The host of American Public Media's Marketplace tells how running helps clear his mind before going on the air.

How much do you run? I run about four to five miles, three days a week. I have four young children, so pretty much the only time I can get away is real early in the morning. I get up at 4:30 and I'm out the door at 4:45. Once I get home from work, it's all, "Daddy, can we throw the ball?" and all that stuff. The only time I can get out the door is 4:45.

What kind of pace do you keep up? Not as fast as I'd like—about 8:30, 8:45 a mile.

Have you been a lifelong runner? Since college, really.

Do you enter races? I've done a bunch of different 10Ks, I tried to get to a marathon once but I got the flu right before the marathon. So it didn't work out. I was so upset too, because I was up to like 18 miles.

How old are your kids? 10, 7, 4, and 1.

What time is your workday over? About 4, 4:30. But we start pretty early. We're here by 7. About 4:30 I'm back to the dad thing. Before I got onto Marketplace, I spent four years working on our overnight program. We have a morning show. So I used to get up at midnight and go to work. I was on the air from 2 in the morning until 6 in the morning. And I would leave here and go for a run then and that was always the best part of the day.

What does running do for you? It does two things. One is, it gets me my Kai time. It lets me have a little bit of time in the morning to sort of get organized. And it really starts my day and gets my energy level up. The funny thing is, I really feel it if I don't run. I start getting sluggish and I feel like I need to do it. That's how I know that the workouts are working—I miss them if I don't have them.You're not tempted to do more than five miles or three days a week? I am, but I run out of time, you know? By the time I'm done with five miles, it's 5:30 in the morning, I need to get in and have a cup of coffee and read the papers and get in the shower and go to work. On the weekends, it gets hairier with kids' soccer games, all that stuff. It's funny, I had my medial meniscus fixed two and a half years ago and ever since then I've been leery about doing too much.

On the days you're not running, do you sleep in until 5:30? Until 5. Then I get up and read the paper. I'm a morning guy. It's funny, 4:30 sounds painful, but for me it's really not.

Is it safe running at that hour? For my birthday a couple years ago my wife bought me one of those little lamps that you can strap onto your head, one of those halogen lamps. Which is really nice to have, because before I was like, oh man, is that a pothole? Is that a crack in the road? And now I have this light so it works out really well.

Do you think about work while you're running? Sometimes. Although, it's funny, my best runs are the runs are where I'm just going and my mind goes blank for awhile and I snap back to reality a mile and half later. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I'm running, this is great" and I don't know what I've been thinking about, which is nice.

What you do think about is sort of the day ahead, right?I remember the day that the House finally passed the bailout package, we had an interview lined up with Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House. I'm out there chugging along at 4:30 in the morning, thinking obviously what you're going to say, because you don't get a whole lot of time on the phone with the Speaker of the House. You really want to line up your questions. And the thing that stuck in my mind while I was running that day was, the House had rejected it the week before and sent the markets down 750 points. So I really wanted to ask her, "Did you bring it to the floor too soon?" And I did. And the question made it into the interview. She said, "Well, we thought we had the votes." And I said, "Um, no, you really didn't because it failed." And she was pretty straightforward. So that was one of the instances where you clear your mind but it doesn't go blank, you know what I mean? I think that's a better description of what happened. She said, "Well, we had the votes." I interrupted, which you rarely do in an interview, especially when it's the Speaker of the House. "But you really didn't, because it failed." We went on from there.
So how has it been lately? Yeah, that's actually interesting. So what's been happening lately, you can see how the real world is impinging on my recreational time. I get up in the morning and usually what I do is stretch on the living room rug, and then I go running. But now I'm opening up my computer and while I'm stretching I'm reading the headlines, just so I can sort of have some sense of the financial news of the day.

When it's bad economic times, do you feel it? Do you take it to heart? You know, it's funny, I think what it is, I'm so involved in it, I can't really think about it that way. First of all, my wife handles all our money. I'm happy to let her do that. It's easier for me if I don't get all subjective about it. And if I just try to be in the news.

Any other intersection between business and running? We heard another correspondent ask you on the air if you're a runner. Scott and I were chatting about the credit squeeze and manufacturing problems are hitting China and he was down in south China where so many running shoes are made. And we got onto a conversation about that.

But Americans aren't going to give up running in tough economic times? Exactly.

Anything you hate about running? The worst part obviously is when that alarm goes off at 4:30 in the morning. If you gave me a nickel, I would scrub the whole thing, I'd say, "Fine, I won't go." But once my feet hit the ground, I think I'm pretty much OK. I think that's the rule, once I'm out of bed I'm fine. I can literally count on the fingers of one hand the number of times in the last four or five years that I've turned off my alarm and said I can't do it today. Once I'm awake, I'm awake, which helps when you have to run in the mornings.

Do you lay out your clothes the night before? I sort of have to, otherwise I'm poking around in the closet and I'm waking everyone up. The clothes go out in the living room. And I get dressed quietly out there, and I stretch and I kind of tiptoe out the door. And I have the baby monitor on while I'm stretching, so if the baby wakes up, I go in and grab her.

Are your kids into it at all? No. They're hyperactive little kids, playing soccer and baseball and all. I took my 10-year-old running with me once. We went a mile and a half and he was not enjoying it at all.

Do you have a baby jogger? No, actually. My wife runs as well. We were out of running for a couple years after our second child and I think the baby jogger got lost in a move. I should probably get a new one. Here's the other thing, I don't like running when I'm holding things in my hand, whether it's a dog leash or a baby jogger. My mechanics get all messed up.

So you don't run with the dog either? No. My wife always says, "Oh, you ought to take the dog. I do, it's great." I'm like, "No, I can't do it. I don't want to trip on the leash, I don't want to do any of that."

Do you have a preferred brand of shoes?I wear Nikes. I never thought that running shoes made that much of difference until four or five years ago when on a lark I tried something else. It didn't work out for me at all?

How did you tear your meniscus?Back when I was doing the overnights. I was up to 8 or 10 miles a day, five days a week. It was just use, because I was running in downtown Los Angeles on city streets, running on pavement. My orthopedist said, "you've got to find some trails or something."

Do you do trails now? I try once a week to go on trails up in the Angeles forest near my house. I've got that little light now. The rattlesnakes aren't out until the sun comes up. Coyotes get scared and kind of run away. I see coyotes every day. Even down on the streets where I live.

And that doesn't freak you out?First time it did. First time it absolutely freaked me out and I wasn't sure what to do. But it turns out they're really skittish and if you pretty much just keep on running and wave your arms a little bit, they'll trot away. First time it absolutely freaked me out.

You were in the Navy? Did you have to do a lot of running. Oh yeah. In fact, I first started running right before I went to boot camp. I figured I really needed to get in good shape. So I started running junior year in college.

There was a lot of running in the Navy? Yeah, there was. I was on an aircraft carrier for three years. I did four years of undergrad at Emory, then went to Officer Candidates School right after graduation, then flight school. While we were at sea, you either did exercise bikes, or treadmills, or ran around the flight deck.

I've heard those flight decks are a rough surface.They are rough. Imagine the roughest sandpaper you can imagine, multiply that by 1,000. There is no give at all. It's steel. I really hate treadmills. I will if I'm traveling and it's the only place I can run, on a hotel treadmill. But I really don't like to. I was in Dubai for Marketplace for two and a half weeks. First couple days I was intimidated by the weather and the desert-ness of it all. And so I ran inside on the treadmill. One day, it was late afternoon and it must have been 100 degrees and I was like, Screw it, I just have to get outside. So I went and it was completely doable. So I ran outside for the last 10, 12 days I was there.

If Henry Paulson and Ben Bernake were runners, would we be in a better spot?I don't know. One would hope so. But you look at Paulson and he has lost a lot of weight, so you gotta figure he's doing something. Maybe he's just not eating right.

If Kai the runner was a stock, what kind of stock would you be? As a runner I'm definitely a growth stock, man. I'm not high-flying, I'm not Internet, I'm not dot-com. I'm slow and steady wins the race. Stick with me and I'll eventually get to five or eight miles, but I'm never going to be doing marathons every week or something.

Do you ever run with a iPod?I don't. I'm a big unencumbered runner. I don't take jogging strollers, I don't take the dog, I don't take an iPod. It's just me and my brain. If the world can't get by without me for 45 minutes, then, you know. I stick an old dogtag in my shoe, so if I get hit by a bus, somebody knows who I am.

But I hear podcasts of Marketplace are becoming incredibly popular, because people want to do it on their terms. One of those times is working out in the gym or running. Frankly, as long as they're listening, we're happy. I don't know that I would necessarily run to a business and economics program, but that's neither here nor there.

Have you ever run on Wall Street? I have never run on Wall Street. When we did the broadcasts from Shanghai, I went running on the Bund in Shanghai. If you've ever been to Shanghai, it's this amazing riverfront area of old colonial era buildings, which is incredible, and it's right near the financial center of Shanghai. When we were in Dubai, running anyplace in Dubai is running in 120 degree weather, so that was an experience. Sand is everywhere. It is everywhere. The city is in the desert. It is everywhere.