisfy, Tracksmith, Bandit. You’re all bringing this completely new feel to the running space. Where do you see that going in the future?
Yeah, it's such a wild time. DJ's starting races and run clubs. I was just at Berlin Marathon and saw a stacked field of high-performing athletes. It's so fascinating and I think it's not gonna stop. It's such an accessible sport. It’s gained such popularity, you know, and I think that one of the tipping points within running is that the social aspect makes it so much more bearable.
I ran yesterday by myself at like, 5am. I'm a very seasoned runner. I run a lot and each run is different, but it's so much more challenging to run solo than in a group or with two or three people. Having all those group runs available to people around the world, in so many cultures, makes this a really safe activity for a lot of people. And so with the accessibility, the support from the industry, the experiences, creativity is coming from so many angles. You can now run and rave. It's bizarre but amazing at the same time.
What about the financial aspect of running? TSP is unsanctioned. It feels like something that might actively rally against capitalism.
The industry will continue to support running because they're making money and that's not a bad thing. What we do need to ask is why are you in this space? And are you in this space for the right reasons? If I look at Diplo for example, who puts on races, it's totally not for me. But he’s been in that world for a while, and I'm sure he could choose to do something else to make more money,
he chooses to be in the sport in his most authentic way, which is beautiful.
And then you have other organisations, or people who moved into this space, where the pure intention to just make money and squeeze the lemon as hard as they can. That's a big turn off for me.
Yeah, this is the beautiful thing. Running can be for anyone and that means it can take on any flavour. You have an authentic need but you can’t see something within running that fits what you're looking for, so you create that space for yourself. And that invites other people in. That's a genuine thing. You're creating something new within a larger idea of running.
Balance
Always Ready to Go
I’d like to get your view on balance and wellbeing. There's the core of running, then there's growing knowledge around the periphery; maximising the running experience by exploring other aspects of our lives.
Oh yeah, I think my objective is to have an ultimate level of fitness so if any of my friends says "let's do x, y and z tomorrow", I can always say, "yes, I'll be there". Someone's training for something, I'm there. I'll do a workout with you. Someone asks me to run up this mountain. Okay, I can run up this mountain.
My objective is to be fit for life.
And so what I've been pushing further into are aspects outside running.
I have a few tools. I implemented a form of daily meditation. I implemented heat and cold exposure. I implemented a few elements in terms of nutrition, and I implemented a few healthy habits. I'm a very radical person and I'm very committed to my lifestyle, so my follow-through is very high.
I lean into what environments I have available. So in Los Angeles, running is really the key element of it all. I spend a lot of time in Central America by the coast and surfing is a critical part of my lifestyle there. I build my routines centred around one main physical activity that depends on where I am in the world.
Sleep Potential
What about your down time? The bits where you’re inactive.
Now that I think about it, sleep would be the one thing I would love to master. If I could choose one thing, then it'd be optimising my sleep to then translate that into higher performance.
Oh man, sleep is the one. I think there’s this belief that to maximise life, you need to be awake more. Which sometimes is true, if you’re running a multi-day event for example. But if you want to perform better when you’re awake, you need the ultimate sleep setup. We still have relatively medieval sleeping arrangements, so there’s a lot of potential there.
Form Advantage
You run, a lot. Big, demanding distances. Do you consider the longer term effects of going deep like that?
The beauty with running is there's not much gear. There's lots of innovation in other sports, but for us the ultimate is learning to adjust your form. How's your stride? Are you a heel striker who stretches the entire leg where you land with your heel, then the impact travels into your knee, into your hip, and so on. It's that wear and tear on your body. The inefficiency of that type of stride really holds you back from a performance perspective. Having gait analysis, really fine tuning and trimming your form is the difference.
If you would’ve asked me when I first started running if form is a thing, I would be like, "form?" That would have not even registered. Now we have so much knowledge and there are tools for us to implement that. Short term it improves your running, long term it takes care of your body.
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Bodyhacking
The Recovery Hack
The majority of our current understanding is about maximising the existing potential of our bodies. More and more people living to peak age and living it well. Then there’s what’s next, new things coming through tech and science that are giving people new abilities beyond today’s potential, augmenting the body in all sorts of interesting ways.
If you could hack your body, what kind of capability would you want? What kind of experience would you create?
Yeah, I think my first experience hacking my body was six or seven years back. I fairly regularly go to Burning Man and part of my experience there is racing a 50k on Tuesday. And Tuesday is kind of like a halfway point. You arrive on Saturday if you're going in with a regular crowd. And so I raced this 50k, came back to my camp, and the neighbouring camp I became friendly with days before, turns out they’re a bunch of doctors and they're like "Hey Nils, we heard you ran this 50k. We have a surprise for you". Like, okay. So I go into their campervan.
They open the fridge and the entire door is filled with IV drips. They're like, "oh yeah, we brought this. We mixed them also". I was like, "okay, sign me up".
I still don't quite know what was in there, but I don't think you can buy it at CVS.
Burning Man is an extreme kind of environment. It's very dry, it's very exposed to the elements. And then running a 50k there, it's pretty hard on your body. So the drips were a big unlock. They very quickly allowed me to get back to life. And they were so simple.
You can drink as much as you want, but at some point your body just doesn't absorb the nutrients. If you're taking it in via an IV, it goes straight into your system.
Recovery hacking, right to the source.
Right to the source. And that's where it's needed. For me, one of the things I’ve always been challenged by is hydration. And oh wow, that's a game changer, you know? For recovery and also pre-race situations. I don't even know if it's legal or not, probably not if you perform on a higher level. If I have a big race, within the 24 hours before, what I do now is get an IV, from a pure hydration perspective. So I know my body, and this small hack has really unlocked a lot of ability within me.
And it's not like a crazy new invention. You know, it's just more accessible to us now. I'm in Los Angeles. I can text a service and within 60 minutes a nurse will be here in the office giving me an IV, you know?
And you've got instant recovery or instant race-readiness. Yeah, that's a cool hack because whilst it definitely sorts out your body, there will be a lot happening psychologically with it too. An all-rounder-hack.
Thanks so much for your time, Nils.
Future Bodies learnings from Nils
Substance and quality are critical. Growth follows, but it’s not the focus.
Performance innovation is brutal. There’s a fine line between glory and crashing out. But there are often gains found in the unconventional thinking sitting on the periphery of the core activity.
Be honest about why you’re moving into the space. Authenticity comes from knowing why existing ideas don’t work for you and why you need to make something that does.
Creativity can take many forms in sport. Remove as many guardrails as possible to let creativity take over. Invite your audience to co-create.
We still don’t know how fast, or far, we can go.
Future Bodies is a series of discussions exploring the perspectives of creatives who are rethinking our relationship with the human body.
At the fringes of subculture, there is a renaissance taking shape. Science and technology, culture and creativity are all converging to unlock new understanding and to push the potential for what our bodies can achieve. Our mission is to explore and shape this future.
Written by
Simon Daniel
Simon is a Creative Director in our London studio and leads The Body mission – exploring the potential of our bodies through holistic wellness and self-expression, performance sport and bodyhacking.
Interested? Get in touch to design the future of The Body with us →