Category: Healthy Running

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 >>

Take Your Rest Day, Gertrude.
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see ya later. Gotta run.

I can’t tell you the last time I had a rest day. And I mean, a true day of rest with zero exercise or anything that gets my heart pumping. Bertha and her litany of excuses is not my problem. I’ve trained myself to ignore Bertha as I get out of bed without hitting snooze, throw my gear on and hit the road without a second thought. Instead, my problem is Gertrude.

I bet you’ve met her. Gertrude is the voice that fills your head with guilt if you don’t run. It doesn’t matter how full your schedule is, how foul the weather, how much pain you’re in, or even if your schedule tells you not to run, Gertrude tells you you’re a wuss.  Read more >>

How Pregnancy Changed My Relationship with Running
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I feel like I’m finally growing up. I’m 29 years old and, after my first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage last year, I’m pregnant again, seven months along to be exact. I mean, I am almost 30, it’s about time I grow up, right? But for real, pregnancy has left me amazed by what the human body is capable of and it has also made me humble, count my blessings, and think a little more deeply about my life, including where running fits in it.

I haven’t always had a healthy, balanced relationship with running. Going into my first pregnancy, before my miscarriage, I told my husband all about how I wanted to be super-fit and not gain any unnecessary weight. I wanted to be like super-woman, pregnant style. But I think the realities of pregnancy have taught me that running is about much more than keeping me fit-looking or as fast as I can be. Read more >>

Beyond Racing Weight: Separating Anorexia from Running
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Last I left you, it was January of 2012, and I had just walked off my college track team. By “walked off“, I mean I literally quit running intervals on the indoor track during practice, and I walked out an emergency exit without looking back. I finally accepted the painful truth that I was suffering from anorexia and, at the time, running was a huge contributor to my sickness.

Thank God for that fleeting moment of insight when I realized that I could not carry on the way I was. As time went by I started to reconnect with friends and family from back home in New Zealand, loved ones with whom I’d fallen out of contact because in their attempts to reach out to me in the throes of my illness, I thought they were all crazy. Voluntarily, I found a therapist who specialized in eating disorders, got rid of my running shoes and vowed to get healthy — and to never run again.

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Beyond Racing Weight: A Story of Running, Anorexia, and Redemption
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Warning: anyone who is easily triggered by images or discussion of the effects of eating disorders, specifically anorexia, should use caution before continuing to read this post.  

Variety is the spice of life, and for the Salty Running team there is no shortage of variety in our past selves before each of us was taken aside, bitten by the running bug, and now appearing on your screens. A year ago, when I came on board with Salty Running, I vaguely alluded to a period of time where I did not run after college. The time has come for me to explain what happened between the time I quit running and began again a few years later.

The cliff notes:
I have gained 40lbs
I am totally ok with it
I have the best support system in the world (really, I challenge you to find a better one)
I am now strong AF

This is the story of how I suffered from an eating disorder, recovered, and the importance of running then and now. Today, Part 1 of my story.

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Real Talk: Is it Food or Fuel?
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Is it food, or is it fuel?

This week the Salty gals got going on whether it’s best to think of food as fuel or more holistically as food. So often we hear things like, “I can’t have that, it’s all carbs,” or we hear people refer to a post-run snack as ‘fuel’. Gotta have that protein ratio down! That’s my fat quota for the day. Bread and pasta is just carbs on carbs.

Do you prefer to think of food as “carbs”, “fat” and “protein,” or do you prefer to think of it as … well … food? Read on for an unedited backstage convo between some of the Saltines!

CATNIP: It’s not fuel, it’s food. I work with so many people who have feeding tubes and miss the pleasure of eating. You should enjoy your food, not just ingest stuff out of some obligation. Saying your snack or breakfast is fuel ignores the other purposes of food – social, pleasure, variety, texture.

BARLEY: Yes and no … when I started looking at food as fuel for my runs it got me to really look at what I was eating and be smarter about it which in turn helped my health and my running. That doesn’t mean I always look at it that way (I mean I still eat junk food, and drink alcohol). I can see how calling it fuel makes it seem like an obligation … but for some people, myself included, it wasn’t about forcing myself to eat, it just made me look at WHAT I was eating. Hey, I can’t expect that run to be fantastic if I ate shit before it.

CATNIP: But then how does that vary at a time when you’re not running? Is it food or fuel then? Does it affect the attitude toward eating?
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Running and Mom
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running and griefI feel like I won’t be able to start writing again until I write about the Austin Marathon and my mom. It’s not necessarily to close that chapter of my life, because I’m not sure that is a chapter than can actually be closed. There will always be a “before Mom died” and an “after Mom died” in my life.

I find myself rationalizing all the reasons why I’m ok. After all, I was a 37 year-old adult when my mother died, and my mother was only 18 when hers did. I was lucky enough to have her with me to celebrate my college graduation and to pick out my wedding dress. She knew my husband and was able to meet and love both of my children. I realize many people have much worse situations and have lost their parents earlier in life, but at the end of the day I still miss my mom. So what does this have to do with running? Nothing. Everything.

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