Cherie Gruenfeld exemplifies the ability to remain competitive regardless of age.
Much like many of our listeners, Cherie picked up endurance sports a little later in life - starting running in her early 40s and triathlons in her late 40s.
Now at the age of 73, she is one of the most heavily decorated Masters triathletes in the world and still competes in half Ironmans to this day.
In this episode, Cherie walks us through her late entry into competitive running and triathlons, her philosophy for finding continued success in the sport, and a little about her nonprofit organization through which she works to help underprivileged kids achieve more than they ever thought possible.
Between her advice on longevity in the sport and her outlook on self betterment (even when that may no longer mean setting PR’s), Cherie’s story has something for everyone.
3:25 What is your athletic background?
5:14 What inspired you to start running?
8:36 Did you have any setbacks or struggles when you first started?
10:12 When did you realize you had the potential to be a competitive triathlete?
10:55 How did you get interested in triathlons?
19:04 Did you know at your first Kona event that you could become one of the most decorated Masters triathletes in the world?
19:45 What did becoming the first woman over age 55 to complete an Ironman in less than 12 hours mean to you?
23:14 Why did you select Kona as the event you wanted to break the 12-hour barrier?
24:18 What makes Kona so special to you?
26:21 What makes Kona something you look forward to year after year?
28:22 Is Kona the Boston Marathon of triathlons?
28:44 Which part of the triathlon is your strongest and which is your weakest?
30:25 Is trying to set new goals within each component of the triathlon part of what keeps you going?
36:47 How has BodyHealth helped you compete at such a high level for so long while remaining healthy?
39:21 Do you attribute much of your success to these supplements and how did you feel prior to and after using them regularly?
41:39 Besides the supplements, what other tips do you have for maintaining competitive longevity?
43:32 What is your organization, Exceeding Expectations, and what is its mission?
49:12 What’s next for you?
“I would never have guessed that I would have had the opportunities that I did.”
“If you have to ask (about Kona), you haven’t been there.”
“There’s a bonding among all Ironmen; you meet another Ironman on a plane and you don’t even have to ask questions, you just automatically know certain things about the character of the person.”
“My swim and my bike are within 10 or 15 minutes of what they used to be, but the run? There’s no way that I am going to run a 4-hour marathon in an Ironman any longer. But I’m still one of the top runners in the age group.”
“You cannot race the way you used to; you simply are NOT going to, and you have to accept that.”
“Sleeping is critical to being ready for the next day.”
“Don’t wait till you’re a Masters athlete to start thinking about maintaining health and longevity, because if you intend to stay in this for the long haul, you gotta start when you’re younger. You have to develop these good, healthy habits, you have to understand that you’re not invincible, that you can be taken down and it’s up to you to take care of yourself so that some of that doesn’t happen.”
“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
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BodyHealth supplements homepage
Exceeding Expectations Foundation
Challenged Athletes Foundation
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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 might 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 any more.
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 you can achieve the technique so many runners swear by today.
3:05 What is your background with ChiRunning?
6:56 What are the principles of Tai Chi and how are they incorporated into biomechanics?
12:01 What is the foot-strike with ChiRunning?
13:44 What did the 2012 ChiRunning study at UNC - Chapel Hill involve?
18:29 In this study, how did shoes affect ChiRunners?
23:48 What is the ChiRunning technique?
28:41 What about cadence and stride rate?
29:35 How long does it take for a runner to learn this new motion?
30:30 How does this help or help prevent injury?
34:20 How would you advise runners adjust their form into ChiRunning?
37:43 What is Body Sensing and what are the benefits?
42:24 Is it more real-time analysis vs. post-activity analysis?
43:19 How is Body Sensing taught?
46:52 Do Runners need shoes for pronation / supination?
48:27 Do you do online consultations?
54:39 Listener question: Do people see significant improvements in their running times with ChiRunning?
“[ChiRunning] is all about really having great posture (really working on your posture)....working from your core or from your center but relaxing everything outside that. It’s really different than how most runners run.”
“I would come back from a run and not even feel like I had gone for a run, so I thought ‘there’s something to this.’”
“Tai Chi is based on how the body is designed, and how the human body is designed is all the big muscles and larger and stronger muscles are in the area of your core - or your “center”. Now in Tai Chi they call your center your “dantien”, and they call it your “power center”. It’s the place from which you move.”
“Where do most of the running injuries happen?....From the knees on down….So what does that tell you? People are using all the teeny tiny, much smaller muscles to run with instead of all the big strong muscles in the middle.”
“The running form is what’s important - not the shoes.”
“As your knees bend as you pass over your support stride, then it turns into a very circular stride like your feet are going around in a wheel motion - like you’re pedaling a crankset to a bicycle.”
“It’s also about reducing your impact. So not only are you getting faster easier, but you’re not creating any impact, which can wear out your muscles, joints, brake pads, things like that.”
“I love that phrase ‘run yourself into the ground.’ That’s how a lot of people run: into the ground instead of across the ground.”
“What I’ve come up with is 104 lessons - that’s one lesson a week for two years. And I did a video of each lesson, and then I did an audio to take with you on the run so people can download the audio and I’m talking in your ear while you’re learning [ChiRunning].”
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Study on ChiRunning’s Benefits
ChiRunning School (two years’ worth of video lessons to help you master ChiRunning)
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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!
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Most of us have been there.
You’re in the thick of training just a few weeks away from your big goal race, and then one morning you step out of bed to feel a new pain - a pain far worse than the everyday soreness you know too well.
*insert expletive*
So what does the doctor prescribe? You guessed it. Time off.
These two words are pretty much the last thing we runners want to hear after months and months of hard work, and the thought of scrapping all that work and starting over after your goal race has come and gone can be demoralizing.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Enter Dr. Christopher Segler of Doc On The Run, a San Francisco-based practice that specializes in podiatry and running injuries.
An accomplished marathoner and Ironman triathlete, Chris knows full well how frustrating injuries can be, which is why he’s devoted his life’s work to getting sidelined runners healthy and back to the grind as fast as possible.
So what’s the first step to a speedy recovery? According to Chris, don’t take time off.
You read that right.
Despite those conventional protocols to which we’re accustomed (“six weeks off” ring any bells?), Chris maintains time off is not only unnecessary, but it’s also counterproductive to recovering from most injuries.
In this episode of Run to the Top, Chris will dispel the myths surrounding injury and discuss better alternatives to time off - methods that help you bounce back not only stronger than before but also equipped with the knowledge crucial to preventing future injury.
3:10 Tell us about yourself as an athlete as well as Doc On The Run.
6:08 What have you found to be the most common cause of injury?
7:27 What are the typical causes of plantar fasciitis and metatarsal stress fractures?
11:14 How would you advise people maximize their 'stress threshold' without exceeding it?
13:20 How familiar are you with Irene Davis and her research?
14:29 Do you think that footwear causes injuries?
17:07 Do you advocate minimalist shoes?
22:34 When should a runner avoid using minimalist shoes?
24:48 What do you mean when you say that runners have an unfair advantage when it comes to recovering from injuries?
29:46 Why is inactivity the last thing a runner needs when recovering from an injury?
36:55 Why does conventional medicine have such difficulty with treating runners?
37:42 What should runners actually do to facilitate recovery for different types of injuries?
44:58 How should an injured runner know when it's time to swap out running for a lower impact activity to aid recovery?
48:39 How can runners determine which cross training activity best suits their injury?
49:57 Will anti-inflammatories inhibit recovery?
56:26 The Final Kick Round
“That’s the way I’ve really shaped my practice is to help runners achieve their goal - not just make their pain go away.”
“People say running causes running injuries, and that’s just not true.”
“A news guy was interviewing a highway patrolman, and he was talking about snow - it had just started snowing in Lake Tahoe. And then while they were standing there talking about this, there was actually an accident right behind them….And so the interviewer said to the highway patrolman, ‘Well isn’t it true that snow causes accidents?’ And the highway patrolman looked at him like he was an idiot, and he said, ‘No, driving too fast for conditions causes accidents.’”
“I believe you only have so much stress that your body can take, and if it’s too much then something breaks.”
“The overwhelming majority of children actually run as forefoot or midfoot strikers. 85% of adults run as rearfoot strikers. 85% of adults who run as rearfoot strikers have also all been wearing some sort of shoe that has an elevated heel usually somewhere roughly in the vicinity of 12mm for pretty much their entire lives.”
“I believe that most runners who have been habitually active - that cycle of tissue damage and tissue repair effectively trains your immune system and your body to heal injuries faster.”
“Most runners don’t feel good when they don’t run, and it’s not because they’re exercise addicts. It’s because their physiology is different.”
“I think it sets up a whole chain of recurring injuries when you stop running.”
“The doctors look at it and they say if you want this one thing - this one injured thing to get better - you have to pay for it by this whole protocol that we use in America as the standard treatment. And they don’t even mention that you’re going to have this enormous risk of recurring injuries that may or may not ever go away.”
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Run to the Top interview with Dr. Irene Davis
RunnersConnect Running Form Course
Video: Peanut Butter Jelly Time (listeners beware)
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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!
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You know your body better than anyone else, so you know when things aren’t feeling “right”.
Unfortunately, traditional healthcare doesn’t typically cater to runners. Reference ranges are determined without the athlete in mind, and when you express symptoms of fatigue, weight gain, or maybe IBS to the average practitioner, you’re often prescribed medication as a short term solution to a longterm problem.
Enter functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and “biohacker” Christopher Kelly. Chris is the founder of a company called Nourish Balance Thrive that provides athletes with science-based, personally customized support programs based on their unique wiring.
A program is created with an athlete’s specific biomarkers in mind, which are substances indicative of disease, infection, or environmental exposure that help Chris and his team pinpoint what might be holding that athlete back.
Chris then creates a special diet and lifestyle plan that will trigger optimal gene expression (i.e. allow you to achieve peak athletic performance, improve your longterm health, and, ya know, just make you feel really, really good).
After effectively reversing his Type II diabetes and going from recreational cycler to now pro, Chris wanted to share the methods he discovered through trial and error with athletes like him.
He started Nourish Balance Thrive back in 2013, and he’s now working with two medical professionals and two engineers to develop software for blood interpretation that he believes will change sports medicine (and healthcare in general) as we know it.
Listen in as Chris discusses “biohacking” and explains two biomarkers he and his team have found to be paramount to performance and longevity.
4:40 Tell us about Nourish Balance Thrive
5:26 How do you help athletes adjust diets and lifestyles?
7:31 What is Fasting Blood Glucose?
9:17 How did your team determine optimal reference ranges?
10:41 How does elevated fasting blood glucose work as a biomarker and what does it mean?
11:21 What is Hemoglobin A1C?
12:22 Where do traditional reference ranges for elevated fasting blood glucose come from?
17:18 So you studied people who are pre-diabetes?
18:30 What factors might cause Hemoglobin A1C to be falsely high?
20:26 What elevates these numbers?
23:42 How did you reverse your Type 2 Diabetes?
26:38 Should endurance athletes move to a diet higher in fat and protein vs. carbs?
28:52 Does everyone have some degree of gluten intolerance?
30:13 How do you test clients for food allergies?
34:13 What foods should be temporarily avoided for food allergen diagnostics?
35:30 How do you ensure people notice differences or changes?
38:02 Did you have difficulties removing these foods from your diet?
40:18 What is Polarized Training?
43:20 Does this affect ‘perceived effort’?
45:46 How should runners monitor Heart Rate?
47:04 How does stress relate to Hemoglobin A1C and Fast Blood Glucose?
50:23 What about nutrient deficiency?
55:27 Are probiotics helpful?
57:07 How can listeners find you and what services can you offer them?
1:01:37 Final Kick
“You can’t possibly fix a problem without understanding what caused it.”
“It’s always interesting to look at a study that’s being done on people who don’t have a problem.”
“I wouldn’t try and claim that everybody is sensitive to gluten, nor would I try and claim that removing gluten from your diet makes it a healthy diet.”
“Let’s say you’ve got the suspicion that you’re sensitive to milk or cheese or soy or nuts or gluten or something else, the gold standard is to remove those foods from your diet for a period, see how you do and then experiment with reintroducing them.”
“Every time I go and do something, I’m always looking for small differences.”
“I find that once you get good at noticing these small changes, you won’t just notice them in your environment around you, you’ll also notice them in yourself.”
“One person’s greatest problem is going to be not an issue at all for the next person and vice versa.”
“Different people respond in different ways to stress and your job is to find the tools that allow you to appropriately manage stress.”
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Book: Counterclockwise - Ellen Langer
Book: The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing - Philip Maffetone
Jeff Galloway on Run To The Top
Book: Ready to Run - Kelly Starrett
Fasted State Training article from Ultra Running
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!
Since Christopher McDougall popularized the practice in his 2009 publication of Born to Run, more and more runners have been opting for minimalist shoes or, ditching the foam altogether, barefoot running.
Followers of the barefoot movement maintain the practice both significantly reduces injury and improves running performance. But is there real, scientific proof to back these claims?
According to Dr. Irene Davis, the answer is a resounding yes.
Irene is one of sport’s leading experts on running biomechanics and injury as well as the most credible minimalist shoe and barefoot running advocate in the world. A professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, Irene’s research revolves primarily around the relationship between lower extremity mechanics and injury.
She’s devoted the last decade to developing protocols to alter runners’ gait patterns and thereby reduce those mechanics known to cause injury - mechanics, as Irene has learned, often caused by footwear.
Listen in as Irene explains how the evolution of footwear has ultimately come to defy our own.
4:30 What research are you involved in?
4:54 How did you get involved in biomechanics research?
5:36 Were you initially working with the general public or professional athletes?
6:22 Given your prior background, when and why did you become a barefoot running advocate?
9:12 Why do you think so many runners get injured every year?
10:44 Why do you believe supportive footwear is causing injuries?
14:03 Are these shoes encouraging heel-striking?
16:29 Is it correct to assume that strengthening your intrinsic and extrinsic muscles will correct issues?
18:46 Why do shod runners with a forefoot strike have the best loading-rates?
21:04 How should someone go about altering their stride?
24:07 What is ‘doming’?
26:35 How could a runner perform weight-bearing exercises while doming?
30:38 Can an injured runner do these exercises?
31:27 Are there significant differences in alignment between runners in shoes and barefoot runners?
32:35 How is dynamic stability affected by footwear from barefoot to minimal to standard running shoe?
38:48 What brands of minimalist shoes would you recommend?
43:07 Where do you see the future of barefoot running going?
45:06 As a barefoot runner, can you run on any surface or are some more preferred?
49:41 How can a traditional runner transition to barefoot running?
55:01 The Final Kick Round
“Based on our hypothesis, barefoot running really is the model we should be using in terms of running style because it’s closest to the way that we were adapted to run.
There is something called the “mismatch” theory of evolution that says we’re not using our bodies in the way they were adapted….and saying we’re not eating the food we were adapted to eat. But I like to extend that also to running because I think that the footwear that we have gotten ourselves into….has actually changed the way that we run so that we are not running in a way that we were designed or adapted to run.
We need to be open to new ideas, and you may need to evolve in your thinking. What the truth is today may not be the truth 10 years from now, and the truth 10 years ago may not be the truth today.
Running is in our genes: you don’t need to be taught to run. You run automatically as you develop. It’s one of the motor skills you develop as a child, and so running is something that is innate in us. You do it for survival, and so it shouldn’t be an activity at which we get injured at such a high rate….It would be like birds getting wing injuries or fish getting fin injuries at a high rate.
If you think about it, if you were jumping off a high step and you were going to land in sand, you’re going to stiffen your leg. But if you know that’s concrete that you’re landing in, you’re going to soften your leg. And we do it without even thinking about it….So if you take someone who’s adapted to cushioning and have them run without cushioning, their load rates are going to be much higher.
If you consider the fact that there’s a 52% lifetime risk of developing achilles tendonitis….and most people are heel-strikers, then you start to wonder perhaps if people were landing on the ball of their foot and actually resulting in stiffer, stronger tendons, maybe that rate - that statistic - would be significantly lower.
There is evidence that the more you take away from the foot, the greater tendency you have to land on the ball of your foot….and we have basically shown that forefoot strikers in general have lower rates of loading than mid-foot strikers or forefoot strikers.
‘Lose the foam and dome!’
‘Minimal footwear running is science and evolution in perfect harmony.’
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Irene's Study on Foot Core
Michael Ryan's Study on Partial Minimalist Shoes
Shoe: Innovate Bare-XF 210
Shoe: Merrell Pace Glove
Shoe: Xero Prio
Shoe: Vivobarefoot
Shoe: Teva
Shoe: Nike Air Pegasus
Shoe: Vibram Five Fingers
Book: Born to Run
Follow Irene 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.
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!
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