Morning, friends! ☀️
I’m really excited to share today’s interview with you, as we hear from someone who’s close to my own age, and whose sense of what’s possible inspired me with every word he shared.
Today you meet Charles Zuckerman, an architect-designer-contractor who has traveled the world with his wife and children, running really every distance you can imagine — from 10Ks to 50Ks to marathons to ultras.
His enthusiasm for running — and for staying in shape in general — came in very early middle age, when a doctor put him on Lipitor at age 36. Determined to get off the medication, which his doctor had said was highly unlikely, he started taking his health seriously in a way he never had before.
The rest, as they say, is history — and so I won’t babble on any longer. I hope you have as much fun reading Charles’s story as I did, and as always, I’d love to hear yours too! — Terrell
So, let’s hear a little bit about you! Who are you, your age (if you’d like to share), where you’re from, what you do, etc.
My name is Charles Zuckerman and I am 58 years old. I come from the Boston suburb of Brookline but have lived in Niger, Germany, Romania, Wisconsin and Texas. For the last 28 years I have called San Francisco home.
I have been married for 32 years. I met [my wife] Mihaela back-packing through Romania and she is the reason I stayed there for a year. We have two wonderful daughters.
I am a licensed architect in the state of California and have worked as a designer, general contractor and owners’ representative. I retired in 2021 but recently came out of retirement to help two friends with an architectural software start-up.
But while that is what I did, that is not really who I am. What I am is someone who likes to explore the world in which I find myself and look into all the interesting and fascinating corners which abound inside and out.
Al Arnold, the first runner to make the intrepid trip from Badwater Basin in Death Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney, and thus inspired the annual Badwater ultramarathon, used to walk for hours in his back yard.
A neighborhood kid asked, “how big is your back yard?” His answer: “how big is your mind?” I think I tended to that point of view since I was young but I have strived for it ever since I read it.
What does your running routine look like? How many times a week, and how far do you run?
My running routine has varied significantly in the many years I have been running. I discovered ultra running around 2006 and prepped for my first 100-miler in 2008. I was up to 100 miles a week then.
In those years, I joined a gym where I worked and would run there 10 to 15 miles a day with a knapsack between 3:30 and 5:30 in the morning, stretch, do weights when the gym opened, and then shower and go to work.
After I changed jobs, I would do short morning runs and leave work early on Friday for the trails in the Headlands of Marin. There I would run from 4 in the afternoon until 2 in the morning, reserving Saturday and Sunday for my kids.
But now I have dialed it back to four days a week between 6 and 10 miles. Most often, my wife and I will head down to Crystal Springs reservoir and hike six miles to the far end. I then run back to the car. While waiting for her to hike back, do some stretching and strength work.
Were you an athletic kid growing up? What are your early memories of what fitness and health were about?
God, no! In fact, one of my earliest memories was the old presidential physical fitness tests. I couldn’t do a pull-up.
I remember fourth grade, trying to run the 660-yard test and being unable to finish. I was quite pudgy at the time (I would have said fat but I think that overstates it, looking at photos). But I always walked a lot.
After my freshman year of high school year, my parents signed me up for a four-week summer youth bike ride in Nova Scotia. One weekend, I convinced two friends to bike from Boston to Fall River to see the Battle Ship Massachusetts, a ride of 70 miles or so.
Boy was my dad surprised — [he was] outwardly angry, but I could tell there was some pride too — when we called collect to be picked up. It was then that I realized that endurance was a part of overall fitness and a place that I excelled.
How did you first get into running? Was there something that inspired you — like a performance at the Olympics, for example, or a runner you discovered by watching them on social media or TV? Or was there someone in your own life who inspired you to think, ‘maybe I can do this?’
Two separate times, two separate events.
When I was studying architecture at the University of Texas, my entire studio used to spend hours sitting at our desks drafting and eating crap. We were all young enough to maintain residual fitness but we all new it wasn’t healthy.
There was a woman in our studio who had run a marathon in undergraduate school and suggested that we all train together for the 1998 Austin Marathon. Many of us signed up and began training.
One by one people fell off, but three of us made it through finals before Christmas break on the plan. I was shocked when I returned for spring semester and found out I was the only one who stuck with it through the holidays. I was the only one who made it to the starting line. Four hours and six minutes later, I was a marathon runner.
I continued to run for the remainder of my graduate student life (including another Austin Marathon), but fell off the bus when I started working in San Francisco. Just like in school, I sat at a desk eating greasy fast food and working long hours. My wife and I had our two daughters and time was scarce.
The I went for a routine check-up. I was 36 years old, 238 pounds. My cholesterol was bad, my blood pressure borderline.
But the worst was my triglycerides. Healthy is sub 150. Mine were 706! My doctor put me on Lipitor. When I asked if I could correct it with diet and exercise, she informed me no, maybe lifestyle can move it 25 percent — but mine was hereditary.
My pencil-thin mother had just had a heart attack and one of my cousins numbers were worse than mine, so it made sense. But I refused to take no for an answer. I started to jog again and limited my calories to 1,500 per day with only 10 percent from fats.
I also joined the gym I mentioned, downstairs from my work. They assigned a coach for five free sessions to see if they could hook me — it worked.
Brian was an ultra-runner training for the Western States Endurance Run. I decided, if it was all downhill after age 40, I wanted to be at the top of a big f*cking hill and set running 100 miles as a goal.
Brian was instrumental in getting me there but on the way, I rediscovered how good I am at endurance efforts and how much I love running in the woods. I ran the Headlands Hundred in 2008 and haven’t looked back.
How has your interest in running evolved since then? Do you run farther, or faster now?
I neither run farther nor faster now. I recorded my fastest times fairly early on during my second incarnation as a runner. My fastest marathon, 50K, 50-miler, 100K and 100-miler were all between the ages of 39 and 41.
For a long time, I actually thought I might get a sub-3-hour marathon (3:10 was my best but I was still pulling off 3:30s into my fifties). But I think those days are behind me.
Instead of pushing speed, I decided to push activity and distance barriers, completing the California Death Ride in 2013, the Sonoma Ironman in 2018 and the Badwater 135 in 2023. My efforts evolved into fitness goals with some peak event every five years. In the fall of 2024, I had my left hip replaced but I am back up to comfortably doing 50Ks and am now trying to figure out what to do in 2028 to celebrate turning sixty.
What do you balance your running with? Do you have a family to take care of? Kids, parents or other relatives or loved ones? If so, how do you balance all of it and still make time to run/care for yourself?
This balance is often the trickiest part. For the vast majority of time I have been running and biking, I have always worked it into a part of my commute. In general, I would run or bike to work early in the morning so my evenings were free.
My long runs have traditionally been Friday nights or very early Saturday to free up the weekends as family/recovery time. My children are also athletic and growing up they often had swim meets around the Bay Area.
On those days, I would bike to their meets. For the furthest ones (like Salinas, which is a ride of about 110 miles), I would leave the house at 2 or 3 in the morning to get there by 11.
Sometimes work would take me to Sacramento for afternoon meetings. In those cases, I would take the first BART train to the end of the line and bike to the meetings. And when I worked at the San Francisco International airport, it was a nice 10-mile run to the office.
One important job factor for me is always to have access to a shower. Once, when planning out the job site trailer for a major project in Mountain View, my boss added a shower to the temporary work facility plans after he saw me arrive after biking in the morning.
By combining my commutes with my exercise goals, I managed to always keep my evenings and most weekends free for the fam.
Is there anything you’re especially proud of that you can point to your running and say, ‘this helped me achieve ______’?
Six months after starting the crazy diet and exercise routine I mentioned, I got off Lipitor. All my health markers have been in the good to excellent range ever since. I am not too concerned with lifespan, but I want a great health span.
I also have found that I do my best thinking when I am out running. Just recently I came up with an idea to use my new company’s platform with another start-up in the AI space to extend the lifecycle of our initial product while simultaneously extending the other company’s market footprint. Running outside the box frees my thinking to be outside the box.
What have you learned about yourself from your running journey? Is there anything that’s changed about you since you started?
It is a little bit of a chicken-and-egg question. I have developed incredible mental stamina. My ability to focus for long periods of time on one thing often even surprises me.
That said, I was always getting lost in thought as a kid, drawing and looking up to discover several hours had gone by. Was I drawn to running because of my propensity to be single-minded or did I strengthen that muscle by running stupid long distances? Not sure which came first!
Where would you like to go with your running? Is there anything special you’d like to achieve — like, say, running all six World Marathon Majors, or running an ultra?
At 58, I am under no illusion that I am on the long slow decline. I am not sure getting faster or longer are really in the cards at this point.
But keeping goals is still really incredibly important to me. As I mentioned, having five-year goals has always been a priority and I am now in the throes of figuring out my 60th year challenge.
Originally I thought a double Badwater would be the ticket but I am starting to tac to something else: the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim. I have done South Rim to River to Rim.
I was driving a U-haul across country and decided to stop in Flagstaff for an extra night to do it on the spur of the moment but needed to buy micro-spikes (Early March - Ice). The store on the Rim didn’t open until 8:00 a.m., so I got started too late to do the whole thing.
There are also several races scattered around the world that I would love to do as part of vacationing with my wife. Ever since 2009, I have wanted to do the Sunrise to Sunset Marathon in Mongolia (100K, the Grand Raid in Reunion, the Marathon Des Sables in Morocco, the Canal Races in England — just to name a few.
What keeps you going? Especially if you’ve been running for a while — do you ever get bored with it? How do you find new things to motivate you, to keep you going?
I don’t really get bored, but sometimes if I take too long a break, I am sluggish starting up again. Residual fitness just doesn’t last like it used to.
But in a strange way, that is what keeps me going. I love to travel. I love adventure. In the last 15 months, I have had the joy of visiting Greece, China and Albania. Even if not going for a run, fitness is a key part for squeezing every moment of adventure out of every opportunity.
Two years ago, my wife and I were at a destination wedding for a nephew outside Mexico City at New Year’s. Three nights in a row, we were out dancing until the place shut down.
When it ended we flew to Chetumal and rented a car to drive to the Mayan ruins at Calakmul four hours into the jungles of central Yucatan. We spent two days climbing pyramids and exploring places most people never get to.
These adventures are only possible by staying fit and able. I watch the world get smaller as people get older. I never want my world to stop expanding.
Look back at yourself when you were a kid, maybe say 10 years old. Remember how you felt, what you thought, especially what you thought you were capable of back then. If you could talk to that kid now, what would you say?
I was not a happy kid — particularly between the ages of about 10 and 17. I saw every glass as half empty. I felt like I didn’t fit in. I was bad at sports and not athletic. Although plenty capable, I hated school and my grades reflected that.
I guess I would say to my former self, just stay curious, stay inquisitive. Remember, we live in three planes: the past, the present and the future. Relish the story telling that depends on your greatest memories.
Plan for the future, give yourself the means and tools to get to where you want to go. But live in the moment. Enjoy the wind blowing an insect across your path. Find one thing every day as you fall asleep that brought you a moment of joy that day.
Be present in what you are doing as you do it. Doing so will turn the goodness of tomorrow into a self fulfilling prophesy and the story-telling tomorrow of what you did yesterday into a great day with your friends.
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I think it is fantastic that you got off of Lipitor. This speaks volumes to the control one often has over their body IF they choose to work hard at it. It would be wonderful for the doctor who said you couldn't change your numbers by lifestyle improvements to know how successful it actually was. I also loved hearing about the energy you had on the trip you and your wife took. Lastly, your self-reflection at the end of the interview is so thoughtful. Thank you for your words of wisdom!!
So glad to learn more about you Charles! You are an inspiration.