Emily’s stomach had definitely gone south. She couldn’t keep anything down, vomiting every few steps. Her pacer Buzz Burrell, a fixture in the ultra scene, had encouraged various forms of nutrition and drink with a side of optimism—it’s just a rough patch, aid station’s in a half-mile, the sun will be up soon. After all, that was his job, right? To lend the moral, emotional, and logistical support Emily needed to get to the finish line.

But when the hurling continued, he got out a flashlight and inspected the latest effluent. “It was blackish red, like a stomach lining,” he noticed. “And that’s when I said to my runner: ‘You know, I don’t think we ought to do this.’”

Pacing: A Role of Many Hats

While that scene might be uncommon, it’s an example of the dire scenarios a pacer might encounter during an ultra-distance race. A pacer may need to be prepared to play all sorts of roles in service of helping a runner achieve their goals, even if it means knowing when to call it quits. They can be cheerleaders, drill sergeants, nutritionists, aide-de-camps, trail doctors, raconteurs, and comedians. It’s an art, one that requires close communication between pacer and runner.

While pacing is uncommon in European ultras (it’s not permitted in UTMB races, for example), it is a frequent feature in the U.S. Both on the track and in marathons, pacers are in from the start and step off somewhere halfway, but those who are pacing an ultra usually pick up their runner after the halfway point and accompany them for some or all of the last part of the race.

Some purists argue that the psychological advantage of having clear-thinking, uplifting company in the later stages contravenes the spirit of the endeavor, while others find it a way for friends or family to share in what might otherwise be a time-consuming and self-centered undertaking.

Pacing Runners for Safety

The practice of pacing originated as a safety precaution—race directors didn’t want runners to get lost or collapse out on the trail alone. The in participation in ultras over the last twelve years guarantees that, while some runners are very experienced, there’s also an influx of neophytes who could benefit from the company of a pacer. And yet, at the same time, there’s a contingent who have never worn a pacer bib.

For those new to pacing, or some of us who have been thrown into the fire to pace a friend without any guidance, here are seven essential insights on the art of pacing from a few of the sport’s veteran pacers. Unsurprisingly, these three pacing pros are also experienced ultrarunners. In fact, it’s been suggested that pacing is an excellent way to learn the tricks of the trade before signing up as a competitor.

• Buzz Burrell is the former manager of the La Sportiva Mountain Running Team, the retired vice president in charge of Ultimate Direction, and co-founder of the website.
• Justin Grunewald recently paced Tyler Green to a second-place finish at the 2023 Western States Endurance Run.
• Nicole Bitter is an Altra-sponsored, two-time USATF winner at 100 miles and two-time USATF trail runner of the year.

Seven Best Practices When Pacing any Runner

After interviewing these three experts, several themes emerged on what to expect when pacing a runner, and how to prepare and execute on your responsibilities:

1. Be Clear About Why You’re Pacing

Buzz Burrell: “You might be trudging along while your runner is throwing up, but I put a different spin on it. As a pacer, I’ve skipped the first 50 miles of the race, which means I’m feeling good, walking into aid stations, eating sandwiches. I haven’t paid a thing for this race! As a pacer, I can enjoy the beauty of the course. This runner might be a dear friend of mine, and I want to help him, but I’m also a free food kind of guy.”

Justin Grunewald: “I think the most common reason is to help someone you care about conquer their demons, and get from point A to point Z. For me, Tyler [Green] is a friend, but he’s also hugely accomplished. I learned so much from him by pacing, I think I could take 30 to 60 minutes off my time from what I learned from pacing.”

Nicole Bitter: “To be a part of a loved one’s attempt at achieving a goal, that’s almost better than if I did it myself. Some people can’t run 100 miles or don’t want to—pacing is a way to share in the experience. A lot of people find fulfillment in pacing, maybe more so than racing.”

2. Schedule a Pre-Race One-on-One

BB: “This is critical. It’s not just two friends saying ‘Let’s go for a run together.’ First, discuss goals. Talk about possible scenarios.”

JG: “We talked about Tyler’s objectives. He’d finished second and fourth at States in past years and was completely overlooked as a top finisher this year, so he really wanted to go for it. He had dropped his pacer before, so he wanted someone who could go 32-33 miles. We talked about his intricate cooling routine and how it was going to go at aid stations.”

NB: “It’s critical to understand your runner and what makes them tick. I love to talk when I have a pacer. I want them to tell me funny stories, what happened earlier in the day. Some people don’t want to talk; they’re just in the zone.”

3. Prepare as if You’re Running the Race

BB: “Be well-fed and well-hydrated, and know when your start time will be. Never become part of the problem; don’t be a liability. Know the pacer rules, like no physical assistance. Usually “muling”—carrying your runner’s food or gear—is not allowed, though it is at Leadville, so be aware of the rules. Know the course, the aid stations, and cut-off times.”

JG: “At Western States, cooling is 15 percent of the race, so everything had to go right at aid stations. Typically, about a half-mile out from an aid station, I’d ask what he wanted to drink. I’d get Coke, ice cubes, water in one bottle, Tailwind in the other.”

NB: “Make sure you and your runner are a good fit, that you’d want to spend some time with this person. Be confident you can cover the distance you’ll be pacing easily. Take care of yourself or you won’t be equipped to pace.”

4. Expect Nothing, Be Ready for Anything

BB: “It’s unlikely your runner will be feeling great. They may be sick. They may be on a bummer. It might be hot or stormy. I tell first-timers: ‘You feel bad. So does everybody else. This is what it looks like.’”

JG: “They might be too mentally fatigued to know what they need. Tyler told me his arms were numb, which told me he needed electrolytes. Hyponatremia and dehydration are really tricky to differentiate, but, in my experience, they almost always need more electrolytes.”

NB: “Expect the unexpected. You don’t know what could happen. You might not even get the chance to pace if your runner drops out. Keep a positive outlook, and be a problem-solver.”

5. Fit the Pace to the Runner’s Goals

BB: “The first-time runner needs stability, support, and mild encouragement. Remind them to start eating and drinking 45 minutes into it. Don’t wait until your stomach starts to go. The veteran probably knows this so you can get into actual pacing, behind or in front of them, moderating the ups and downs. For someone who just wants to finish, concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.”

JG: “Normally, Tyler takes it out slower and picks people off, but this time the theme was ‘no regrets,’ so I reminded him of his objectives, of who he is, of how proud his family will be. He ran in front of me so I wouldn’t distort his view of rocks and roots.”

NB: “It’s nuanced. My husband is competitive so I usually talk about how we need to catch that runner in front of us. The hunt mentality. Or if we need to pick it up, I joke, ‘Wow, are you keeping up with me?’ Some races, like Western States, are dialed in to the tech, and can feed the pacer info on how far ahead or behind their runner is.”

6. Be Relentlessly Upbeat

BB: “‘It’ll be fine’ is our mantra, as long as it’s just a mental or emotional low. You can always come back from that. I’ve had runners say, ‘I’m out. I can’t do this.’ I have them sit down, take some deep breaths, let their heart rate come down. Heck, you can take 30 minutes at an aid station, change your socks, and march back out.”

JG: “I told him [Tyler Green] he was looking great. He hit a rough patch, so we focused on hiking 10 steps, running 10 steps. Relentless forward progress. I’d tell him things like, ‘In 800 meters there’s a downhill.’ Late in the race, no one wants to eat, so I kept thinking of what’s going to sound good, to get in some calories.”

NB: “My husband is usually in the zone, not talking, but he enjoys when I tell him stories and point out nice views.”

7. Know When to Call it Quits

BB: “Personally, I’m always going to protect my runner’s health first. Finishing is second. There are thousands of stories of people getting through awful circumstances, but I’m not going to encourage them to go on if I think it’s damaging to their health.”

NB: “In the 2016 Western States, my pacer called my day. I had hyponatremia and we didn’t feel it was safe. It’s good to have a close friend make those tough calls.”

Bottom Line?

Being a good pacer is perfect training for becoming an accomplished ultrarunner. All of our expert pacers routinely switched roles in their many years in the sport. And for those new to the sport, pacing is a great way to dip your toes before actually signing up for a long-distance race. Regardless of whether you ever intend to go the full distance or not, the many roles of the pacer make for a rich, fulfilling experience.

The post New to Pacing? Three Expert Running Pacers Share Their Best Practices. appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Thousand-year floods in China and Germany, shrinking ice sheets, heat waves and wildfires in the Pacific northwest that would be “” without climate change — the drumbeat of catastrophic events is impossible to ignore. And, yes, in the face of mass extinction, starvation, and suffering, having to run indoors one day is laughably trivial.��

Yet, on this particular yellow-tinged day in St. Paul, it hit hard. After checking the air quality identified as Extremely Unhealthy on the AirNow website, I stayed inside. On a summer day in Minnesota, because the air was noxious to breathe. The highest particulate count ever recorded in the Twin Cities, in fact. was not in the future, it was not in China or Texas or Eugene. It was here, now, in my backyard, which is crispy from drought and baked from 23 days of temperatures over 90°�� (average is 13 days in an entire year).��

Far from a freak occurrence, the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested this is the new normal: “It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer, and that extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent in many regions. Until mid-century, projected climate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist. In urban areas, climate change is projected to increase risks for people, assets, economies and ecosystems, including risks from heat stress, storms and extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, landslides, air pollution, drought, water scarcity, sea level rise and storm surges. It is virtually certain that global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100.”

We’ve blithely blown through the point where just drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be sufficient to turn things around. Now, scientists agree, some of these changes are here to stay. In addition to mitigation efforts, we’re going to have to adapt. And rapidly.

Can Runners Adapt?

Jennifer Vanos is a biometeorologist, that is, she looks at how weather and climate, specifically heat and air pollution, affect human health. An assistant professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State, Vanos is a longtime Phoenix resident, and a runner. There are, she says, some ways runners as individuals can adapt, and some things race organizations can do.��

Behaviorally, most runners already make changes like running early or late in the day, finding shady routes, drinking plenty, and soaking a bandana or putting ice in their clothes.��

Physiologically, she says, exposing oneself to heat can, over a period of at least two weeks, lead to — you’ll be a better sweater, your heart will pump more blood to the surface to more efficiently get rid of heat. High humidity slows that acclimatization process. But when we’re talking about climate change, we’re talking about temps above 115°��, conditions most of us have never faced. Are there limits to acclimatization?

“Short answer is, we don’t know. We’re working on that in a lab environment but we can’t let a person’s core temperature go above 104,” she says. “So we don’t have hard data. Empirically, we’ve seen runners at Badwater or Marathon des Sables successfully run ultras in really extreme heat.”

The ability to adapt to extreme heat involves so many factors, Vanos says — an athlete’s fitness, what they’ve been exposed to, amount of sun, humidity, the length of the race. “I’ve lived in Phoenix a long time. I often run after sunset — it’s 105, but it’s dark and very dry. It’s honestly not that bad.”

Modifying the Way We Train and Race

Race organizations can also adapt, and she pointed to the Tokyo Olympics, a group she helped advise. “Scheduling races early or late in the day, moving the marathons to Sapporo, even moving the women’s marathon an hour earlier on the fly — I think you’ll see that more often,” Vanos says. “I would hope that at least larger organizations would have someone on their team who can do a climatological risk assessment, maybe two weeks out, to provide accurate messaging to runners.”��

Race directors currently use the (WBGT) scale, originally created for the military, to help decide when to cancel an event. But Vanos says, it’s “not fully enforced;” it’s still up to individual race organizations to actually pull the plug. And that varies widely — Twin Cities Marathon that takes place in October in a traditionally cooler climate, cancels at 70 WBGT, conditions that would be just fine for a runner coming from Miami.

Other adaptations Vanos thought will become more common are race courses designed with more shade, more sponges, water (including misters) and ice on the course, and medical personnel and time cutoffs such that slower runners who don’t make it to the halfway point within a certain limit would be required to stop.

��Unlike heat, there are no physiological adaptations that make breathing smoky or polluted air safer. William Roberts, professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and medical director of the Twin Cities Marathon says, “You’re harming your lungs. You might not feel it immediately; the effects might be down the road. Whether it’s chemicals from car exhaust or wildfire smoke, once in your lungs, it’s really hard to flush out. It can destroy lung tissue. Really high levels, above 200pm, is along the lines of smoking cigarettes.”

Two things you can do to mitigate the hazards of poor air quality, Roberts says, are to run indoors (preferred) or wear an N95 mask (second best).

Heat and poor air quality are only the most direct effects runners will need to adapt to. Roberts reeled off a long list of hazards that come with climate change — flooding (inundated roads, contaminated water), drought (only extreme water restrictions prevented taps in Cape Town, South Africa from going dry), more frequent powerful storms (even pea-size hail can cause injury), and proliferation of disease vectors (warmer temperatures have allowed tropical and tick-borne diseases to expand their range).��

The Problem With Unprecedented

The problem, particularly for large organizations like the IOC, USATF, NYRR and BAA, is the climate change we’re experiencing is unprecedented. Adapting is even more difficult if prediction models don’t work.�� USATF thought Eugene in June, with an average high temperature of 74°��, would be perfect for the Olympic Trials. Similarly, Sapporo should have been a safe bet for the Olympic marathons.

“The heat wave in Eugene should not have happened, and Sapporo should not have had a heat wave,” Jennifer Vanos says. “They used good data for those decisions.”

USATF was caught off-guard at the Olympic Trials by temperatures that were unthinkable in Eugene, 35°�� above the normal June high temperature of 74°��. Competition was scheduled throughout the afternoon, and on June 27, was finally called off at 3:15pm. The 5-¼ hour suspension of racing and evacuation of Hayward Field was costly and chaotic for the organization, and disruptive to the athletes. The organization did not respond to questions about changes to their calendar, choice of venues, schedule, or logistics in view of climate change.��

“Adapt or Die”

So far, it appears conditions severe enough to require canceling or making major changes to events like the NYC Marathon or Boston or Chicago are still infrequent enough to be on the right side of the cost/benefit ratio. Realistically, making changes to an iconic race involving hundreds of thousands of people is probably not going to happen until catastrophic events become much more frequent.

��But there are smaller organizations, and some individual runners who have already made the changes that Jennifer Vanos and William Roberts suggest.��

Adapt or die is the harsh truth of the desert, and one that has embraced.

Phoenix is not the usual focus of dramatic climate change, but it has happened there too.��

“The monsoon hasn’t been as much, so there’s been a big uptick in wildfires. It’s normal to have days over 110°��, but last year, in June, there was a ten-day period of temperatures over 115°��. This year, we had a night race where it was 117°�� at 6 p.m.” Aravaipa Running race director Julie Neisch adds, “Even with night races, there may come a point where we can’t hold them.”��

She couldn’t say what that point would be, but the fact that Aravaipa could successfully put on a race at 117°�� indicates that that organization has already made some adaptations that could serve as a model for others.

��One that’s been in place for at least six years is the, races from April to September that start between 6pm and 11pm to take advantage of relatively cooler temps and darkness. Courses are multiple loops — a 50K is usually five loops — so water/aid stations are no more than 4 – 5 miles apart, and runners can easily drop down to a shorter race than they signed up for, and still get a result. Aravaipa also has a generous withdrawal policy that allows runners to cancel up to 72 hours ahead of the start and get 100% credit toward another event.

��“We try not to cancel an event outright, and encourage runners to listen to their bodies. If they deem it too hot, we want to make it easy to switch to an event that’s more comfortable,”�� Neisch says.

They’ve expanded to offer races at altitude in Flagstaff and Utah, as a respite from the extreme summer heat in Phoenix. Aravaipa has medical personnel at aid stations, giant water sprayers along the course, sponges that runners can squeeze over their head, and ice. Lots of ice. “At a recent race with 250 runners, we had 1000 pounds of ice on the course,” says Neisch. “We encourage runners to take in sodium and pack their clothes and their bandanas with ice. It makes a huge difference.”

Neisch did note most of their summer night run series participants are local runners who are heat adapted. “It’s a way for local runners to stay motivated and keep training through the summer.”

As savvy as Aravaipa’s adaptations are, Neisch admits, they were made as a matter of absolute necessity. “As far as bad air quality goes, we’ve gotten lucky because the wildfires happened after our race. Until you have to deal with it, you don’t put a whole lot of thought into it.”

��Not having to worry about bad air quality was one of the reasons Max King decided to live in Bend, Oregon. But four or five years ago, he bought a mask to run in, because he didn’t always have time to drive an hour or more to avoid the increasingly intense and frequent wildfire smoke. It’s not just affecting him as a runner, dangerous smoke plumes are affecting his business —. He recently had to move his popular Mount Shasta camp (in northern California) because of wildfire smoke. Without a backup plan, he scrambled to operate the camp out of his house in Bend.��

��But, he says, wildfires have really been affecting those who aren’t mobile, like high school cross country teams. “They’ve been training in the hallways or on a treadmill. It’s not ideal.”

��Heat waves are an increasing concern, especially for his youth camps. “We run early or later in the day, and make a point to have water nearby, a lake or river, so kids can jump in and cool off,” King says. He also scouts out cooler options, like going over to the coast or running in the redwoods.��

��But these adaptations, and being ready to change plans on the fly have definitely made his job as a coach and camp director harder. “It was stressful switching my camp with 25 kids. I can’t imagine NYRR changing a race with 50,000 people.”

��And what about ultra races in which extreme temperatures can have more devastating effects on a human body? Hundred-plus degree heat is a tradition, in fact, the foundation of 100 Mile Endurance Run’s badass image.The organization did not respond to my questions about whether there was a heat threshold beyond which badass would become dangerous, but King offers up that he, like about a third of the field, dropped out of this year’s race due to heat. “I think it [heat] is affecting races like Western States, in the number of finishers, and the slower times,” King says.��

Necessity Breeds Innovation

Bridget Franek is used to adapting to extreme heat. Even ten years ago, the 2012 Olympic steeplechaser and Eugene resident would wear extra clothing during a midday workout, and sit in a sauna afterward to get used to being overheated. That heat training was not necessarily climate change driven, but because USATF had scheduled her championship race at 1 p.m. in Indianapolis in July.������

“I’ve been shaking my head for years,” says Franek. “USATF always puts championship races in odd places relative to the time of year — Sacramento or Des Moines or Indianapolis — that would be hot even without climate change.”��

Now, of course, there’s no need to seek out a sauna for heat training in Eugene. Like Max King, Franek has adapted to the frequent wildfires, either running indoors or driving to find fresh air. Athletes, she pointed out, are used to going where they need to to train — distance runners to altitude, sprinters to warm places in the winter. She thinks they’ll be up to the challenges climate change presents, at least in the near future.

But USATF making major changes? Like scheduling races early morning and late evening, or even shifting the racing season away from summer? Franek is not convinced the organization is up to the challenge. She does see possibilities though, brought to light by the pandemic.

“Covid made people figure out how to make plans that can be changed. Before Covid, the model for putting on an event — location, schedule, TV, the supply chain — was fairly rigid. Now, that model is more flexible, there are innovations that allow change on the fly. Maybe races in the future will be something like a surfing event, where there’s a four-day window, and spectators and athletes are sort of on standby. They go when the waves are right.”

Lew Blaustein likes to think outside the track oval too when it comes to climate change adaptations. He’s the president of (Franek just signed on), a group that helps top athletes from a range of sports use their social platforms to become climate advocates.��

Blaustein agrees, race organizations will need to adapt — time of year, time of day, course—if their event is to continue, be it the NYC Marathon or USATF Track & Field National Championships.�� But they’re going to have to think bigger picture too, he says. “Race organizations are going to need to become activists because this problem is bigger than the Boston Marathon, or running, or sports. It’s a global, macro problem.”��

He spitballed some ideas: “What if the World Marathon Majors signed a compact asking Congress to pass carbon pricing legislation?�� What if all the major races pooled their resources, and collaborated with a university and a company like Boeing to ‘win the race to zero carbon aviation fuel?’ Using their social capital to advance something that would make a difference? Yes, it would make their races greener, but more than that, sports can change fan’s behavior, and instigate global change.”��

Blaustein stepped out of his visionary daydream, adding a note of stark realism, “I think sports organizations are going to have to become activists. Otherwise they’ll cease to exist.”

��Adapt or die. When it’s put that way, running on a treadmill in the summer seems doable.

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The difference between running 999 out of 1,000 days and running 1,000 out of 1,000 days is more than one day. It’s the difference between not being a streak runner and being a streak runner.

It’s the difference between other Peace Corps volunteers who, after arriving in Quito, Ecuador in 1978 on a red-eye flight, took a nap, and Steve DeBoer.��

“I had been counting my steps at home because I knew I’d have to estimate my mileage once I got to Ecuador,” says DeBoer, who recently passed his 50th year of running every day. “I counted in Spanish, to practice the language. Actually, I counted every fourth step, and by that metric, 300 steps equaled about a mile.”

Who Are These “Master Streakers?”

DeBoer is a member of a small, some would say obsessive, club for whom never taking a day off — more than speed or distance or competition — is everything. According to, DeBoer has the third longest running streak in the world, atop 3,112 men and women, mostly in the U.S., who have been running at least a mile every day for more than a year.��

Running every day, through illness, injury, bad weather, is antithetical to virtually any program out there. Bad for you, right? Borderline crazy. Why do it? What could running every single day possibly provide that merely running pretty consistently doesn’t?��

I went to the most experienced to find out. I talked with:

John Sutherland, currently #1 in the world at 52.06 years of daily running;

Steve DeBoer, #3 at 50.03 years;

Sue Favor, #3 among women at 36.49 years; and

Steve Gathje, who retired his running streak at 45.84 years.����������

There were commonalities. Necessarily, the masters of the streak are in their fifth, sixth and seventh decade of life.

None of them started out with the intention of establishing a streak. In fact, the concept barely existed when most of these streakers started back in the 1970s. (USRSA was established in 2000. President Mark Washburne said streaks are registered on the honor system, but for especially long streaks that began before 2000, he asks for log books, news stories, references, and other forms of documentation to verify).

Most started running every day as a way to get in shape. They all mentioned being raised to value hard work, discipline, tenacity, and consistency. Getting it done first thing in the morning, usually very early, was universal. There are nine men, but only one woman, 84-year-old Lois Bastien, whose streak exceeds 40 years, which reflects the fact that there were few women running in the 1960s and 70s. Surprisingly, location did not play much of a role. DeBoer and Gathje are both lifelong Minnesotans, and Minnesota, with its brutal winters, has more streakers than any other state. Though one mile is the minimum per day, these streakers far exceed that: Sutherland’s average over 52 years is 10 miles a day.

But Why?

Stress reduction, meditation, spirituality, connection with the outdoors, and physical fitness were mentioned as benefits, but there was a dance around the big existential question of why. On one hand, they all mentioned wanting to run every day until they passed from this earthly sphere. The philosophy is: you don’t decide whether or not to breathe; you don’t decide whether or not to run. It’s part of life. You wake up, you run. They admitted streaking was an obsession, but argued that healthy obsession was not an oxymoron. On the other hand, when asked about its importance in the larger context of their life, running did not even make the podium. Family, friends, the people they’d met through running, faith, health, happiness — those were the big prizes.

Where commonalities between the master streakers fell apart? Family situation/lifestyle, work, diet — a lot of variety. One point of particularly large divergence was level or pace, as measured by PBs or interest in racing. For instance, Jon Sutherland, now 70, was an elite competitor with PBs of 13:51 for 5K and 28:51 for 10K; Steve DeBoer was dead last in the two varsity cross country races he ran in high school, and “wasn’t good enough to run in college.”

That said, these four masters of the daily were so individual, so articulate, they described the streak running mentality best in their own words. Here are their words, from phone conversations with these runners:

Steve DeBoer

Steve DeBoer, 66, lives in Rochester, Minnesota, married with two grown children, recently retired from job as dietician, started his streak on June 7, 1971 at age 16.

How his streak started

“I was not a great athlete, but with determination or stubbornness a person without a lot of ability can do some amazing things over time.”��

Psychology and motivation

“I have a streak mentality, a tendency to do things every day. In 1967, 12 years old, I was very bad at pushups, so I started to do calisthenics every day. Burpees, jumping jacks, sit-ups, pull-ups, pushups. I kept track of it in a diary. I still do 100 pushups before I go out, and 30 to 40 sit-ups. And I stand on my head.”

Rituals and routine

“I go shirtless down to 30 degrees — I’m warmed up from the pushups — and shorts down to 20. I’m not stupid. If it’s windy or sleeting, I’ll make exceptions.

“When I was working, I got up at 4:30, out the door by 5:15. In winter I ran to work. In summer I ran, then biked to work. I hated running in the dark in the winter so I slept in til 5:30.

“I still have a pair of Brooks Super Villanovas that I bought in July 1980. They have over 7,000 miles on them. I have about 25 pairs of shoes that I rotate. I get one new pair a year. — you can still buy it at Walmart!”

Biggest threat to the streak

“I had food poisoning once — ran two miles and spent the rest of the day in bed. I broke my ankle in 2007. I taped thoroughly over the wrapping, and did a mile in 15:20-something. Four weeks later, I was up to 15 miles. Another goal I have is to never run less than 200 miles in a month, so I made it. And in February 2020, I was hospitalized for a week with double pneumonia and influenza B. I had IV antibiotics but my breathing was not that bad so I jogged around my bed for 20 minutes and figured that it had to be a mile.”

His why

“I use running time to plan my day, and pray. For meditation. It’s a non-caffeinated jump start — I don’t drink caffeine. For me, it’s [streak running] a social network too. It’s a challenge — can we do it til the day we die? A friend, Roger Carlson, was running home from a race, had a heart attack, and died. That’s what I’d like to do — finish a race and die.”

From the final paragraphs of his soon-to-be-available book Traversing the Tundra:

“The bottom line is that I run and will continue because it is a passion but not an idol. For those of faith, God needs to be our highest priority. My advice to others is to follow your passion (something positive, not necessarily running) and see how far it will take you, but don’t let it take over your life… there is much more to enjoy in life besides lacing up my Super Villanovas and traversing the tundra one more time.”

Jon Sutherland

Jon Sutherland, 70, lives in Washington, Utah, semi-retired writer/coach, set six track records while at Cal State Northridge, started streak May 26, 1969 at age 18.��

How his streak started

“In 1969, Mark Covert — he’s a good friend, a champion, and huge inspiration — said he’d run every day for a year. I thought, that’s noble. I’m going to try it. I was running two or three miles a day, but within a couple months I was up to 100 miles/week.”

Psychology and motivation

“I’ve always been competitive. I’ve done 1,150 100-mile weeks, up to 120 sometimes. Hard all the time. The streaking — I didn’t even think about it. All the streakers behind me, they weren’t any good. Covert and I were elite runners, we were good. The streak has never been the most important thing. I ran to be competitive. I liked the feeling and the people I ran with.

“I was a rock journalist for 20 years. I know I’m the only one who’s dog-piled with Metallica and [has] run with Prefontaine. Been to more than a thousand rock concerts, but I never took drugs. I’d be home by 1 or 1:30, and I always take a 25-minute nap in the afternoon. I’m a world class recoverer. Once, I ran a marathon, and five days later, ran a 13:56 5K.”

Biggest threat to the streak

“I was running a half marathon, stepped on ice, and tore ligaments and pulled a chunk of bone off my pelvis. The doctor wanted to re-attach it surgically but I didn’t have insurance, so I just limped badly for nine months, doing the same 2-½�� mile course. Not to keep the streak together; the streak doesn’t motivate me as much as people think it does. I had been in great shape, and I wanted to get back.

“The hardest thing was shingles when I was 67 — it kicked my ass. I could barely sleep, I was in so much pain. I slept on a tarp because the blisters would pop. I lost 10 pounds, fell 25 times because I had neuropathy. It lasted a year.”

Routine and rituals

“I don’t drink coffee, but I have 8 ounces of Dr. Pepper in the morning. I’m also a big Sam Adams guy.”

His why

“I have a tremendous urge to run, to be moving. I think when I’m running. It’s my church that I go to every day. When I get done I feel good about myself.

“To quote one of the guys from Metallica about quitting: I don’t see no fucking stop sign.

“Rock writer, runner, streaker — I’m proud that I did it all. I’m a memory guy. I’d rather meet someone I admire than have a million dollars. That’s the great thing about the streak — you meet so many people.

“If I can break the world record — I don’t want to jinx it. [On July 4th, Sutherland surpassed British Olympian and running legend Ron Hill’s world record running streak of 52.11 years.] I’m being real careful until then, because you never know.” ��

Sue Favor

Sue Favor, 54, lives in Los Angeles, educator, started her streak December 20, 1984 at age 17.

How her streak started

“The middle of my senior year of high school, I was crawling my way back from illness. I had to get out of the house, and do something toward getting better, so on the darkest day of the year, December 20, I set out running. That was the day I started streaking. One run at a time, every day, a little stronger. Pretty soon it was spring and I thought, I think I’m going to do track.

“Born and raised in Eugene, surrounded by runners. Mary Decker Tabb, she was there at the time, and Alberto Salazar ran by on the daily. You have no idea how much that influenced me.����

“My first love was basketball. Watching the Oregon women’s team, they were so strong and solid. I saw possibilities to being a woman I had never considered. I thought, that could be me. I tried it [basketball] but I wasn’t very good. Being an athlete, that stuck.”

Psychology and motivation

“I’ve never cared much about races. For me it’s a bodily and emotion regulator. Running got me through depression, and a lot of other stuff. My body is so used to running at this point that if I suddenly stopped, I don’t know if I’d even be able to eliminate in the morning.

“I ran so I could see things. Long-ass runs, an hour in the morning and an hour at night. That’s the way I saw the city.”

Routines and rituals

“I’ve been a vegetarian for a long time. I get up, have coffee — I’ve lived in Seattle — Starbucks is as low as I go — run, and go to work. I’ve been on a save-the-knees program since 2008. If I want to do more cardio, I go to the gym and do bike or stair stepper.

“When I was young I ran in the dark, I always run alone, and I’ve never been accosted. I project myself as a strong woman. My family raised me with no gender limitations. I’ve always been extremely independent.”

Biggest threat to the streak

“In 1993 or 94, I fell and gashed myself, ran home, and helped myself. In 2002, I gashed my knee so hard the kneecap was showing. It hurt like hell, took ten stitches. Next day I ran very carefully and painfully. In 2008, I had pneumonia. That’s about it.”

Her why

“I was raised by parents who didn’t give up. I believe in discipline, in habits, in commitment. I admit, I value the streak itself, and the fact that I’m pretty high up on the list. I’m more than 36 years in — what kind of schmuck would I be if I quit? It’s not rational, I guess. But there’s no decision — the run is on unless I’m dead.”

Steve Gathje

Steve Gathje, 66, lives in Minneapolis, retired actuary, married with four children and 3 grandchildren, started a streak on September 25, 1972 and retired it July 27, 2018 after 45.84 years.

How his streak started

“I went out for track my junior year in high school to get in shape for football. The first cross country race in the fall I killed two guys who had beaten me before and thought, this is going to be a great season. That night, I had my appendix out, and was out for almost the whole season. When I finally got back to running, I was frustrated, angry, really wanting to get back in shape. I wasn’t even aware streaking was a thing, but that’s when it started.”

Psychology and motivation��

“It’s the way I was raised. Work ethic was a huge thing. The way to be successful was to give it your all, outwork everyone else. Through college I felt like I couldn’t take a day off if I wanted to be competitive. Eventually it became so ingrained, I can’t remember a day I had to make a decision to run. It was not if, but when.��

“At first it was about competing, not so much the streak. I ran a 2:27 marathon and won some 10Ks, and still raced into my late forties. But I was married, had four kids and a demanding job — it was obvious I wasn’t going to be in the national class. Then it became about going out for a run every day.

“It reduced stress, it was my own time. If I wasn’t addicted to exercise, I’d be addicted to something harmful.”

Biggest threat to the streak

“In 2018, I had hip problems. I ran in pain for a month, could barely go a mile, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t walk up and down stairs. It might have been cool to hit 46 years, but why? Running used to make my life better, and now it was making it worse.

“I went to the doctor on Friday — I’d run that morning — and started crying because I knew the streak was over. The next morning, it was extremely weird to wake up and not go for a run. I was not even the same person.�� But a week later I tried an ElliptiGo, and now I pretty much do that every day.”

His why

“A running streak can be all-consuming. I’ve not been that way. I was a senior executive, with a�� 39-year marriage, family, friends. Grandchildren are a magnificent thing. For some, the streak becomes destructive. Running had a slot in my life but not anywhere near the center.”

The post The Minds and Habits of Master Streakers appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

At 16, Toni St. Pierre was a natural athlete in the way of someone who’s grown up careening around the neighborhood on bikes, playing kick the can, five hundred, and hot box, and since this was Minnesota — all manner of messing around on snow and ice. She held her own in all the unorganized sports kids did circa 1970.

But opportunities for girls to train and compete in organized sports were slim to none at Hopkins Eisenhower High School in suburban Minneapolis. Since there was no girls cross country team, St. Pierre was invited by the coach to work out with the boys’ team. But competing, that was tricky. If any other coaches or officials complained, that was it — she couldn’t run. Section 8 of the 1971-1972 Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL)��handbook prohibited girls from participating on boys’ teams.

This didn’t sit well with St. Pierre, who wasn’t fond of people telling her what she could or couldn’t do. She loved running, she could keep up with the boys, and saw no reason why she, or any other girl, shouldn’t be able to train and compete like the boys. And, since there was no girls’ program, with the boys. It was simply right; it was the rule that was wrong.

A Precedent Opens Possibilities

So, her junior year of high school in early 1972, requesting she be able to train and compete in cross country running and skiing, which at the time were only boys’ interscholastic sports. The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union combined St. Pierre’s case with that of Peggy Brenden, a tennis player who’d filed a similar lawsuit.

On May 1, 1972, the in the girls’ favor.

Ostensibly a victory, it’s also notable for what the decision did not do. The court did not say that competitive sports for St. Pierre and Brenden was a right, rather that the girls proved that they were talented and committed enough to participate. Something no boy had to do. And the decision affected only those two girls in those three sports.

But what it did do was set a precedent. People, other girls, saw possibility where there had been none. The state high school league saw it too. Unless they wanted to spend their time and money defending themselves against more lawsuits, they had to put some muscle behind their 1969 resolution to develop girls’ interscholastic sports. The same thing had been happening across the country. Critical mass had been reached. On June 23, 1972, the Equal Opportunity in Education Act — Title IX — was signed into law.

In retrospect, what Toni was able to accomplish was an astounding paradigm shift. Previously, if the absence of women’s sports came up at all, it was met with a shrug — that’s just the way things were, like gravity. Perhaps some women convinced themselves they didn’t really want to sweat and get uncomfortable anyway. And then there were the cumbersome logistics. Who do you call? How do you file a lawsuit? Writing letters, going to court — it’s a lot of work. Better let someone else do it.

The few women who entered races knew and accepted the rules, like . As long as you didn’t rock the boat and try to race officially, sure, you could run in the Boston Marathon. But circumventing laws rather than challenging them head on isn’t how you change anything. Real, systemic change means ruffling feathers.

Take, for example, Kathrine Switzer, who drew fire in 1967 because she insisted on racing the Boston Marathon officially, number and all, like a man. Similar to Switzer, Toni was not content to compete under the table to appease some old men on the wrong side of history. She wanted to run and compete officially, like the boys, for all the same reasons boys did: to pursue athletic dreams and destinies. Because she enjoyed athletic competition; it made her feel good.�� And that was the crux of the matter — she wanted to be treated as fully human.

A Family of Strong Women

Who was this headstrong girl? Toni passed away in 2013 at the age of 58 of a rare cancer of the smooth muscle, which came to light, ironically, while she was training for the Boston Marathon. So we have to rely on others who crossed her path, different views of this rebel who wanted not only to run but to compete, and was willing to shift the world a little to make that happen. We tracked some of those people down.

There was just Toni — Antoinette, but no one called her that — her younger brother Sam, their mom, Marie, a nurse, and dad, a railroad worker. The family of four lived in small town Staples, Minn. The parents divorced when Toni was 11, and the kids and mom moved in with their maternal grandparents in Hopkins, a western suburb of Minneapolis.

“It was kind of an odd thing to happen back then,” Sam told PodiumRunner. “Divorce had kind of a stigma. Moving and trying to find her place, it was hard on Toni.”

Between cousins and a neighborhood full of kids, the two were quickly assimilated in their new home. “Nobody believed in sitting around watching TV,” Sam remembered. “We’d go off on our bikes, from place to place all day long. Toni wasn’t exceptional in terms of athletics. But she was real headstrong — she wouldn’t take shit from anyone.”

West Junior High included grades 7, 8, and 9. That was where Toni first encountered Pat Lanin, a science teacher, who was also the boys cross country coach, and the high school’s boys’ track and cross country ski coach. He was also founder of the Minnesota Distance Running Association, president of Minnesota AAU track, and all-around instigator of endurance sports, for men and women.

Toni, Sam remembered, participated in sort of one-off track meets in 8th or 9th grade. “She was looking for something to do, an outlet,” Sam said. “I was at the other end of the spectrum. I was smoking dope and going to keggers. She did some of that, but realized that wasn’t where she wanted to go.”

The running thing became more frequent. Toni started going out on her own in the morning, with her grandfather hunched behind the wheel of the car, trailing her around their green and leafy neighborhood. Apparently a security detail. This, like much of their lives, was an edict from the unrivaled boss of the extended family, Grandma Loosen. Devout Catholic, bowler, chronic speeder, plain talker, described as “tough as a boiled owl” — very few messed with Toni’s grandma.

Grandma Loosen was outwardly a staunch conservative — there were things that men and boys did, and things that women and girls did. Running around in shorts and competing against boys was definitely not something girls did.

“She put up a little bit of a stink at first, but when she saw that’s what her granddaughter really wanted, she was 100 percent behind it,” Sam said.

Marie, Toni’s mom, had managed to extricate herself from a bad marriage, and was raising two kids on her own. She was used to standing up for herself, and her children.

Toni, Sam said, was of the same mold. “She wasn’t a rule follower — no, I wouldn’t call her that. She was a bit of a rebel, but not for the sake of breaking rules. She wanted to do what she thought was right.”

“I don’t remember a lot of talk about the lawsuit,” Sam said. “But mom was forward thinking as far as civil rights go. She wanted Toni to be able to run, but other girls too. She would go after something like that. She made me go down to the courthouse [during the trial] because she said it was important.”

While he admits to being “out there” in high school, Sam got into road biking later, a pursuit that helped him understand Toni’s love of running. “[The lawsuit] was never self-driven. She was always looking out for other people. She wanted other girls to be able to have that feeling she got from competing.”

A Social Life That Revolved Around Getting in Miles

Tim Heisel lived and breathed the distance guy lifestyle — two-a-days, a social life that revolved around getting in the miles. In other words, he was the perfect training partner.

Pat Lanin, Heisel’s coach and mentor in all things endurance, had just discovered Toni’s incredible potential. But at the time, it seemed she was more devoted to partying than training. Lanin was afraid he’d lose her over the summer.

“We met through Pat. He knew about her ‘extracurriculars.’ He told me she could use someone to run with over the summer because she didn’t believe in it enough to go by herself,” Heisel said. “She was 14 or 15, I was two years older. She was cute, and I was afraid to talk to girls, so this meeting up to run was a plus for me.”

They ran and chatted, and jumped in some road races and AAU all-comer races, Junior Olympics. “When she started winning races, beating women and some men, that’s when she realized what she could do. In the fall, she started listening to Pat, and really pushing herself as a runner.”

According to Heisel, there was zero pushback from the boys on the cross country team when she joined their practices. She had no trouble keeping up in workouts and had an easy, non-threatening attitude. “There weren’t any other girls doing this, but we didn’t see anything wrong with it,” Heisel said. “We were mostly nerds; Toni brought some coolness to the team.”

But if they enjoyed the female presence at practice, they didn’t think much about her absence at meets. “To be honest, it didn’t affect me, and I wasn’t very curious about how she felt [about not being an official team member],” Heisel said.

He graduated the year before Toni filed her lawsuit, and he didn’t remember much of the trial, but looking back, the seeds of activism were there. Actually challenging the high school league rule didn’t come up in their conversations, but Heisel thought such an idea would have found fertile ground with Toni. “She didn’t like following a rule just because it was a rule. I think the state high school rule really pissed her off, and that’s why she was willing to fight them, with vigor. She was competitive in all things; she hated to lose more than she liked to win. That was her personality. And her mom and grandparents really supported her.”

He moved on to St. John’s University, and two years later, Toni matriculated at St. Johns’ sister school, St. Benedict’s, in the well-respected and demanding nursing program. They started dating seriously.

They married when he was 22 and she was 20, and had their first child four months after she graduated. Life was “pretty chaotic.” Toni worked as an obstetric nurse, they fostered some children, and their second child came along 19 months later. “Neither of us even thought about running. That part of our life went on hold. And it wasn’t missed. This was what we wanted and we were plenty fine with it.”

They eventually had three children, and divorced without rancor in 1985. Struggling with drug dependence, Toni returned to running, and later competed in triathlons. Heisel said she never lost her competitive spirit.

A Challenge to Coach

The PE teacher hurried over to talk with Pat Lanin. A 9th-grade girl had just crushed the school record in the 600-yard dash, and since Lanin was the track and cross country coach, she thought he’d be interested. And he was. But they both knew Toni was a handful. She had what Lanin called “an attitude.”

“She was leery of me,” Lanin says, which he attributed to her troubled relationship with her father. She might have great potential but she was certainly a challenge to coach. Of course, the friction may have been a result of their similarities — both were very opinionated. Whatever the source, there was not an immediate meeting of the minds.

At the time, there were hit or miss opportunities for girls to compete — some AAU all-comer track meets (Lanin was president of the Minnesota AAU in the late-1960s), some road races. If they knew of girls who wanted to run, coaches might put together a girls’ race.

Lanin invited Toni to work out with the boys, and gave her workouts she could do on her own. He hadn’t really seen yet what she could do in a race, so he entered her in an all-comer meet that served as a testing ground for the as-yet informal University of Minnesota women’s track team. Toni ran the half-mile, and beat both the university entrants.

“Holy buckets, this kid can run,” was Lanin’s reaction. “She had this short, clipped stride — it was not beautiful, but it got the job done. There were other girls at these races, but what set her apart is that she not only had talent, she had determination and focus. She was a competitor.”

Any opportunity to race, any opportunity to improve, any schedule of workouts, Toni ate it up. She practiced with the boys in the fall of 1971, competing on JV, informally. Of course, she couldn’t run varsity, couldn’t participate in district or state championships where MSHSL rules were more closely monitored. Lanin had to tread lightly around the League. He already had a reputation for going rogue; he couldn’t push too far or he’d be out of a job.

Coach and harriers together transitioned from cross country in November to cross country skiing in December. Again, Toni knew the drill — she could practice with the boys, and race JV, but there could be no appearance of being a legitimate team member.

As far as Lanin knew, this arrangement was working. Until he got a subpoena to appear in court as a witness for one Antoinette St. Pierre.

“She said, ‘I didn’t want to tell you about it [the lawsuit]. I thought you’d be mad.’ I said, ‘I am mad because you didn’t trust me. I’m 110 percent behind you, but I’m still mad.’ The guys on the League were sure I’d put her up to this, but I knew nothing about it until I got that subpoena,” Lanin said.

A Day in Court

The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union combined Toni’s request to participate officially on the boys’ teams with that of Peggy Brenden, a tennis player in St. Cloud. The April (1972) court date had some immediacy, since Brenden was a senior. Toni was finishing her junior year. The MCLU thought, rightly, it would be easier to win a case involving just two girls, rather than an unwieldy class action suit, and one limited to nice, non-contact sports like tennis, running, and skiing. They claimed that since there were no girls’ teams offered in those sports, the girls’ Fourteenth Amendment rights were being violated, i.e. they were discriminated against based on their sex.

Judge Miles Lord, known for protecting average citizens from giant corporations, presided over the case. Lord and Lanin were compatriots, having grown up in the same time period, “dirt poor” on Minnesota’s Iron Range.

At the trial, Lanin recalled, Toni was asked to explain why she wanted to run and ski, and provide proof of her dedication to the sport, and ability to compete at the boys’ level. Lanin’s testimony was supposed to provide that proof, but soon after he took the stand, the questioning took a strange turn.

“They started asking about whether, as a coach, I might have to perform first aid on athletes, boys or girls. Was it possible I’d have to perform first aid on the groin area? It was ridiculous. Judge Lord put a stop to that. The high school league was a good old boys’ club. They didn’t want girls to compete, period. There was no basis in physiology. They just wanted to protect their sports — football, basketball, baseball.”

Immediately after the court’s decision came down granting the two girls full participation, Toni joined Eisenhower High School’s first official girls’ track team, coached by the wrestling coach. She dominated the half-mile during the brief season, and at the state championship, won the 880 Yard Run in 2:18.3, hailed as one of the fastest high school times in the country. The 880 Yard Run was the longest event.

Several months after the trial, Lanin attended a MSHSL meeting of cross country coaches and was “cussed out like I haven’t seen since the marine corps” by members of the league. Convinced of the great harm that could come from girls being allowed on boys’ teams, the MSHSL immediately appealed the decision (it was upheld). No love was lost between Lanin and those members of “the good old boys’ club.” Though, Lanin praised the work of the one female member of the group, .

Though he was not the girls’ track coach, Lanin entered Toni in the 1973 Drake women’s mile, a far more competitive event than Minnesota high school meets. It was the spring of her senior year. She placed third in a personal best time of 5:04. “I was impressed, but she wasn’t happy because she didn’t win,” Lanin said.

An Advocate in��Opposition

Dorothy McIntyre pointed out that both sides in a court case are motivated by the desire to do the right thing. And in fact, though they’re cast in opposition, they often want the same thing. It would be natural to assume that Dorothy, a member of the league that fought against Toni’s lawsuit, was opposed to girls’ sports. But it would be wrong. Even Pat Lanin agreed, few have done more for girls’ sports in Minnesota than Dorothy McIntyre.

She started teaching high school in 1957, when the Girls Athletic Association provided fun activities for girls whenever the boys weren’t using the gym or track. Competition, aggressive play, and actually striving to win or improve were considered unseemly and harmful, to be avoided, she told PodiumRunner. So, Wilma Rudolph’s stunning performances in 1960 were indeed surprising given the attitude about competitive sports, and doubly stupefying when sports officials wondered aloud why there were so few other U.S. women out there winning gold medals.

In response, high school teachers were trained to be coaches. Dorothy was one of the first such persons, organizing a girls’ gymnastics program at Eden Prairie High School, and meets with other schools. Gradually through the 1960s, intramural and extramural programs popped up, and interest grew from the grass roots — the girls.

“Girls were coming up to me asking for more — more sports, more opportunities to play. They wanted to play like the boys,” Dorothy said. In the fall of 1968, she made a proposal to the all-male high school league to institute girls’ interscholastic sports. There were skeptics about whether girls could mentally or physically handle sports, but also the realization that the budget to hire coaches and buy equipment was going to have to come partly from boys’ sports, and facilities too would have to be shared. It was a hard pill to swallow for those who for decades had enjoyed the whole sports pie. Maybe because they saw that girls’ sports was inevitable, the MSHSL voted 32-0 in favor of establishing girls’ interscholastic sports. They hired Dorothy in 1970 to head that project up.

To say she was starting from scratch would be an understatement. Trying to find interested and qualified people to coach even a few sports, to establish the same sports in enough schools to hold competitions, accommodating girls at the beginning level of a sport along with those, like Toni, who were ready and hungry for much higher level competition — it was daunting to say the least. But still, the steepest hurdle and the hardest to change was the societal attitude that girls couldn’t or shouldn’t do sports.

Track and field was chosen as the easiest to pull off and the most likely to sway those stubborn attitudes. Most schools had a track, running was not skills intensive, it was non-contact (basketball, while popular, could be a bit rough), and girls had been exposed to elements of track and field in PE class. By 1971, just a year after Dorothy started, there was an embryonic track season for girls, and by the beginning of 1972, the first official girls’ track program, with qualifying meets and a state championship, was on the schedule for that spring. That’s when the MSHSL was apprised of two girls’ lawsuits.

“Our responsibility was to encourage girls to participate in sports, and schools to provide them that opportunity. Our responsibility was to all girls, not just a few of the most talented,” Dorothy said.

The MSHSL opposed Toni and Peggy’s request because they saw three scenarios resulting from it, all of them deleterious to their goal of establishing girls’ interscholastic sports. One, if a few talented girls like Toni were allowed to join the boys’ team, there would be little incentive for schools to create a girls’ team. Second, if schools didn’t form a girls’ team there would be no opportunities for the vast number of girls who were not experienced or talented enough to compete on the boys’ team. And third, if girls were allowed to join boys’ teams, there would be nothing stopping boys from migrating to girls’ teams, which would also diminish opportunities for girls.

“Pat Lanin wanted to help one young woman run; I wanted that young woman to stand on the podium at a girls’ state championship,”�� Dorothy said. “Looking back, I do regret the way it turned out for girls like Toni, who were ready for high level competition before we could provide it. In a sense though, the lawsuit was an opportunity for the courts to carve out an exception for those girls. What needed to happen did happen.”

About a month after facing Toni in court, Dorothy watched her top the podium at the first Girls’ State Track Championship. She doesn’t recall any conversation with Toni, just an overwhelming sense of triumph. In 1975, Minnesota passed its own version of Title IX that allowed girls to participate on boys’ teams whether there was a girls’ team or not; but boys could not join girls’ teams. Today, Minnesota has 18 girls’ interscholastic sports, the most of any state.

“I’m a historian. I know the only way anything changes is by women rebelling against the status quo,” Dorothy said. “Many have felt we [the MSHSL] have been in that position of maintaining the status quo. I respect and admire the young women who held their own on that.”

An Odd And Messy Postscript

In the fall of 1972, the first opportunity to take advantage of her legal victory and compete officially on the boys’ cross country team, Toni chose not to.

An October 4, 1972 article in the Minneapolis Tribune explained: Just before the season started, Murrae Freng of the MSHSL informed Toni of a new rule that barred athletes (it was directed at boys) from participating simultaneously in an AAU sport and their high school program. The rule, Freng told the Tribune, “will open up opportunities for more kids to compete in organized sports because high school athletes will not be taking part in other programs.”

That reasoning was murky at best, the timing was oddly coincidental to Toni’s first season on the boys’ team. Murrae Freng has passed away, and Dorothy McIntyre doesn’t recall the discussion around it. Lanin too didn’t remember this rule, though it effectively clawed back the rights he’d helped Toni win in groundbreaking fashion just four months earlier.

She had to choose — AAU women’s cross country or Hopkin’s boys’ cross country. Over the previous three years, she’d been heavily involved in AAU and Junior Olympics because it was national in scope and provided better competition. AAU cross country consisted of US regional meets, and a national championship, like today’s NXN and Footlocker, but was open to women of all ages. Toni told the Tribune that the only reason she ran with the boys’ cross country team was to gain competitive experience for the national AAU meet. She chose AAU. But there were workarounds. She worked out with the Hopkins boys, and ran some meets unofficially, as she had in the past. And more meets were adding a girls’ race, including the longstanding in Duluth that she won handily that fall, covering the hilly 1.5-mile course in 8:36.

But under close scrutiny by the MSHSL, Lanin eventually shut down even her informal participation with the boys’ team. The Tribune reported, though sad about the turn of events, Toni was “still practicing and working — washing dishes two afternoons a week at a nursing home and being an aide at the home from 10:30pm to 7am on Friday and Saturday nights — to earn money to go to the AAU cross country meet in California.”

Optimistic, feisty, a rebel and a realist, Toni saw what was possible for herself and other girls, what was worth fighting for. She experienced the thrill of winning, both on the course and in the courtroom. But as a teenage veteran of the sports system, she saw more clearly than most how tenuous her rights, women’s rights, were. Even hard-fought victories could be taken away. She wondered about her right to compete in cross country skiing to the Tribune, “I’m scared they’ll change that too. I have this dream that something will happen just before the season starts.”

As it turned out, Toni did compete on Eisenhower boys’ cross country skiing (it was too new a sport to be included in the high school league’s rule), placing as high as 4th according to Coach Lanin. And not one to let an opportunity go by, she also skied in USSA meets, earning a spot on the US women’s B team.

Toni was inducted into Eisenhower High School Athletic Hall of Fame, and was honored for her advocacy at the 2013 Minnesota Girls and Women in Sports Day. Maybe closest to Toni’s heart, close enough to chafe her competitiveness, Tim Heisel said, was when their daughter, competing for Boston College, ran a 4:59 mile. Toni had never quite been able to dip under the 5:00 mark.

The post Toni St. Pierre Just Wanted to Run appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Our earthly temples are designed for self-preservation, hard-wired for survival, with innate responses that kick in automatically when things get inconsistent with, you know, life. Sometimes those responses are inconvenient — spiking a blazing fever, for example — and unreasonable, given that you’re on a once-in-a-lifetime trek in Bhutan. But even through the delirium you can appreciate that your body is actually saving your hide. Short term, you feel like you’ve been trampled by yaks, but ultimately, infection is not fatal.����

Of course, these physiological responses were written into the human program long before we had marathons or even ran for recreation. I’ve encountered some bodily responses, either through observation or personal experience, that have all the hideously graphic short-term downsides, but seemingly no redeeming upside. They make no sense. It’s almost as if your body was actively making the situation worse.

Example? Vomiting and diarrhea as a response to dehydration. Wouldn’t the old Central Liquids Department, in times of drought, quash any reaction so flagrantly wasteful of precious fluids? If the water level is already low, why on earth would the natural response be to pump the remaining ounces out in explosive fashion as a means of self-preservation?

Other things I put in the “counterintuitive responses” category are sleeplessness as a response to hard training, and inflammation that double dips as both a response to and a cause of injury. I dumped these perplexing problems out on Ross Tucker’s desk and said, Explain. He’s the sport scientist of website and podcast fame, and particularly skilled at speaking high-level physiology using short, easy words. I supplied the dubious theories — things I heard from a friend of a friend of some guy —�� and the head scratching questions; Tucker supplied the clear, smart, white-coated answers. That’s the division of labor you will observe in the following examination of counterintuitive responses.

Spoiler: our bodies are indeed very clever, and user error may play a role in bad outcomes.

Counterintuitive Response #1: Vomiting and Diarrhea in Hot Weather

As anyone who has run or watched a hot weather race can probably attest to, . “A good number of those cases are wrongly attributed to dehydration, when they’re more likely acute overhydration, combined with exertion,” Tucker stepped right into it, via email from his home in South Africa.

If you’ve got enough liquid to hurl, or poop firehose fashion, you’re not dehydrated, according to Tucker. Humans are designed to lose fluid over prolonged exercise without harm.

“On average, people doing endurance exercise will lose weight [technically dehydrated], and be perfectly fine,” Tucker said. “We know this because only about 0.8% to 1% of runners end up needing medical attention. But 80% to 95% of the runners lose weight. They are dehydrated with zero consequences. That’s because the body is not regulating weight, it’s regulating sodium concentration, and it’s quite happy for a short term increase in salt levels caused by dehydration, provided it’s not ridiculous, because we are able to regulate sodium in much more complex ways than just fluid.”

Clinical dehydration happens of course, Tucker says, just not in exercise scenarios, and certainly not during a race where there’s a drinks station every five kilometers. In fact, it’s those frequent drinks stations that may cause vomiting and diarrhea.

“It’s known that exercise can make us nauseous,” Tucker said. “That’s probably a result of the metabolic processes and changes that happen because of exercise — changes in pH levels, salt levels, and blood pressure being the main culprits. We send blood away from the gut during exercise, because our bodies are smart — they know we don’t need to absorb nutrients and fluids while we are exercising. It’s not a priority. So, when we force fluid on our guts, they just aren’t prepared or capable of dealing with it.” Ergo, rejection.

Just to muddy the water a bit, while pouring gels or liquids into a nauseous stomach is to blame, dehydration may be a factor in the nausea. Tucker explained.

“The exertion of exercise plus mild to moderate dehydration causes a rise in blood sodium levels, a condition called hypernatremia.�� It’s important to note that hypernatremia is the normal response to exercise, particularly prolonged exercise. [Again, a condition that’s not dangerous unless the athlete went days completely without fluid, e.g. ] I raise this because people think that sweating a lot causes us to lose salt and thus, salt levels would decrease. But that doesn’t happen because, very importantly, our sweat has a lower sodium concentration than our plasma. So we can only ever drive the sodium content of our plasma up as a result of sweating. We are always going to lose relatively more water than salt as a result of sweating.����

“In any event, this hypernatremia might, in some people, contribute to nausea, that develops over the course of a marathon or long race. Then, when that person ingests too much fluid, say a single drink of 500ml or more, or the 40 fluid ounces that some people still foolishly recommend during exercise, the body, already nauseous thanks to the hypernatremia, rejects the fluid and they throw up.��

“That’s not dehydration causing the vomiting, per se, but it kind of contributes to it because the dehydration, which is not a bad thing, might cause hypernatremia which contributes to nausea, in which fluid can’t be tolerated.”

Whew. So, vomiting and diarrhea are not a response to dehydration, but rather, a response to over-hydration + exercise-induced nausea. “Our bodies are plenty smart. We’re foolish for trying to make them do something unnecessary.”

In other words, user error.

Counterintuitive Response #2: Training-Induced Insomnia

Now for the second counterintuitive response: why is the inability to sleep a response to hard training? It seems that you would sleep more than usual to keep up with increased training.��

First off, Tucker explains there’s a difference between being fatigued and being sleepy. In the case of training-induced insomnia, your body is fatigued, but not sleepy.

“When we train hard, the signal that makes us ‘sleepier’ is the cytokines that are part of the inflammatory response to training. Sleepiness, however, is complex, and those cytokines are but one contributor. You might have that signal in abundance, but other things are overwhelming the sleep mechanisms. For instance, pain. Chronic pain especially, from the muscles and joints can prevent sleep. The main one, though, is the persistent heightening of the sympathetic nervous system, because we’ve trained ourselves to the point of being stuck in a persistent sympathetic response.”

Sympathetic response — increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, awash in cortisol, fight-or-flight preparation — is designed for short-term use.��

“The cortisol levels are high, we are trying to control inflammation, trying to restore the body to some kind of resting balanced state, and the prolonged stress of doing that is what then prevents sleep.��In simplified terms, we’re over-aroused and can’t sleep.”

Sleepiness is the body’s answer to the damage that exercise incurs, but we can override this regulatory response. Tucker provided an anecdote from our knuckle-dragging ancestors to explain why this ability to override sleep signals came about.

“Let’s say we were migrating, or dealing with extreme weather situations plus predators, etc. We’d need to be alert and have readiness to survive pretty much all the time.��Being excessively sleepy might have been disastrous. So we can shut off sleep for the sake of survival.

“Now our survival very rarely depends on our ability to be awake more, but the physiology underpinning it is the same. That sleep-deprivation capacity we had, mediated by the sympathetic nervous system, was never meant to be a prolonged one. It was a short duration, just until we could escape the situation. But things like persistent hard training keep us in that physiological state.”

So sleeplessness is your body’s way of indicating it’s blown past normal sleepiness, and is in survival mode, something you may not have realized. It’s a waving red flag. A precursor, Tucker said, to Force Quit: “At some point the body will begin to shut down or cut out the processes essential to life in an attempt to help us recover.”��

Again, user error.

Counterintuitive Response #3: Inflammation

Finally, the third counterintuitive response — inflammation. Inflammation double dips in that it’s the body’s response to injury. But once present, florid and bloated and loud, it starts pressing on boundaries and causing friction and, in general, further bollixing up the situation it was originally called in to fix. Helpful? I think not.

Tucker sorts it out.

“So, inflammation is healing. As you know, inflammation involves a number of processes whose ultimate goal is to remove damage, then repair damage, then restore normal function. And it works beautifully most of the time. Even in animals, injuries are not fatal, because of inflammation. It’s effective and elegant 99% of the time, if not more.”����

Just so you get the message in no uncertain terms, Tucker said, after injury, chemicals that sensitize nerve endings flood into the site and then inflammation/swelling presses on the already sensitized nerve endings. Ouch. Ideally, you heed the pain, stop doing the thing that caused the injury, and inflammation moves on to phase II of the healing process.

“However, if we don’t respond, in either a behavioral sense, or at a metabolic level, and the inflammation is either excessive in intensity or duration, then the very things that help us begin to harm us. I always use the analogy of a city struck by an earthquake. The first thing that should be done afterward is to clear out the rubble, maybe knock down a few damaged buildings, in order to clear the way for reconstruction. But imagine something goes wrong and the wrecking balls and the dump trucks are too aggressive, or stay there too long. The earthquake damage [primary injury] is added to by the inflammation damage [secondary injury].

“If we continue to cause damage, the signal that brought those dump trucks and wrecking balls there in the first place is never removed. We keep signaling them to work, we keep the pressure on our immune systems to clear out the damage, and so we get persistent inflammation. Then a mild injury becomes a moderate one, then a severe one, like in the case of shin splints, or a muscle strain that starts out as a little twinge and ends up a chronic tendinopathy.”

In Summary��

And there you have it. The physiological programming, it turns out, is not haywire. There may not be an upside to vomiting or insomnia or shin splints. They are indeed making a bad situation worse, and that’s to purpose. Because some ninny has not read the user manual.

Tucker defends the physiological programming: “We have regulation of normal physiology, even for very stressful situations — prolonged exercise without fluid, acute or chronic injury, or very hard exercise that makes us hungry for sleep. But we kind of force things on ourselves — drinking more than needed, or training despite lack of sleep, or continuing to train despite injury and pain — and responses designed to help us instead cause problems. Our stupidity, ironically, turns the body’s ‘cleverness’ into a disadvantage.”

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Let’s say you’re coming back from patellar realignment surgery. Or a stress fracture, or a — something that kept you out of action for more than four weeks. Just like training, returning from injury is highly individual, maddeningly non-linear, and clouded with uncertainty. Two steps forward, one back. And then a sideways slide?

Even if you’re working with a physical therapist, things come up and decisions have to be made on the fly. Should you run? If it hurts a little? Is that stiffness? What’s normal?

What’s needed is a Return To Running decision tree, an algorithm that follows every twist and turn of the recovery dance. I was given such a thing by Krystan Coyle, a physical therapist with Twin Cities Orthopedics in Minnesota, as I rehabbed from patellar realignment. It was enormously helpful, and so practical I found myself consulting it almost daily in the months it took to get back to my pre-surgery level of running. I rang Krystan up to talk about the provenance of the Return To Running guide.

She was quick to point out that this guide was a mashup of a protocol devised by in Boston, and other evidence-based information gleaned from the years of practice of the therapists at Twin Cities Orthopedics who specialize in running.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite to anything that looks like running is the ability to walk for 30 minutes, and do everyday activities like climbing stairs, standing for a period of time, and getting into and out of chairs with a pain level no more than 2 out of 10.

Another prerequisite, according to the RTR guide, was being able to complete a large number of double- and single-leg hops that mimic the landing and pushing off of running. Krystan amended this part of the program in my case, in favor of 30 single-leg calf raises per leg.

Two other caveats, Krystan added: Swelling should be gone or minimal before embarking on running since it impedes normal motion; and those returning from a stress reaction or stress fracture should work with a nutritionist to ensure they’re meeting energy needs as they return to running. This will reduce the risk of re-injury.

First Jogs

All those prerequisites met? Fine, you’re ready to jog. For one minute. On a flat, even surface. Like a treadmill. Though it’s not mentioned explicitly, every phase of this program is inherently a patience-building opportunity. Though progress is the game, players must accept that there will be many go back one spaces, some lose a turns, but hopefully not a return to start.

The planned progression looks like this:

Exciting, huh? These 30-minute “workout” stages are to be done every other day. That allows you to assess your body’s reaction both during the 30-minute activity and in the 24 hours following. Begin and end each 30-minute session with 5 minutes of walking. Off days can involve walking, 30 minutes of non-impact cardio, or total rest. You should be able to accomplish the stage without pain before advancing to the next one. Again, rate of progress is highly individual, and your path will very likely involve some returns to a previous stage.

Tightness Evaluation → Action

Some muscle soreness and tightness is to be expected. Here’s what to do…

If tightness is experienced → stop and stretch the affected area for 30 seconds → resume stage

If tightness returns → stretch again → resume stage

If tightness is not alleviated by stretching and affects your running form → stop running, walk remainder of 30 minutes → next time, go back to previous stage → advance to next stage when you can complete the current stage with a normal stride

Pain Evaluation → Action

There’s tightness and there’s pain. Let’s talk about pain. Here’s what to do…

If pain is noted at the start of activity, but goes away within 10 minutes → complete the 30-minute stage that day → next time, stay at the same stage until it can be done pain-free

If pain is evident at the start of activity and remains after 10 minutes or gets worse → stop running for the day, ice for 20 minutes → return to previous stage the next workout day

If pain is noted after the 30-minute activity → gently stretch the affected area, ice for 20 minutes → next time, go back to previous stage → advance when no pain is noted during or after activity

If pain comes on at night or wakes you up → return to previous state the next workout day

If pain is evident in the morning → return to previous stage the next workout day even if pain diminishes as the day goes on

If pain moves around and does not change your stride → continue workout for the day → next workout day, you may advance to the next stage but keep pace easy

If pain is sharp and in a constant location → stop running for the day → take two rest days, resume at previous level preferably on a soft surface

Pain That is Okay

In general, pain that allows you to continue running that day and maintain rehab level, is:

• General muscle soreness
• Slight joint discomfort after workout or next day that is gone in 24 hours
• Slight stiffness at beginning of run or walk that dissipates after first 10 minutes
• Pain that is generalized or moves around

Pain That is Not Okay

Pain that requires cessation of running for the day, rest and a cautious return at a lower stage, is pain that:

• Keeps you awake at night
• Evident at beginning of the 30-minute session, doesn’t diminish, and may become worse
• Changes your stride
• Is accompanied by swelling in joint
• Is sharp and consistent in location

Continuous and Consecutive Runs

After completing Stage 4 pain-free, continue to decrease walk breaks until you can run 30 minutes consecutively, every other day. That marks a new phase — congrats! — of gradually longer runs every other day, and after 8 weeks, back-to-back days of running. Off days can involve non-impact cardio, walking, or rest. Like the earlier walk/jog stages, the progression below is a general outline and should not be thought of as linear.

Run multiple days in a row after 8 weeks.

Cadence and Pace

This new phase allows you to manipulate more variables, one of which is cadence, or steps per minute. Krystan recommended increasing cadence before pace, particularly for those returning from a tibial stress fracture, because a shorter, quicker stride reduces the stress of ground contact through the lower leg. You can increase cadence without increasing pace. Aim for about 170 steps per minute, which, coincidentally, is about the same as your most upbeat playlist.

Pace during recovery, in general, should be slower than your typical pace, increasing gradually. In the progression above, duration remains the same for three runs, you run for 30 minutes three times before bumping up to 35 minutes. Increase your pace slightly with each of those 30-minute runs, e.g. 9:00 pace the first 30-minute session, 8:45 the next, and 8:30 the third time, if you were a 8:00-8:30 min per mile runner pre-injury. When you increase to 35 minutes of running, drop the pace back down to 8:30 – 9:00. Again though, try to keep quick cadence.

Pain, Redux

As in the earlier stages, adjust the program based on pain during or in the 24 hours following your runs. At this point, there are more ways to do that.

If pain is noted during a run → stop, stretch, walk for 5 minutes → resume running

If pain remains longer than 10 minutes or worsens → stop running for the day, next workout day decrease duration of the run, or increase rest days between runs, or split the run into two shorter runs separated by 6 to 8 hours, e.g. a 40-minute run becomes two 20-minute runs, one in the morning, the other in the evening

If pain is noted after the run or the next day → next time, decrease duration of run, or increase rest days between runs, or split the run into two shorter runs separated by 6 to 8 hours, e.g. a 40-minute run becomes two 20-minute runs, one in the morning, the other in the evening

Running Into the Sunset

When you reach the holy grail of running multiple days in a row:

• As you increase the number of runs per week, decrease the duration of each run. So, if you ran 3 x 45 minutes in a week, when you increase to 5x per week, start out at 25 – 35 minutes each time.
• Increase weekly volume by no more than 10% per week.
• Continue to exercise willingness to step back in duration or pace, or add rest days, if pain develops.

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In 2000, a ginger-haired 12-year-old named Bria Wetsch won the women’s open division of the Hennepin Lake Classic 10K.��

This past December , 32-year-old Bria Wetsch sheared over 7 minutes off her marathon best, placing tenth in 2:29:50.��

The always-elfin fireball found what she wanted early in life, latched onto it, dreamed big, and worked hard. Now she’s living that dream.��

Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Girls who jump from primary school to the podium, more so than other demographics, find themselves in a harsh spotlight: yes there’s wonder and applause, but also scrutiny and speculation. It’s a lot to heap on narrow shoulders. That weight, public opinion they innocently drew, uniquely shapes child stars’ paths.

Early Running Stardom

The oldest of three siblings in Chaska, Minnesota, Wetsch was, admittedly, a type-A character from the get-go, driven to perfection in school, sports, everything. When her dad took up running, 11-year-old Wetsch asked to go along. The two hit some local road races — 5Ks and 10Ks — and she placed well, not just in her age group, but in the open division.��

“I liked the freedom of running. You just lace up your shoes and head out the door,” Wetsch says of her start in the sport. “It felt like meditation, even though I didn’t know what meditation was then. And it was fun! I wouldn’t say that after a few years, but early on it was. It was exciting to have this new thing that I was really good at, and to keep improving and finding out more about myself.”��

She came into 7th grade a comparatively seasoned competitor and made the varsity cross country squad at Chaska High School. But already, perfectionism combined with a 12-year-old’s view on how to “do running right” was a recipe for disordered eating.

“I was stubborn,” Wetsch admits. “I thought I knew best, and that everyone else was out to get me.”�� How to improve? More mileage, more discipline — done and done — so she landed on another factor within her control — maintaining a tiny body. She started eating less, restricting calories, and cutting out fat and sugar.

Fortunately, Wetsch’s parents recognized what was going on and the health risks it posed. “They’d tell me I couldn’t run if I didn’t eat enough, but sometimes I snuck out anyway to go for a run. I was hospitalized — that scared some sense into me. My family and my coaches helped me through it. I had some injuries when I came back, but eventually I figured it out; that the better I fueled, the better I felt, and by senior year I could see that in my results.”��

Game-faced, she embarked on a spectacular high school campaign that included a Minnesota state cross country championship accomplished in course record time, three state 3200-meter titles, a win at 1600 meters and two runner-up finishes, top-10 finishes at Foot Locker and USA Junior Cross Country, and as a senior, a Nike Outdoor National 2-Mile title in 10:10.50�� —�� then the second fastest time in the country.��

“I had huge goals — I thought I’d go to Oregon and be a pro runner and be in the Olympics,” says Wetsch. “I wanted to run a marathon. I told my brother and sister I was going to be the best in the world, and they were like, ‘Okay.’ I thought by now I’d have retired as a runner and be a partner at a CPA firm, that it was going to be a straight path.”

Excited about her future in running, Wetsch and her dad created a website where people could follow her progress. It was called something like Watch Bria Run, she can’t remember exactly.��

“We got all this shit for it. Comments along the lines of, ‘someone needs to hold her back.’ That was sad. I don’t know what it is — I don’t necessarily think people want to see young girls fail,” notes Wetsch. “Maybe it’s exciting to see someone rise and fall. Young girls fading away is a story we keep writing. I heard all these things — this is what’s going to happen, be careful — and became focused on that. Any article written about me had that spin on it, and I didn’t like it. It’s a story we’ve created, invented really, that young girls have to face this obstacle of burning out. It’s ridiculous to me that we choose to focus on that.”

The public pessimism only strengthened her resolve. A little less innocent, a little more guarded, her stellar senior year was confirmation she was on the right track. She just had to work hard and stay tough. Despite being hampered by injuries at Oregon, she made the traveling team every year and was a top contributor at the distances in track and cross country, and in five years, graduated with a Masters in Accounting. Impressive by any metric, but her collegiate career fell short of the stratospheric trajectory she’d planned.��

Road Bumps

“When I first started running, there was no internet, I didn’t know what other people were doing, I just did what I thought was right,” says Wetsch. “In college, I compared myself to others, to what I’d done in the past, and what I thought I should be doing. The anxiety before races was so great, I’d hope that somehow the race wouldn’t happen. I set myself up to reach these goals and if I didn’t, I perceived myself as failing. Early on, I ran balls to the wall, no fear, but in college, I was scared of failing. I didn’t want to be the girl everyone said I would be. The goal was not to succeed any more, but to not fail. That’s not a good way to go about things. There were a lot of other things going on at that time — I struggled with depression — and that all got tied up together.”

But she kept her foot on the pedal. After all, being a top runner, an endurance runner, wasn’t supposed to be easy. You had to be tough. There were bright spots at Oregon — classes she enjoyed, and good times with friends and teammates. In 2011, Wetsch graduated, passed on two remaining seasons of eligibility, and took an accounting job in Portland. It felt like she was back on track, an independent woman, working, training, and focused on qualifying for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials.��

“Deep down I felt like I had unfinished business, untapped potential, and I wanted to delve into that. I ran the Twin Cities Marathon and had a blast, just like I’d dreamed of.” Wetsch ran 2:44 on little training and decided that the marathon was her “thing.” It got her to wondering how much better she could be if she really focused on it. The conventional pro runner path was to join a group, and train at altitude, two-a-days, all running, all the time. She quit her job and moved to Mammoth.����

Some people thrive on a singular focus. Wetsch did not. Having only running — no work, no classes — served to emphasize what wasn’t going right. It was easy to pinpoint the physical pain in her heels, every step a jagged edge, but the mental torment of a broken way of thinking was harder to diagnose. She did what any Type A, driven person would: doubled down, worked harder, endured more. For four years.

“Running defined me and my happiness. I kept thinking if I ran 75 minutes in the half, that would make me happy. Then when it didn’t happen, I got more sad and frustrated. I thought maybe everyone feels like this, and I’m just not tough enough. I couldn’t admit I was in physical pain because if I admitted it, I would lose my threshold, my ability to endure. I wore it as a badge — Oh I’m tough. I have this high threshold of pain.”

She tried platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, she took breaks, but the pain was still there. Somewhere along the way,�� pain started to be a normal part of life as a competitive runner. That running could be pleasant and fun, well, that was a silly idea left behind along with trapper keepers and sleepovers.

“I didn’t know how to trust my own body. It’s hard to think about how long I spent, it makes me very sad. I was running to prove everyone wrong, to prove I was going to be successful. At first it was gradual, and then in my face — something needed to change. It was such a low point, there really could be no wrong decision.”

She left Mammoth in 2016, moved to Colorado with her then-boyfriend (now, fiance), and in 2017, had double achilles surgery.��

From Child Star to Adult Runner

And that was the inflection point. When child star Bria Wetsch became adult runner Bria Wetsch, when she started owning running instead of the other way around. She rediscovered the freedom and joy that had first ignited her sixth grade self.

“It’s only been in the past four years, since I left Mammoth, that I’ve been able to turn my mental health around. I got a job in accounting, 30 hours a week, so I have more balance in my life. And I was running just to run, so grateful to be pain-free. That’s when things turned around.”

And turn around they did. Just 13 months after surgery, Wetsch ran CIM in a new PR of 2:37:16. The remarkable aspect of that performance was not the miraculously quick return from injury, nor the pro-level pace. It was the pain-free part. Free from achilles pain, and free from equally debilitating fear and anxiety.������

Working with Matt Hensley of, she focused on enjoying the day-to-day-training and staying healthy. “I like the Yoda line — ‘You must unlearn what you have learned,'” Hensley says. “Running is so quantitative, it’s easy for your times and places to become your identity. We tried to rewire, to be mindful of thoughts and feelings when we assessed training, and focus on process.”��

Free of the weight of expectation, her own and others’, Wetsch soared. Tenth American at 2019 Boston Marathon, then 2:37:58 — scaring her PR — on the hilly 2020 Olympic Trials Marathon, and in December, the eye-opening 2:29:50.

That massive seven-plus-minute PR was accomplished with what was in her experience astoundingly low mileage — just two weeks over 90 miles, most at 75.��

“If you had asked Bria of even five years ago if I could do that, I would have said, ‘No way! I need to do more mileage,’” Wetsch said. “I thought I had to outwork everybody. But my views on life, and on mental health have changed. I need to be happy and believe in myself, and enjoy the journey and things will come together. In my 20s, I was so caught up in what others were doing without regard to what I wanted or needed to do. Now I do trail runs in the mountains. I would never have done that in my 20s — too slow!�� I’m not so caught up in mileage and paces.”

She credits meditation — even ten minutes of stillness, shutting out the noise from outside — with being able to trust that what she’s doing and feeling is right. Like her audacious, high-flying, 12-year-old self.

“That’s not to say I’m not training hard, that I don’t have goals, but there’s so much more to life than fast times. I run in gorgeous places, not always on a flat, safe road. I try to draw more out of running than just a performance.”

Advice to the Next Phenoms: “Anything is Possible”

There’s a girl out there somewhere, maybe 11-and-a-half years old, discovering that she’s really good at running. Looking back at her own long road, Wetsch would tell the next phenom that there will be peaks and valleys, that the road won’t always be straight. She’d counsel her to practice mental health with as much dedication as physical. But mostly she’d encourage big, big dreams — sky’s the limit.��

“I want the message to be: anything is possible,” said the grown up child star. “You might want something different when you’re 20 than you did at 12. Or you might still be running and loving it. Anything’s possible.”

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In an interview following his upset win at the XC Town USA Meet of Champions on Nov. 14, Mason Ferlic mentioned how the Terre Haute, Indiana course had always been good to him. While it’s true that Ferlic had achieved All-American finishes on the course for the University of Michigan in 2013 and 2015, and was part of the 2016 Wolverine team that took the NCAA cross country title there, his first experience with the Terre Haute course wasn’t a particularly pleasant one.

As a freshman in 2011, he’d come dead last at NCAAs; 252nd out of 252 finishers. And the day was not over. On the bus ride back to Ann Arbor he overheard some seniors talking to the coach about the results. Coming to his name at the very bottom of the list, they said, “Dang, he shouldn’t even be here.”

Ferlic, now 27 and an Olympic hopeful (hopeful that the 2021 Olympics will happen at all and that he’ll be a part of Team USA) in the steeplechase, has had plenty of spectacular falls, literal and figurative.��

“But I don’t want to be portrayed as the victim of disappointment,” Ferlic texted before we spoke. “They didn’t really weigh me down.”

It was a perfect example of the resilience I wanted to talk with him about. Not about falls and disappointments, but about getting back up. It’s a learned skill, like hurdling. In his own words, Ferlic shared what he’s learned about getting up, practical measures any hopeful can employ.

The Fall: Freshman Hero

“I was the small school [Minnesota] cross country champion, winner of the mile and two-mile my senior year, coming into a D1 powerhouse. I was going to prove to myself and to everyone that I belonged there. Crushed every workout. Let everyone else determine how hard I ran. The freshman hero? I was that guy. Yes, I clawed my way to a traveling spot as a freshman which was something, but by the time we got to NCAAs [cross country championships in Terre Haute] I was fried at both ends. I was an empty shell, mentally and physically. Thus, 252nd place.”

Getting Up: Learning to Tune-Inward

“Getting last was certainly a reality check. I took a step back — actually, I had to because I had a stress fracture — and realized I had to get good at my own pace. I was still 18 and trying to hop in with the top dogs. I had to get control of how things were going. I guess it was sort of a nirvana or self-awareness thing. Anyway, running day-to-day on my timeline, my trajectory not someone else’s. It’s the race that matters, not crushing every day. That’s helped me every year since.”

The Fall: Winning Cross Training

“Sophomore year [2012 into 2013] I had an achilles injury and, later, mono. I was completely sidelined, so I cross trained like a fiend. For six weeks, I crushed it on the bike and in the pool. I thought, ‘I’m going to come out of this even stronger.’ All those horrible hours on the bike and in the pool were not worth it. It just burned me out mentally. Sometimes cross training like crazy is lack of confidence, fear that you won’t be able to get that fitness back. I’ve always been confident and enjoyed the process of training on the track. I realized I’d be better served by riding out injury, letting my body heal so I could work hard on the track, not the bike.”

Getting Up: A Blessing in Disguise��

“That long layoff was a blessing in disguise — that’s how I was introduced to the steeple. In the spring of 2013 I did some 5Ks but I was still so fatigued from mono, there was no way I was going to qualify for Big Tens. My coach suggested I try the steeple. I had no desire to race it, but this was my ticket. I won that first race in 8:50, which was then the second-fastest time in the Big Ten. I thought, okay, I’m going to be a steeplechaser.” ��

The Fall: Literally��

“By 2015, I’d won some Big Ten titles, had been All-American. I thought, I’m going to compete with the best guys in the country [in the steeple]. Up to then, my trajectory had been pretty linear so I thought it was a given that as I got older, I’d get better. I got kind of complacent. I didn’t think I had to worry about getting over the barriers any more, so I started skipping steeple drills. I didn’t practice going over the water. I thought I was past that. About three laps in at [Track] Nationals, I clipped the top of the water barrier, and in slow motion, realized I was diving head first into six inches of water. I must have done some kind of somersault — all I know is that I was completely submerged. I got up and started running but I was drenched, embarrassed, and disoriented. In front of this big crowd at Hayward Field. ”

Getting Up: Good is in The Details

“Because of that, I came into my senior year with a totally different mentality.�� I was exceptionally focused — my teammates would say I was a hardnose — about doing the small things, the things I needed to do to get 100 percent out of myself. So, yes, I did the steeple practice and the water pit. I stretched, foam rolled, iced. Never a fan of the weight room, but I went in the weight room. We won the Big Ten title in cross country, and [in spring 2016] I won the NCAA title in the steeple, definitely the highlight of my collegiate career.”

The Fall: “Just Running” Gets Dull��

“I’d graduated with a Master’s [in aerospace engineering] in 2016, and had signed a pro contract with Nike. I stayed in Ann Arbor with my college coach, Kevin Sullivan. Ran a bit with Nick Willis but primarily with the college guys. I was the volunteer assistant coach but I wasn’t working, I just ran. I got very bored, very quickly. My friends had full-time jobs. I’d run in the morning and think, now what am I going to do for ten hours?”

Getting Up: Finding Balance

“Luckily I got a part-time job in the performance research lab at the University. Later, that became a full-time job as the lab manager. I really need stimulation outside of running. It keeps me even keeled, balanced.”

The Fall: Doom Scrolling

“My pro career was up and down, but mostly down in 2017 and 2018. There were glimmers of hope followed by long periods of nothingness, injuries. I started comparing myself to everyone I wanted to beat, and got caught up in how other people were training, scrolling through social media. I thought, this is my job now — I should be doing more mileage, training harder, more than other people.”

Getting Up: Taking Social Media Breaks

“I had to find my love of the sport again. Part of that was deleting Instagram and Twitter at certain parts of the year. In fact, I had to re-download it to post something about this last race in�� Terre Haute. And not seeing other people’s posts made it easier to take a day off every week. I’ve been doing that for the last year. A day when you don’t have to think about training has been hugely valuable. I’m more focused, more efficient on the six days I do run, and it’s really hard to overtrain. I also take three to four weeks at the end of the season with barely any running.”

The Fall: A Deluge of Injuries, Abandonment by Sponsor, and a Pandemic��

“I was in great shape at the end of the season 2019. I was enjoying racing, had raced internationally including [Country], and thought this last meet in Croatia would be the time I’d finally break my PR, set back in 2016. I tripped going over a normal hurdle, really ate shit, dislocated my shoulder, hobbled a bit, and dropped out. Next day my knee swelled to the size of a cantaloupe — partial tear of my ACL. Couldn’t run for six weeks. Toward the end of that I was hit by a car on my bike and broke both arms. Nike didn’t re-sign me going into the 2020 Olympic year, but I brushed that one off. I thought, I’m going to prove I can make the [Olympic] team, sponsor or not. And actually, in early 2020, training was going great. I set a PR at 3K and 5K indoors. I’d taken a month off work to go down to Virginia and train. Then the virus news came out.”

Getting Up: And Now For Something Completely Different

“No track season, the Olympics not happening. That was tough. I thought, I’m taking as many days off as I want. I went on a road trip back to Minnesota with my brother which was great, just to enjoy something outside of the sport. Sometime in May I decided to try something completely different — I set a goal of breaking 4 minutes for the mile.

“I’ve always been a strength guy, the one who crushed long tempos. This was polar opposite — pure speed. So me and Nick Willis and a couple other guys spent the summer just seeing how fast we could go. Warm summer nights, doing things like 4 x 400 all out. It was fun, and it paid off. I ran two sub-4:00 miles. Then in the fall — and this is what led to the win at Terre Haute — we got away from the watch and did a lot of unstructured strength fartleks on the Michigan golf course. That’s when I deleted Instagram, trying not to get bent out of shape about the pandemic and other people’s training. You know, running is a simple sport. I focused on that and really enjoyed it.”

The post Mason Ferlic Talks About Falling, and Getting Back Up appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

We were at the first stop on the Tour de Playgrounds, when Max, chafing at this childish format, asked if he could run around the golf course instead. He was not sure where the golf course was, nor how to get there from here, nor how far that would be. But he is in 7th grade, thus, an elder statesman.

This was to be a long run day for the middle school harriers, 20 game people with a talent for not overthinking. Mostly 6th-graders, a few in 7th. While four or five of the group, including Max, claimed experience with distances up to 7 miles, for the majority, anything over a mile-and-a-half was uncharted territory. I’d mapped out a 4-mile route defined by four playgrounds that served as destinations, rest stops, and distractions. Certainly, it lacked challenge and was an affront to the maturity of some, so I jumped at Max’s request.

I opened up what I estimated to be a 5-mile golf course option to all comers. As everyone was busy considering their immediate future, my description of the route went unheard, but the commandment to stay together must have resonated. Seven takers split off in the direction of the golf course, while the rest of us jogged to the next playground.

In the space of 75 minutes, the middle schoolers ran farther than they ever had before, and at the same time, discovered some of the great overarching truths of running, and life. It was a busy 75 minutes. Here’s some of what we learned. It might be a good refresher if your middle school years are tiny in the rear view mirror.

1. Independence and agency over one’s life is a key to happiness.

This cuts across all ages, but it’s at the pinnacle of Maslow’s for 11 and 12-year-olds who have spent nearly every living moment under adult supervision. And running can deliver that precious freedom. Whenever possible, I let my people decide how many intervals, how far, or where they run.

I’ve been reluctant to let them run long on their own though because ours is not a neighborhood school; most students are unfamiliar with the area. Max taking the initiative to suggest a different workout and accepting the cloak of responsibility — that needed to be honored. The golf course group self-selected, they did route-finding, kept pace, stayed together, and urged (“Dude, quit walking”) the stragglers. From the looks of it on their return, there was struggle, on a personal and interpersonal level. They couldn’t have been happier. Knackered, yes, but they owned this huge achievement completely. My contribution was to get out of the way and allow it to happen.

We, post-middle schoolers, are sometimes afraid of having control over our lives because that comes with a lot of responsibility. Unless you’re a pro, running is one slice of your life in which you have almost total control, with little consequence if you fail. You don’t have to do a 7-mile tempo, you get to do a 7-mile tempo. Or not. Run whatever you want, gosh.

2. Be open to an adventure.

Sometimes it’s better if you don’t have all the information up front. Now, there’s a great big caveat here as I think of people airlifted out of the Grand Canyon because they didn’t have sufficient information — how far, how hot, how steep. My hasty risk assessment showed ours was not a Grand Canyon situation.

I did arm them with the information that looping the golf course would be about 5 miles. Meaningless, even if they were listening. If you have never run 5 miles, you don’t know what that means, in terms of its effect on vital organs and shocked muscle cells. The saying ignorance is bliss springs to mind. What was relevant, and ultimately irresistible, was that some of the stronger runners shuffled over to join Max. This, in turn, attracted some innocents who, I knew, were out of their depth. Their friends were going, the coach was not. They’d be out in the world, real athletes, conquering vast distances and parts unknown. The seven jogged away laughing and chattering, unencumbered by knowledge. They came back wiser. And sweatier. Between gasps, they managed to relay all the details — how they got lost, how far, how epic it was.

Grownups know how to get to the golf course and how far that is. In fact, thanks to smart watches, we’re almost completely insulated from unknowns, and adventure. I’m not suggesting heading into the in flip-flops, but maybe a 5-mile route you haven’t done before, without the watch. Or a new trail where you may miss a turn, get lost, go an extra mile — or 6 — and come back with a story.

3. Some people, especially girl people, under-estimate themselves.

…And some people, especially boy people, over-estimate themselves.

You know those about how girls — who are frequently warned to be careful — hang back in the face of risk, and boys — whose risk taking is considered natural — go forward? That played out to a T. It was eye-opening. In the two seconds they had to decide whether to go for the riskier 5-mile run or stay with the coach on a safer 4-mile route, boys with less ability opted in, and girls with more ability, hung back.

Later, I spoke with those girls. They agreed, they probably could have handled the golf course run. Peers played a big role here. Boys took the risk partly because their friends did, and on the flip side, the girls didn’t go because their friends didn’t go. Next time, the girls said, they’d be more adventurous.

While there are a lot of years and miles between the playground and the boardroom, the dynamic is much the same. The status quo needs a nudge. People who consistently take the safe, less challenging way need a nudge.

4. Big things are easier when broken down into small things.

That was the strategy ultrarunning legend Lizzy Hawker told me she used to get through the brutal 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. An unknown who’d never tackled anything remotely as difficult, Hawker’s initial goal was to make it to the first aid station. When she got there, she set her sights on the next one.

Focusing on small achievable goals is scalable for medical school, or parenting, or covering 4 miles when that’s 3 miles further than you’ve ever run. We weren’t slogging 4 long miles; we were running ¾ of a mile to the first playground, and a mile to the next, and the next, with four minutes at each destination to explore, climb, swing, bounce. We were all, coach and middle schoolers alike, astounded to have notched the longest run ever with little to no knuckle dragging.

That’s just some of the big ones. But here I am, chewing ideas to death. Rest assured, the middle school gladiators left all weighty truisms behind at the school, along with their jackets and water bottles.

Which is, itself, another truth: Epic run, done. Chipotle, not yet done. Move on.

The post Lessons from Middle School Cross Country appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

When Lorraine Moller, bronze medalist in the 1992 Olympic Marathon, was struggling to maintain a pace in a race, counter-intuitively, she would speed up.

“I was stuck in this negative feedback loop,” Moller says. “To break that loop, I’d run to the front of the pack. As soon as I ran to the front, I felt like I was winning. I created a whole new feedback loop, one in which I felt strong.”

When she focused on fatigue, the default was to slow down. But by shaking things up and increasing the pace, she was able to quite literally shift her view. What she’d been feeling was not fatigue, but monotony. A change of pace — counter-intuitively, faster — revived her.

With races canceled or postponed, many runners have been doing the same workouts, the same training, for six months or more with no definitive end goal in site. Naturally, some are now feeling flat, burned out, and possibly overtrained.

So what’s the solution — a break from running, or just a change?��

Fatigue or Boredom?

As the president of the , Moller conducts coaching clinics that address issues like this. First off, Moller says, “You have to distinguish between boredom and fatigue. And to do that, you have to really know yourself and your training. One of the challenges runners face today is that knowledge of our bodies has been outsourced to a watch or a computer but those devices can’t tell you the finer points, your inner feelings.”

While boredom may manifest itself in a variety of ways that can look like overtraining/fatigue, symptoms of overtraining are more limited, objective, and persistent. Moller listed poor running form (which can lead to injury), elevated heart rate, and poor sleep as the most common indicators of overtraining. Those symptoms probably point to taking a break from running.

Shutting the whole show down seems to be the default solution when feeling flat, partly because, well, it requires little effort, and is sure-fire — if you’re not running, you’re not feeling tired, dreading going for a run, or posting disappointing times. It’s a good solution to overtraining, but doesn’t necessarily address boredom.

Loss of enthusiasm, lack of improvement, or stressing about having to go for a run, Moller says, might be manifestations of mental and physical boredom. You might feel tired, but in fact, you’re just tired of doing the same thing. A change in training — not necessarily less, but different — might restore your mojo.��

“If you apply the same stimulus for too long, you’re not going to improve,” Moller says. “You’re not overtrained, your body has just gotten used to what you’re doing. You need to change it up, apply a new kind of stimulus.”

Not Less, Just Different

As Moller’s run-to-the-front-of-the-pack strategy demonstrated, change doesn’t necessarily mean reducing the intensity or load, just changing it. For example, if you’ve consistently been putting in 50-mile weeks of the same road workouts, same long run on the weekend, you might try putting those 50 miles into a trail ultra format — done on trails where pace is less relevant than on the roads, with almost all the weekly mileage on .��

Or, you might up the volume and intensity of a mid-week workout, trying something truly challenging — and more than a little scary — like . ��Then give yourself an extra day or two of rest after to recover, adapt and feel the fresh new strength.��

Erin Block, an Olympic Trials Marathon participant, and Oiselle athlete, is a proponent of counter-intuitive solutions. She’s hit the doldrums in training many times. Her first step, like Moller’s, is to identify the source of the malaise. “You have to be honest with yourself about whether the burned-out feeling is due to something physical, emotional, or pragmatic, like life stuff,” she says. “Sometimes I was just feeling unfit, or scared of certain goals or workouts, so forcing the issue was the best antidote.”

By forcing the issue, she means facing the fear, actually attempting the hard workout, or going for the steep goal. “Common wisdom is, if things aren’t going well, to go gentle on yourself, to expect less of yourself,” Block says. “That didn’t set right with me, so I often went the other way, and it worked for me more often than not. What I was calling ‘burned out’ was actually boredom. When I set a higher standard for myself, rather than a lower one, I felt better, less tired. We tend to see change as less. It could mean more.”��

Block is quick to make a caveat. Her method of treating the ‘blahs’ by cranking things up is an adults-only dose, she says, “because kids, people under 20 even, are usually going full tilt as a matter of course. Suggesting they dial it up would be irresponsible.”��

Expect More, Step Up

Block’s experiences sounded a lot like something Moller says: “Most people train with an expectation way below what they’re capable of.”

Running to the front of the pack, trying a trail block, hammering an intimidating workout, expecting more of yourself — changes like these, in a horizontal or upward direction, require significant physical and mental effort, especially from a state of ennui. And there is risk — you might fail. Challenging, risky… that’s inherently exciting.

“The fact that I was striving, not pulling back, made me feel like I was in the game. It energized me, ” Block says. “Even if I didn’t accomplish the goal, making this counter-intuitive choice to do more rather than less, and then going for it — it shook things up and put me in an entirely different mental place.”

Another positive to changing up your training rather than taking time off, Block says, is that fitness is retained. So when a racing opportunity arises, you’ll be ready to jump on it.��

Taking a break from running will definitely keep your running fresh, and a period of time off should happen at least once or twice a year. But there are other options. Change, too, can reboot your mojo.

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