Category: Healthy Running

I Chewed an Entire Box of RunGum and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!
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rungum

Nail-biter, gum-snapper, pencil-gnawer, teeth-tapper — Freud would have a heyday with my oral fixation, which I self-medicate by chewing gum, a lot. Call me the Violet Beauregarde of running. So when a friend offered me an entire box of Nick Symmond‘s RunGum she won at a race I took it. Chewing caffeinated gum while I run? Sounded like a match made in Heaven: three of my favorite things all rolled into a single experience.

With the gum long gone and the box recycled, did I turn into an elite runner, OTQ, improve my tempo pace, turn into Cornholio, enhance my physique, or at least pony up the money to buy another box of RunGum for myself?

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Running on Low Progesterone: An Update
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progesterone and runningIn my first post on this topic, I explored how I came to a diagnosis of low progesterone. Since then, I have been to an endocrinologist and an alternative medicine practitioner called a naturopath. As many of you can surely relate, when it comes to my body, I don’t take no for an answer when I know something is wrong. I ask questions, press harder, and explore all avenues to get everything back on track.

Sadly, since my diagnosis I have had to work very hard to find a medical professional to take my diagnosis or concerns seriously. I’m one of many women who’ve struggled for answers about my health. But, like I said, I will not be deterred. Read more >>

The Case for Junk Miles
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Junk miles. You know, the runs where you run with no particular purpose in mind: no workout, or necessary distance even, at whatever pace you want. We’ve written about them before, and explained why it’s important to avoid them because they might be keeping you from your goal of getting faster. But, um, what if you need a break from that one-track-minded getting faster thing, of hitting a determined number as you cross a finish line? What if junk miles feel right?

What if what you actually need in your life are more junk miles?

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A Mindful Approach to Time Off from Training
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It’s late at night and you’re curled up in bed with your beloved smartphone. You open up Instagram to watch some stories, mostly of your favorite runners, the ones you follow out of genuine interest and the ones you follow with morbid curiosity. And then the thought pops in your head: how do these people continue to train for race after race? Why is everything about running? Don’t they ever take any breaks?

The short answer is yes. Many runners take breaks, and these breaks often look different from runner to runner. Even pros take breaks after intense training cycles. For some, a break can be as short as a week or two off. For others, it may be longer, lingering into months-long hiatus territory.

Even so, some people continue to run during breaks, but focus less on structured training and more on running for enjoyment. Like many things, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. And, it’s true: it’s often difficult to take time off from running. But I’m here to reassure you that’s it’s not only possible but can also be done in a way that preserves both our fitness and our egos. Read more >>

Our Runner Bodies Do Not Lie: My Experience with Low Progesterone
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My body has thrown me a few curve balls over the past few years. As a runner, I feel like I’m quite in tune with my body, almost to a point where I notice when the smallest thing is off. You know like the hangriness creep that starts after eating lunch a mere 30 minutes later than usual.

A few months ago, I knew something wasn’t right. Sure, I had some vague symptoms when I wasn’t running, but it was my running that really tipped me off that something in my body was amiss. In my case, it turned out to be my progesterone levels.  Read more >>

I Survived the Worst Chafing of My Life
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I’ve never been one to chafe, at least not like some people seem to. Sure if it’s really hot I’ll chafe along the shorts-liner, or I’ll get the occasional armpit hot spot, or for some reason my lower back chafes from time to time. Oh and this is kinda crazy. Since my two pregnancies turned my belly button into an outie, it gets rubbed raw if I run in the rain. But it’s nothing too serious: I lube up my little problem areas with the same tube of BodyGlide I’ve owned for several years, and am usually just good to go.

Meanwhile, I read about, and listen to my friends moan about their terrible chafing — one poor friend nearly had a skin-free strip under her sports bra strap last summer. But so far, severe chafing has been one of those things, like plantar fasciitis or melasma, that I imagine must suck but I really never fully appreciated the horror … until recently.

But #soblessed no more. A series of unfortunate events, environmental factors, and poor decisions led to the worst chafing of my life.

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Girls, Running and Role Models
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About a week ago, I was stretching by my parked car before a run on my favorite local path when I saw a young girl, maybe nine or ten years old, get out of a car with her dad. I overheard their conversation as she was stretching while her dad unloaded his bike.

She looked at him and said, “I hope you can bike fast because I am a really fast runner.”

Her confidence was beaming and she started running down the trail ahead of her dad, calling for him to catch up.

I started my run about five minutes later and saw her about a half mile down the trail. I made eye contact with her dad and I couldn’t stop smiling — her innocence and youthful love of running seems so rare for girls her age, and you could tell that he was so proud of his little girl.

I go to that path at least once a week and this was the first time I saw a young girl exercising. Why is that? Read more >>

I Read Matt Fitzgerald’s The Endurance Diet & You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!
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If, like me, you suffer from a lifetime overload of dietary (mis)information, but love to read about running and food and science, then Matt Fitzgerald’s latest book The Endurance Diet will be a refreshing read. Fitzgerald travels the world, examining the diets of elite endurance athletes, and concludes — perhaps unsurprisingly — that carbs are the basis of virtually all elite endurance athletes’ diets. Furthermore, elite athletes don’t restrict calories, food groups, or macronutrients; they eat what they need to perform. Read more >>

It’s Not Asthma? Vocal Cord Dysfunction and Running
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After quitting the track team in high school due to what she thought were asthma attacks, Laura Hurd started running again as an adult, but soon the attacks came back. Now a speech-language pathologist, she recognized that the symptoms she was experiencing way back when were not asthma but something else — vocal cord dysfunction.

Our vocal cords are designed to block our airways when we swallow to keep food and drink out from going down the wrong pipe and into our lungs. When operating normally, vocal cords only block our airways for that purpose. Paradoxical vocal cord dysfunction, also known as vocal cord or vocal fold dysfunction (we’ll call it VCD), occurs when the vocal cords close when breathing, and thus block the airway. It’s obviously a problem when breathing causes us not to be able to breathe!  Read more >>

Runners, Use Your Sunscreen!
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As runners, we spend a lot of time outside. But do you apply sunscreen before you go out for every run? Even more important, do you put it on as part of your daily routine? Do you put it everywhere you need to?

Only recently have I noticed a trend away from tanning and towards skin protection. I, too, am guilty of not being as diligent as I should be. Sadly, it took a tragedy to really get it through my skin that I’m not invincible. Read more >>

I Am That Girl
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Who am I anyway?

“Everyone needs a hobby,” I shrug with a smile. I say this to family members, to people I date, people I work with, people I meet out. You can relate, I’m sure, to that look they give me in return, the way nonrunners look at us. It’s some combination of admiration, confusion and dismissal. There’s an instant barrier. They could never do that. They don’t want to. They don’t understand.

At my “day job” I’m that girl. The one who runs. The girl with the funny tall socks and the race t-shirts and the rain jacket that sports the NYC Marathon logo. “How many miles did you run today?” asks a coworker, who shakes his head and calls me crazy when I give the answer.

You might be surprised how often I get that same look from runners too. Read more >>

Beyond Racing Weight: Running to Recovery from Anorexia
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Phew! I’m finally back with Part III of my story of overcoming anorexia. Sorry for the delay! My Boston Marathon recovery called for a little time away from running, which also included writing about running. To catch up, you can read Part I and Part II before diving in.

Four and a half years ago I was struggling in the throes of anorexia and running was tangled up in my illness, a means to burn the few calories I consumed. My running performance was an excuse I used to justify needing to lose more weight. For these reasons, it might come as a surprise that, after all that, it was running that helped me recover.

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How Running Helped Me Overcome Imposter Syndrome
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I have been an educator in the public school system for 11 years: eight years as a classroom English teacher and three years as an instructional coach. The eight years I was in the classroom, I struggled to think of myself as a good teacher despite receiving commendations from colleagues about my classroom management and relationships with kids, as well as receiving a county Teacher of the Year Award.

When I decided to become an instructional coach, I did so because I felt burnt out and needed a break from the classroom, not because I thought I had value to contribute to my colleagues. After three years, I continue to feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, but have been told multiple times what an asset I am for my school.

I don’t share these stories to brag, rather I share this to tell you my experiences with imposter syndrome … and how running helped me change that mindset.

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Love Ya, Tina, But You’re Wrong About Amenorrhea and Running
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Elite legsRecently, podcaster and elite runner Tina Muir revealed she hasn’t had a period in nine years and to get a period back so she can conceive a baby, she quit running.

I, for one, am always down to read about other runners’ period woes. There’s no question that amenorrhea can be a serious health issue with potentially scary consequences. Amenorrhea is common in women athletes and because it’s often associated with disordered eating and the female athlete triad, it’s kind of a dirty word. Open conversations about it are good! Thanks, Tina, for starting one.

But one woman’s story, in this case Tina’s, does not represent some universal truth, yet it’s portrayed as such. High level training is not necessarily bad for women’s health, reproductive or otherwise, and I fear this article portrays training as an all or nothing proposition: to reach the top of the sport women have to sacrifice their health to get there. That is not true. Read more >>

Writing Our Own Running Story
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I started writing here in 2012, right after we launched. I didn’t know it at the time, but each post became a part of my story as a runner named Ginger. I started timidly, with a hunger to see how good I could get. I shared what it’s like to date a much faster runner and to be in the presence of all of his fast friends. I reached for goals I never thought possible and learned how to race. I received my Master’s degree and shared how I tried to balance training with a job that involved a lot of stress, much of it self-imposed, but hindsight is 20/20. And when life became really challenging, I decided to be up front about it, detailing a mental health crisis at length. This ultimately became a large part of my identity as a writer and blogger with the site.

It was around two years ago that I started to see the importance of surrendering to the process and allowing the story to write itself instead of curating an identity. When I first starting sharing my story here, I imagined that by now I’d be a Boston qualifier on her way to a sub-3:00 marathon. How so you ask? That little booger of a concept called comparison. Read more >>