APRÉS RUN

Running

The Ultimate Marathon Packing List (for All Weather Conditions)

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When you’re preparing to run a marathon (and especially when you’re preparing to travel for a marathon), you’re probably a little nervous and have a million different thoughts running through your mind. You never want to be underprepared on race day when you’re running a distance as long as the marathon, and yet, in the chaos of race week, it can be so easy to forget something. I wanted to create a one-stop-shop packing list for all marathoners, and inclusive of whatever conditions you might be racing in. Some of the things on this list may seem obvious, but it includes literally everything you’ll need for race weekend. Print this out and use it as your check list to make sure nothing gets left behind.

Know someone running a marathon soon? Help out another runner and share this post with them!

For race weekend

  • Toiletries
  • Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash (if needed)
  • Make-up (for women, if you wear it)
  • Hair brushes, hair products, and a blow dryer (if needed)
  • All outfits – Running and otherwise. Don’t forget socks, shoes, and underthings.
  • Pajamas
  • A reusable water bottle – Hydration is so important leading up to a race. Wherever you go on race weekend, make sure your water bottle goes with you. Make sure you’re sipping all day long.
  • Lots of snacks – On race weekend, I want to keep my fuel stores as topped-off as possible and never like to let myself get too peckish. Some of my favorite snacks to pack: portable fresh fruit (bananas, grapes, apples, oranges), nuts, trail mix, dry cereal, popcorn, homemade energy balls, healthy energy or snack bars, protein shake packets (it can be hard to get healthy, adequate sources of protein while traveling).
  • Any compression and/or recovery gear – Compression socks, sleeves, foam rollers, stretching ropes, lacrosse and/or trigger point balls, etc. – to keep your legs feeling fresh and healthy before and after the race.

For race day

  • Running watch and charger
  • Trainers
  • Racing outfit and any back-up options if you’re unsure – Make sure you have at least one of each: (1) top, (2) bottom, (3) socks, (4) underwear, (5) racing shoes (if not racing in trainers), (6) sports bra (for women)
  • Any accessories you like to race in – Headbands, hats, sunglasses, arm sleeves, compression gear
  • Hair ties (for women)
  • Band-aids – For blisters and/or for covering any sensitive areas. Also just a good thing to have on hand.
  • Warm up gear – If the forecast isn’t super hot, you’ll likely want to wear something over your race outfit while warming up. Make sure to do your research ahead of time and figure out what your options are for either storing, handing off, or discarding your warm-up gear… you may need to buy cheap or second-hand ‘throwaway’ gear you can dispose of just before the start.
  • All your race-day fuel – (1) Breakfast (if making in your hotel room), (2) electrolyte packets or tablets, (3) enough gels/sports drink/chews to get you through 26.2 miles (plus a few extra, just in case), (4) anything special you may want for recovery afterwards
  • Any storage solutions you may need to carry your gear – Hydration belts, SPIbelts, Koala Clips, etc.
  • Headphones (if using, and permissable on the race course)
  • Body Glide or your favorite anti-chafe lube
  • SPF that you’ve tested – AKA, one you know won’t run into your eyes while sweating
  • Garbage bag – For collecting sweaty clothes afterwards
  • A clean, dry outfit to wear after the race – Don’t forget an extra pair of socks! (Clean socks = heaven after a marathon.)
  • Slide-on shoes – For after the race, when you’ll want to be wearing anything but your running sneakers
  • A towel, body wipes, and body spray or deodorant (optional) – For transitioning to your amazing and well-deserved post-race feast
  • A gym bag for storing your post-race clothes and gear – Plan to either bag check this or leave it with a friend/loved one. DO NOT leave this in your hotel room. Your body temp will take a nosedive after finishing a marathon, and it’s very important to get you in clean, warm, dry clothes ASAP.

For rainy marathons

  • A waterproof outer shell – If under a certain temperature
  • A few garbage bags – One for wearing to the race start (best pre-race poncho, and you simply toss it in a trash can once at the starting line), and one or two more for collecting wet clothes after the warm-up and race
  • A hat and/or sunglasses – Nonnegotiable for rainy races. It will help keep the rain out of your eyes and prevent you from squinting/wincing the entire time. If wind is also a factor, you may want to either slip ear warmers, or a headband, around the top to hold your hat in place.
  • Extra warm clothes for after – Remember to pack a little more warmly than you think you’ll need… running a marathon in the rain will drop your body temp even more severely than normal.

For cold marathons

  • A hat and/or earwarmers, and gloves – Really important for keeping your core body temp up. If you’re unsure you’ll want to wear them the entire race, you may want to choose ‘throwaway’ options. If it’s really cold, consider two layers of gloves. Mittens will keep you warmer, but you’ll want the tactile control of gloves for taking your water stops well.
  • Hand warmer packs – For keeping you warm in the starting area and on your warm-up (if needed)
  • Thick socks – To put on over top your racing socks and keep you warm in the starting area and on your warm-up.
  • LAYERS – Preferably some of which are throwaway and which you can discard as you go along (should you choose)
  • Extra warm clothes for post-race

Marathoning gear I love

  • My all-time favorite race day short: The Oiselle Race Day Short – Sadly, these are either out of stock or have been discontinued, but I found a limited number of (small) sizes left here. If you like racing in short spandex shorts like me, you’ll love these, and they have tons of waistband pockets for all your gels.
  • Oiselle Toolbelt Roga Short: Another favorite short for those who like a shorter short (but maybe not a compressive one). They have a 4″ inseam and super flattering cut that gives you plenty of room in the quads. They’re also very lightweight and dry quickly, which means you’re not carrying around a ton of stored water if you get wet.
  • Lululemon Fast & Free 6″ Short: If you like a longer compressive short, you won’t find anything as buttery and comfortable as these. Big, stretchy pockets on the sides let you store lots of gear (gels, and even your phone), AND they’re slightly high-rise which makes them super-flattering for most.
  • Megababe Thigh Rescue Anti-Chafe Stick: I first tried this product after seeing it everywhere on the internet. It definitely lives up to the hype. It’s super effective, leaves no residue, and is made with nontoxic ingredients (unlike Body Glide), like aloe, grapeseed oil, and pomegranate seed extract.
  • GRID Foam Roller: My favorite foam roller. I have the full-size version that I use at home, as well as the shorter one (linked), which I bring with me to travel. It doesn’t take up a lot of space and does such an effective job at getting at tight muscles. Also, this brand is super sturdy and you never have to worry about the foam denting like with cheaper models.
  • CEP Compression Socks: I’ve been using compression socks for years, and this is by far my favorite brand. I like a tight compression (to feel like they’re actually doing something), and these give the perfect amount – without also making your calves feel like sausages. They stand the test of time and have lasted me years and years without getting holes in them or becoming dingy-looking.
  • Ursa Major Essential Face Wipes: My favorite nontoxic face wipes for post-workout. I buy the 20-pack bag and throw it in my gym bag. They come individually wrapped, so they never dry out, they smell amazing, and they truly leave you feeling clean (with no weird residue after).

All About Running & Recovery – What’s Important and What’s Not So Much

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Stress + rest = growth. That’s the formula for getting better. Most people only focus on the first part and neglect the second part, while some people overemphasize the second part but aren’t doing the day-to-day work they need to do to get better. Hence, recovery can be a very polarizing topic.

What a lot of people focus on today when they talk about recovery: all the ‘tools’ and gadgets they think they need to recover effectively. Cryotherapy chambers, Normatec boots, ice baths, contrast baths, vibrating foam rollers, Theraguns. These things can have a place in your recovery toolbox, but they can only do so much if you’re not aiding your recovery in much larger, more important ways. These things are the so-called ‘2%’ of recovery.

But what is actually going to move the needle the most when it comes to recovery? (AKA, the 98%) Four things: sleep, diet, proper training, and mobility work.

  1. Sleep – If you were to understand all of the incredible processes your body carries out while you’re sleeping, you would never think of sleep as a ‘luxury’ again. Sleep = work. Sleep = training. This is when your body releases human growth hormones and when your muscles are healed and repaired. If you have a lifestyle that prevents you from getting 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night (whether you have young kids or a job that forces you to work late), your recovery will be impaired and you should make sure you’re adjusting your training appropriately. See #3.
  2. Diet – Food = fuel, and food heals. With running, you get what you give. If you’re putting a ton of refined, processed, and nutrient-poor food into your body, OR if you’re undereating and in an energy deficit, your body isn’t going to be able to perform optimally. On this blog I share lots of whole-food, anti-inflammatory recipes that support your training and help your body recover and adapt to training naturally. The body is amazingly sophisticated and complex. It is really terrific at healing itself naturally, IF you give it the tools (sleep + plentiful, varied, and nutritious food) it needs. But shortchange any of these things and watch your recovery become impaired.
  3. Proper training – Every body is different, and every body responds differently to training. We know this already, right? But how about how everyone’s lifestyle is different? I wish I could record the number of conversations I have with my athletes about why can’t they run x miles per week, or how come they’re not already running 20 milers every weekend? It would at least make people feel less alone and crazy. With the prevalence of social media (and the rise of the ‘Instagram running community’), we’re now getting a ton of data about what everyone from world-record marathoners to sub-3:00 ‘local elites’ are doing on a daily basis. If you want to break 3:00 like the woman you follow on Instagram, shouldn’t you be doing the same training she is? No. Because you don’t know what her ‘behind the scenes’ lifestyle looks like (Instagram doesn’t show everything), or her training history, or injury history. Maybe she’s able to get 8-10 hours of sleep a night, and that’s just not possible for you. Maybe she’s actually training unsustainably and is a month away from a year-long series of stress fractures. You have no idea. Training SMART and in a way that is right for YOU is a huge way we can prevent injury. What does this mean? Taking the proper number of rest days that allow you to recover effectively, building your mileage and intensity gradually, and proactively adjusting the plan when unexpected aches and pains creep up. Most people struggle to do this on their own, which is why hiring a coach can be so helpful.
  4. Mobility work – Research has shown runners don’t necessarily need to be flexible and loose all the time to run fast and prevent injury. In fact, some stiffness in the muscle actually helps you perform better, and overstretched muscles might be just as prone to injury as overly tight muscles. Therefore, instead of trying to learn the splits or achieve an impressive level of hamstring flexibility, we just want to make sure the muscles have adequate mobility and can go through proper range-of-motion. What impairs mobility and range of motion? Sitting all day. Also spending hours per week moving in the same plane of motion (AKA run training). Also hard workouts – which create adhesions and microscopic tears in your muscles. If you run and then immediately jump in the shower, get in your car, or sit on the couch, you’re letting everything tighten right up. You want to spend at least 5 minutes doing some kind of mobility drills or range-of-motion exercises to jumpstart the natural recovery process and prevent harmful stiffness and tightness from building up.

The ‘extras’ or ‘2%’ — ice baths, epsom salt baths, contrast baths, cryotherapy, compression socks, Normatec boots, and all the recovery gadgets (Theraguns, vibrating foam rollers, Roll Recovery wheels) are AWESOME and great to have. I personally use several of these and have found they work really well for me and many of my athletes. BUT, it’s all about giving them their proper time and place. If you’re religious about your post-workout ice baths but skipping meals or not sleeping, you’re wasting your time. Also, your Normatec boots can help you feel better and maybe less sore from big workouts, but they’re not going to be what gives you the big PR you’re looking for. SMART, hard training does that. And giving your body the ‘big’ tools it needs to recover properly.

Bonus: For those who love their recovery gadgets and are afraid of being sore, there might be such a thing as ‘recovery addiction.’ Steve Magness has wrote about this really well and in-depth. Check out his blog post here.

What are your thoughts on run training and recovery? For those who have been running for a long time, what are the biggest recovery lessons you’ve learned, and what has made the biggest differences for you personally?

A Letter to All Athletes: You Don’t Need ‘Perfect’

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When I was fresh out of college, a psychology grad, and starting my coaching apprenticeship at Michigan State, I created a blog to share everything I was learning, reading, and thinking. A lot of it was probably garbage, but this post was one of my favorites. It still resonates with me today, and I wanted to share, as I think it’s an important sentiment for all athletes. Whether you’re preparing for a high school or collegiate cross country season, or gearing up for a fall marathon, you should know you don’t need ‘perfect.’ Here’s why.

The great warrior Achilles had his heel. Samson, the strongest man alive, had no self-discipline. Macbeth was brought down by his ambition and lust for power, and Hamlet by his inability to act. In literature, we call it a tragic flaw. Mine, without a doubt, has been perfectionism. Maybe that sounds like a humblebrag (See also: “My Lamborghini is so flashy, cops always think I’m speeding when I’m not”… “I wish people could like me for me and not the famous people I always hang out with”… “I can’t find a dock big enough to park my yacht around here.”). I assure you it is not.

The thing is: perfectionism sounds like “perfect” by its name only. In reality, there is no correlation to “perfectionism” and “perfect”, and more often than not, perfectionists are not the high-achievers – in sport, in business, in academia, et al.

In the psychological literature, we recognize that perfectionism is a multi-dimensional construct. That means it has implications in various different branches of psychology – from motivational psychology to social psychology to cognitive psychology. It is also multi-directional – there is both what we call positive and negative, or adaptive and maladaptive, perfectionism. Most of the research focusing on perfectionism and sport has focused on evaluating the effects of maladaptive perfectionism on performance. This type of perfectionism is characterized by rigid, black-and-white thinking. Things are either “good” or “bad”, and there is nothing in between. There is either “success” or “failure”, and often nothing in between. Perfectionists strive off of rules, structure, and clear expectations. When adversity strikes, the maladaptive perfectionist athlete might feel the whole “plan” has been thwarted, and they may mentally check out because they feel there is no way the end goal can be reached any longer.

Life is messy.

Write it on your mirror, on the back of your hand, in your diary, on the top of your training log. Write it wherever you will see it – if this is something you need to hear.

Life is messy.

Training is messy.

Performance on any given day is complicated and imperfect.

We are not robots who exist in a laboratory! 

The beautiful and heart-breaking thing about our sport is that you can check off all the boxes in your training, live a simple, ascetic life; you can run all the workout times that all the coaches and exercise physiologists agree will allow you to run xx.xx, and you can still miss the mark. Sometimes, you will lose a race and it will have absolutely nothing to do with you or how you prepared. And you have to be able to be okay with that in order to be able to move on. In order to be able to free up the mental space you need to put yourself back out there and on the line again – hungry and ready to compete at 100% of your best effort.

I don’t think I ever fully realized this in all my four years of college. I’m just learning this now.

By now you’ve probably realized I am a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing. I will share another quote of hers. Several weeks ago, after lots of travel, she posted this to Facebook, and I think it illustrates, again, not only how messy life can be but also how the messiness of life is everything. There’s no changing it; you’re stupid to try to fight it or mentally resist it; you might as well just embrace it – it’s the gift we get for being fully alive.

“Been on the road now for two and a half months, Dear Ones. Three more events in Germany — and then home. It’s cold and raining. I’m super tired by this point. I’m out of toothpaste. A huge construction project right outside my hotel woke me up with a bang-boom-crash extra early today — hooray! LIFE IS IN SESSION! We can do this! We get to be alive another day! I embrace every single bit of it. There’s no other world I would rather be in than this world — this weird, loud, chaotic, beautiful, exhausting, jacked-up, freaky world. Let’s roll.”

The high-level athlete is: relaxed, open-minded, even-keeled, able to think on their feet, and able to respond quickly to competitive demands. Just like a high-level runner is one who can quickly and effectively change gears in a race, a high-level athlete (in any sport) is one who is able to “change gears” in any competitive situation – for example, if the weather is bad and demands a training session be modified; if a bag with some gear is lost en route to a competition; if the pre-competition warm-up area is limited; or the meal you always eat before a competition is not available.

Every runner who has competed for at least a few years can probably recall a time they felt like garbage on the warm-up or pre-meet shake-out and ending up running a personal best or really great race. This is a fairly common experience.

I’ll share with you, though, how some of my best races in college were fundamentally founded on “imperfect”. Hopefully this serves as a reminder for anxious athletes to always stay engaged and open-minded in the days leading up, and during, a competition. You never know how your body is going to respond, even if the signs appear against you, and never, ever underestimate your potential. You have NO idea what you are capable of, and your next breakthrough could be just around the corner. That’s what makes our sport so fun.

In outdoor track my sophomore year, my first race of the season was a 5K at the Colonial Relays at William & Mary. My sophomore year of college was more like my freshman year, because my actual freshman year was a mess of sickness and injury compounded on more sickness and injury. My freshman year, I hardly competed at all. Come my sophomore year, I was still kind of figuring things out and was still very new to collegiate competition. I had some success already sophomore year, running 40 seconds faster for the 5K than I had in high school. Still, it was the first week of April, I was just coming off a month of very tough, high-volume training, and I didn’t particularly feel ready to run fast yet. Nonetheless, my coach took a risk on me and petitioned to get me moved up to a faster heat of the 5K. I remember him looking me in the eye and telling me not to mess this up. I nodded and promised him I wouldn’t.

Things I remember about the day of and day before the race: Our bus ride down was 6 ½ hours or so. The pre-meet once we got there was very rough – I don’t think I cracked 8:00 pace once, and that felt hard. I was worried my legs wouldn’t feel good come race time the next day. The morning of, I felt super lethargic, and ended up lounging in my hotel bed all morning after shaking out. Once again, I was nervous this was a bad sign. Where was my energy?

The night of the race: I was the only one from my team in my heat, so I had to figure out a warm-up route on my own. Anyone who knows me knows I have just about the worst sense of direction ever. Naturally, I got horribly lost. My 2 ½ mile warm-up ended up turning into about a 3 ½ mile warm-up (including a stop to ask for directions to the stadium), and the last half mile was me tempo running back to the track (but trying to look casual once I made it to the infield). I had to cut short my drills, because I was now behind schedule. I started doing frantic strides. Then, a couple of minutes before I thought my race was about to go off, my coach told me they run fast-to-slow, not slow-to-fast (the opposite of what we originally thought), and I suddenly had about 17 extra minutes before my race. I had to add some more jogging back in, and then re-start the drilling and striding-out process over again.

Now, much of went wrong logistically I could have easily prevented, but that’s not the point. The point is, it didn’t matter. What I did right was: once the race went off, I was totally composed and calm like nothing had happened, and I executed the race plan my coach gave me perfectly. It was the most patient race I’ve ever run. I ran a 27-second PR. To this day, my coach doesn’t know any of what happened on my warm-up (he will now). I was just determined to deliver on a promise to run well.

After a year of huge improvements my sophomore year, I came out my junior year thinking I had to PR in every race again. Constant, linear improvement, or I wouldn’t be happy. Come my indoor track season my junior year, I had not yet surpassed my PRs from outdoor the following year. I thought this was a failure. I thought I needed to beat my outdoor PRs in indoor in order to feel assured I’d hit even bigger PRs come outdoors, when it really counted. Our league meet was a week or two away, and I was down in the dumps and probably not very fun to be around. I had pretty much already written off the season as a failure. And if I wasn’t hitting my goals for indoors, how could I possibly expect to hit my goals for outdoors? The whole year was a wash!

Going into this league meet, I had an attitude totally different from my normal attitude leading up to a big meet. I was still checking off all the boxes, taking care of the details, but I was doing it much more detachedly. I pretended like I didn’t really care about running (probably self-protectedly), but this meant I also wasn’t overthinking running, or my training, outside of practice. I showed up, did the work, and then just left it at the door of the field house. I felt so bad about myself at that time that I decided I just wasn’t going to attach myself to any outcome any longer.

About ten or so days out, we did our last big workout before the meet. It was a Bucknell standard 2 x 2 miles on a road loop. Me, with my moody new “unattached”, “not-caring” attitude ended up running one of my best times on that course ever. Suddenly, a switch went off in my brain. I felt like I had put myself back in the running. Maybe this thing could go well for me after all. I decided I’d be mentally engaged for this one race and just give myself a shot to see what I could do. It was Leagues, after all, and the team needed me. At our League meet that year, my legs ended up feeling really great on the day, and I just went with it. I put myself in the race, ended up scoring, and running 15 seconds faster than I’d run yet that season (just 6 seconds off my personal best ever). My time also qualified me for the Indoor ECAC meet, which I had never qualified for before.

This taught me that things can change on a dime. It also taught me the value of sometimes letting go and letting things happen on their own, without obsessing and overthinking.

What I would consider to be the best race of my college career came during cross country season of my senior year. Boston University had joined our league the previous year, and that first cross country season, they just crushed us. They continued to crush us in indoor and outdoor track. At the end of the year, we regrouped and decided, “Enough is enough.” We made some changes in order to elevate our program, we went to work over the summer, and each race of that next cross country season, we focused on getting better and better. Come November, we were ready for a second try.

What we lacked in a front runner, we knew we had to make up for with incredible depth. Our goal was to place a big pack just off the front of the race and to keep this pack together for as long as possible. If we were to give ourselves a shot at winning this race, we knew we had to be very deliberate about our approach. We were given a very specific race plan through 3K, and after 3K, it was simply attacking the course and pushing as hard as we could to the finish.

On the day, I remember nothing about the warm-up felt good. I tried doing an extra minute or two at up-tempo pace during the warm-up to try to get my legs to come around. I did a couple extra snappy strides. But sure enough, the whole first mile of the race, I felt like garbage. At the mile mark, we executed our plan perfectly and had all five of our top five runners in a pack up front. But I felt like I was barely holding on. I knew I was working way harder than I should be in the first mile of a 6K race. I didn’t think I could sustain this pace. However, I was so locked in to our mission, I wouldn’t let myself consider the possibility of dropping off that front pack. I told myself, “Just one more K,” and I got through the first 3 K’s of that race just willing myself to the next one.

My coach told me before the race I needed to be right next to our top runner, Katie Jessee, at the 3K mark. In fact, he told me he would be standing right there at the 3K mark with a camera, and I’d better be in that frame! Right before 3K was when I slowly started fading. I was increasingly having trouble holding onto the pace. But I thought of my coach, and the picture, and I put in a surge just before that 3K post in the ground, and come 3,000m, I made sure I was right at her side.

After that, Katie and one or two of our other runners started taking off, and I just focused on maintaining a good, steady pace and not going backwards. I knew I couldn’t fall too far off them if we were to have a shot at winning. Between 4K and 5K, we approached the toughest (mentally and physically) part of the course. Right around that point, I got the strangest, most remarkable second wind. I’m not sure I’ve gotten anything like it in any race before or since. My legs were turned around. Suddenly, I was powering through the winding trails and uphills, and I caught my teammates who I thought were long gone. I put myself in the top 10 of the race, and then into 9th place, and by the finish, 8th place. My highest finish at a cross country league meet ever – by 14 places, and a big 6K personal best. And best of all, we ended up tying the race, coming so heart-breakingly close to winning and beating a team that destroyed us the year before.

From this race, I learned how to self-sacrifice for a greater good, and I learned that whether you feel good or bad at any given point in a race, that will change. This also brought full-circle for me the idea that “perfection” is an illusion, and that being at your best has more to do with fighting through imperfection than it does with achieving this illusive “perfection” in the first place.

I think it is important to hammer into athletes that there is an important and distinct difference between working relentlessly hard (which you need to do if you want to be competitive at the highest level… there is no sugarcoating this) and putting together “perfect” training. From my experience and learning from the experiences of others, what is able to constitute for Type-A people a “perfect” training block is usually the early stages of overtraining syndrome. This is a very slippery slope and can easily ruin seasons. And it is especially important for college athletes, who only have a limited number of seasons to explore their potential.

I think one of the best tools you can have as an athlete is a keen awareness of both your greatest strengths and weaknesses. You need to let both guide your training. If you know you are a Type-A person, that is something you can be aware of. If you are a Type-A person, you can use that awareness to know you will always overtrain yourself before you undertrain. You can know you might need to finish every workout, every training day, every training week feeling like you are “satisfied” but not entirely content with what you have put in. You can know you might need to feel like you gave 95%, versus 100%. For the Type-A athlete, this will always feel itchy and uncomfortable, but it is a necessary and small sacrifice one needs to learn to make to be able to give everything they have come race day, when it counts.

Athletes should always be reminded that they are “training to race” and not “training to have impressive training logs”. This is not a take-home test. Everyone’s training logs are not collected at the end of the race, evaluated and tallied; the medals are not awarded to whoever has achieved the most “perfect” and consistent mileage progression, or strung together the “perfect” series of uninterrupted workouts. You do not get an asterisk next to your name on the results sheet because you left your race in that 4 x mile workout two weeks ago.

QOTD:

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

– John Steinbeck

5-Minute Running Warm-Up Routine

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It used to be that people just talked about preventing injuries when touting the importance of warming up before running. Now the conversation has switched to “activation”, which explains the underlying mechanisms of why warm-ups work.

When your muscles are “activated” properly prior to running, not only will you prevent injuries, but you’ll also be able to run more powerfully and efficiently because the muscles that give you the most power are turned on and engaged. Sitting at a desk all day, for example, “turns off” your glute muscles… your butt essentially becomes lazy and half-functioning. (Google “dead butt syndrome.”)

By going through an activation series prior to running, you’re waking up those muscles, getting them re-firing, and priming them for movement. Don’t believe me? Give this warm-up a try before your next run, and see if you notice a difference.

(Note: If you have more chronic/systemic activation issues, you’ll want to get with a good PT to address this.)

This quick 5-minute warm-up routine is what works for me. It’s short, but sweet, and it does everything I need it to – it gets blood flowing, activates my hips, glutes, and hamstrings, and takes me through some range-of-motion work.

The seven moves I do before every run (shown in the video above):

(Note: You’ll need a miniband, which you can buy here. They are super affordable and will last you forever!)

  1. 10-12 banded squats
  2. 5-10 each side banded hip abductions
  3. 5-10 each side banded glute kickbacks
  4. 5-10 steps each side banded lateral low walks
  5. 5-10 steps each side banded monster walks
  6. 8-10 each side leg swings
  7. 8-10 each side cross-body leg swings

4 Better Questions Than “What Do I Weigh?”

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See disclaimer in my sidebar: I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or PT — but I have worked with lots of doctors, nutritionists, PTs, and strength training professionals over my career. These are just my experiences and informed opinions from 12+ years in the sport.

If you’re looking to lose weight, you’ll find no shortage of resources. Every blog, magazine, and book out there will tell you about “the next big thing” and “what worked for me.” Diet culture is pervasive and contagious, and there are many, many companies out there that profit on the contingency of women hating their bodies.

In my bio I talk about how running changed my life 12 years ago. When I started viewing myself as an athlete, I started viewing my workouts as “training” vs. ways to get “skinny” or “toned”. I started looking at my body for what it can do — like running longer than I ever have before, setting new PRs, nailing a tough lift — vs. just what it looks like. This in turn totally changed the way I viewed myself, my body, and what I eat.

In the past six years, I’ve maybe weighed myself a handful of times. Why? Because I feel there are more important questions to answer than “What do I weigh?”.

What if, the next time you’re tempted to fixate on your weight, you asked yourself:

1. Do I feel strong and competitive in workouts and races? Do you feel like you’re fully present in workouts and races, or do you feel like you’re just slogging along and going through the motions? Do you feel like you attack hills, or like every hill defeats you? Do you feel like you have a strong kick at the end of races? Before focusing on fixing your body, try focusing on fixing your training (and your mental game). Ask yourself: Am I doing all the little things I need to do to succeed? Am I fully present in my training when I’m training, or am I constantly distracted? Am I neglecting certain types of workouts or doing too little/too much mileage? Sometimes you need to refocus, sometimes you need to be working harder, and sometimes you just need to change it up.

2. Does my training bring me joy? Do you view training as a challenge, as a way to hone in on your competitive spirit, as a way to push and understand yourself better? Or do you view training as a chore? If you’re not loving what you’re doing, it’s going to show – in everything from your training logs to your performance results to your personal relationships, sleeping habits, and the food choices you make.

3. Does what I’m eating make me feel good and energized? If you’re eating lots of sugar, processed foods, and too few vegetables or quality protein, you’re going to feel like crap all the time, and your body isn’t going to be functioning optimally. Plain and simple. Conversely, if you’re eating too little or trying to go vegan/paleo/fat-free just because everyone on Instagram is doing it, your body is going to respond accordingly and you’re going to be tired all the time, your hormone function is going to become suppressed, your recovery is going to slow, and your skin, hair, and nails will weaken. Your diet should be working for you, not the other way around. It takes a lot of experimentation to find what works best for you, but put blinders on, stop looking at what everyone else is doing, and focus on what foods and in what amounts make YOU feel happy, strong, and energized. When you eat what makes you feel good, eat intuitively, and train hard, I’m a firm believer that your body will find the weight it’s supposed to be at.

Hint: Make sure you’ve got the fundamentals down. Eat often enough to avoid blood sugar crashes or big dips in energy. Make sure you get vegetables (especially leafy green ones) in with at least two meals a day. Make sure you’re getting some kind of protein in consistently, so your body can keep repairing and recovering. Make sure you’re eating enough healthy fats for hormone function (especially important for females), and make sure you’re drinking lots of water consistently throughout the day. Eery system in your body depends on hydration, and it is especially important for digestion – which plays a big part in how you feel day-to-day. Avoid regularly eating foods that make you feel sluggish, give you brain fog, give you a stomach ache and/or compromise your digestion, and avoid foods that make you bloated.

4. Are you enjoying the foods you’re eating? If you’re eating plain steamed vegetables and grilled chicken every day because that’s what’s “healthy”, you’re probably not enjoying what you’re eating. (But if you are, that’s ok too.) There are so many different amazingly healthy foods out there, and so many different ways to cook them, combine them, and make them more interesting. Healthy food doesn’t have to be boring (see my Instagram for recipe ideas). And any healthy diet should have plenty of variety — not just to make sure you’re getting all the macro- and micronutrients you need, but also for your psychological health and sanity.

Also – barring any allergies, there is a place for all foods in a healthy, balanced diet. An A- or B+ diet is always better than an A+ diet, because an A-/B+ diet is one you can sustain for the rest of your life, and an A+ diet is not. (Lauren Fleshman has great insight on this.) And furthermore, you simply don’t need an A+ diet to reach your goals. You can absolutely achieve and maintain your happiest, healthiest, fittest weight with a B+ diet… it just comes down to consistency.

Feature photo courtesy of Ocean State Multisport.