Category: Healthy Running

Improve Your Sleep Hygiene for Consistently Better Rest
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“Get more sleep.” An often-lauded recommendation to improve not just your running but your entire life, and it sounds SO SIMPLE except … how? And how much? And, um, can we go back to how?

I’ve concluded that I cannot, in fact, add an extra couple hours to my day just for sleeping. And there are only so many to-dos we can cut out of our days to increase the amount of time available for sleeping. But what we CAN do is improve our quality of sleep. That’s what researchers call “sleep hygiene,” and it encompasses all the habits and routines around your bedtime as well as your sleeping environment. Read more >>

Learning to Let Go of The Juggle
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Marathon training. Yoga. A demanding full-time job. Volunteering. Serving on committees. Book club. Homeowner. Wife. Dog mom. Blogging. Editing. Lifting. All the ExtraSalt things I should be doing. Fitting all of these pieces together can be a challenge.

When I first thought about tackling this topic, early on in my fall marathon training cycle, my inclination was to give you some insight into the magic of How It Works for Me, to come up with some new and groundbreaking tips that make doing all the things possible. I pride myself on my organization and time management skills. I’m always happy to talk planners, organizational apps, and systems that work for me. I stand by all of those things and firmly believe, to borrow from Rachel Miller, that “being organized is a gift you give yourself and other people”. Read more >>

Managing Hip Impingement: My Injury and What Didn’t Help
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I’m a runner who currently cannot run. I’m on a rehabilitation journey to correct the hip impingement and subsequent sciatic nerve pain that has kept me from the activities that I love, and I want to share what I’m learning along the way.

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Safety First! A Guide to Seeing and Being Seen in the Dark
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This Halloween, I’m handing out flashing lights like candy before I hit a runner while I myself am on my way to run. My morning runs are already noticeably darker, but with Daylight Saving Time kicking in November 3, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. (I mean, literally, we’re losing daylight until the winter solstice.)

According to our highly scientific Twitter poll, most respondents wear at least one piece of visibility-oriented gear. And yet … don’t we all know that one person who shows up to run in all black with not a single piece of safety gear? DON’T BE THAT PERSON. We’re here to help.

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Running: A Relationship Transforms
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Last week I went for a run after class. It was supposed to be an easy run. All my runs are easy runs currently. You could say they have a presumption of easiness. Easy until proven ready. Last week I was ready.

In the first five minutes, I decided I would run a fartlek. I finished my 10 minute warm up, and quickly googled a fartlek sequence since I’m a bit out of practice. I chose one, standing at the top of the hill by the train tracks. I reset my watch, and for the next 20 minutes, I enjoyed the challenge of speed play by the river. When I was finished, I ran my cooldown back toward the city skyline and felt satisfied – with my efforts and with my decision. At the end of my spontaneous fartlek, I felt, and I still feel, optimistic.

It’s taken a long time for me to reach this place with running. Read more >>

Am I Still A Runner If I Can’t Run?
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Years ago, a man at a bus stop eyed me and said, “You look like a runner.” It was a catcall; just an entry to comment on my body, I knew. Yet, I was secretly proud that my identity as an athlete was obvious to a stranger, however lecherous. 

For nearly two years, however, I haven’t been able to run, and I’ve been forced to wonder if I still deserve the credentials, which triggers a larger identity crisis: if I’m not a runner anymore, who am I? Read more >>

Introducing Spruce!
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Hello runners,

I’m Brianna, known around here as Spruce.  I was introduced to Salty Running when I serendipitously met Laura Parson on an outdoor conservation trip in Utah this spring. The alluring combination of running and writing immediately drew me to the community, and I wanted in. Read more >>

Readers Roundtable: Clumsiest Non-Running Way You’ve Sidelined Yourself?
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My reputation as clumsy is legendary in my family. There are fridge door handles that my parents stopped replacing because I’d tripped and tore the handle off the door so many times (grasping the handle in a futile attempt to keep myself from falling). My sister loves to recall the work day where she heard me fall down an entire flight of cement stairs, coffee in hand, when my stiletto heel got caught in the cuff of my pants.  I don’t just fall down stairs, I fall up stairs, and not gracefully. Ballet, ice skating lessons… nothing my parents put me in as a child helped. Read more >>

Cross Training With a Running Injury
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a bicycle wheelInjury got you down? Maybe it’s tendonitis, a sprain, a stress fracture or one of the Million Different Ways Your Knee Can Turn Into a Knob of Hot Fire-y Pain … whatever is ailing you, every injury sucks. The PT has prescribed time off. You’re completely justified in using that time to just not run, if you’re into that, but, like … who’s into that?

A serious study of anecdotal evidence (sponsored by the SaltyValu corp) shows that almost no runner wants to take time off, which we have unscientifically extrapolated to mean that you’ll probably be cross training if you’re injured, and that you might be cross training even if you’re not injured. Believe it or not there are many ways to exercise without running and some of them are actually fun!

Exhibit A:

A woman in a sport bra smiles while handling tiny dumbells
Tiny pink dumbells in your underwear is like the MOST FUN, amirite gal pals?? Let’s go have a powderpuff pillowfight next!

Okay but really, I don’t mean it’s fun to cross train in that stock photo, depressingly persistent and overwhelmingly male-driven ideas about women and athleticism kind of way, I mean it can actually be fun.

Please note that depending on your specific injury you may or may not be able to safely do all of these activities, so I recommend checking with your doctor or physical therapist and paying attention to how your body feels!

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5 Pilates Moves for Runners – With Bonus Video!
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Want to skip to the video? Click right here, baby.

I first took Pilates in college—for credit, because I was at a bougie Northeastern school—and I loved it. It spoke to my dancer spirit, and I loved the specificity of the practice, connecting breath with movement and being precise and intentional about every action.

I came back to practicing about the same time that I started running, when I joined a gym that offered mat classes. But after some life upheaval I stopped going and just ran more. Ultimately this resulted in stress fractures in both shins and a strained hamstring. Lesson learned! Once my injuries healed I joined a new gym, in part, because it also offered Pilates mat classes. I loved the classes and the gym so much that I decided to get certified to teach about three years ago.

Pilates can do wonders for runners. Its focus is on the entire powerhouse, not just your abdominals, but all the supporting core musculature including your hips and lower back. It can shore up your body to ward off a ton of common running injuries.

I recognize Pilates can be cost-prohibitive and intimidating, but I promise it’s not all graceful women hanging upside-down on what looks like a torture apparatus, and a lot of the exercises are simple things you can do at home. Starting right now!

Here are five of my favorite Pilates exercises for runners.

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Parsley and Her Stages of Injury Grief
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Squint to see me, but that’s my favorite form of alternate summer training- ocean paddle boarding!

Because not running is losing something dear to me.

Relief. When I was finally diagnosed with hamstring tendinopathy, it was almost a relief. I knew something has been wrong for awhile. It seems I’ve spent the past year or so trying to justify my disappointing race results, wanting to figure out why I wasn’t running faster. I wasn’t looking to make excuses, rather analyzing my performances to see what I could improve to do better in the future. And many times things just didn’t add up. It was reassuring to know that something was actually physically holding me back; it wasn’t just me underperforming, getting old, getting weak mentally; my body wasn’t functioning properly to run fast. Now with a proper diagnosis I can fix the issue and get back on the fast track.

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Diary of an Injured Chili, Chapter 2: Aqua jogging and Violent Fantasies.
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I recently listened to a podcast that discussed statistics of people who have violent fantasies. According to several studies, a whopping number of women and men interviewed admit to having at least one violent fantasy in their lives, if not many more.

But not to worry, we aren’t all a bunch of psychopaths. There is often a “well-intended” catalyst for such fantasies; for example, self-preservation, a reaction to injustice or protection of others. The podcast went on to explain how one can “direct” these impulses into more acceptable forms of behavior, a defense mechanism that Freud labeled sublimation.

In layperson speak, sublimation is the transformation of an unwelcome impulse into an unharmful or even a beneficial outcome. Freud called it “a mature type of defense mechanism”—he actually believed that sublimation was a sign of maturity!

And now for my point: competition is a marvelous means of sublimating for a runner with lots of explosive energy and a drive for crushing her opposition. In fact, competitive sports are a prime example of healthy sublimation. But when a runner is on a forced break from running, the competitive outlet, is eliminated.

So, then, what is one to do? Read more >>

Diary of an Injured Chili, Chapter One: AFOG
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Chili after the Shotgun Trail Race, feeling studly

Running has been my life for the past 7 years. I rediscovered it on a beach in Jamaica, and when that happened, I rediscovered myself.

Then my husband roped me into Salsa lessons. At the first sign of foot distress, I blamed the dancing. For a couple of months I suspected it was the salsa shoes and opted for “dance sneakers” to help ease the force placed on the ball of my foot. But before I could even try these beauties out, the damage had already been done. Sure, I enjoyed the Salsa, but it wasn’t worth the cost of my passion.

We all have an injury story. I’ve had my fair share, but never to the extent of what I have now: a diagnosed partial tear of the Flexor Hallucis Longus, a new part of my anatomical vocabulary, and literally one of those muscles you never even knew you had.

Guess what? I’m special. Tearing the FHL is such a rare condition that nobody really knows how to treat it. Doctors are forced to look up case studies and, at best, provide a prescription for the most conservative treatment out there: Boot and Scooter, or what I now coin as “BS” for short.

My good pal Joe labels this sort of thing A.F.O.G.: Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth.

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Step by Step: The Runner’s Guide to Postpartum Recovery
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We runners are an impatient bunch. After a year or so of downshifting our running due to pregnancy and childbirth, we’re raring to find that running identity again. But physical changes mean physical challenges. Runners who’ve ever been pregnant often joke about peeing our pants – just a little! – on the run. Is it sweat on those gray shorts, or is it pee? Tee hee. And we laugh at the outdated medical advice that women shouldn’t run because their uterus might fall out, but pelvic organ prolapse is a real phenomenon (read Poppy’s guide to pelvic floor 101!)

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