This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Robin Thurston, the 54-year-old founder and CEO of Outside Interactive, based in Boulder, Colorado. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I grew up in Colorado, and I’ve been in the outdoor space for a long time.
I was a cyclist when I was young, grew up through the national team system, and then raced in Europe for four years. I still ride my bike 7,000 to 10,000 miles a year.
I tell the story about how my dad, in 1979, threw an Outside Magazine at me and said, “We’re going here.” The front cover featured Arches National Park. I remember it as a very excruciating 10 days as a young child, but I was exposed to the outdoors a lot.
After cofounding MapMyFitness and later holding leadership positions at Under Armour and Helix, I founded Outside Interactive, the outdoor media and tech platform that now owns Outside Magazine, Velo, Gaia GPS, Inntopia, Outside Days, and more, in 2019.
Screen time is taking over. Never in human history have we spent as much time indoors as we do today. It’s pretty scary to think that we probably spend around 5-10% of our lives outdoors. That’s not really what we’re supposed to do. Humans are no different from any other animals on the planet.
I’m constantly thinking about what the next thing I’m going to do outdoors is. I probably check the weather six times a day.
Here’s a day in my life.
My wife and I typically wake up between 5:45 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.
We’ll take our three dogs out and split dog-walking duties. I always tell people, if you want to spend more time outside, get a dog.
Next, coffee. I cannot survive without coffee. I make it at home with my espresso machine every day.
I usually spend a little time with my kids, who are 10, 13, and 15, as they get ready for school. My oldest recently got her driver’s permit, which is both frightening and exciting.
If I plan on doing a higher intensity workout, I’ll eat a little bit of carbs — some granola and yogurt, or fresh fruit and granola. For my longer workouts on weekdays, I’ll try to eat a high-protein meal such as steak and eggs.
I drink ketones, beverages containing ketone bodies as an energy source, every day, first thing in the morning. I’ve probably been taking them for at least four years, and I definitely think they help with brain fog and endurance when I’m riding.
I check the weather to pencil in my bike ride
About three workdays a week, I’ll either ride my bike for an hour and a half to two hours between 8 a.m and noon, or do some work and schedule the bike ride for later, depending on the weather.
It’s a massive priority for me to try to figure out when I’ll go on my ride, and I don’t do well in the late afternoon or evening. When you’re mentally fraught, it’s harder to do it. On the weekends, I’ll ride 3- to 4- hours on Saturday and 2- to 3- hours on Sunday.
I change my activities depending on the season. In the winter, I’ll ride indoors on a Zwift bike, get out for a short hike, or head up to Eldora Mountain to ski for a few hours. From spring through fall, my daily workout is almost exclusively cycling.
I bring my bike on international flights
I’m probably in a hotel for 75 days a year.
If I’m going on a trip for 3 to 5+ days, I take athletic equipment. While taking running shoes would be super easy, I don’t personally love running. Instead, I take my bike, my skis, or my golf clubs on flights 60 to 70% of the time.
For bikes especially, renting can be a huge disaster on the road; it’s easier for me to bring mine. All I have to do is take the wheels off. The case I have lets me keep the handlebars straight and the pedals on, so I can get the bike ready to go in 10 minutes. I also have multiple AirTags in it, so I can tell where it is.
I work from home and take local ‘food meetings’
While we have offices in the US, Canada, and Germany, we don’t have one in Boulder right now.
If I’m meeting with someone, I might be doing it at their office or at what I call ‘food meetings’ around town. I probably go to 15 of those a month. Otherwise, a typical lunch looks like tacos or a protein shake if I have less time.
Otherwise, I work from home, might do my workout, and then I’m back at it.
I encourage my staff to take walking calls and use AI responsibly
We have about 400 employees. We encourage everyone to hold their meetings on walks rather than on Zoom. I think video calls are great if you’re meeting for the first time, but they can get pretty exhausting if you’re doing them for eight to nine hours a day.
There’s also a lot of clinical research showing that even 30 minutes of outdoor walking can lower blood pressure.
I try to schedule meetings where I ride with someone or go golfing, skiing, or hiking. In a given month, I’ll try to do 8 to 10 of those. Otherwise, I’ll go on a dog walk during a call.
Our culture around video calls is similar to our approach regarding AI. I’m a fan — it has massively sped up many of the things I do each day and helped me follow up on a lot of things I maybe could not in the past. I emphasize that you have to check everything; you cannot rely on accuracy.
I typically finish work by 5:30 p.m or 6 p.m.
Working from home gets a little hectic at 4 p.m. because my kids get home from being at school all day. We ride around the neighborhood, go to the park, or sit down and play a board game. My son loves Battleship.
Then we’ll have dinner. We grill a lot, so we have a lot of protein, some carbs, and vegetables when we eat together. It’s pretty structured — 80 to 90% of the time, we eat at home. It creates consistency.
I try to be away from screens, email, or anything like that until the kids go to bed or start getting ready for bed around 8 p.m. or 8:30 p.m.
Then I’ll work for another hour or an hour and a half, just getting ready for the next day.
I try to turn off screens again an hour before I go to sleep, around 10 p.m.
We go to bed around 11 p.m. I try to maximize my sleep time. I wear an eye mask, we have blackout shades, and I’ll put on some meditation music or the “Nothing Much Happens” podcast, which puts me to sleep almost instantly. My Eight Sleep mattress cover has also genuinely changed my sleep quality. My only complaint is that I can’t bring it on the road with me.
I track everything through Oura and Garmin, and understanding those patterns has been really valuable. I’ll still sort of consistently get six and a half, maybe seven hours of sleep, if I’m lucky.
Some people live long, but they don’t necessarily have the greatest quality of life. I use the sauna and cold plunge, but the No. 1 thing for me is consistency in activity. It’s investing in yourself, similar to dollar-cost averaging.
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