Eat, Run, Love

I've had some struggles with eating is a sentence I have heard far too often as an NCAA D1 distance runner.  From friends, doctors, trainers, and strangers, it's very common to hear some variation of, "You distance kids are all just too skinny.  You need to eat something."  To an extent, the petite frame of your typical endurance athlete is to be expected.  In these competitions, the point is to move yourself over a course faster than your competitors can, and that becomes much less difficult if you are carrying less weight.  On top of that, if you consider the fact that the average person burns 100 calories for every mile run, and our metabolisms are often amped up to levels much higher than the average person, it's no wonder that we have to work fairly hard to get the calories that we need in a healthy way.  So, if you struggle to get the calories you need for any reason, it can wreak havoc on your body.  When you put these types of demands on your body and give it nothing to recover on in return, a multitude of problems can develop.  One of the first things I ever learned about in my exercise science courses is called the Female Athlete Triad.  Basically, this is a pattern in female athletes that starts with low energy intake levels and/or disordered eating, and can lead to bone loss and osteoporosis, making the athlete vulnerable to stress fractures.  Muscular atrophy is another common symptom.  Because the body isn't getting its energy from outside sources, it literally starts to break itself down just to fuel the everyday processes necessary for life.  It can also lead to menstrual disturbances, and if that is left unchecked, infertility.  How much are those extra few points worth to athletes and coaches, that they would keep allowing this to happen to their bodies?    

So why is this so prominent in collegiate athletes?  Well, there's a simple formula some people erroneously follow.  Less weight means faster times, so if an athlete drops weight quickly, they can perform at whole new levels.  Often, you'll see athletes on the national stage who seem to come out of nowhere to drop times that they hadn't come anywhere near previously.  They get their moment in the spotlight, and if they're lucky, stay healthy long enough to compete for their team at the championship meets.  What the coaches don't mention in interviews, and what the running channels don't cover, are the intermittent months of injury that precede those great performances and immediately follow them.  When you are sacrificing your own health to run a faster 5k time, your body will not hold up for it.  Doctors, coaches, and trainers habitually overlook their athletes' unhealthy weights and eating habits as long as they are still performing and making the school look good.

The first time I had to buy a shirt in a size medium, I cried.  As stupid as it may sound, at the time I felt like I could never be a real distance runner if I wasn't meeting a certain BMI.  There is such a pressure on distance runners everywhere to be at an "ideal" weight.  These days, I'm actually pretty proud of that size medium because it just reflects the #gainz I've been putting on in the weight room.  I was very fortunate in high school to have the type of coach who encouraged a healthy body and normal eating habits, and am still fortunate in college to have a coaching staff who would never prioritize the health of their athletes below a championship.  However, though I personally don't have to deal with coaches pressuring me to lose weight or turning a blind eye to blatantly unhealthy habits, it is still a clear issue on the national competitive stage.  When you consider the years it can take for these individuals to develop healthy eating habits again, and the lasting damage that is done to their bodies for the sake of shaving a few seconds off in the 10k, it's extremely upsetting.  This is one of many reasons why I believe the NCAA needs to establish a minimum BMI or body fat percentage for athletes to be eligible to compete.  Regardless of whether an athlete has "always been skinny" or they are running fast times, there are certain percentages below which healthy metabolic function, bone density, and brain function simply cannot be maintained.  Glorifying unhealthy habits is only going to continue perpetuating them in future generations of young athletes, and that is a reality that I will not stand for.  Coaches, please stop asking your athletes to set "weight goals" for the season, and turn your attention instead to ensuring that they maintain a healthy body composition.  Weight does not necessarily indicate health.  Right now, I weigh more than I ever have, but my body fat percentage is also lower because since coming to school, I've been incorporating strength training and injury prevention into my training.  I've put on weight, but I've also significantly decreased my chance of injury and am running better as a result.  If a coach pushed me to lose weight right now, the only place I would have to lose it would be from muscle mass, which is unreasonable and unhealthy.  

So, whether you are a coach, an athlete, or a casual bystander wondering what on earth I'm talking about, please always remember to #eatrunlove.

Naps on Naps on Naps

There are a few phases every distance runner goes through each year in the transition from track to cross country.  First is the summer training phase, where you basically turn into a machine capable only of napping, running, and eating.  Mileage goes up, and number of pants that actually fit you correctly go down.  You eat entire boxes of Otter Pops each week, exclaiming, "Gotta get those electrolytes!" as each one goes down, knowing full well that they're basically just frozen sugar sticks.  Next comes the "Back to School" phase.  Everyone is back in town, and stoked as can be to be training again.  You have a few weeks between when you get back to school and when classes start, so you're free to continue your habits of sleeping in late and running whenever is convenient for a short period of time.  Then you have all of the compliance meetings, team barbecues, and exciting discussions about what the season will look like.  The workload from school isn't too big, so you say to yourself, "Ah, yes.  This whole semester will probably stay like this and be relatively easy."  And if you listen closely, you can actually hear the lady from Game of Thrones whisper, "Oh, my sweet summer child."  The fourth and final phase of cross country is the Peak Phase.  The money is in the bank, as the old folks would say, and all that's left to do is trust in the hard work you've put in, peak, and compete.  It's the championship phase, the part of the season that you look forward to every week leading up to it.
The third phase is what we are currently in.  The Grind Phase.  This is where you put in some of your hardest workouts, where you wake up for early morning practices and badger the training room staff almost daily for new stretches and more ice bags wrapped onto your body.  It's where you have three or four exams in one week, plus two papers and a new design for rocket fuel due on the same day.  It's where life gets a little bit challenging, but it's also where you can take yourself from being good to great.  Yeah, that summer work is incredibly important to build your base and get you ready for the year.  But if you let your effort slip when things start to get tough, you won't get to see the results of that hard work come the end of the season.  Nobody wins a national title off of the first race of the season alone.  This is the phase where you are no longer just competing against the ideas of your opposing teams every day in practice.  This is where you have to start competing against yourself.  You have to be willing to accept that there will come a point in the workout where your body wants to quit.  Your mind might try to tell you that you can't possibly run another interval, but you have to tell both your mind and your body that you don't really care what they think is possible because you're going to make it big and that's going to hurt.  Maybe you'll have to overcome some setbacks.  Maybe it feels like the hardest thing you've ever done.  But if you can choose to not just make it through the Grind Phase, but come through it stronger than you started, you can do just about anything in this sport.