How Marathon Training Has Put Kyle Larson On Brink Of Third NASCAR Title

Homestead-Miami Speedway (Homestead, Fla.) — Kyle Larson has plans before he gets into his NASCAR Cup Series car Friday for one of the most important practice sessions for the season. He’ll go run 15 miles along the Florida coast. Larson has no plans to interrupt his training for his first marathon, as he makes one last push to win an expected third NASCAR Cup Series title Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He needs just nine points Sunday to clinch the title, and that’s only if Christopher Bell (67 points behind) or Denny Hamlin (70 points behind) have career race-winning days. Four weeks after the 2026 season finale, Larson will compete in a very different type of race when he competes in the California International Marathon. It goes from Folsom to Sacramento, just miles from his hometown of Elk Grove. Has training for a marathon helped Larson in what has been an incredible postseason run where he has three wins with an average finish of 6.8 (Hamlin is next at 11.2) and an average point total of 47.1 (Bell is next at 39.1)? “It’s been fun to have this sort of going on in the background and fun to be committed to the training of it and to also keep my mind off of racing,” Larson, who has been running 40-plus miles the last few weeks, told me in an exclusive interview Thursday morning at the track. “I really think that’s important. I’m curious what other athletes would say in other sports, but I think it’s good to have an activity, whatever it may be, to keep your mind off of the sport that you’re into because it can be pressure-packed and you can overthink it a lot of times.” The 34-year-old Hendrick Motorsports driver decided to do the marathon to run with some California friends, including sprint-car mechanic Trevor Canales. He will race a midget car as he normally does on Thanksgiving weekend at Ventura (Calif.) Raceway and then stay in his hometown for a week until the marathon. “Doing my first marathon in the town I was born in is cool,” he said. “It’s a favorable course, net downhill. … It’s just my friends were doing it together and that’s where they live.” Larson crew chief Cliff Daniels, who said Larson is trying to get him to run a half-marathon in Daytona the morning of the preseason Clash next February, thinks the marathon training has helped Larson. “I think it has to,” Daniels told me. “His physical capabilities are as high as they’ve ever been. “Working out does a lot of good things for you mentally as well, and keeps him focused on the discipline in his weekly process and what it takes to work towards the end of a Cup season and what it takes to work towards a marathon and all those things. That’s a pretty high level of prep, and it takes a special individual to do that.” That level of prep has been different than in the past for Larson, who has not had as rigorous a sprint-car schedule as in past seasons and also has spent more time with his kids (including their racing) this year. “I would say it hasn’t hurt me,” Larson said about the marathon training. “I don’t know if it’s helped me, but I do think it’s kept my mind off of racing, which has been good because I just have this other thing that I’m like equally committed to. “I probably, honestly, put way more thought behind this marathon than I do The Chase, which I think has kept a lot of pressure off of me. “I’ve definitely felt pressure, but I’ve felt more pressure in other years, and I think a lot of it has just to do with just my mind is on something else. But I’m not distracted from it, either, because I think it’s all kind of benefiting Sundays in a way.” Larson runs by himself and listens to music. “I don’t feel like I’m a great runner, so I don’t want to feel like I’m limiting anybody that’s going with me,” Larson said. “It’s peaceful. I just put my headphones in and go log miles. It’s fun. … [The music] could be anywhere from country to EDM, some rap, classic rock, alternative. “You’ve got to change it up. For as long as you’re out there on the road, you can get bored of hearing the same music every day.” But to do 15 miles in the humidity of Miami on Friday might not seem like the smartest thing to do on a big NASCAR weekend. He admitted he isn’t looking forward to it but feels he will be ready for practice. “I haven’t had a Friday practice while I’ve been training,” Larson said. “As long as you stay fueled, you feel fine afterwards. I thought when you’re training for endurance stuff, I thought you train at a higher heart rate or whatever you’re supposed to do, but the majority of it is low heart rate stuff. So staying fueled during it is the biggest piece to not feel like crap afterwards.” While some drivers run, others choose different types of physical and fitness training. William Byron, a Larson teammate and winner last weekend at Martinsville Speedway, doesn’t have much interest in running a marathon. “I just feel a little bit miserable when I run, so I don’t know if that would change [because] 26 [miles] seems like a lot,” Byron told me last week. “Three is a lot for me.” Larson can relate. He said he found running hard in the past, but this training started with him at a slow pace and he hasn’t felt much pain. “[Byron] was how I was and then I think you turn early 30s and your priorities change, and you get into this stuff,” Larson said. “It’s like what all 30-year-olds do. … I used to golf all the time. And now I don’t golf and do this.” As far as goals for the marathon, Larson hopes to do better than three hours, 30 minutes. He expects to hit a wall at some point. Larson knows about hitting an actual wall and then battling on. So hitting a proverbial wall and continuing on should be something he can muscle through. But to hear him talk about it, it almost sounds like he’s more nervous about the marathon than racing this weekend. “I just don’t know what my body’s going to feel like at mile 18 or 20 after running that pace,” Larson said. “I could be faster, but I just don’t want to … be walking across the finish line. “I just don’t want my body to freak out, and then I’m like just limping home. I think that’s where I would get disappointed in myself. … I don’t know. Man, it’s nerve-racking.”