Info

Run to the Top Podcast | The Ultimate Guide to Running

Running podcast to motivate & help runners of every level run their best. The RunnersConnect team of coaches, headed by your host Finn Melanson, share with you the best running information backed by research, science and experts.
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
Run to the Top Podcast | The Ultimate Guide to Running
2024
March
February
January


2023
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2022
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2021
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2020
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2019
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2015
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2014
September


2012
September


Categories

All Episodes
Archives
Categories
Now displaying: Category: general
Apr 28, 2021

Tianna Bartoletta is one of the best sprinters in the world, and she’s on hand to teach all of us, even the endurance runners, what we can learn from short distance running. Really short.

For most of us, a sprint is less than 20 seconds, which is the distance short enough to reach your top speed completely anaerobically, or without needing oxygen for fuel.  Past this point, your lungs scream for oxygen and you will probably not be able to sustain the effort.

Why should long distance runners care about those 20 seconds?  Because by tapping into your anaerobic system a couple times a week, you teach yourself to burn that fire just a little hotter, and train your other gears to run a little more smoothly and efficiently.

Tianna also talks about what surprising things endurance runners can learn from long jumpers and yogis, how to frame our body talk in a positive way, how she’s adapted her training as she’s aged, and her gold-medal-winning, world-record-breaking Olympic relay experience. This episode has something for everyone, whether you’re a walker, a sprinter, or an endurance monster! 

Tianna is a 35 year-old American sprinter and long jumper.  She is a two-time Olympian with three gold medals.   She ran the lead leg in the world record setting  4 × 100 m relay team in 2012, handing the baton to Allyson Felix.  At the 2016 Summer Olympics she won two more golds, first with a personal best to win the long jump then again leading off the winning  4 × 100 m relay team.

In non-Olympic years, Tianna has won the World Championships 3 times and competed as a pusher on the U.S. bobsled team in 2012.

And if all of that weren't amazing enough,  she’s also a registered yoga teacher, writes a blog at tiannabee.com , and her memoir, Survive And Advance, will be released this June!

Questions Tianna is asked: 

4:37 This conversation is a little bit delayed because you got a surprise drug test at 7:00 in the morning. Can you talk about that?

5:09 Can you talk about the 60-day transformation that you posted? What happened? I thought you looked great before, but now you’re like a sculpture. It’s amazing. Can you tell me how that happened?

9:01 I remember reading in one of your Instagram threads that you said you were hungry during your 60-day transformation, and that’s not something that we really like to admit. Why did you want to tell people like, “Hey, yes, this is working but to be perfectly honest, I’m hungry?” Why did you want to share that part about it?

11:45 You'll have to forgive me for asking what might end up being very basic questions, but our listeners mostly are endurance runners. So when somebody says, “I’m going to go run 100,” they’re usually talking about 100 miles not 100 meters, and you are a 100-meter specialist among many of your talents. So I would love to learn more about what it takes to be a good 100m specialist?

13:41 When you say you’re allergic to running long, you obviously don’t just run 100 meters in training and then stop. You do obviously run long. So what’s a long run for you?

17:17 Let’s talk about Stephanie Bruce. One of the bright spots of 2020, an obviously crazy year, is that you two connected, and I would love to hear about that story.

19:39 In 2020, obviously Tokyo was delayed. What was that like for you when you found out the news?

22:12 In both 2012 and 2016, you were a part of the gold-winning 4x100m relay team, in the lead leg position, handing the baton to Allyson Felix.  Talk us through that. What makes a good relay team? How does the coach determine the order?  How many times do you practice that baton pass?  

24:19 What was your favorite moment from those games? 

25:19 You are also a gold medalist in the long jump, and I want to talk about the world record there. The American world record and the overall world record, those are very, very old from the ‘80s and ‘90s. What’s it going to take to break it?

29:00 You recently had a meet where you were jumping really, really well, and you registered under the team name AARP.  Can you explain that?

30:37 What’s your key to longevity in this sport then? What makes you at your age still able to perform at such a high level?

32: 17 How do you get your ego out of the way when training? How do you tell yourself, “No, it’s okay to step back?”

34:19 Let’s talk about yoga. One stereotype about runners is that they really don't have to be all that flexible.  You are a yogi and you are super flexible. Can you share how yoga physically helps you, and then we get more into the mental side of it?

 

36:44 You have a book coming out. Tell us about that.

37:57 When does your book come out?

38:10 What do you think long-distance runners can learn from sprinters, jumpers, and yogis?

39:27 How often do you do plyometrics?

40:14 What's next for you?

Questions I ask everyone:

40:39 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give yourself?

41:04 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

41:17 Where can listeners connect with you?

Quotes by Tianna:

“You realize how much of our eating is just habit and mindless snacking. And so that’s really the biggest transformation is that everything is mindful. Everything I ingest is done with that little pause, like why am I eating this? What is it for? And that’s been the difference and my body has really responded to that.”

“I loved not realizing that we broke the world record. Somebody had to point it out to us in 2012.  I just knew we won and we won by a lot.”

“You have to be able to put your ego aside and say, ‘This is what my body needs. Sure, I can see that my rivals and competitors are doing six days a week but I can’t do that.’ And at the end of the day, you have to train the body that you have. That you actually have. Not the one you wish you had; the one you have. And that’s the key.”

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Tianna Bee

Survive and Advance

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

 

Follow Tianna on:

 

Instagram




We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Apr 21, 2021

You probably know that strength training can help a runner minimize injuries but what about plyometrics or jump training? Do runners really need plyometrics? Wouldn’t that lead to more injuries? Dr. Duane Scotti thinks the opposite is true.

Dr. Duane Scotti, DPT, PhD, OCS is a running physical therapist, run coach, host of the Healthy Runner podcast, and founding owner of SPARK Physical Therapy, and has been a leader in the rehab and running community for over 17 years.  He is passionate about helping runners feel strong and confident so they can stay healthy and become lifelong injury free runners!  

Dr. Duane truly believes that anyone can run and that all runners should be treated differently as athletes.  He is on a mission to change the traditional thinking that running causes “overuse injuries” and you must “take a break” in order to get better.  Through run specific training (exercises and running progression) you can build your body to be a strong resilient runner and stay active, stay healthy, and just keep running! 

You may think it’s counterintuitive to take time out from your running to work on your jumping, but running is a series of one-legged hops so incorporating some plyometric training into your workout plan to get better at those one-legged hops can dramatically change how well you run and how good you feel while running. 

In this episode, Duane explains exactly why plyometrics is important for runners and shares what he thinks are the key muscles runners should focus on, and also gives some great examples of non-jumping strength training exercises that all runners should do to become better and stronger. Some exercises were even new to Coach Claire! 

Through the Healthy Runner community, Duane strongly believes living an active lifestyle can help you stay healthy and live a pain free life.  At SPARK Physical Therapy, Duane guides his clients in achieving a high-performance active lifestyle through his in-person clinic and virtually anywhere in the world. You could be a runner who aspires to complete your first half marathon, or you could be an experienced marathoner of 30 years. Duane has been the fitness and health support system and the go to resource for coaches, trainers, and runners. 

Duane is also honored to be a part of team UCAN as a featured expert dedicated to training strategies and innovation.  He has his clients’ best interest in mind as evidenced by constantly creating and sharing new videos, podcast episodes, and blog posts to help runners improve their confidence and strength for running. Through his programs, coaching, and virtual rehab, Duane has successfully helped thousands of runners crush their running goals, hitting personal bests over the years.  He has a passion for helping runners of all abilities stay healthy and prevent injuries in order to get back to the workouts and runs they love!  







Questions Duane is asked: 

 

5:27  You’re a physical therapist who specializes in runners. Can you tell us a little bit about your own running journey and how you came to focus on runners in your practice?

 

6:30  You used to dance. What kind of dancing did you do?

 

7:20  What is plyometrics and why is it good for runners? 

 

9:06  I’m going to play a little devil’s advocate for you here. So if we are jumping all the time, running is a series of hops from one foot to the other, if we’re already jumping all the time, why do we need to do more jumping?

 

10:03 How do your muscles function differently when you’re running and jumping versus strength training?

 

11:06 Are plyometrics for every runner?

 

12:43 Let’s say I am a Level 1 runner. I run three days a week, speed work one day, easy day one day, long run on the weekend, and I’ve never done any plyometrics before. What would your prescription be for me? 

 

14:26 You’re saying that we need to practice landing softly in the gym as well as when we’re running?

 

15:22 What’s Level 2 plyometric training?

 

19:32 When I was in super heavy marathon training, the miles piled up, I was running every day, and the last thing that I wanted to do was jump around because I would be so tired. So what do you say to somebody who’s really deep into marathon training and who is balking at a little plyometrics?

 

22:00 One thing about plyometrics, at least in my experience, is that it ends up being really high cardio. For the most part, I want to get my cardio from running, not from my extra activities so what’s your position on that? How much do you really need or are you a fan of getting your heart rate up in non-running activities?

 

24:10 At least with other kinds of strength training, a little goes a long way for runners because we’re not trying to get huge and strong and build muscle mass and deadlift a million pounds. We are trying to be not weak for running, so we can get away with a little less strength training than some other kind of athlete in a different sport. So is the same true with plyometrics? Can I just do like five, ten minutes a week and call it good?

 

26:44 There are some runners, especially older runners and runners who are injury prone, who are afraid that jumping is either too hard or not something that they should do. How do you address that?

 

29:00 Before plyometrics, what kind of other foundational strength work should we runners be doing every week?

 

32:10 Let’s talk about examples for each of the muscle groups runners should be focusing on in strength workouts. 

 

39:23 What are some exercises for hamstrings and quads?

 

43:28 What I’ve been doing for my hamstrings, just to get some feedback to see if I’m doing the right or the wrong thing, is I have a really big exercise ball. So I will lay down on the floor like I’m getting into a glute bridge and I’ll put my heels on the exercise ball and push with my heels the ball away and then pull it back in, and push it in. My hamstrings are on fire when I’m done with that. I can do 10 or 15 and I’m calling for mercy. But you’re saying that’s a little bit different than the Nordic one you recommend?

 

44:46 One thing you said a little bit earlier that I want to go back to real quick. You talked about some runners being hamstring dominant. I’ve encountered a lot of quad dominant runners. What are your thoughts on that and what’s going on there because most of the people I know who have problems or injuries tend to be really quad dominant?

 

47:17 When you say we need to work on eccentric exercises, I assume that means you’re a fan of some downhill running because that’s eccentric? 



Questions I ask everyone:

 

48:37 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give yourself?

 

49:10 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

50:07 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Duane:

 

“One of my big principles is we need to train in order to run. So running is not our only form of exercise, our only form of training. We actually have to train in order to run successfully and stay healthy.”

 

“I am not about, you will see some camp style classes or bigger programs, not going to drop any names, but they go to like failure and they’re doing like 50 box jumps because that’s the WOD that is posted and you’re going to do 50 of them no matter what. No, I’m a big believer in more the quality and how you’re feeling when you’re doing the exercise in order to get the benefit that you want to get from the exercise.”

 

“One thing about the calf muscle before I forget is endurance. So runners should be able to do 25 single leg heel raises or calf raises.”

 

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

 

Follow Duane on:

Listen & Subscribe to the Healthy Runner Podcast:

We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

Apr 14, 2021

The Relatable, Rambling Runner - Matt Chittim

Most running podcasts focus on professional runners. Matt Chittim’s Rambling Runner podcast focuses on dedicated amateur runners who are working hard at the sport while also balancing running with the rest of their lives. 

That’s not to say Matt ignores the elites. He also covers the other end of the spectrum with his Road to the Trials podcast which follows the training, racing, and experiences of some of America’s best runners as they prepared for the Olympic Trials.

As an athlete, Matt is a former college basketball player and coach. He started running at a young age with an occasional 5k or track season but most of his running was at the service of getting fit for other sports. After college Matt started taking running more seriously and eventually became fully invested in the running community. 

Matt is currently working through a year-long journey called Mastering 40 in which he is hoping to break 40:00 in the 10k after turning 40 years old. He talks to Coach Claire about his training ups and downs and what motivated him to set this “stretch goal.”

Matt also talks about how his Ramblin Runner podcast got started, his most memorable interview, and what he thinks the differences are between professional and amateur runners. He is a natural storyteller who brings a unique perspective to the running community!

 

Questions Matt is asked: 

3:50 Most of us know you from your popular running podcast Rambling Runner. Can we go back to the beginning of how it all got started and how it's going now?

 

8:10 What do you attribute the growth of your podcast to?

 

9:32 What have been some of your most memorable interviews?  

 

11:05 Who is still on your list of dream interviews?

 

13:28 You’ve got another show, Road to the Trials, which obviously interviews the best of the best, the elite Americans who are gunning for the Olympic Trials, so you have interviewed your share of elites and you’ve interviewed your share of just recreational runners. What would you say is the difference between the two?

 

15:54 PTs probably love working with professional runners because they do what they’re told more than amateur runners do.

 

18:38 You have a new series within your podcast called Mastering 40 that you started last August, dedicated to chronicling your journey of breaking 40 minutes in the 10k. Let's talk about that and what you are doing to prepare.

 

21:29 How’s your Mastering 40 goal going?

 

22:21 How did you injure your knee and how did it affect your training goal?

 

23:07 Do you have a date for your goal? When’s the time trial?

 

24:26 What kind of races are you looking for to prepare for your time trial?

 

25:19 What are all the other things you’re doing? What's training like?  Nutrition, sleep, all that good stuff, etc? How are you doing in those areas?

 

29:28 Another project of yours is Road to the Trials.  Can you talk about that and who you bring on the show?  

 

32:33 We could talk about how great such and such race was but you really learn so much more when everything falls apart.

 

36:54 What's next for you?  What happens when you break 40?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

40:01 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

40:46 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

41:00 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Matt:

 

“I started the Rambling Runner podcast with the idea of there’s a lot of running podcasts out there that I really liked and the vast majority of them were talking to professional runners... and I was like, ‘All right, no one’s talking to amateur runners. Let’s do that.’”

 

“Professional athletes in any sport are incredibly gifted athletes, and I think that the thing that’s easy to miss sometimes for dedicated amateur runners is sometimes they hold themselves to too high a standard. These folks, they were awesome at running the minute they started running.”

 

“One of the things I’ve learned through the show is that just like anything else, racing is a skill. It’s not just a test of fitness.”

 

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Leave a space for libsyn link

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

The Rambling Runner podcast

Road to the Trial‪s podcast

Amino Co - RunnersConnect

Anchor - The easiest way to make a podcast

InsideTracker.com

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Retreats

email Coach Claire

 

Follow Matt on:

Instagram

Twitter




We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Apr 7, 2021

As runners, we think about how to fuel properly. That includes carbohydrate and protein, but what about essential amino acids? How do they help us optimize our nutrition to become the best runners we can be?

Dr. Robert Wolfe, Ph.D, is here to talk as both a scientist and a runner. As the director of the Center for Translational Research on Aging and Longevity at the University of Arkansas, he focuses his research on the regulation of muscle metabolism. His research publications have been cited an impressive 75,000+ times, and he shares how amino acids might be able to help your performance and recovery.

Dr. Wolfe has also been running for 60 years and has run an amazing 62 marathons under 2:30 in his lifetime! Coach Claire talks to him about his running career, how to stay young and healthy, what happens in the body when we run, and how our food can help us before, during, and after the run. 

Dr. Wolfe also shares his thoughts on the importance of keeping a consistent exercise routine as we age, so there’s definitely a lot of great food for thought in this episode!

 

Dr. Wolfe’s undergraduate studies were at the University of California, Berkeley, and he completed his Ph.D. degree at UC Santa Barbara’s Institute of Environmental Stress. Dr. Wolfe served as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School for nine years. Prior to accepting his current position in 2006, he was at the UT Medical Branch at Galveston, where he held the John H. Sealy Distinguished Chair in Clinical Research and was Chief of the Metabolism Unit at Shriners Burns Hospital. 

Dr. Wolfe has received a number of awards and invited lectureships in recognition of his work. He received the Herman Award from the American Society of Clinical Nutrition for his career contributions. He has published over 452 peer-reviewed research articles, 126  review articles, three books, including the major reference source in the field of stable isotope tracer methodology and has 5 patents. His papers have been cited 50,663 times (h index= 122), and 16,423 (h index =65) since 2011. Dr. Wolfe has been funded continuously by the NIH for his entire career and frequently held two NIH grants per year as Pl.

The focus of Dr. Wolfe’s research is on the regulation of muscle metabolism, particularly as affected by aging and stressors such as injury, sepsis and cancer. His research has been performed largely in human patients and normal volunteers. Dr. Wolfe has developed models using stable isotopes to quantify a variety of metabolic processes in human subjects including the oxidation and production of fatty acids, various aspects of carbohydrate metabolism, and the rates of muscle protein synthesis, breakdown, and the transport of amino acids between blood and muscle tissue. Dr. Wolfe is the Director of the Center for Translational Research in Aging and Longevity at the Reynolds Institute on Aging.



 

Questions Bob is asked: 

 

3:33 Before we talk about the science of exercise metabolism, I want to hear about your running journey. You’ve been a runner for over 50 years with 62 marathons under 2:30. Can you tell us a little bit about what your story is and how you started?

 

5:15 I can’t imagine that every single run was super fun, so I would love to talk about what your training was like, how you trained for marathons and what are the key ingredients in the recipe for a marathon?

 

8:06 How old were you when you did your last sub-2:30 marathon?

 

8:59 As far as fueling goes, what does an endurance athlete need before, during, and after exercise?

 

12:09 What are amino acids?  What are the different kinds (essential, branched chain, etc)? And how are they used in the body?

 

14:56 When we’re eating enough dietary protein, does that mean we are automatically eating enough of the essential amino acids that we need?

 

16:53 What is the optimal amount of essential amino acids we as individuals need?

 

18:44 Obviously protein requirements are going to be different for an endurance runner and a bodybuilder, right?

 

22:51 Is the purpose of taking amino acid supplements to get everything you need for optimum performance without having to eat more food?

 

25:24 Is there a limit to how much amino acids the body can absorb at one?

 

27:55 Does the body have a way of storing essential amino acids?

 

29:22 If you take in too much essential amino acids, do you just excrete it?

 

29:44 How are the amino acids from the Amino Company produced?

 

32:09 How do you use amino acid supplements? Do you take it before your run, after, or even during?

 

36:40 When you are taking amino acids during exercise, do they activate hormones in your body?

 

41:00 Does your company have an amino acid formulation to help me with my insomnia too?

 

41:41 Besides leading the Amino Company, you are also the director of the center for translational research on aging and longevity at the University of Arkansas. So what's the secret to staying youthful and vital as we age?  

 

43:39 Do older athletes have an advantage when it comes to longevity and aging?  



Questions I ask everyone:

 

45:32 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

47:02 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

47:54 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Bob:

 

“Generally speaking, I think the protein aspect of the diet is extremely important but as far as dietary protein, when you’re eating as many as 4 or 5,000 calories a day, even a low protein diet is going to provide enough dietary protein to meet your protein requirements.” 

 

“It’s important to understand that the dietary requirements are telling us not only how much protein we should eat, but how much of each individual essential amino acid we should eat, are predicated on the baseline amount we need to avoid deficiency. And so the key aspect, what we’ll talk about with specific amino acid supplementation, is that for optimal physical functioning, particularly with stress like exercise training, that the baseline amount of essential amino acids that you need to avoid deficiency is really not optimal.”

 

“One of the things that obviously we’re trying to do is with running is to improve muscle function and muscle strength without increasing muscle bulk because it’s just extra weight.”

 

“The thing which is obvious when you see a lot of older people is that ability to function physically is really the primary determinant of quality of life. If you can’t get up out of a chair then medical costs and everything else go out the window, but just being able to do the activities you like is so important.”



Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Leave a space for libsyn link

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

The Amino Company

The Center for Translational Research in Aging and Longevity | UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Retreats

Email Coach Claire

 

Follow Bob on:

Email Dr. Wolfe



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Mar 31, 2021

Many runners face constant negative mental battle when the run starts to get hard.  If you are frequently struggling with negative thoughts, there is a way to win the mental battle.

Dr. Jacob Cooper has the answers.

Jacob breaks down exactly what you need to do and exactly when you need to do it, to convert your self-talk that’s telling you to quit, to an ally that lets the real you triumph. So if you want to perform better at running, or really at anything in life that's challenging, keep listening and be ready to apply Dr Cooper's techniques, and finally win the negative mental battle when running hard.

Jacob is a clinical sport psychologist who serves as the director of sport psychology at Appalachian State University in Western North Carolina. A former college athlete himself, he has worked with professional and amateur athletes, Olympians, and Paralympians.  He has an extensive background in mental health and how it ties to performance.  Jacob has developed a style of working with athletes that focuses on them holistically, with the goal of performance optimization in the pursuit of excellence. 

Jacob Cooper Ph.D. - Full Bio

Dr. Cooper is a clinical sport psychologist who serves as the director of sport psychology at Appalachian State University in addition to his own private practice serving professional and amateur athletes. He is a member of the United States Olympic & Paralympic athlete mental health registry, which consists of a selected group of specialized sports psychologists who are thoroughly vetted by the USOPC and then made available to current U.S. Olympians & Paralympians.

As a former collegiate offensive lineman turned amateur triathlete and runner (Hello Clydesdale Division!), Jacob has worked with athletes at the Olympic, Professional, and Division-1 level over the course of his career. As a sport psychologist, Dr. Cooper brings an extensive background in mental health and performance enhancement. To this end, he has developed a style of working with athletes that focuses on them holistically, across the spectrum of future-oriented performance optimization, current personal barriers/stressors, as well as more significant mental health issues that can inevitably show up in the pursuit of excellence. 

As a doctoral student at Boston University, he completed clinical practicums within a variety of settings, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Federal Bureau of Prisons system (BOP) along with multiple D1 college sport medicine teams as a performance consultant. Additionally, he has published scholarly articles and cultivated a unique approach to working with athletes and teams that integrates the latest research, evidence-based strategies, and technology to help them reach their goals. 

In addition to high performance populations, he has a unique background and training in the areas of rural mental health, trauma recovery, serving low help-seeking populations, and military psychology. He has provided performance optimization for military personnel prior to their deployments as well as counseling for veterans transitioning back to civilian life throughout Western North Carolina, Indiana, and Boston. 

Dr. Jacob Cooper- Ph.D. Clinical Sport Psychologist. 

Director of Sport Psychology Services at Appalachian State University

Licensed Clinical Psychologist & Health Service Provider (HSP)

U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Sport Psychology Registry Member

 

Education Background:

B.A.- (Psychology) Taylor University (Indiana)- 4 year scholarship athlete & team captain (Football)

Dual Masters Degree- Ball State University (Indiana)

M.S.- Sport and Performance Psychology

M.A.- Clinical Psychology

PhD- Counseling Psychology (Sport and Performance Track)- Boston University

Matched Clinical Residency - Charles George Veterans Hospital - Asheville North Carolina. 




Questions Jacob is asked: 

 

3:59 I first found out about you from an Instagram post that the folks at ZAP posted. You were working with the elites at ZAP helping them build some mental strength. Can you tell me a little bit about how you worked with them?

 

5:03 How do elite and regular runners find motivation and purpose when a lot of races have been taken off the board?

 

6:19 Maybe this pandemic is a silver lining or maybe it’s a gift because we can look at our running in a different way because we’re all going to get slower as we age and performance is a huge part of why we do it, at least for some people, but once you take those PRs and the clock away, why do we run? That’s got to be the most important thing, right?

 

7:28 We always talk about, “I want to get mentally tough,” because clearly it’s not just our bodies. We can train our bodies to do certain things but if the brain is not onboard, the train’s not going to get all the way to the station. So how do we train our brain to be mentally tougher when things get hard?

 

8:30 I’m going to use myself as an example. When I’m running really hard or trying for a specific goal, I have the devil and the angel on my shoulder. I have the voice saying, “Go, go, go. You can do this.” And then I have a very, very sweet devil saying, “Everybody still loves you no matter what you run. You can slow down. This is really hard.” So I’m fighting these two opposing things that are 100% me and I really want to tell the devil to shut up and I really want to keep moving hard. How do I do that?

 

11:30 So the feelings come and we’re supposed to say, “Oh hello, feeling,” and let it go on its way. Is that what we’re supposed to be doing when we’re trying to run that 400 meter repeat really hard?

 

12:43 Can you give us a few examples of mental tools that we can use? What’s in the toolbox?

 

14:37 What is radical acceptance in your RISE model?

 

16:32 What does the I in RISE mean?

 

23:50 What does the S in RISE mean?

 

25:23 Do you have any hints for people who don’t know what their optimal performance cues are?

 

26:18 When I’m running well in a race or in a group setting, I definitely lock on the dude in front of me. I’m laser focused on him and I pretend that I have a rope attached to him and I pretend that he’s pulling me. And I just link up to him like a train like I am not letting this person go. It works for me.

 

27:13 What does the E in RISE stand for?

 

29:06 Let’s talk about the difference between psychology of teams and the psychology of athletes that are in an individual sport. Can you address that a little bit? Or is it the same just on a different level? Are we all talking to ourselves like we would talk to a bunch of people?

 

31:58 What about teams of runners? What about groups of runners where they’re obviously not always running the same races but they train together? They are in a team environment where they eat, sleep, and work out together and it’s been proven that we work differently in a group setting. Can you talk about that?

 

33:31 Especially with the pandemic, we’re seeing more and more runners find support, find a tribe, find a group of people online that they haven’t been able to find before, and a lot of people are finding it incredibly helpful. Especially runners are typically Type A, loner, data nerds (or maybe I'm just speaking for myself!), but a group setting isn’t typically comfortable for people who love to spend hours alone running, so any advice for that lone runner who maybe shies away from a group?

 

35:48 You help athletes work on their mental health issues. And we think about elite runners especially as just having these super tough brains that are as tough as their bodies and they are able to do amazing things that the regular people can’t do. So we think that they are just some kind of machine when it comes to their minds but I suspect that you find some mental health issues. Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

39:36 People who drive themselves so hard to be excellent, they’re a specific breed of people and you look at them and you wonder if they did have some trauma. Why in the world are they pushing themselves to these extreme limits? Do you find that that is really the case that people that are just absolutely at the top of their game are more likely to have had some kind of trauma in their past?

 

41:58 One thing I really wanted to talk to you about is the whole concept of balance. When we are striving for something, whether it's athletics, a career, parenting, sacrifice is inevitable and balance is simply not possible (or desired).  How can we reach our goals without letting everything else fall apart?

 

45:21 What is next for you and what questions in sports psychology are you looking to get answered in the future?

 

Questions I ask everyone:

 

48:54 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

50:04 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

51:33 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Jacob:

 

“That ‘why’ is such a valuable thing and it’s very easy in athletics to sometimes lose touch with that.”

 

“I think that it’s helpful to have multiple fuel sources because there’s costs to them all.”

 

“Your attention is a muscle. It’s like a spotlight that allows you to shift to what matters most right now. I call these optimal performance cues or OPCs.”

 

“Anywhere that there’s pressure and stress, we’re all capable of that impacting us and manifesting in the form of some level of mental distress whether it’s just some symptoms of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, trauma, or it’s like a full blown chronic disorder and something like that.”

 

“There’s going to be times and seasons of life that feel unbalanced. But I believe that in every season of life it is possible and worthwhile to live in a way that reflects our values.”



Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Leave a space for libsyn link

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

ZAP Endurance

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

 

Follow Jacob on:

dr.coopercc@gmail.com

Instagram

Running with Heart



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Mar 24, 2021

How many marathon runners have acute kidney damage after they cross the finish line? According to a Yale University study, the answer is a shocking 55%. So if you’ve ever run a marathon, the odds are slightly better than 50% that this has happened to you. 

But don’t worry. The damage tends to be temporary, resolving itself after a few days. So we heal, get stronger, and move on. But what if something goes wrong?

Dr. Sherry Mansour and Dr. F. Perry Wilson are kidney doctors or nephrologists at Yale, and they share their expertise on running and your kidneys. Dr. Mansour actually led the research on marathon runners and kidney research. They talk to Coach Claire about who is susceptible to acute kidney damage from running, what we can do about it, and what we still need to learn.  

They also discuss ibuprofen which can cause kidney issues, and how it can be used safely by runners. They also delve into kidney stones. If you’ve ever had one, you know they are extremely painful. They cover how to minimize the risk of kidney stones and what precautions kidney stone sufferers need to take when running long distances.

If you are a runner with kidneys, this is one conversation you don't want to miss!

Dr. Sherry Mansour grew up and attended medical school in New York. She graduated in 2010 and received the Highest Academic Achievement Award. She was elected valedictorian of her class and was also inducted into the Psi Sigma Alpha National Osteopathic Scholastic Honor Society. She went on to complete residency training in Internal Medicine at Stony Brook University Medical Center, where she was chosen as chief medical resident. She was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, Stony Brook Chapter in 2012. She then joined Yale New Haven Hospital in 2014 as a Clinical Research Nephrology fellow. She also completed her Master of Science from the Yale School of Public Health in 2019 with a focus on Chronic Disease Epidemiology. Since her arrival at Yale, Dr. Mansour has been working on identifying novel repair biomarkers in blood and urine to better predict long-term kidney and heart disease outcomes after AKI, and improve overall patient care. Her K-23 proposal is focused on understanding the role of a vessel repair pathway, known as the Angiopoietin pathway, in graft outcomes after deceased donor kidney transplantation.

 

A link to Dr. Mansour’s full biography including links to her research and publications is:

Yale Medicine Profile - Dr Sherry Mansour

 

Dr. Wilson grew up in Connecticut, before attending Harvard College where he graduated with honors in biochemistry. He then attended medical school at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, before completing his internship, residency, and fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2012, he received a Masters degree in Clinical Epidemiology, which has informed his research ever since. At Yale since 2014, his goal is using patient-level data and advanced analytics to personalize medicine to each individual patient. He is the creator of the popular online course "Understanding Medical Research: Your Facebook Friend Is Wrong" on the Coursera platform.

A link to Dr. Mansour’s full biography including links to his research and publications is:

Yale Medicine Profile - Dr F Perry Wilson

 

Questions Dr. Mansour and Dr. Wilson are asked: 

 

6:33 Dr Mansour, you did a study a couple years ago at Yale that studied the effects of marathon running on the kidneys.  Can you explain how the study was conducted and what you found?

 

7:50 So marathon runners have markers like people in the ICU. That sounds horrible. Should we be worried?

 

8:31 Why do runners suffer from Acute Kidney Injury? Is it unique to running? Do swimmers suffer from this too?

 

9:23 Sherry, you said that you just run for fitness, so I assumed you would be a marathon runner since you studied the effects of marathon running on kidneys. Can you tell me why you chose to study marathon runners?

 

10:38 Perry, are you a marathon runner?

 

10:48 Perry, what questions do you have when it comes to kidneys and running? Have you experienced dehydration? Have you tested your own urine after a race?

 

12:13 What role does dehydration, your sweat rate, and sodium play into the types of injuries that the kidneys have after endurance racing?

 

14:28 It’s very difficult and actually not advised to drink the same amount of fluid that you actually lose during a race. What kind of advice would you give for somebody who says, “I know I sweat a lot. How much do I drink? How much salt do I put in my water?” Are these questions that you’ve been able to figure out yet?

 

16:28 Runners, especially older runners, worry about salt because their doctors say they shouldn’t intake a lot of salt if they have high blood pressure. Or if they have other kidney problems, they might have been advised to be on a low salt diet. How does that play into while you’re exercising? Should you continue to not consume much salt just because you’re supposed to be on a low salt diet?

 

17:46 Runners hear a lot about ibuprofen. A lot of people call it Vitamin I and take it when they’re feeling sore. Some people even take it before a race so they won’t feel sore, and we as coaches try to advise against this. Can you talk about the link between ibuprofen and kidney injury?

 

22:08 One of the reasons I wanted to have both of you on the show is because I recently suffered from a kidney stone, something I haven't talked about until today. I’m a healthy, athletic person and did not expect it. It was the worst pain of my life and as an athlete, I'm struggling to find good advice for hydration for kidney stone sufferers.  Perry,  can you give me some advice?

 

25:00 Through my research I’ve found that kidney stones are fairly common. Is that correct?

 

25:16 What do kidney stone sufferers have to do as far as exercise goes? I’m absolutely dehydrated at the end of a marathon. Is that more dangerous for me than it would be for someone who doesn’t have a kidney stone history?

 

26:59 I haven’t heard of people talking about how endurance runners and kidney stones interrelates at all, so I think there’s a lot of people out there that are hungry for this advice. Like I said, that’s why I want to have you guys on the show. So we can still run, we can still get a little dehydrated, but our risk is going to be a little higher is what you’re saying?

 

28:21 I think most runners now take Tylenol instead of ibuprofen, which hurts our liver instead of our kidneys. There’s also some evidence that Tylenol actually affects your brain and makes your perception of effort go down. So any time there’s something like that, runners are like, “Give it to me. Give it to me.”

 

29:25 Acute Kidney Injury from marathon running is typically temporary.  When do we have to worry that something could be wrong and damage could become chronic?

 

31:17 Have you looked at people who you measured right after the race and then looked at them a few days later to see if the damage was resolved?

 

32:15 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

33:41 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

34:12 Do you know why students at Yale aren’t allowed to run outside?

 

Quotes by Dr. Mansour and Dr. Wilson:

 

“This urine really we see in the hospital all the time when patients are in the ICU when their blood pressure is really low so we didn’t think that we would see something similar in runners but that was sort of the main finding that kind of surprised us.” (Dr. Mansour)

 

“I wish I were a runner. Every time I do studies with marathon runners, they’re so inspiring, they’re so dedicated. It’s really a great crowd to be around, but I’m just not like that. I don’t have the stamina.” (Dr. Mansour)

 

“There might not be that much of a correlation between how you feel and what’s going on in your kidneys because I was convinced I was going to see the most terrible stuff based on how I was feeling at the end of that race and my kidneys kind of shrugged it off.” (Dr. Wilson)

 

“A kidney stone is painful but it isn’t going to kill you either, so you have to think about the benefits.” (Dr. Wilson)




Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Leave a space for libsyn link

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Article: Marathons and Kidney Damage: What Runners Should Know

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

 

Follow Drs. Mansour and Wilson on:

 

Dr. Mansour on Twitter

Dr. F Perry Wilson on Twitter



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Mar 17, 2021

When you’re running hard, pushing yourself to extremes, which do you think is the more limiting factor, your body or your brain? Alex Hutchinson has done extensive research on exactly that question. 

 

The Toronto-based author and journalist focuses on the science of endurance and fitness. You may know him from his book ENDURE: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance or from Outside magazine where he’s a contributing editor and writes the Sweat Science column. 

 

Alex believes that our limits are elastic, stretchable, and as of yet, undefined. He and Coach Claire discuss those limits, and also tackle hydration, fueling, carbohydrates, strength training, aging and more.  And just for fun, they also get into the science of why Coach Claire loves an out-and-back course way more than a loop!

 

Alex also writes the Jockology column for The Globe and Mail, and his writing has appeared in Canadian Running magazine, Popular Mechanics (where he earned a National Magazine Award for his energy reporting), the New York Times, and he was a Runner’s World columnist from 2012 to 2017.

Prior to ENDURE, Alex wrote a practical guide to the science of fitness called Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? Fitness Myths, Training Truths, and Other Surprising Discoveries from the Science of Exercise, which was published in 2011. He is also the author of the 2009 book, Big Ideas: 100 Modern Inventions That Have Transformed Our World. 

Alex started out as a physicist, with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, followed by a few years as a postdoctoral researcher with the U.S. National Security Agency, working on quantum computing and nanomechanics. During that time, he competed as a middle- and long-distance runner for the Canadian national team, mostly as a miler but also dabbling in cross-country and even a bit of mountain running. He still runs most days, enjoys the rigors of hard training, and occasionally races, but hates to think of how he’d do on an undergraduate physics exam!

Alex’s best-selling book Endure has a forward written by Malcolm Gladwell, another famous Canadian runner and writer, and the updated version is now out in paperback.



Questions Alex is asked: 

 

3:34 You are an author and a journalist, but you really seem like a scientist at heart.  How did you get into writing about fitness and endurance sports?

 

5:22 What fascinates you most about how the body works when exercising?

 

6:10 Your book Endure, if you could really sum it up, I would say that it is trying to discover whether it’s the body or the brain that’s mostly the limiting factor when you’re trying to go to extremes but it’s clear that it’s a mix of the two. You can’t say, “Oh, it’s just the brain” or “It’s just the body.” Can you talk a little bit more about how they’re interrelated and what we are finding out?

 

7:41 Tim Noakes is a South African scientist that has been very controversial. He’s written a lot of things that turned out to be totally true and then he’s written a bunch of things that maybe people have not found to be true. Can you talk a little bit about the controversy, both the good and bad things that Tim Noakes has contributed?

 

10:35 I would love to distill the lessons that you’ve learned so far about things that can help runners do better. The two main topics I would love to get into are hydration and fueling. Let’s talk about hydration specifically for the marathon. Hydration needs are different for every type of body. Are there any rules of thumb that recreational runners should think about when coming up with a hydration plan for the marathon?

 

15:25 ‘Drink to thirst’ is starting to become more popular but there are some populations that their thirst isn’t reliable. I’ve heard that as you age, your sense of thirst is not as strong. Have you heard that as well?

 

18:05 We could talk about fueling during the race or we could talk about nutrition in general, but what I have found is that human studies are just notoriously bad when it comes to nutrition because we’re not rats and we can’t put humans in cages and measure everything. So what would you say are the limitations to studying nutrition on humans?

 

23:53 Let’s get into the great carbohydrate debate. As I often tell people, what’s frustrating about the word carbohydrate is that lentils, lollipops, and lumber are all carbohydrate. And if you say do eat carbohydrates or don’t eat carbohydrates, clearly those three things are processed differently in your body. First of all, why do we lump carbohydrate? It’s an absolutely massive category of food and clearly our body treats it differently. Carbohydrate is the preferred fuel of the brain. It’s the preferred fuel of the muscles. So why isn’t everybody on the carbohydrate train?

 

25:35 Sugar or simple carbohydrate is bad if you’re not exercising but it’s exactly what you need if you are trying to run a fast marathon.

 

27:29 A keto diet could be exactly what an ultramarathoner would want to do. They’re not so concerned about ultimate speed; they’re concerned about eating all the time. Isn't that what they say about ultras is that it’s not really a running race; it’s an eating race?

 

28:58 What’s the point of all this science if the answer is always “It depends?” 

 

30:22 Let's talk about strength training. What is the minimum effective dose for a runner who is highly active and competitive but not at the elite level?  

 

34:36 What is the minimum effective dose of strength training for somebody who is actively training to be competitive in a race but still at a sub-elite level?

 

40:10 I think a lot of what we attribute to normal aging is actually more of lack of activity, and all the decline is mostly for the couch potatoes, the more sedentary people, and we runners think that maybe we’re immune to all of that stuff. Would you agree a little bit with that?

 

44:12 You recently wrote an interesting article about the science of finish lines or teleoanticipation and you related it to not knowing when the pandemic will end.  Can you explain?  

 

47:46 I like out and backs better than loops because I know what to expect on the way back. There’s science that proves it, right?

 

49:28 The brain loves knowing what to expect and it predicts what’s going to happen whether it’s right or wrong, right?

 

49:42 What questions are left unanswered? What kind of science are you looking forward to in the future?

 

51:33 I think everybody wants to figure out how to make their brains stronger, not just in running but in life and dealing with little kids.



Questions I ask everyone:

 

52:22 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

53:32 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

53:58 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Alex:

 

“For every situation that you think of the answer is both. The answer is “Yes.” It’s just like nature and nurture. The answer is your fate is 100% nature and it’s 100% nurture, and your physical performance is 100% your body and 100% your brain.”

 

“If you look at the list right now of the top 100 men’s marathon times ever run, 98 of them have been run by Kenyan or Ethiopian marathoners so if they’re doing something wrong, I want to do it wrong like they’re doing it because they’re pretty successful. And if  you look at the data, in both cases they’re getting more than 60% of their calories throughout the day from carbohydrates. And for the Kenyans, apparently it’s more than 20% of their calories come from the added sugar that they put in their oatmeal and their tea. So is this healthy for a couch dwelling office worker in North America? Probably not. But if you want to run fast or if you’re training hard, sugar is not only like you can use it, but like you said, you need it.”

 

“There is some pretty interesting evidence showing that older runners like Masters runners get a much larger and more immediate benefit from weight training for their running than younger runners do because the younger runners have more muscle to spare.”

 

“Your body knows, even parts of your body that you wouldn’t think know exactly where the finish line is.”




Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Leave a space for libsyn link

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

Alex Hutchinson | Outside Online

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

 

Follow Alex on:

 

Twitter

Facebook



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Mar 3, 2021

What is it with runners and knees? If you run, you’ve heard “I used to run but it hurts my knees.” Although running is not inherently bad for your knees and staying active helps keep your knees healthy, a lot of runners eventually stop running because it hurts their knees too much. 

Older runners, especially men, have to be particularly diligent in their strength training and stretching to avoid knee pain. So which is it? Does running cause people knee problems or are certain people predisposed to knee problems and would have issues regardless of whether they ran or not?

To get to the bottom of this issue, Coach Claire speaks with Yale orthopedic surgeon, Dr. John Fulkerson. Dr. Fulkerson specializes in sports medicine and focuses on treating patella instability, which refers to the kneecap sliding in and out of position. 

Dr. Fulkerson has been at Yale for over 40 years and he is leading the way in cutting edge technology to help those who suffer from debilitating knee issues. He talks about who’s most at risk for knee problems, what does and doesn’t work for prevention, the simple exercise that you can do today that can help keep your knees running smoothly and pain free, and why those of us who are fortunate enough to be runners should feel gratitude for our running, even on those bad run days!

Dr. Fulkerson received his medical degree from and also completed his internship and residency at Yale University. His awards include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Patellofemoral Foundation, a Sports Medicine Fellow Educator Award from the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Connecticut, Connecticut Orthopedist of the Year, the San Francisco Bay Area Lifetime Achievement Award, U.S. News and World Report Top Doctors, and the Wisdom House Community Service Award (with his wife Lynn).

He founded the International Patellofemoral Study Group and the Patellofemoral Foundation. He has been head team physician for the NHL Hartford Whalers and Hartford Wolfpack, and a team physician for the U.S. Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey and Trinity College in Hartford.

Dr. Fulkerson is known for orthopedic surgical innovation and has lectured worldwide. His publications include Disorders of the Patellofemoral Joint as well as many other chapters and monographs on the same subject. He also published the non-orthopedic book Thin Lines: A Vineyard Journey.

Questions John is asked: 

3:00 What every runner wants to know is, is running bad for your knees?

4:44 What other people besides older people need to be careful about running safely? You said that there are some people that maybe aren’t as well suited to running as far as their knees go at least, so who are we talking about here?

5:53 Your specialty is patella instability. Can you talk about exactly what that is and maybe give us a quick anatomy refresher here?

7:11 So patella instability is when the kneecap is actually moving around is what you’re saying?

7:42 The patella groove depth is just genetic, you get it or you don’t? It’s just how you were born? Or does it have anything to do with the activities we do?

8:24 Can you talk about some of the specific problems that runners face with their knees? Give us a definition of what’s runner’s knee?

10:30 You mentioned core instability, and that’s something as I coach I talk to my runners about is that often knee problems are actually a symptom. They’re not actually the problem. It’s something higher up in the chain. The hips, the core, or maybe in the lower part of the leg or the ankles, something like that. Can you talk about how the knee is related to everything else that’s going on in the chain?

11: 57 What are some other exercises besides jumping rope that you recommend that can help with people who complain about knee issues?

12:24 How do you stretch the knee?

13:47 Let’s say we have a runner who complains of knee problems. He is doing everything he’s supposed to be doing, all the stretches, all the strengthening, rock solid core, but still cannot get away from the knee pain. At what point is surgery the best option?

14:59 How does 3-D printing work as a diagnosis tool for knee pain? 

16:10 This sounds like cutting-edge technology at Yale. Is this something that is spreading across the country? Are we going to be able to find this in Kansas? Or is this pretty limited at the moment?

17:44 When we’re talking about knees and joints in general and aging, the next thing that tends to come to mind is arthritis. And when I was researching this before interviewing you, I learned that there’s all sorts of different kinds of arthritis which I was not aware of. I thought arthritis was just arthritis but apparently it’s not. Can you talk about arthritis, especially in the knee, that runners are likely to encounter as they age?

20:07 My dad used to jog three miles every other day and he stopped in maybe his 60s because it hurt his knees too badly. Am I going to have the same fate? What do you think?

23:34 Let’s go back to cartilage. You mentioned the various things that happen to our cartilage as we age.  Is once the cartilage is gone, it’s gone, or it degenerates to a certain point? Does it regenerate? What exactly is going on with our cartilage?

25:00 How do we take good care of our cartilage? Is it just listening to your body and eating well? Is there something that we can do that will help prevent it if we happen to be prone to this?

26:47 As far as running shoes go, would you say nice, cushioned shoes or a nice drop? I would imagine you’re going to say no barefoot running. What would  you say about shoes?

26:41 I have a runner who is in his late 50s and has always had knee problems since I’ve been working with him, and his big thing is downhill running. Downhill running is really, really tough on him. Can you give some insight on why that is and maybe some advice about what he should do?

30:51 Are you saying we shouldn’t avoid downhill running if it doesn’t give us pain?

30:59 A lot of people say that most of the symptoms that we tend to associate with aging are actually more associated with inactivity, and I wanted to get your thoughts on that because I know a lot of people who are runners and their friends say to them, “Oh, well that’s just bad for your knees. Maybe you shouldn’t run.” What’s your take on that?

Questions I ask everyone:

33:48 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

35:27 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

36:53 Where can listeners connect with you?

37:17 What are you working on next?

Quotes by John:

“I think that running is a natural activity for people. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t descended from people who could run. I think it’s a survival skill. So I’d say for the majority of people, it’s very natural.”

“Runner’s knee is a broad term. It’s basically any runner that has pain in their knee.”

“Core stability is the first thing we recommend for many people with anterior knee pain, is just maximizing the core, working on the hip external rotators.”

“One of the things I like to think about is running really is a privilege. For those of us who are able to run, I think it’s great. And we love it, and it’s so hard for people when they lose that ability for any of the reasons that we talked about. It is a privilege that we should enjoy if we can. And so I don’t have the feeling at all that people should not run to protect their joints or something like that. If everything lines up and they’re the right structure, then it’s not a problem. Enjoy it.”

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

Follow John on:

John Fulkerson, MD < Yale School of Medicine

We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

Feb 24, 2021

Even if you’ve never heard of Cortney White, you’ve probably seen her pictures. Cortney is one of the few female professional photographers snapping shots of elite runners at sporting events. What’s even more impressive is she is 100% self-taught. How good is she? Her photography is all over the internet and she works with Nike’s elite training group in Portland, Oregon, the Bowerman Track Club. 

 

Cortney also lives in a van full time, previously used running as a means of staying fit for all her other athletic endeavors, and has had to combat a serious medical condition affecting her legs called compartment syndrome. 

 

Cortney shares her interesting story with Coach Claire starting with her enjoyment of trail running in college while she studied business and IT, and how surgery on her legs resulted in a move to Portland and a “regular” job at a large accounting firm with running pushed to the back burner. 

 

Cortney quickly realized she wanted to switch careers and seized an opportunity to work at a startup where she fell into the role of photographer for the brand. 

 

Without any career aspirations or professional knowledge, Cortney photographed some friends and others in the Portland running community and fell in love with photography. Within a few months, she was able to quit her job and combine both passions by doing full-time sports photography, including work with the Bowerman Track Club. She quickly fell back into the running community, but this time from behind a lens.

 

Along with her personal story, Cortney talks about which athletes love to get their picture taken, who doesn’t, and how to get that perfect running picture, which makes for a fun and fascinating episode!



Questions Cortney is asked:

 

2:31 I first learned about your work on Instagram. I follow a lot of professional athletes and I noticed that your name kept coming up in t photo credits. How did you start photographing runners at the elite level?

 

3:30 Are you completely self-taught?  You just sort of accidentally became a pro photographer?

 

4:15 When you knew this was going to be more than just a hobby, did you just like fall down the rabbit hole, just obsessed and learned everything you could? Is that how it happened?

 

5:16 Why running? You were a runner yourself, right?

 

6:31 I read that you had an injury that forced you to stop running. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

 

8:34 You film the best athletes in the world and yet you can’t participate in this sport itself. You seem to have a good attitude about it but didn’t that just crush you?

 

9:42 How’s your injured hand now?

 

10:23 What is it like shooting the Bowerman Track Club?  Can you talk about what the logistics are like shooting athletes on the track?  

 

13:16 Who on the Bowerman Track Club loves getting their picture taken and who doesn’t? Can you name some names?

 

14:06 Every runner knows this. It’s really tough to look great when you’re running really, really hard and you’re working hard. So I would love to hear your tips, both as a photographer and as a runner, how do you look good in running photographs? How?

 

16:16 I recall a lot of pictures that I’ve seen you take where you must be somewhere at like the 300m line, like the inside of the curve or something, and you have the trees in the background, and all the Bowerman babes are like all in flight at the same time. Their trailing leg is just back at… like they’re floating in air. And I’m just like, how does she do that? 

 

16:55 How staged are some of your shots outside of the track? You do photo shoots with the athletes too, right? Walk me through some of those. What are those like?

 

18:39 I’m sure it’s interesting to see the athletes kind of out of their element when you’re doing photo shoots.

 

19:41 Let’s talk about how things have changed. Obviously 2020 with COVID and the race scene was extremely different last year. The Bowerman Track Club along with other professional groups put on races that were very secretive, very last minute. Can you talk about this scene there with some of those races that they put on? What was it like and how was it different from the previous year?

 

22:16 You’re the one that’s documenting this craziness that we’re going through. Pictures of their coach Shalane Flanagan wearing a mask, hugging the women at the end. These are pictures that are only going to be during this special, crazy period of time. They’re going to be iconic. Have you thought about that?

 

24:11 What is your favorite part of the job? What do you look forward to the most when you wake up every day?

 

25:06 One interesting thing about you is that you live in your van full time.  How did that happen and what do you love about van life?

 

28:12 You’re doing all your editing and everything in the back of the van? Is that how you do it?

 

29:50 What's next for you?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

31:17 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

32:40 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

33:01 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Cortney:

 

“I absolutely love shooting runners. I love the stories and how it is such like an individual sport but then you apply it to this team aspect. I didn’t mean to end up in this but I’m so glad I did.”

 

“I actually prefer more of like the documentary event style photos because I love capturing real things that are happening, but of course, you’re going to have to, especially when it comes to product, or if an athlete just want some portraits for something, or if it’s for a different brand, you will have those staged photos.”

 

“I pretty much only shoot with natural light. I don’t do lighting setups or any of that. I really like it to feel as natural as possible.”

 

“It’s interesting to be living through this and thinking that in several years, we’re going to look back on this and these moments and realize that this was all a part of history.”



Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Leave a space for libsyn link

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Portfolio - Cortney White

Bowerman Track Club (bowermantc.com)

PWURE: Data-based Sports Nutrition

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

 

Follow Cortney on:

 

Instagram



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Feb 17, 2021

When ultramarathoner and running guru Danny Dreyer attended a tai chi class in 1999, a lightbulb went off.

He believed the martial art’s principles of alignment, relaxation, and balance could allow him to finally make the next leap in training, and he wasn’t disappointed.

After he began incorporating tai chi into his running, Danny not only witnessed dramatic improvements in his performance, but he also wasn’t getting injured anymore.

In fact, he’d finish a run feeling exactly the same as when he started.

Wishing to share his discovery, Danny founded ChiRunning through which he’s helped thousands of runners conquer injury and run more efficiently to reach new levels.

A mindful and process-driven exercise rather than simply a means to an end, ChiRunning is also known as “moving meditation”, and it’s helped both recreational and elite athletes reduce impact for improved health, better performance, and more enjoyable running.

Listen in as Danny discusses the benefits of ChiRunning as well as how to master the technique so many runners swear by today.

Feb 10, 2021

Tina Muir talks with Evie Serventi, a competitive runner and swimmer, the Deputy Editor of Running Fitness magazine in the UK and Sports Psychologist in this encore from 2017.

In this episode, they talk about the importance of Mental Training and techniques for training our brains to help us run better and to not sabotage the effort we put into our physical conditioning.

As you will hear, Evie and Tina have a wonderfully close relationship. and you will come away with actionable steps that will get your brain and body working more effectively together.

Feb 3, 2021

Running isn’t always forgiving.

Between injuries, mental ruts, and the curve balls life sometimes throws at us, finding long term success and remaining engaged in the sport can be incredibly difficult, and Sinead Haughey talks with Jonathan Beverly about his book Run Strong, Stay Hungry, in this encore from 2017.

The book reveals the habits and mentalities of more than 50 veteran runners who are still running fast decades after they started.

A writer for Runner’s World, Podium Runner, and lifetime runner himself, Jonathan will give us a peek into the lives of runners like Bill Rodgers, Deena Kastor, and Joan Benoit Samuelson to show us what it takes to avoid burnout and achieve longevity in the sport – both physically and mentally.

Quotes by Jonathan:

“The physical burnout usually comes because of a lack of variety: doing the same thing and the same type of training over and over again.”

“People overcomplicate it: always having a detailed training plan, hitting certain splits – it becomes obsessive…and when that happens, either you’re doing it all or you’re failing.”

“Gary Allen talks about how a recipe has to be followed exactly: if you don’t have half a teaspoon of baking soda, things are going to blow up….But a chef knows that you put a little bit in and see what happens.”

Jan 27, 2021

Coach Tina interviews Jay Dicharry in 2017.

 Jay is a renowned expert in biomechanics and physical therapy and is also the author of Anatomy for Runners. In this episode, he challenges us to reevaluate parts of our accepted, conventional training and running wisdom.

 He does a great job of deconstructing clinically complex concepts into easily understandable ideas and examples. He breaks down things like Strength Training versus Power Training and the differences between joint limitation or blockage, shortened tissues, stiffness / sticky tissues, and dynamic mobility.

 Our conversation covered a lot of ground and included many additional resources as noted by the links below. This may very well be an episode that you will want to listen to multiple times to explore these and evaluate what changes you may want to integrate into your own personal program.

Here are some of the topics we’ll discuss today: 

  • How biomechanic training can help Pre-Hab or prevent injuries.
  • Biomechanics fact vs. fiction and the ongoing critical evaluation of prior assumptions.
  • How to leverage strength training to improve your running while reducing your volume.
  • How to evaluate a potential strength coach or options if you don’t have access to one.
  • Risk / Reward balance of using different types of shoes for training / racing.
  • Jay’s Mobility / soft-tissue work philosophy.
  • The difference between ‘stretching’ and ‘dynamic mobility’ and which you should do before a run.

Quotes by Jay:

“There’s still the folks out there saying ‘Running is going to kill you and you need to stop’.”

“I don’t like being the person paving the way; I like being the person helping people.”

“ ‘What’s the ONE thing to do?” and the reality is that life isn’t that simple, right? If it was, then nobody would have problems.”

“There is very good research out there to show that running does NOT make you strong. Running efficiency DOES improve when you improve the way that you carry yourself.”

“At the end of the day, the runners who are serious find a way to get in the weight room. The runners I work with, the people I’ve introduced to this, I don’t know any of them who have STOPPED doing this at all even from a novice up to an elite level.”

“The goal is to build a running-specific plan to RUN better, not just to lift more weight in the gym.”

“If it’s not improving running economy and making your body more robust in terms of injury reduction, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”

“If you’re a soccer player and you’re more accurate in shooting goal with your right foot, that’s fine, right? But, when you run both legs have to show up.”

“I’m not looking to train a muscle; I’m looking to train a movement.”

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

UVA Speed Clinic

Run To The Top podcast with Max Prokopy

The American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Joe Friel's Blog

Bryan Heiderscheit, PT, PhD

Christopher M. Powers, PhD, PT, FACSM, FAPTA

Irene Davis, PhD, PT, FAPTA, FACSM, FASB

  1. Reed Ferber PH.D., CAT(C), ATC: Director - Running Injury Clinic

2017 UVA Running Medicine Conference

PubMed Website

MedLine Home Page

Jack Daniels's Run Smart Project

Book: Anatomy For Runners

Run To The Top podcast with Dr. Santos

Run To The Top podcast with Drew Watts

Saucony Stride Lab app for iOS

Saucony Freedom Shoes

Steve Magness Amazon Author Page

Runner's World Article: How to Use a Lacrosse Ball for Recovery

Carrom Balance Board

Hyperice Vibration Ball

Rep Lab - Jay's lab blog

Tina’s Dynamic Warm-up Drills

We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

If more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, it means I can reach out to and get through to the top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

Jan 20, 2021

Keira D’Amato is a world class runner who broke the American record in the 10 mile and clocked an incredible 2:22 at the Marathon Project this past December, but incredibly, she’s a full-time realtor and running is her side gig. 

Keira, an unsponsored Realtor and mom of two from Virginia, unexpectedly placed 15th at the Olympic Marathon Trials last February, emerging onto the American running radar after a comeback mission that spanned over a decade.

Keira was a rising star at D1 American University, even beating future Olympians Molly Huddle and Amy Cragg. Then an ankle injury and subsequent surgery seemingly ended her running career for good. 

Switching gears, Keira started working at her mom’s real estate company, started a family, and called herself a “hobby jogger.”

She started training hard again to fulfill her life-long dream of becoming an Olympian, continuing to get faster and faster even as the pandemic shut down the world and Tokyo postponed the Olympics.

In 2020, Keira got an unofficial Olympic standard in the 5K, ran a blisteringly fast 4:33 mile, and in November, Keira became the fastest American woman in the 10 mile.  To cap off the year, Keira clocked a truly world-class time of 2:22 at the Marathon Project last December, coming in second place behind Sara Hall, a 12-minute improvement over her time at the trials.

As remarkable as all that is, running is still a hobby for Keira. She remains a professional realtor, not a professional runner. She talks to Coach Claire about running at an elite level while being a full-time realtor and mom, what 2020 was like for her, including the Marathon Project and her PRs, and how she trains for both speed and distance. As a bonus, this fun and inspiring episode even includes some corny mom jokes! Enjoy!

 

Questions Keira is asked:

 

4:14 What an amazing year 2020 turned out for you in running!  After what you call a decade of "hobby jogging" you have emerged as one of the best American distance runners, breaking the American record in the 10 mile and clocking an incredible 2:22 at the Marathon Project in December.  Can you talk about what last year was like for you?

 

5:43 It’s easy to think that you just came out of nowhere, but you ran Division I in college, you were coached by Matt Centrowitz, even beating out a few future Olympians in races back then.  What were your plans for your running career back then?

 

7:06 I imagine it must be such a mind shift to think, “Okay, my life is headed in a certain direction,” and you get injured. “Well, my life is not going in that direction.” And then to get a second chance. Not many people get a second chance like you got.

 

9:39 You have become one of the distance moms. The field of American female distance runners right now is so deep, and most of them are moms which would be unheard of not that long ago. How do you feel that motherhood has intertwined with your running? Do you think there’s something to do with it that makes you a better runner?

 

11:34 When your kids were younger, did you do the running stroller thing?

 

12:46 Let’s talk about the Marathon Project last month. You had a massive PR and came in second place. What about your training said that “Hey, I can do this. I can get a sub-2:30. I can get close to 2:20.” What kind of workouts, what kind of things were going on in your mind that told you, “Yeah, I’m a contender?”

 

14:22 Did you have any thoughts of running out with Sara Hall and going for the American record at the time?

 

15:13 Not only did you kill it in the marathon but you got a new 5K PR and a mile PR this year. How does training for those shorter distances, or at least testing yourself at those shorter distances, how does that relate to your marathon, and what would you say to that 20-yr-old girl that you used to be that you’re pretty much beating all the time now?

 

17:57 Would your advice to somebody who is let’s say plateauing in the marathon be to do track work? What would be your number one tip to get a breakthrough like you had?

 

18:45 Speaking of your training, you are on Strava and your Strava feed is like a corny mom’s joke, so I would love to hear what’s your favorite corny mom joke?

 

20:16 We have something else in common besides running. You are a realtor. I’ve been a realtor for almost 19 years now so I can relate to that. You still work full time as a realtor and you’re not sponsored as a pro runner. Tell me about that.

 

22:35 That’s a great point. You think, “Oh, you’re an elite runner, you should just get signed and have running, running, running all over your life,” but the fact that you can be riskier because you have real estate as your income source, running isn’t about money for you.

 

23:58 I read somewhere that you do real estate negotiations while you’re on a run, on an easy run.

 

25:06 You said multiple times in this conversation that you are going to be an Olympian, so what’s next for you?

 

25:29 You’ve hit the Olympic standard in the 5K, right, but it was unofficial? Is that correct?




Questions I ask everyone:

 

26:30 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

27:41 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

28:27 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Keira:

 

“I think through all the chaos, and all the hurt, and pain, and just everything that happened in the negative space in 2020, I really clung to running to be my hope, to be my good time, to be my goals.”

 

“It’s important to keep the mileage up and to make sure you’re getting your long runs and your tempo runs too, but I think just developing your speed. Like when I first did a marathon, I think that was like my 5K pace too, and then I’ve been able to drag my 5K pace down so much that now I feel really comfortable running marathon pace, so I think that that’s the key.” 

 

“I live, I train, everything about me is elite athlete. If you look at my life, I have a very similar structured life to the elite athletes but just instead of taking as many naps or having some downtime and going on Netflix binges, I’m doing my real job.”

 

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Keira D’Amato – Stone Properties (stonepropertiesva.com)

FlipBelt.com

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

 

Follow Keira on:

 

Instagram



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

Jan 13, 2021

Nathan Martin just broke a 41-year-old record at the Marathon Project held this past December. He finished in 2:11:05, making him the fastest US born Black marathoner of all time. He placed ninth, beating out Olympians and professionals with far deeper pedigrees.

In addition to being a super-fast runner, Nathan is also on a mission to give back and inspire others, especially the kids he coaches. Instead of leaving his high school coaching job to turn pro and join an elite training team, he decided to stay and continue training with his college coach Dante Ottolini at Spring Arbor University.

In this episode, Nathan discusses how he first started running, the tragic deaths of both of his parents, and his unlikely path to record-breaking running success. He also shares his thoughts on why there are comparatively few American born Black runners in long distance running and how he sees that changing in the future. Lastly, he talks about his next goal which involves hopefully setting a huge PR!

Nathan Martin was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois and raised in Three Rivers, Michigan. He started running Cross Country in Middle School after doing well in the gym class fitness test. He quickly discovered he had talent, and with the encouragement of others, kept with it. He was able to excel at the high school level, breaking three different school records and finishing runner-up at the MHSAA D2 state finals in the mile.

At Spring Arbor University, Nathan majored in Recreation and Leisure Management with a minor in Computer Science. As a freshman, he came in underdeveloped as far as training goes. However, after a couple of years of hard work, his potential started to show. By the end of senior year, he became a National Champion in three different events and set the NAIA Marathon record. 

Post college Nathan continued pursuing running to see how far his talents could take him, which ultimately led to an incredible opportunity to coach at the MHSAA D1 level, as well as substitute teaching in Jackson County. At first it was just a way to keep a flexible schedule, but he quickly fell in love with it and his and his coach’s new focus became how to make everything work together, which inspired them to create the Great Lakes Running Club. 

Through this process, Nathan was still making huge gains in running, most notably the 2019 20k Championships where he finished runner up, and now, his finish at the 2020 Marathon Project where he finished 9th with a 2:11:05 putting him 49th on the all-time US Marathoner list and breaking a 41-year-old record set by Herman Atkins, making Nathan the fastest US Born Black Marathoner. 

Questions Nathan is asked:

 

3:20 You made history at the Marathon Project on December 20th, by becoming the fastest US born Black man to run a marathon in 2:11:05, breaking a more than 40-year-old record.  What does that feel like and did you even know about the record before the race?

 

4:16 Can you give us a recap of the race in Arizona, how it went, what your strategy was, all the details?

 

5:36 There’s two sets of pace groups in that race, the 2:09 group and the 2:11 group. What made you not want to go ahead with the 2:09 group?

 

7:35 Easing up on your pace a little instead of staying with the 2:09 group left you out in no-man’s land for a little while, didn’t it?

 

8:22 You ended up in ninth place, which is obviously very impressive on such a fast course where so many guys went 2:09, so congratulations for that. It must have felt amazing to have such a PR and to crack the top 10.

 

9:28 I’d love to hear a little bit more about your back story. How did you first get into running and did you like it immediately?

 

11:15 You ran through high school and you ran in college, and you worked with a coach that certainly changed your life.  Can you tell us a little bit about your coach and that relationship?

 

12:31 Dante Ottolini is still your coach today, right?

 

12:36 During college you lost your parents to cancer. How did running help you get through those hard times?

 

14:32 It sounds like your team really had your back when you lost your parents. That’s amazing.

 

15:03 After college, you could have left Michigan to be a pro or train somewhere else, but you stayed and became a substitute teacher and high school coach.  Why did you make that decision?  What does coaching bring to your life?

 

16:36 It sounds like you get more out of coaching your athletes than they get from you.

 

16:50 Do you think you would ever consider turning pro?

 

19:21 Have you considered staying in Michigan and maybe joining Hansons-Brooks?

 

19:59 One thing that I wanted to ask you is do you have any insight as to why more Black Americans aren't involved in distance running?  Black Americans dominate track and field but are not as well represented in the longer distances.  Do you have any thoughts of why this is?

 

21:41 Why didn’t you switch to basketball or football or something like that?

 

22:28 As a coach, how do you keep kids motivated when the other sports come calling?

 

23:12 Obviously running, at least in the United States, is not as glamorous as the NFL or the NBA, so I think this is an issue all across the country no matter what race you’re from, so how do we get more people interested in running? And I don’t know the answer. I don’t know if you have any insight on that.

 

24:02 What was the reaction when you came home from Arizona with your athletes, people in town, your coach? What did they say to you?

 

24:58 What are you training for now? What’s coming up next?

 

25:38 The Olympics 10k standard is 28 minutes so that would be a big PR for you. What’s your PR right now?

 

26:16 What are some of the specific things that you would do to run the 10k in 28 minutes, or is that still a mystery?

 

27:01 Are you basically the fastest guy in town or do you have some good training partners that can help you out?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

27:58 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

28:49 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

29:34 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Nathan:

 

“So I’m like, You know what? Hey, we need to be smart about this race. We’re looking to hit a huge PR. If we can stay with this 2:09 group, we’re going to do it but I need to protect myself and make sure I have a good day and don’t let others affect that.”

 

“Always, whatever I’m doing, I want to make sure that I’m connecting with people and finding ways to impact them. So if I did leave to a training group, it’d have to be more than just faster or to get to the Olympics type thing.”

 

“Most people enjoy hearing what they’re able to do and that’s definitely what I would try and make sure I do with my athletes.”

 

“You need people you can look towards. In one sense, I broke a record. Great for me. But in a whole ‘nother sense, it allows somebody to see somebody who’s achieved something and say, ‘You know what, that’s what I want to achieve. I think I can do that.’ And then they carve a path to find a way.”



Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

 

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

email Coach Claire

Use Promo Code RTTT for 20% off Sweaty Betty at www.sweatybetty.com/RTTT




Follow Nathan on:

 

Instagram

Nathan Martin’s Olympic Trials Countdown | Facebook




We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Jan 6, 2021

Happy New Year! Did you resolve to lose weight this year? Running burns a ton of calories so it should be a great way to melt off the pounds, right? Well, maybe not. Dr. Kyle Flack, a weight-loss researcher from the University of Kentucky, conducts studies on how the body responds to exercise and how much you really need to work out to work off those extra pounds, and it turns out you need to work out a lot more than the current recommendations suggest.

Dr. Flack was recently featured in a New York Times article on exercising to lose weight and he shares his research results and provides insights on why weight loss isn’t as simple as burning more calories than you take in. He explains how body chemistry can seemingly work against us, thwarting significant weight loss, especially for fitter people, and why it’s not uncommon for people to actually gain weight while training for a marathon.

Through his studies, Dr. Flack has found that people overcompensate for the calories they’ve burned pretty consistently, and he shares what the average calorie overcompensation amount is and how much exercise time is required to overcome it to really drop pounds. He also talks about how long it takes to make exercise a habit, he compares strength training to aerobic exercise for weight loss potential, and also reveals whether it’s possible to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. If your goal is to lose or maintain your weight through your running, this is definitely a must-listen-to episode!

Kyle Flack grew up in a small town in Vermont where, as a 4-year starter on the varsity football team, earned All-State honors twice and won two state championships. He left to play college football at Ferrum College in Southwest Virginia, earning a BS in health sciences 4 years later. He continued his education at Virginia Tech in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, where he earned his PhD in 2014. 

Upon beginning grad school, Kyle also turned over a new leaf in terms of his exercise routine, going from 280-pound power-lifting football player (who got winded walking upstairs) to a runner. He devoted an entire winter and spring to this newfound training, lost 40 pounds, and completed his first marathon, Vermont City Marathon in 2008. 

From there he was addicted, running two marathons each year for the next 5 years throughout grad school and dropping another 30 pounds. Each marathon was a new learning experience, a new opportunity to get better, and always ended with the goal or running the next marathon faster! 

After grad school, and after finally reaching that sub-3:30 goal (he did the Marshall University Marathon in 3:27) Kyle shifted his attention to triathlons, which he has been at since 2014. Kyle completed a Post-Doctoral research fellowship with the USDA in Grand Forks North Dakota from 2014 to 2017 and has since been an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition since 2017. Kyle is an RD (registered dietitian) and primarily focused on researching weight loss physiology, how exercise may affect eating behaviors, and how exercise can be more appropriately used for weight control.    

 

Questions Kyle is asked:

 

4:52 You are a researcher at the University of Kentucky specializing in how exercise affects eating and weight loss.  And you don't just study it, you used running to lose weight yourself.  Can you share your experience?

 

7:27 You were already an athlete with football so it wasn’t like you were obese or overweight and just wanted to lose weight by running?

 

7:58 Let’s get into some weight loss science.  It seems that weight loss should be easy. It’s "calories in and calories out."  What makes it more complicated than that?

 

10:00 When you lose weight, you’re obviously lighter so there’s less of you to move around. Is that correct?

 

10:30 Why isn't exercise generally effective for weight loss?

 

11:37 Overcompensating for calorie expenditure due to exercise is not entirely all our fault. This is not entirely a willpower issue or something like that. Our body’s working against us. Is that correct?

 

14:28 What you’re saying is when you go for a great run and you get all these endorphins flowing, you’re feeling really good, the entire pan of brownies tastes even better, right?

 

15:15 Many athletes that I’ve coached have actually gained weight when they start training for a marathon. They are burning a ton of calories and for whatever reason instead of losing weight, they gain weight. How is that possible?

 

19:34 I did a calculator once to figure out how many calories I burned running a mile and it was something terrible like 56 calories, and I’m just like, “What! That’s not fair.” Why is our body doing this to us?

 

20:17 In a recent study you did, you and your team found that in order to lose fat, the participants in the study needed to burn 3000 extra calories per week.  Can you talk about this study?

 

21:52 In your recent study, were the participants moving less in their normal lives when they weren’t exercising? Were they slowing down?

 

23:27 The exercise you put the test participants through, was it just walking? Is that what you had them do?

 

23:51 Any other differences would you expect to find if you did the same study with athletes rather than obese, sedentary people?

 

25:01 Does the type of exercise matter?  How about duration, frequency, or intensity?

 

26:44 The results of your study show frequency doesn’t matter. That’s good news for the weekend warriors, right?

 

27:19 You’ve also done some studies about the reinforcement value of exercise and I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can make exercise a habit that we can stick to.

 

33:27 You’re talking about a significant amount of exercise, five, six, seven hours a week for most people to get addicted to exercise?

 

34:11 One thing about exercise studies and nutrition studies, there’s some inherent difficulties in studying human beings because we’re not rats and you can’t put us in cages. So what kind of limitations did you find in some of your studies? What are the challenges that you find in this kind of work?

 

39:36 Nutrition labels, they don’t have to be perfectly accurate. I’ve heard that you can be 20% off on your nutrition label and it still be okay with the FDA. So calories in aren’t always perfect, right?

 

40:12 What about strength training?  How does that differ from cardio when it comes to weight loss,  hunger, the afterburn? We hear that when you strength train, muscles take more energy to sustain than fat does so you’re burning more just standing around if you have more muscle mass. Can you talk about that?

 

42:59 Can you gain muscle at the same time as lose fat? I’ve heard that that’s not always the case. Is that possible?

 

44:18 What questions are still unsolved and what kind of research are you looking to do in the future?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

48:39 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

49:46 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

50:19 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Kyle:

 

“If you lose weight, we would expect you to decrease your total energy expenditure, but what’s really been found is that if you lose weight, you decrease it more than what we would anticipate.”

 

“We need to exercise more to overcome that obligatory 1000-calorie-a-week compensatory response so we can actually see useful weight loss. So that 150-minutes-a-week recommendation that we hear actually isn’t enough to overcome that compensatory response.”

 

“With aerobic exercise, you can put someone on, ‘You’re going to exercise at this heart rate for 30 minutes,’ and you can do that for everybody and they all have the same workout. But if you say, ‘Okay, you’re going to go to the gym and lift weights for an hour,’ that’s going to look completely different from one person to the next person in terms of muscle activation, what you’re lifting, how heavy, how intense.”

 

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

 

kyle.flack@uky.edu

New York Times Article - Exercise for Weight Loss: Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

https://runnersconnect.net/focus/

RunnersConnect Focus Classes

Use Promo Code RTTT for 20% off Sweaty Betty at www.sweatybetty.com/RTTT




Follow Kyle on:

 

Kyle Flack | Human Environmental Sciences (uky.edu)




We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

Dec 30, 2020

At age 75, legendary coach and Olympian Jeff Galloway is almost as famous for walking as he is for running. Jeff says his run-walk-run method of training enables people to run longer and faster with much less risk of injury, and his half a million followers agree. 

In this episode, Jeff talks about how he developed his walk/run technique and how everyone from absolute beginners to the fastest runners can benefit from it. He also shares with Coach Claire how he’s getting more steps in while working from home, how runners can stay motivated during the pandemic, what his Magic Mile is and how to use it for training, and what he’s doing at age 75 to ensure he can keep running until age 100 and beyond.

Not only is there a lot to be learned from Jeff in this interview, but he also has a new book out called Galloway’s 5K/10K Running, Training for Runners & Walkers. The book describes Jeff’s Run Walk Run method and how it can be used to reduce aches and pains and fatigue while improving race times. It includes training plans, easy-to-read advice on medical checkups, nutrition for runners, fat-burning workouts, choosing the right running shoes, how to stay motivated, and a race day checklist. The book is definitely a great tool for runners at any level!

Jeff worked his way from being an average teenage runner to an Olympian. His book Galloway’s Book on Running is the best selling running book in North America. He also wrote columns for Runner's World for 20-plus years, he’s an international running and fitness speaker, and as a coach, has helped 400,000-plus average people train for their goals. His Run Walk Run marathon training program boasts an impressive 98% success rate. 

 

 

Questions Jeff is asked:

 

3:35 At this point in your career, you are almost as famous for walking as you are for running!  Can you talk about what you love about walking in general and its benefits for runners?

 

9:09 How would you recommend all of us who are working from home get more transition time between sitting at our computers and running and get more steps in? How do we get our work done and still get in all our steps?

 

10:51 Maybe because we’re all stuck at home and the gyms are closed, I see more people in my neighborhood than ever out walking, out running, out doing things, people you’d never see before. So what advice would you give to someone just starting out?

 

14:58 Should runners of all levels use walking in their training and racing? What’s your opinion on intermediate-to-advanced runners?

 

16:12 I’m a steady runner. I run even splits no matter what, and in the last marathon that I was in, there was somebody next to me who was leapfrogging me. And he was running super fast and then he would walk, and then I’d pass him, and he’d run super fast and then he would walk. And this is at a sub-three-hour marathon pace, and so I was just like, “That is pretty impressive to see someone doing that,” because in order to get to the finish line in the same time as me, his run section would have to be significantly faster to make up for the walking. So I thought that was very interesting.

 

17:32 Is there a proper technique to walking or can you just go out and walk like you always do?

 

18:43 The walk in the run/walk method is not just a stroll; this is a walk with purpose?

 

19:42 Let's talk about the Magic Mile. What is so magic about it and how do you use it for training?

 

22:03 So you just go out, you run a mile as fast as you can, and then you pop it into a calculator. Is that it for the Magic Mile?

 

23:53 When I use the Magic Mile calculator on your site, my predicted marathon time is far slower than what I actually could run for the marathon.  Can you explain this?

 

25:21 My Magic Mile calculator result could just mean that I’m bad at short distances and better at long distances, right?

 

25:43 In a recent podcast, I asked leaders in the running community what they did to continue running for life, and I actually got somebody wanting to know what you do. They asked for you specifically, so I would love to hear your thoughts on how you’re going to keep running to 100 and beyond.

 

30:16 A lot of runners and walkers really look forward to having a race on their calendar, and with 2020 being as crazy as it has been, not all of us have those races on the calendar. How would you talk to those people who really get motivated by races when there aren’t any?

 

33:43 What is next for you?

 

Questions I ask everyone:

 

36:40 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

38:57 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

39:55 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Jeff:

 

“There are a lot of people that won’t start running unless you tell them, ‘Well, just walk. Give it a try.’ And then if they’re interested, I offer them a proven way to add small segments of jogging or shuffling in a 30-second to 60-second timeframe so that they gradually introduce the body to the running motion. And I found that almost anybody can get into running, get all the benefits, and not have aches and pains if they have the right Run Walk Run.”

 

“If you want to walk, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with walking. You honestly are not going to get the brain benefits that you get even from five seconds of running at a time.”

 

“If runners want to run faster in races, then it’s definitely a good idea to put the walk breaks in.”

 

“The whole thing about running as you get older is all based on what your body part can handle that’s getting irritated, and I call those weak links. We all have weak links and we have to be attentive to them, and at the first irritation of a weak link, you back off, you treat it, and you go on.”




Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Jeff Galloway | The official site of Run-Walk-Run

jfg@jeffgalloway.com

Book: Galloway's 5K/10K Running, Training for Runners and Walkers

Charge Running

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net

https://www.precisionhydration.com/



Follow Jeff on:

 

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

YouTube.com





We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

Dec 23, 2020

Elevating American Distance Running: Ben Rosario 

Ben Rosario is the head coach of the HOKA Northern Arizona Elite. His athletes have been wildly successful in recent years, with the most notable being Aliphine Tuliamuk's win at the 2020 US Olympic Trials. His athletes Stephanie Bruce and Kellyn Taylor also finished in the top ten of that race, and on the men's side, Scott Fauble, a 2:09 marathoner, came in 12th.

 

In this episode, Coach Claire talks to Ben about the Olympic Marathon Trials, focusing on how well his female athletes did, how HOKA NAZ treats female athletes, especially in light of the Nike Oregon Project, and why he thinks so many female runners are still posting PRs well into their 30s.  Ben also shares some great coaching advice, his training philosophy, and his insight into why so many world records have been posted during COVID. 

 

At the time of this recording, Ben was preparing for The Marathon Project held on December 20. Coach Claire asks Ben for his predictions and will post the results here in the show notes following the race.

Like many coaches, Ben started out as an accomplished runner himself as a member of the Hansons Brooks team and he competed in the Olympic Trials twice before turning to coaching full time. 

In his six+ years with Northern Arizona Elite, Ben’s athletes have won U.S. National Titles in cross country and on the roads at 10k, the half marathon and the 25k, as well as New Zealand National Titles on the track and the roads. 

HOKA NAZ Elite athletes have recorded 8 top-10 finishes at World Marathon Majors.The team has been represented at the World Cross Country Championships, the World Half Marathon Championships, and at the World Track and Field Championships. 

His athletes have also competed at the European Athletics Championships, the Great Edinburgh International XC Meet, the NACAC Cross Country Championships, the NACAC Track Championships, the Pan American Cup Cross Country Meet and the Pan American Games. 

In 2016, the team produced two sixth-place finishes at the Olympic Trials Marathon and two fourth-place finishes in the 10,000 meters at the Olympic Track and Field Trials. At the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials, four HOKA NAZ Elite athletes posted top 20 finishes, including three in the top eight in the women’s race led by Aliphine Tuliamuk–the Trials Champion. 

 

Questions Ben is asked:

4:19 2020 has been pretty crazy for everyone in the world but specifically for the team that you lead, Northern Arizona Elite. Let's go back in time to February when you were getting ready for the Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta. Can you take us back there and recap what you were thinking?

 

5:10 Atlanta is a pretty tough course with all the hills. Obviously that was not a problem for at least your female athletes.

 

5:28 Your athlete, Aliphine Tuliamuk, won the women's race and was planning to head to Tokyo when the world shut down. What was that like as her coach?

 

6:41 I would love to talk to you about Aliphine Tuliamuk’s recent announcement that she is pregnant and due in January. As her coach, I’m sure she came to you and said, “Hey, Ben, this is what I’m going to do.” What was that conversation like? 

 

7:26 How tough was it keeping Aliphine’s pregnancy a secret?

 

8:33 You are quite experienced in elite mom runners. Several women on your team are moms and are still just killing it. I would love to talk about Kellyn Taylor, Stephanie Bruce. I would love to talk about Stephanie for a minute. She is almost 37 years old and still getting PRs in the 10K. How is that possible?

 

10:14 It didn’t used to be so long ago that mid-30s was old for a runner but now that’s not the case, and I think maybe it has something to do with belief, too, seeing all these new great examples.

 

11:06 I want to keep going back to the women because you have been coaching some really great ones obviously, and American women are seeing a resurgence in endurance running. American men maybe not so much. Would you want to talk about that?

 

12:32 I want to talk to you about how women are treated in this sport. We’ve all heard about the crazy things with the Nike Oregon Project and how Kara Goucher was treated when she was pregnant. I don’t think that it’s going to be the same story with Hoka. I would love to have you share what you could say about how Hoka supports its female athletes.

 

15:06 I think you’re right that when all that came out about the Oregon Project that we thought as fans, “Oh. This is the way they’re all treated.” But it’s great to hear that that’s not the case.

 

15:34 Whenever I get a coach on, I love to talk about coaching advice to hopefully help someone who’s listening become a better runner. Do you have different training approaches for the kids who come straight out of college than you do for your veteran elite runners?

 

17:03 Let’s talk in a little bit more detail about the training advice. Most runners get the advice hard days are hard; easy days are easy. But then you throw in some medium days. I think that’s where a lot of recreational runners trip up is those medium days. Can you talk about those and what they’re for and how you use them?

 

19:22 You don’t always have to run your hardest, right?

 

20:11 You're also a fan of high mileage and I want to know what that means to you because as runners we all want to run as much as possible but clearly there’s a point when high is too high. So what is that point? Obviously it’s individual, but how does somebody know what is high for them? Where’s that sweet spot?

 

22:51 Besides your athletes, this year we've seen so many world-record breaking performances in 2020, which seems counterintuitive since there have been so few races, the world is not normal, and people can’t train the way they usually do. What do you attribute that to?  

 

24:14 I’m sure the cynics would say the number of world-record breaking performances in 2020 are because of the shoes or because there’s not enough drug tests in COVID. What do you say about those kinds of things?

 

25:25 So you think there should be regulations on running shoes like them being available to the public or there’s a stack height, that kind of stuff; is that what you mean?

 

27:00 What's next for you and your athletes?  How do you predict the running world will change in 2020?  

 

28:29 This will probably air after the Marathon Project this weekend, but I would love to have you handicap it a little bit, tell us who’s all racing and what do you predict?

 

31:40 How many participants are there for the marathon?



Questions I Ask Everyone:

 

32:17 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

33:31 What is the greatest gift running has given you? 

 

33:56 Where can listeners connect with you?

Quotes by Ben:

“I think what we’re learning is that women can run really well into their mid-to-late 30s, and we’re learning that not only from Steph but Shalane, Des, Kellyn, Molly Huddle; all kinds of women in the US and beyond are showing that in distance running, women keep getting better.”

 

“In general, my goal anyway is to keep people around here for a really long time. So we’re definitely taking a long-term approach and we’re not trying to necessarily throw everything at them right away. We’re trying to slowly add pieces over time, and you see that with the folks who have stayed with us for a long time just getting better and better and better and better, and that’s what we want.” 

 

“I think uninterrupted training leads to great performances for anybody at any level.”

 

“The sport has a side to it now that is very technological. And so does golf. And so does swimming. And so does baseball, right? And every sport almost. And like all those other sports, we need to make sure that the playing field is fair.”



Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

 

Mentioned in this podcast: 

The Marathon Project

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net

https://www.precisionhydration.com/



Follow Ben on:

NAZ Elites on Instagram

NAZ Elites on Twitter

NAZ Elites on Soundcloud

NAZ Elites on Facebook

Ben's Twitter

Ben's Instagram

Dec 16, 2020

Is Nike too big to fail?

Matt Hart is a freelance journalist whose new book Win at all Costs investigates Nike’s Oregon Project, diving into its culture of cheating, lying, and misogyny. The book is a page-turning sports thriller reminiscent of a Shakespearean drama with one of the top coaches in the world felled by hubris.

Coach Claire talks to Matt about the rise and fall of former coach Alberto Salazar, if he is indeed a villain through and through, the win-at-all-costs mindset of sports today, how young athletes are affected, the women at Nike, if Nike has some redeeming qualities as an organization, and if most people even care about any of this. It’s a fascinating discussion that is sure to appeal to true crime fans!

Matt Hart’s writing covers sports science, human-powered adventure and exploration, performance-enhancing drugs, nutrition, and evolution. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Men’s Journal magazine, among others. His reporting on the investigations into Salazar appeared on the front page, above the fold, of The New York Times in May 2017. In addition to his access to the Gouchers, other sources for the book include former Nike employees, athletes, and coaches; famed sports-scientist and Oregon Project whistleblower Steve Magness; and Olympic marathon gold medalist Frank Shorter, among many others.

About Matt’s Book WIN AT ALL COSTS:

In May 2017, journalist Matt Hart received a USB drive containing a single file—a 4.7-megabyte PDF named “Tic Toc, Tic Toc. . . .” He quickly realized he was in possession of a stolen report prepared a year earlier by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). It was part of an investigation into legendary running coach Alberto Salazar, a Houston-based endocrinologist named Dr. Jeffrey Brown, and the cheating by Nike-sponsored runners. The file began Hart’s reporting on the Nike Oregon Project and led him to uncover a win-at-all-costs culture of greed, corporate malfeasance, and abuse. 

WIN AT ALL COSTS is an explosive and revealing narrative depicting the deception and performance-enhancing drug use at the Nike Oregon Project. Hart writes richly detailed portraits of athletes Kara and Adam Goucher, Galen Rupp, and Mo Farah, as well as the coaches and doctors at the root of the cheating. The book recounts how the  secretive program began to unravel when Steve Magness, an assistant coach to Salazar broke the code of silence by alerting USADA. He was followed by Olympians Adam and Kara Goucher who, risking their prosperous careers, became whistleblowers on their former Nike running family at headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. 

Combining sports drama and corporate exposé, WIN AT ALL COSTS uncovers a relentless culture of deceit and drug misuse at Nike; as well as abuse of power, gender discrimination, medical malpractice, and systemic cheating at the highest levels of professional athletics. The book is also a cautionary tale about the excess of greed, corporate malfeasance, and the pushing of athletic boundaries. Deeply researched, unsettling, and ultimately entertaining, WIN AT ALL COSTS will astonish readers by the extremes that coaches and athletes will go to achieve athletic greatness—no matter the cost.

 

 

Questions Matt is asked:

 

3:20 On your website, you say that humans learn through storytelling.  What made you want to tell the story of Nike and its infamous coach, Alberto Salazar?

 

4:28 Your new book, Win At All Costs, is a fascinating deep dive into the world of Nike, from its scrappy, rebel beginnings to the behemoth brand that it is today.  Essentially, it's a "David becomes Goliath" story.  How would you describe the changes that the company went through from its humble beginnings to today?

 

6:33 Let's talk about Alberto Salazar.  When he started out as an athlete he became one of the greatest American marathoners, and then became an absolute legend as a coach. I was struck reading your book how Skakespearean he really is. He’s like this man in power brought down by his hubris.  How would you describe him as an athlete, coach, and father?

 

10:18 It’s easy to paint Alberto Salazar as the evil cult leader who got everybody under his spell, but how do you see that? Obviously there were people complicit in it and athletes at the top of the sport, some of them are willing to do anything to get ahead too. So how do you see it? Do you see Alberto as just the evil cult leader or is it more complicated than that?

 

13:25 Galen Rupp was what, 15 or 16 when he began to be coached by Alberto? That’s a child, and you’re not really able to make decisions, especially when somebody who has a reputation like Alberto comes into your life and says, “Hey, I see something special in you. Let me take you under my wing.” I have a lot of sympathy for Galen Rupp. I know not everybody in the running community does, but I do. But he’s an adult now, so we’ll see what happens with his career. 

 

15:12 It’s like you want to hate Nike for all of the things that they’ve done, but yet they also have the Bowerman Track Club which is like women supporting women. Shalane Flanagan is now one of the coaches there. If you look at them on Instagram, it’s just like picture perfect empowerment and everything that it’s supposed to be. It’s just like how can you have two things like that in the same town and in the same company?

 

17:56 It’s easy to kind of say, okay, Alberto was the bad apple, but we’ve got Jerry Schumacher and he’s the best, and he’s wonderful, and still that Nike is just that one guy. But a lot of the stuff you talk about goes higher up than just Alberto Salazar. It goes to everybody above him, and I thought that it was really eye opening when you talked about salaries. In the world of running, it’s very secretive how much pro runners make, and you were able to find out that Kara Goucher got paid $35,000 while her husband Adam got paid $90,000 when they joined. Can you talk about that and about why they were willing to tell you that?

 

20:11 Compared to just about any other professional sport, coaches’ salaries all seemed incredibly low. And maybe it’s because obviously running doesn’t bring in the money that the NFL does. We don’t sit around watching running, at least not too many people do, which still I think is very bizarre that there’s millions and millions of runners in the United States and yet track and field and running is not that interesting to people. Why do you think that is? Why doesn’t running have the fan base that baseball or the NFL or something like that does?

 

22:24 I coach a lot of athletes and many of them just simply aren’t interested in what the elites do. And this leads me to my question for you. This whole scandal with the Nike Oregon Project, has it affected Nike at all as far as sales? People are still buying their shoes, right?

 

24:28 Nike is still paying for the defense of Alberto Salazar. Any insight on why?

 

26:13 Did you interview Mary Cain for the book?

 

26:57 Alberto was a son figure and a father figure and so many of the athletes say that, “He’s like a father. I love… “ Even Kara Goucher was like, “He’s a father figure to me. He’s the best,” and all of that, and now it’s a very different story.

 

28:26 You talk in the book about how Alberto Salazar who has $1 million budget or something, he has access to the latest technology, and massage therapists, and all of that, he would personally massage Galen Rupp, and there’s a couple things that you might be suspicious are going on there when that happens, but it seems like that was the testosterone. Is that what you found? It just seems weird to me.

 

31:29 There were stories of athletes being prescribed things for ailments that they didn’t have. Everybody on the team had a thyroid problem all of a sudden. And then there were the L-Carnitine infusions, and obviously infusing yourself with anything is against clean sport. But when they were caught, they just said, “Oh, it didn’t do anything for me.” Do you want to talk a little bit about the whole infusion story?

 

34:26 Is there a USADA test for L-Carnitine, because it’s an amino acid?

 

35:06 I’m surprised L-Carnitine hasn’t become more of the thing because to be perfectly honest, when this whole story broke, I was training for a marathon and I went to GNC and got myself some L-Carnitine. People see this and hear this, recreational runners or sub-elites, and they’re like, “Huh, that’s interesting.” And yet, they go ahead and follow that gray line. It’s almost like exposing the truth encourages more people to cheat, do you think?

 

37:44 I’d love to talk a little bit about the women at Nike. We learned all about Kara Goucher and her reduction clause. So when she decided to have a baby, she basically was not paid. So she was not paid for a very long period of time while she still was technically working for Nike. Again, this goes back to the contracts being super, super secretive. Do you think at least that has changed in the world of running for women as far as how they’re treated when they decide to have a family?

 

40:09 What do you feel is the future of sports and running and Nike?

 

42:52 Hopefully with the good example of the Bowerman Track Club, Nike might be able to change for the better from the inside, and then with work like yours, hopefully will change for the better from the outside.

 

44:13 Matt, what’s next for you with your running and your writing?




Questions I ask everyone:

 

45:01 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

46:15 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

46:51 Where can listeners connect with you?

 

Quotes by Matt:

 

“As an athlete, I learned this through the reporting, that Alberto Salazar would try basically anything to try to improve performance. Now that’s not all drugs and illicit means. That’s kind of anything from massage to dry needling to whatever else might be in the popular culture of athletes at the time.”

 

“Athletes at the end of the day are 100% responsible for what they put into their body. Any athlete that’s working with Alberto Salazar, it does want to aggressively pursue hard training and they’ll do kind of whatever they’re asked or whatever they think can help them stand on top of the podium, and that’s the win at all costs sort of zero sum game that sports have become.”

 

“Of the $36 billion Nikes makes a year, some $4.6 billion of it is the run category, and so that’s I think their largest category, to sell to runners. Now it’s a different question of whether we want to watch those runners run.”

 

“You have to imagine years of training at a level you simply couldn’t maintain without drugs changes you physiologically. You’re steps ahead or you’re stronger or you’re faster. And so, that’s a whole other discussion, the long-term benefits of drugs and is someone still a cheat if they’ve gotten off them.”





Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Matt Hart's website with links to book: Win at All Costs: Inside Nike Running and Its Culture of Deception

Bowerman Track Club

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net

https://www.precisionhydration.com/



Follow Matt on:

 

Instagram

Twitter




We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

Dec 2, 2020

Elite distance runner Becky Wade Firth, a standout at Rice University in Texas, was expected to turn pro after graduation. Instead, she chose a different plan that changed her life and how she looks at running and training.

Becky decided to travel the world, but not just to see and explore like a typical college-age kid.  She applied for and won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel the world to learn how others run. Over the course of 12 months, Becky traveled solo to 22 countries including Switzerland, Ethiopia, New Zealand, and Japan to learn about some of the world’s most fascinating running traditions, and she captured her experience and findings in her book RUN THE WORLD

Coach Claire talks to Becky about how her year abroad affected her and what she learned from this incredible experience. They also get into Becky’s cross training, her experience with orthotics, similarities between recreational and pro runners, and Becky’s perspective on running in a year without in-person races.

Becky is still an avid writer and in addition to her book, you'll find her work all over the web in places like Runner's World, Outside, Podium Runner, Women's Running and more. She is also a food lover and traveler.

Part of two sets of twins born 20 months apart, Becky grew up in Dallas, Texas, before making her way to Rice University on a track scholarship. There, alongside the world’s greatest teammates and coach, she fell in love with the distance running lifestyle and by the time she graduated, was a junior national champion, an All-American in cross-country and track, and an Olympic Trials qualifier in the 10K and 3K steeplechase.

Since then, Becky has moved up to the marathon, signed with Flynn Sports Management, relocated to Boulder, Colorado, and gotten married. She’s competed in three more Olympic Trials (4 total: 2 in the 3K steeplechase, 2 in the marathon) and qualified for 2 senior USA teams (2018 and 2020 World Half Marathon Championship, the latter of which USATF sadly pulled them out of). She now has her eyes set on the 2021 US Olympic Track Trials, faster PRs over all distances, and many more writing projects—ideally a second book before too long!  

 

Questions Becky is asked:

 

3:54 Instead of going directly from college to the pros, you took a year off to travel to 22 different countries to learn what runners do all over the world.  What were some of the biggest similarities and differences you found when compared to American running? 

 

5:19 Some of the countries you went to are obviously the big running countries that we all think about, Japan and Africa, New Zealand, all of these places, but you didn’t end up just going to those places; you took a couple of detours. Anything you want to tell us about that and what you learned about that?

 

7:17 Were you worried at all before you left? Because people who are on track to do amazing things in whatever sport it is, they kind of get nervous about change, they kind of get nervous about getting out of their schedule. Were you worried when you took off for a year that your running might suffer?

 

9:01 I think that if you want to learn more about your own country, the only way to do it is to leave it, so I highly encourage everybody who can in college just to get out of America to see what the rest of the world is like.

 

9:43 What was it like coming back to the States after that experience?  Do you think it made you a better runner?

 

10:51 Recreational runners think the same thing as professional runners, “Are we doing enough? Should I be resting? Should I be doing heel lifts?” Or whatever it is. You just think that “I’ve got to do it in such a perfect way,” and there’s room for flexibility.

 

11:44 2020 has been obviously a very strange year for everybody, but I'd love to know how you are doing specifically and how you've been training.

 

15:12 Let’s talk a little bit about your cross training. I’ve looked through your Instagram. There’s a lot of pictures of you in the pool and I know you aqua jog. Can you help us out and give us some tips to make aqua jogging less boring?

 

20:03 Besides your book, you are a pretty prolific writer. You write articles for lots of running magazines and online places, so what are some of your tips? I know you recently wrote an article for Runner’s World about challenging the conventional rules of running. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

 

22:26 Why do you wear orthotics? What is it for you?

 

23:28 We think of orthotics as a temporary solution, but to hear that you’ve been wearing them for 10 years, that’s super interesting.

 

23:55 Another conventional rule of running you challenged in your Runner’s World article was the 30-minute window, that you have to eat 30 minutes after you stop running, and you found that not to be true.

 

25:08 One thing I’ve been asking almost everybody this year is without in-person races, s really hard for a lot of people to find motivation, and for a lot of people it’s going to be a really long time until we race again. Do you have any tips or any suggestions to kind of keep that spark, and what can you do as far as training goes in a world without races?

 

28:51 What’s coming up for you in the future? What have you got your sights on?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

30:00 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

31:02 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

32:01 Where can listeners and charities connect with you?

 

Quotes by Becky:

 

“It really allowed me not only to see how the best runners in the world train, and some of the strongest, most kind of iconic running traditions are, but I also got to see so many just passionate recreational runners and see how running influences their life to just the same degree as someone whose career it is but in a different way.”

 

“I think there are maybe components of successful training systems that people maybe can apply, but there’s really not that. I think one of my fears was that I was going to go travel and see that what it takes to be a really good runner is to be like 100% dialed into running. That’s your life. That’s all you do. You do everything perfectly, and I literally never saw that, so that was kind of validating.”

 

“I think there are a lot of things you can do, nothing that is exactly like racing because I just find like the whole atmosphere, and like official results, and the community and everything, that’s really what makes road racing special to me and to a lot of people I think, but there are other ways to I think really stay engaged with the sport and stay on top of training and still work towards goals.”

 

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

 

Becky Runs Away

Run the World book

Thomas J. Watson Fellowship

Runner's World Article: When You Can Challenge Conventional Running Wisdom

Runner's World Article: Alternative Outlets for Your Competitive Fire

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net

https://www.precisionhydration.com/



Follow Becky on:

 

Instagram



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

Nov 25, 2020

The Real Way to Get Mentally Tough: Matt Fitzgerald

 

The biggest difference between elites and the rest of us is not simply talent; it’s mental resilience.

Matt Fitzgerald has been studying elites his entire career and has learned what techniques the best of the best use to get there. In his new book, The Comeback Quotient, Matt talks about a philosophy called ultrarealism and how we can all apply it to add some extra oomph to our training and push to the next level.

 

Matt is a well-known endurance sports author, coach, and nutritionist. His many books include How Bad Do You Want It?, 80/20 Running, and The Endurance Diet. Matt’s writing has also appeared in numerous magazines, including Outside and Runner’s World, and on popular websites such as podiumrunner.com and nbcnews.com. He is a cofounder and co-head coach of 80/20 Endurance and the creator of the Diet Quality Score smartphone app. A lifelong endurance athlete, he speaks frequently at events throughout the United States and internationally.

 

Matt’s work has given him access to some great athletes who have shared their secrets about what it takes to truly become the best in the world, and it’s not just about raw talent or genetics; it’s about the mind. It’s about leveraging science and psychology and philosophy into mental toughness. In The Comeback Quotient, Matt combines those elements that he’s compiled from the best in sport to deliver actionable advice and techniques that any athlete can use to improve. 

 

If you haven’t heard of David Goggins, look him up. He overcame an abusive upbringing to transform himself into a Navy Seal, Air Force Ranger, and competitive ultramarathoner, and he is undeniably one of the toughest minds out there. He’s just one example from Matt’s book that he and Coach Claire discuss as they talk about the qualities that athletes like David have that we can all develop in ourselves.

 

Matt’s new book The Comeback Quotient comes out in December 2020, and if you are as interested in training your mind to be as fit as your body, make sure you get a copy!

 

  

 

Questions Matt is asked:

 

6:15 You've written several books on endurance fitness that also seem to have a healthy dose of psychology woven in.  What is it about the mental side of the sport that interests you so much?

 

7:49 I have two little kids, and when they run, they run as fast as they can and then completely poop out. They have no sense of pacing or anything like that, so obviously that’s something that we have to learn.

 

8:30 Your new book that’s coming out is called The Comeback Quotient.  Can you give us a summary of what it's about and why you wanted to write it?

 

9:56 One thing that you talked a lot about in your book was a philosophy called ultra-realism.  Can you explain what that is and why it's important not just for athletes, but for life?

 

12:24 It sounds so simple when you say, “Just make the best out of it.” How simple is that? But why is it so hard?

 

14:16 If our brain is so good at predicting, then what do we do when we haven’t thought out a way to get around the obstacle?

 

16:50 How do you override everything your brain is telling you when you’re in pain?

 

18:51 You did have a few examples in your book of people who like David Goggins and the Slovenian skier who won Olympic bronze after she had punctured a lung and broken a bunch of ribs. I don't want to be that mentally tough!!! That just sounds pretty stupid some of these things though. Where’s that line?

 

20:39 Besides just reading your book, how can athletes actively practice mental fitness?  It's pretty simple to learn how to physically run your best, but how do you mentally train? Any advice with that?

 

23:59 You definitely have some stories in the book about people freaking out and things not going so well.

 

26:37 You basically said to some of the athletes that you’ve coached to stop BSing themselves, and sometimes that’s some realism that’s hard to hear too.

 

28:13 One thing I definitely have done in a race myself is BSed myself in a positive way and told myself, “It doesn’t hurt. It’s fine. Nothing is wrong here. You can keep going,” when that’s not really the way I feel at all. So I don’t know how that falls into it. I feel like I’m lying to myself in a positive way, if that makes sense.

 

31:02 Another thing that struck me is a lot of sort of… I don’t know if we call this a self-help book, but a lot of books that are trying to get into the psychology of performance, they only talk about the really positive things. This is called The Comeback Quotient. We’re expecting to read a whole bunch of comeback stories and have everybody get the gold medal at the end, but you included several people who didn’t come back “successfully,” and I’d love to hear about why you chose to do that?

 

34:02 I think there’s a lot of people, especially new runners, seem to struggle with accepting things that don’t go as expected. Would you say that?

 

36:37 Another part of the book was your personal journey to train for a triathlon using the mental training techniques that you learned from the ultra-realists.  Without giving too much away, what were some of the lessons that you applied for yourself?

 

39:54 One thing I thought about when reading your race report is it’s very common for people to set goals. So you’ve got your A goal, shoot-the-moon goal, B goal, C goal, but most people aren’t really happy with that C goal. I think that maybe being actually happy with your C goal is like a mental trick that you can do because you didn’t get your A goal in your triathlon, right? And you’re still super, super happy. And how is that possible? How are you not upset that you didn’t get your A goal?

 

41:44 When does the book come out and what's next for you?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

43:22 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

44:09 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

45:12 Where can listeners and charities connect with you?

 

Quotes by Matt:

 

“I’m still running at 49 and I just believe that the most obtrusive barriers in endurance sports are the mental barriers.”

 

“The people who are able to make the very best of the very worst situations in endurance sports, they do so through a process of just facing reality.”

 

“Whether or not you’re already the most resilient person in the world, if you simply just copy what the ultra-realists are doing, you will start to develop those qualities.”

 

“You’re not dependent on reality, kind of the stars aligning. It just doesn’t matter. You can succeed in any situation simply by making the best of it even if the end result is not what you originally wanted.”

 

“It is about the process. Ultimately, when it comes down to it, like you have one race day for every 100 training days or whatever, so those training days you should be enjoying.”



Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

 

MattFitzgerald.org

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net

https://www.precisionhydration.com/



Follow Matt on:

 

Facebook

Twitter



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

Nov 18, 2020

How to Make Everything Hard About Running Easier: Brad Miles

Imagine being able to run and heal through an injury. Or imagine significantly increasing your weekly mileage while healthy, while also minimizing your chances for injury, increasing your speed, and improving your recovery. Wouldn’t that be great? Brad Miles, the founder of Lever Running says it’s not only possible, but scientifically proven.

 

Brad created his Lever system to deliver the benefits of body weight supported running in a convenient, portable package that costs a fraction of the AlterG. The what? The AlterG is basically a big, fancy, eye-poppingly expensive treadmill that takes some of your weight off as you run. It’s a bulky piece of equipment that NASA uses, not your local gym, and certainly not your average runner. And for years, it was the only player in the market for body weight supported running.

 

Enter Brad, who says that the Lever makes everything that’s hard about running easier. He shares use cases with Coach Claire about how injured athletes have benefitted from body weight supported running using his system, and also how healthy athletes have leveraged it to up their game. He describes the technical aspects of his system and how it works, and after hearing about it, you’ll probably find yourself visiting his website to check out the videos and see the Lever in action.

 

Please note: Lever Running is not a sponsor of the Run to the Top. This is not an infomercial, but we do talk about the product in great detail in order to introduce you to something that just might help you run faster and injury free.

 

Brad is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He started getting serious about running in high school where he helped his team win two State cross country titles, won an individual State cross country title, as well as the Footlocker Northeast Championship.  He went on to run cross country and track for Baylor University and was named as Baylor's Cross Country Runner of the Decade.

Brad first experienced the benefits of body weight support first hand in college, and soon his business degree was put to good use. He and co-founder Ryan Ognibene started LEVER in 2019 after they recognized the overwhelming need for a mobile, athlete-friendly body weight support system to compete with the AlterG. The primary goal with LEVER was to take technology that was once reserved for the elites and make it available to everyone.

This episode is for everyone interested in breaking the injury cycle, cross training while running, or getting faster!




Questions Brad is asked:

 

7:22 You first experienced body weight supported running in college.  Can you talk about that experience?

 

8:05 Were you injured when you first tried body weight supported running?

 

8:13 The AlterG is a pretty expensive piece of technology, is that right?

 

8:32 AlterG was basically the only game in town as far as taking gravity off your run, is that right?

 

8:52 From a physiological point of view, what does taking the weight off running actually do for you?

 

9:32 Because AlterG is such an expensive piece of equipment, not a lot of people have access to it, so I don’t think a ton of people besides the real running nerds know a whole lot about body weight supported running. So what made you decide to make a competitor?

 

10:37 Let’s talk a little bit about the Lever product. It’s basically an AlterG in a bag?

 

11:28 How much body weight can the Lever support?

 

11:35 Can you tell us a little bit more about what this is used for? Why would I want to have something like this?

 

13:32 In the use case you just described, you talked about a woman using your device to significantly increase her mileage. How was she able to do this safely?

 

14:28 Are you saying that anybody can use your product and basically double their mileage in a couple of months?

 

15:24 As a coach, I know that the best thing to do to become a better runner is to run, but there’s an upper limit to that. So basically, it sounds like using body weight support could be like cross training, the most specific cross training that you could possibly have. Would you agree with that?

 

16:10 Let’s go back to what Lever was originally designed for, which was injured runners. Do you have any stories that you could share about some of your clients?

 

17:56 Any surprising kind of uses that you’ve seen?

 

19:05 How do you use Lever for speed?

 

19:49 If the Lever makes it easier to run, isn’t it de-training by using it?

 

20:45 Let’s say you’re running whatever pace for your tempo run and your heart rate is X, you want to make sure your heart rate is still at X, but obviously that speed, that pace is going to be much faster with the weight taken off using Lever is what you’re saying?

 

21:59 Does your Lever pace translate to when you go outside? Do you run at the same pace or somewhere in-between your Lever and outside pace?

 

22:24 I went to your website and watched the videos and one thing I noticed is that you have to wear specific shorts in order to use this product. Can you tell me about the shorts and why that was a design feature?

 

23:26 You went with the shorts instead of some kind of harness system?

 

24:06 What are the shorts like?

 

24:44 What are the limitations to the body weight support device? Specifically I’m thinking about heavier runners. Is there an upper limit or is there even a lower weight limit? 

 

25:37 The Lever takes off 45 pounds max no matter what your body size, right, not a percentage of the person’s body weight?

 

25:56 Do the shorts come in all sizes for all runners?

 

26;04 Could this potentially be a way for heavier runners to get more running in with less pounding?

 

26:51 What kind of reaction do you get when you bust this out in the gym?

 

28:07 What's next in the technology?

 

29:06 For those who are interested in getting this for themselves, you have both a rental option and a purchase option, is that correct?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

30:35 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

31:29 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

32:16 Where can listeners and charities connect with you?



Quotes by Brad:

 

“One of our users just recently reached out to us and said, ‘Guys, thank you so much. I have been able to improve my marathon time from 3:09 to 2:42.’ Big jump.”

 

“If you can cross train but still run, you’re getting more benefit out of each step that you’re taking.”

 

“Far too often, a lot of athletes just fall into this repeatable pattern of like injured, getting healthy, injured, getting healthy, and so we’re trying to help athletes break that.”

 

“We wanted to make sure that the experience was still the experience that you have running, not a very uncomfortable… And again, I’ve run in AlterGs. They are uncomfortable at times, and so we wanted to create a very natural motion of running.”



Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Lever Running

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net

https://www.precisionhydration.com/



Follow Brad on:

 

Facebook

Instagram



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!



Nov 11, 2020

The Fate of Charity Running in a World Without Races: Susan Hurley

 

If you’ve run for charity, you’re probably wondering how charities have been doing this year with so few races being run. Or maybe you’re looking for inspiration and motivation during these uncertain times. If so, this week’s guest, Susan Hurley, may provide the answers you’re seeking.

 

A former New England Patriots cheerleader, Susan brings the high energy, creative mind, and fun approach required to motivate, inspire, and lead others to achieve personal goals through fitness and running, while also raising funds for small nonprofits through her organization CharityTeams. 

CharityTeams helps nonprofits raise money for good causes through the use of running races and athletic events. Running for charity takes a lot more than just asking your friends and family for money. It takes a lot of organization, and Charity Teams helps take care of the details.

Susan shares how 2020 has impacted charity running and what she sees for the future, through virtual racing and beyond. She also talks about her app, Charge Running, which she’s developed over the last 3 years with a team in Chicago. Charge Running is a live virtual training and racing platform, which is especially relevant now when there are so few in-person races.

Susan started CharityTeams when she recognized the need small nonprofits had for support in valuable athletic fundraising opportunities, and she created a niche sports-related business around that.  CharityTeams has blazed a trail for many nonprofits to grow and set the bar high in the athletic fundraising industry. Her teams are some of the most desired to run on. She is a certified RRCA professional running coach and fundraising expert.

Susan is a professional at developing team brands and understands what it takes to keep them succeeding. Her network in the industry is extensive and she has a strong ability to work with runners of all backgrounds in running and fundraising building lasting friendships in her groups and strong ambassadors for charities.

 

She is formerly a New England Patriots Cheerleader and continues to dispel the words of her mother, that "You can't be a cheerleader your whole life." 

Susan's marathon personal best is 3:16 and she continues to run The Boston Marathon, NYC Marathon and Chicago Marathon each year, as well as many other races. 

(Qualifying for NY and Chicago)

She has been running since she missed the bus in 2nd grade.

She has qualified and competed in the World Triathlon Championship in Hawaii.

She continues to run competitively while raising funds for various causes.

Susan completed the first ever 2017 Fenway Park Marathon and the first ever Gillette Stadium Marathon. She is a two time finisher of the  Mt. Washington Road Race in 2018 and 2019.

She finished her first 50K at the Marine Corps Marathon weekend in 2021. 

Susan also works on special projects such as the Bobbi Gibb sculpture project which will be unveiled in April of 2021. This beautiful statue named after the children's book, The Girl Who Ran, was sculpted by winner of the Boston Marathon and trailblazer for women’s running, Bobbi Gibb. It is of herself. In 1966, Gibb popped out from behind forsythia bushes in Hopkinton to become the first woman to run Boston. 

 

After listening to Susan, maybe you’ll be inspired to run for a higher purpose!  



Questions Susan is asked:

 

6:36 Your business, Charity Teams, has raised over $24 million for various non-profits.  Can you tell us more about how Charity Teams works and how you started it?

 

7:39 Let’s say I am a charity and I want to raise money and I give you a phone call. What’s that conversation going to be like?

 

8:26 Charity Teams is like a one-stop shop then for fundraising?

 

8:57 Obviously 2020 has been strange for all of us, but especially in the running world with no races. What are charities doing?

 

9:48 Most runners, we race because we want to achieve a personal goal.  What makes it different when you run for charity?

 

11:09 Let’s talk about the Boston Marathon for example. If you’re not fast enough to meet the qualifications, you can go ahead and sign up with a charity and run for charity. But there’s some big fundraising goals you have to meet which I think might be intimidating to some people, and maybe kind of stressful. So how do you encourage people when they’re facing some $5,000 goal or something like that? How do you encourage people because that seems a little scary to me?

 

12:41 Do you have anybody that you can think of in mind that is just a charity superstar? Any good stories that you can share with us?

 

14:23 Let’s talk about virtual racing. Virtual racing is here to stay I think for a while. I think it’s a challenge for some people because it’s not the same as in-person races, and you’ve kind of come up with a little bit of a solution for that with your app. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?

 

16:22 So if I wanted to go out the door and go for a run using your Charge Running app, I just plug in my headphones and somebody will be telling me to run faster, or how does it work?

 

17:22 Is the Charge Running app course specific?

 

18:10 One of your projects you are working on is installing a statue of Bobbi Gibbs on the Boston Marathon race course.  Can you tell us, for those who may not know, who Bobbi Gibbs is and why the statue’s so important?  

 

19:08 What made you want to get involved in the Bobbi Gibbs statue project?

 

20:01 Do you know anything about the Bobbi Gibbs statue artist?

 

20:35 This year has been really challenging for a lot of people, so I would love to hear your tips since you’ve worked so much in the virtual race space, how do we stay motivated? How do we look beyond possibly having no races and nothing to plan for? What are your best tips for this?

 

22:20 Could choosing a charity and having to show up to a race for someone besides yourself be really motivational for some people?

 

23:27 What is next for you? You mentioned that you are training for some virtual marathons. What kind of things are you training for?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

24:42 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

25:37 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

26:10 Where can listeners and charities connect with you?




Quotes by Susan:

 

“The bigger charities have a lot of bandwidth to be able to provide services, but the smaller charities don’t, so the smaller charities is really where I have made my little bit of a niche, if you will. And so I’ve really helped a lot of small nonprofits grow.”

 

“I think you see a different breed of runner going into the charity world. Maybe not as fast. Definitely somebody that might be just more of an average runner trying to qualify, or maybe would never have the chance to qualify for an event, but they go into this charity space and they’re inspired and they can set goals and feel like they’re achieving a lot of great things.”

 

“With goal setting comes inspiration. Maybe find a nonprofit that is hosting a virtual run and use that for your inspiration in your goal setting so that you can continue to stay in shape as we move through this really uncertain time.”

 

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

Charity Teams

Charge Running App

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net



Follow Susan on:

 

Facebook - Charity Teams

Instagram - Charity Teams

Twitter - Charity Teams




We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

Nov 4, 2020

As a runner, you prioritize your physical training, but what are you doing for your mental health training? Dr. Lara Pence (aka Dr. L) is a clinical psychologist who has spent the last 15 years working with endurance athletes to help them shed unhealthy patterns of behavior and build mental strength using curiosity as a tool to become mentally resilient and adventurous. By training athletes to dive deeper into the why behind their goals, she also helps them boost their mental toughness by creating a values-driven way of being.

 

Dr. L shares a lot of great info with Coach Claire on how to build mental strength, including discussions on the relationship between athletes and food, changing our personal narratives about our performance as we age, setbacks, and motivation. Having a fit mind is at least as important as having a fit body, and this is an episode everyone can benefit from.

 

Dr. L is an East Coast native who did her post-doctoral fellowship in Dallas, TX. She has since built her own private practice, becoming one of the most sought-after therapists in Dallas.  She moved to Colorado in 2019 to become the Chief Mind Doc for SPARTAN, the world’s top endurance company. She also hosted the Spartan Mind podcast and served as a consultant to the organization on various mindset-focused initiatives.

 

Dr. L is also a coach for The Unbeatable Mind, alongside Mark Divine, founder of SEAL FIT. She has been featured in various publications and media outlets such as Good Morning America, the BBC, Glamour, Vogue, WebMD, Psychology Today, and The Huffington Post. 

 

Most recently, Dr. L has launched her own podcast called Curious Minds with Dr. L, and she has a new product called LIGHFBOX, a simple program designed to exercise your mind, spark curiosity, and boost your mental fitness. 

 

Get ready to strengthen your mind and boost your mental fitness with Dr. L!

 



Questions Lara is asked:

 

6:17 You like to call yourself an "active therapist" and that's not just because you are also a runner.  What do you mean by that?

 

7:39 Let’s talk about the people you do work with and your own running background. How do you specifically work with runners?

 

9:34 Eating disorders and running. Obviously, to be at the top of your game, you need to be light and lean. Thankfully some elite runners these days are talking more about how getting too lean is really causing huge problems, but there is a fine line between being at your highest performance and whether that’s actually healthy or not. So how do you kind of dig through that mess?

 

12:15 Let’s go into the performance side of what you do, mental strength training if you will. A lot of people, when runners or athletes get to a certain level, they realize that it’s not just all about physical training. The mental aspect is absolutely huge, if not more important than the physical training. Everybody wants to know: How do we get mentally tough?

 

14:47 You’re saying that we should just be curious about why a race or a workout didn’t go well. How do you incorporate curiosity in success and failure when it comes to athletes?

 

17:12 I would love to hear about how you practice incorporating curiosity. Say I’m a runner and I’m trying to go after this big goal and I’m just getting frustrated. How do I practice curiosity to improve my mental strength?

 

20:33 What happens when you peel back the onion and maybe there’s not such positive motivation down there?

 

23:45 Obviously 2020 has been a crazy year, but for runners specifically, all their races have been canceled pretty much. And so the carrot that everybody has, that’s evaporated, and so a lot of the clients that I coach have just been like, “You know what? There’s no race on the schedule. I don’t really feel like training anymore.” What advice do you give runners who are training without races?

 

29:23 I read on your blog that you wrote an article recently about overcoming setbacks.  Obviously as people, but also as runners specifically, setbacks can happen all the time, whether it’s just a bad workout or a big race that you train for that didn’t go so well. I’d love to hear your ideas about overcoming setbacks.

 

33:28 How about successes? Some people, surprisingly, don’t handle success very well. What are your thoughts on that?

 

35:54 I'd love to get your thoughts on comparison and competition.  Runners compete in races and we compete against ourselves. That can be great, but that can also be pretty tough, especially if you were let’s say a high school or college runner and you’re now in your 40s, 50s, and 60s, and you’re just not the same person that you used to be. I would love to get your opinion and thoughts about Masters runners and about how as we get older, we’re not as fast as we used to be, and how can we still celebrate what we can do? 

 

40:16 I think honestly, the runners that have the healthier outlook as Masters are the ones who were not competitive when they were younger, because they’re finding it all new and exciting, and every race is a PR, so it’s really special, whereas sometimes I get other athletes who competed before and it seems like they’re always looking backwards instead of looking forward. 

 

42:31 What's next for you? You say that you have a race coming up in May. What are you training for?



Questions I ask everyone:

 

43:42 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

43:51 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

44:15 Where can listeners connect with you?




Quotes by Lara:

 

“One of the things that I love to do, one of my strengths, is actually knowing my limitations and knowing what’s the appropriate arena for me to explore something with a client and when it’s not.”

 

“The judgement that can accumulate inside of us is almost like energy, if you think of it as energy. It’s really toxic and can be really poisonous. And when we reduce the judgements and open up space for curiosity, it really allows for a willingness to learn and a willingness to absorb other information that can actually be helpful and fuel us.”

 

“In terms of setbacks, I really, really encourage individuals to have the mindset of everything is an opportunity.”

Take a Listen on Your Next Run

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

https://www.drlarapence.com/

Podcast - Curious Minds with Dr L

Newsletter sign up

LIGHFBOX self-reflection cards

Salt Flats Endurance Run

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net



Follow Lara on:

 

Instagram



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

Oct 28, 2020

Speed in Your 60s and the Fastest Mile That Didn’t Count: Dan King

 

Dan King is blistering fast at 61 years old. We’re talking world record breaking fast. He just broke the masters record in the mile for the 60-64 age group, running 4:49:08 to beat the 4:51:85 record set in 2012. But this amazing feat won’t count. Why? Listen in to find out.

 

Dan also talks about his surprisingly low-mileage training routine, how he incorporates a lot of cross training into his daily life, and his plant-based diet which he believes is key to his performance. 

 

Despite being super fit, Dan has suffered a number of injuries, including plantar fasciitis that has plagued him for years. He talks about a procedure he had to alleviate his heel pain, and how he’s adapted his training and overall lifestyle to stay both fit and injury free.

 

Dan hails from Boulder, Colorado. At the University of Colorado-Boulder, he ran an impressive 5,000-meter PR of 14:34, but didn’t complete too much after graduation. After building a successful start-up company, he sold his business and retired in 2017.

 

As of this recording, Dan was preparing to run another mile race that would officially count as a world record if he repeated his August performance. Coach Claire will share Dan’s results at the end of the episode. 

 

Dan is definitely proof that you can train well and be fast at any age, and that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all training plan that all runners must follow. Whether you’re a masters athlete or just aspiring to keep on running as you age, this one’s for you!


Photo credit: Todd Straka

Questions Dan is asked:

 

5:18 This past August, you ran 4:49:08 in the mile, which is faster than anyone in the world in the 60-64 year old age group.  Now, I understand that this may not count as an official world record on a technicality. Can you explain this?

 

7:16 There’s another race in South Carolina on October 17th that will be USATF certified, and that should count for the world record. And by the time this airs, you will have already raced it, but hopefully you’ll get your official time at that one, right?

 

8:04 Can you tell us about the race and your strategy?

 

9:59 You've been a runner a long time. You ran for the University of Colorado in college.  But you were not a miler back then, right? What made you decide to specialize in the mile now?

 

12:43 I would love to talk about your training. Your training is a little unusual for somebody at your level I would think. Can you talk about what a normal week looks like for you?

 

14:49 You’re missing a big element that most runners think is incredibly important, and that’s the long run. So no long run for you?

 

15:55 You’re not running a ton of miles or pounding a lot by running over and over again, but you’re spending hours and hours on your off days of running doing something aerobic. So you’re still building that aerobic engine, just not running all the time.

 

17:18 You have no rest days?

 

17:27 About 25 miles a week is all you put in for running?

 

17:52 I would like to go a little bit deeper into your injuries, and especially the plantar fasciitis. You had what’s called a Tenex procedure for that. Can you talk about that?

 

19:42 What was the recovery from the Tenex procedure like?

 

20:29 What is the eccentric calf-raise exercise?

 

21:13 Let's talk about diet and nutrition.  Like me, you are 100% plant based.  Can you tell us how you decided to become plant based, and what the benefits have been for you?

 

23:30 You’re plant based, which is not always the same thing as being a vegan. Is that correct?

 

24:30 What do you eat and where do you get your protein?

 

26:29 What are your favorite things to eat before a workout or after a workout?

 

28:19 I’d love to know what lessons have you learned being a Masters athlete that maybe you didn’t have to think about so much when you were younger?

 

30:17 What do you do for mobility and strength and stretching? How do you fit that into your routine?

 

31:12 After the race on October 17th, what’s next for you?

 

Questions I ask everyone:

 

 32:54 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give?

 

34:23 What is the greatest gift running has given you?

 

35:20 Where can listeners connect with you?




Quotes by Dan:

 

“I was still under a five-minute mile equivalent, and that was when I was 56. And so it just sort of put a goal in the back of my head that when I turn 60, I want to see if I can still run a five-minute mile.”

 

“When I turned 40, I just redefined myself as an endurance athlete, not as a runner, and I haven’t not been fit since I’ve been 40.”

 

“I have gotten really consistent this year in terms of doing electrolytes post-workout. I feel like a lot of the injuries I get as a Masters athlete are because I get more easily dehydrated than I used to.”

 

Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel

Mentioned in this podcast:

 

Younger Next Year

The China Study

Skratch Labs

Nuun

World Masters Athletics

 

News Article - Dan King's Second Try at Official M60 Mile

“... was more than 4 seconds off his August mark of 4:49 at a meet in the same city. It barely missed the listed M60 American record of 4:53.01 by Nolan Shaheed in 2012.”

 

Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community

RunnersConnect Facebook page

claire@runnersconnect.net



Follow Dan on:

 

Instagram

Twitter



We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.

The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.

The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

 

1 « Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next » 15