January 2019

#349: Running Groups for Moms

Sarah Bowen Shea and co-host Maggie Palmer chat with three dynamic women who head up (and, in two cases, founded) running groups for moms. First up: Karissa Johnson, founder of Moms on the Run. Learn how this self-described “introvert” went from leading one 26-woman running group (promoted by paper flyers she stuffed in mailboxes!) to overseeing MOTR franchises in soon-to-be eight states. Karissa talks about the breadth of programs MOTR chapters offer, including yoga for runners and strength-training boot camps. Find out what Olympian is now designing intermediate and advanced training plans for them!

Next is Pam Burrus, the can-do woman behind Moms RUN This Town. Laugh as she details her first forays in running (from “dreading” it in PE to copycat’ing a friend’s training posts on Facebook!), then how she launched this nationwide organization. Learn how MRTT chapters branch out beyond running to do good in their communities. Find out what’s the what with magnet flipping—and how it serves as motivation to members of this free club.

The final guest is Katie Provencher, who heads up a Stroller Strong Moms in Anchorage. Katie recounts her introduction to the program, seeing a “herd of moms running by!” Katie explains why Stroller Strong Moms is so popular among military spouses. And she shares one of the all-time greatest TMI tales ever told on the pod!

Get $50 off the purchase of an AfterShokz wireless bundle at amr.aftershokz.com
by using code AMRBUNDLE at checkout. 

Training for My First Marathon: Shin Splints, 20-Milers and (Almost) Quitting (Oh my!)

How I Trained for My First Marathon

BAMR PAMR’s race day is (almost) around the corner (February 10!)—and she received some special encouragement in the mail from a fellow BAMR! (So cute!)

[Race day is almost here! Read BAMR PAMR’s marathon training journey.]

Last Sunday, the morning of my non-negotiable 20-mile run, I woke up nearly paralyzed by fear. Unlike my previous collision with imposter syndrome, this fear had a solid grounding in reality. Up until the week of Christmas, my training had progressed in an entirely unremarkable fashion. The training plan detailed a workout; I executed that workout as written. I set my alarm earlier and earlier on weekdays to accommodate six, and then seven, and then eight easy miles, and still get home in time to help get all four of us to work and daycare on time. I killed an 18-miler.

And then it—or shin splits—happened.

Midway through my second 18-miler, I felt the beginnings on a niggle along my lower right leg. I tried not to panic as I checked and rechecked my form, taking rare walk breaks until things downstairs calmed down. I managed to complete the run, fast finish miles and all, but I had a sinking feeling in my gut that the niggle wasn’t done with me. I took two rest days rather than the usual one, but on Wednesday, I had to cut my seven miles down to six. The warmup felt great, the race pace miles could not have felt better, but as soon as I slowed into my cooldown, the inner bits of my lower right leg started burning. I trudged home feeling a mixture of panic and defeat.

When I had a few free moments that morning, I called my big sister Katie, who also happens to be the best PT I know. She encouraged me to look for horses rather than zebras and focus on the obvious culprit: shoes. Katie instructed me to trade in my minimalist Altra Solstice and Topo Magnafly running shoes for some styles with more padding to absorb the greater stress of marathon training, and add some compression calf sleeves to my wardrobe.

New kicks and new sleeves!

In addition to purchasing new shoes and accessories, I doubled down on strength, mobility, and recovery. Coach Amanda’s training plans include “pre-hab” exercises like single-leg deadlifts and hip hikes, and I focused on performing these moves daily. I also foam-rolled at least once a day, often more, from my calves and shins all the way up to my neck. I spent some quality time with a lacrosse ball, focusing largely on my feet, calves, and glutes. I stretched my calves, hips, and everything else a couple times a day. When I was able to run, I iced my lower legs after.

I got fit for some Brooks Ricochet and Brooks Launch shoes at my local Fleet Feet, and eased back into running, taking each day and each mile as it came. Some days the shin splints crept in early in the run, some days a bit later. As soon as things felt tight or sore or just not quite right, I’d slow to a walk for a bit. Often walking would calm things down, and then I could run for a bit. I felt a bit stronger each day, and set out for a planned 18-20 mile long run on January 6, knowing I might have to cut it a bit short. I ran the first 11 miles without incident, and then had to stop regularly for walk breaks. By the time I hit 16 miles, the walk breaks weren’t helping as much, so I walked home to get one more mile on my feet.

I didn’t feel any niggles the day after my 16-miler, so I ran eight miles a few days later. While the run itself felt good, my shins felt distinctly not good the rest of the day. At that point, I was ready to throw in the towel, mentally and physically.

Hanging on MARTA with two of the cutest passengers ever.

So you know what I did? I quit. That’s right. Straight up quit running. I relegated all of my running apps, including social media as that’s pretty much its only purpose in my life these days, to the third screen on my phone. I stashed my running shoes and clothes and journal out of sight. I read Patriot Games, a 1980’s espionage thriller where the only running consists of Jack Ryan throwing himself headlong into danger. I listened to Wooden Overcoats, the only non-running podcast in my queue. I spent Sunday escorting my 4-year-old and her class bear, Cupcake, around town. I drank beer and ate an embarrassing amount of leftover peppermint M&M candies.

Friends, it was glorious. It was exactly what I needed. One week after I quit, I laced up my Brooks Ricochets, took some deep breaths, reminded myself that no one run defines my worth as a runner or as a human being, and took once more to the streets. I ran a little over three miles and quit before anything started to hurt. I still felt good two days later, so I ran four, most of them around and around the muddy crushed gravel Active Oval at Piedmont Park. Once again, things still felt good downstairs—but upstairs was another story.

Which takes us to Sunday, day of the non-negotiable 20-miler. I approached the run like a preschooler approaches bedtime: I dawdled. I took all the time in the world to eat an English muffin with peanut butter, to get dressed, to stretch out my calves and my hips and my glutes, to roll out those same areas, to get my podcast queue just right, to choose and organize my fuel. And so on, ad infinitum. Finally the moment arrived. I had done everything I possibly could to delay the run. I kissed my daughters and my husband, and I stepped out into the cold.

Because I was unsure of what to expect out of the run, and because I wanted the security blanket of being close to home the entire time, I chose to run a flat—679 ft. total gain rather than the 1500 ft. plus of my usual out-and-back—and boring five-mile loop four times. The first loop felt great. I ducked into the neighborhood coffee shop to pee and hit the road for the second loop. By the end of mile 8, I started to feel my right lower leg getting a little tight. I slowed to a walk, feeling more than a little angry and discouraged. After a minute or so of walking, I picked up the pace to a run. Another half mile and my leg told me to walk.

All smiles after 20 miles!

I wanted to quit again. But more than that, I wanted to see what I was capable of. I decided to use this final LONG run of the training cycle to figure out a blueprint of the Penultimate Case Scenario. Not the Worst Case Scenario—that would be a DNS or a DNF. No, this would be the second-to-worst. If I felt some warning niggles on race day, how would I handle it?  Not the kind of sharp, race-ending, season-ending pain that indicates an acute injury that sends a runner to her knees, but a niggle that indicates the runner is not going to have the race she wanted. Could I handle that scenario with grace and with bravery-cum-grit?  Now was the perfect opportunity to find out.

So I pulled up my entirely metaphoric big girl panties (#commando4life!) and took some deep calming breaths: inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. I adjusted my attitude and focused on forward movement. I made it my goal to run until I hit X.0 or X.5 on my watch, giving myself the leeway to run longer if everything felt good downstairs or shorter if it did not. I didn’t look at my pace, and I didn’t look at my heartrate. I ran what felt sustainable. Work, Play, Love segued into Another Mother Runner. The miles passed in half-ish mile increments. Halfway through Neely Gracey’s pregnancy and ¾ of the way through my run, my headphone batteries gave up the ghost—in all that dawdling, I’d neglected to charge my trusty Trekz Airs. Oops. To be honest, though, I was so focused on my new goal of creating a Penultimate Case Scenario blueprint that I didn’t even miss the dulcet tones of SBS and Coach Amanda in my ears.

I finished that 20-miler, friends. I finished with a big, goofy grin on my face, and at a pretty usual overall pace of 11:57. I finished knowing that I can handle things going sideways mid-race with grace and bravery and grit. I finished with a confidence I haven’t felt in weeks.

And just like that, BAMR PAMR has reached the home stretch: She is in the taper! What advice (or cheers) do you have for her as she tapers and gets ready for her first marathon? 

AMR Aid Station: The Pros + Cons of Running with Music

Last weekend I ran the Daufuskie Island Half-Marathon, off the coast of South Carolina. There were fewer than 150 runners; I felt like the only person without earbuds. You could say, Well, that’s because it was a tiny race. Of course runners need to listen to music to get through 13.1 quiet miles. (There was also a two-loop marathon and a three-loop ultra. Faint!)

But the same thing felt true in New York City’s 50,000+ New York City Marathon, despite the fact that the use of headphones is “strongly discouraged.” Everyone, it seemed, had headphones.

(Years ago, race organizers tried to outright ban the use of headphones in the NYC marathon. Runners revolted. And the ban proved just too hard to enforce.)

Don’t worry, this is not a manifesto against running with music. Nor a prescriptive FOR it, for that matter.

running with music

Daughter Nina, then 6, with her Boston Bear at the 2011 Boston marathon.

I have run a few marathons with music, notably the 2011 Boston Marathon, which I ran during the unmooring surprise-divorce year. My playlist was full of angry Alanis Morissette, Courtney Love, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam. Sadly, I also ran both my daughter’s and my iPod minis through the wash. And I am just not motivated enough to create a new playlist and take my phone on the road. (Lazy runner/DJ!)

“Do you run with music?” A runner mom acquaintance asked me the other day. “I can’t get out the door if I don’t.”

Yep: 60% of runners run with music, according to Running USA’s 2017 National Runner Survey.

Music is, in fact, study-proven to get you out the door.

The famous music-running researcher Costas Karageorghis, PhD, of London’s Brunel University published a study in The Sport Journal in 2008 reporting that “music has the potential to elicit a small but significant effect on performance.”

Karageorghis notes five key ways music helps: “disassociation, arousal regulation, synchronization, acquisition of motor skills, and attainment of flow.”

That is to say, music is distracting enough to make running feel 10% less hard, especially on a treadmill.

running with music

Evidence of running with music in the 2014 Boston Marathon. Hey, that’s a hard marathon! I needed all the help I could get.

The right music can pump you up before an event or workout OR calm you down if you’re over-anxious. (Science proves what you already knew.)

Matching the beat of your preferred music to your footfall helps you attain and maintain a specific pace, according to a 2013 Dutch study published in PLOS One, which is why 160-180 BPM (beats per minute) is recommended for fast, hard efforts and 130-150-ish for easy runs.

Spotify has BPM playlists. Podrunner offers super-specific 45-minute-plus lyric-free electronic dance music from 120 to 185 BPM, as well as varied workouts. Techno doesn’t turn me on, but I’ve used Podrunner’s mixes as an effectively mindless way to lock into a pace on tempo runs. It works.

What about the safety issue?

There is no one-size-fits-most answer to that question. It’s a personal calculus based on familiarity with your surrounding environment multiplied by common sense. A common recommendation is to run with just one earbud so you can “hear” with your other ear. AfterShokz’s “bone conduction” headphones send music into your brain through your cheekbones, leaving your ears uncovered to hear your surroundings: The new, lightweight AfterShokz Trekz Air has gotten rave reviews.

I do confess that runners with earbuds in the New York City marathon annoy me. The race is SO crowded, and it’s frustrating to try to get around an oblivious earbud-plugged runner weaving in front of you. But then again, pretty much anything in the end of a marathon is annoying when you’re glycogen-depleted and just trying to get one step closer to the finish line: Why are those people cheering me on? SO annoying!

If you DO run with music—always, sometimes, during races—you are in the really good company of marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe, who has said: “I put together a playlist and listen to it during the run-in. It helps psych me up and reminds me of times in the build-up when I’ve worked really hard, or felt good. With the right music, I do a much harder workout.”

These days I put the headphones in mostly to do solo long runs. The rest of the time? I enjoy the quiet.

Running with music

So pretty! And so quiet! Daufuskie Island, SC, Half Marathon (and marathon and ultra). See you there next year? I won’t wear headphones! xoxo

 

HOW ABOUT YOU?
DOES RUNNING WITH MUSIC PUMP YOU UP—OR DO YOU PREFER QUIET?

#348: World-Record Stroller-Pusher + Speedy New Mother Runner

Sarah and Dimity sIt down in person in Houston with Megan Saloom, a 2016 Olympics Marathon Trials runner who is now a new mother, then the AMR duo gabs with Calum “Cal” Neff, a super-speedy father runner who holds two world records for pushing a running stroller in races. The two pro runners were hours away from running the Houston Marathon (Megan) and Houston Half-Marathon (Calum. Spoiler alert: He PR’d!).

With her adorable 6-month-old son in the audience with his dad, Megan shares details of running while pregnant, including oversharing that “every day was a different experience” with her bladder!  She gives advice about returning to running post-partum. Megan talks about DNF’ing the Olympic Trials; reminding us “running is not an overnight success,” she talks about the importance of patience.

Next up is father of three Cal, who describes how pushing a stroller in races allows him to combine his passions for running and being a father. He shares stroller-running tips that apply to any pace runner as well as cold-weather dressing advice. Learn a snappy Canadian phrase, and what it means to “be modular in your gear.” Get a bit misty-eyed when he says that on his two world-record-setting race days, he was a dad above all else. “You’re always a parent first.” (Let’s make this man an honorary mother runner!)

In the intro, Dimity and Sarah share their Houston adventures. Megan hops into the conversation at 10:52.

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Listen to Murder Book, a true crime podcast hosted by bestselling author Michael Connelly debuting on 1/28/19, and check out Dark Sacred Night, Connelly’s latest #1 bestselling detective novel.

Get $50 off the purchase of an AfterShokz wireless bundle at amr.aftershokz.com by using code AMRBUNDLE at checkout.

Dry Martini: Courage to Run

In 2017, I decided to run for a county office. Given that it was the first time I ever even thought about doing such a thing, my hopes for success weren’t high. But I’d decided to get off my arse and get in the game — because it’s a game that has consequences for me, my nearest and dearest, and my community.

As I knocked on doors during for most of a steamy summer, with sweat running into my bra as I pitched strangers on my value as a representative, I thought about how similar running a campaign was to running a race. Both require some training, a lot of stamina, and buckets of endurance.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Frieda K. Edgette, a former government affairs specialist, lobbyist, and appointed county commissioner turned certified leadership coach, neuropolitics professor, and pioneer for political well-being, came to the same conclusion and started Courage to Run last year.

Courage to Run is a nonpartisan 5K that celebrates women getting involved political life, which they are doing in droves right now. Last year set records for the number of women running for office — and this trend shows no signs of stopping.

courage to run

photo by Ana I. Martinez Chamorro for Ana Isabel Photography

The seeds of C2R were planted in 2012 when Frieda, a former high school cross country runner, started running in London’s Hyde Park as a way to reconnect with her body after wrestling with an eating disorder for 15 years.

“I would just run laps around and around and around,” Freida says. “I get into a meditative state when I run. It’s where I do my greatest creative thinking.

“I was training for a half marathon and I thought about all those women running for office in 2012. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it takes so much courage to run. It can be the most empowering experience, or it can suck, just like the physical act of running.’ A lot of it is defined by our state of mind,” Frieda says.

“When I returned to the U.S., I identified that real self-care is often the first thing to go when women seek office. We piloted these little day-long meet-ups that we would cap at 12 people. I created three different running/walking routes of varying lengths. We returned to do yoga. The day was focused on a different leadership topic, like authenticity, decision making, innovation, resilience, or curiosity.

“We would invite a guest speaker, a high profile woman executive to share a story. It would open up into a discussion,” Frieda says. “It was amazingly empowering, because you would have a huge diversity of women ranging from mothers who are re-entering into the workforce after maternity leave with these C-suite women executives, with entrepreneurs, with women just out of college, wondering where do I fit in?

And then, at the beginning of last year, watching the number of women filing to run for office continue to go up — it was amazing. I was like, ‘This is a BFD. We need to do something empowering and inspiring about this.’”

courage to run

Frieda gets the crowd fired up before the first Courage to Run 5K.ontinue to go up — it was amazing. I was like, ‘This is a BFD. We need to do something empowering and inspiring about this.’”

 

In three months in 2018, Frieda and her crew pulled together the first Courage to Run 5K in D.C. Five hundred politicos — Democrats, Republicans, and all points in between — ran together to celebrate the power of women in the political sphere. Along the way, Frieda recognized that not everyone who wanted to participate could travel to the nation’s capital.

“Duh,” she thought. “The light bulb went on. Of course you can’t — because you need to be campaigning in your district. We created a Virtual Run option, and we had women candidates ranging from school board all the way up to statewide legislature and congressional candidates. Some ran as their morning workout because that’s all the time they had before they went on a marathon of meetings. Some turned their runs into door-to-door canvases, which is incredibly creative. There was a group in Seattle of women and their daughters who ran together, which was deeply, deeply inspiring.”

While Courage to Run’s primary goal is to get women up and moving, they also want to break down race day barriers. In D.C., there will be a lactation station. There will be a kids’ dash for democracy and sign making station, which will include glitter because they are brave. Strollers are welcome.

“Making it as family friendly as possible is really important,” Freida says. “One, it normalizes moms running; and two, democracy is a family affair. It’s important that children see their mothers crossing that finish line, strong, powerful, and claiming their value.”

courage to run

Representing in Seattle.

The mission doesn’t stop after race day. “One thing that we encourage and give permission for is that if all you have is 20 minutes to go and walk outside, you’re moving your body and that is good. You don’t need to be running a 10K, five times a week. Absolutely not. This about removing the black and white, which can be rife in politics,” Frieda says.

For me, at least, the work of running a campaign was worth doing, whether or not I won the office. I feel the same way about running races, too, which is good because the odds that I will win a race with more than one runner in it are very, very, very tiny.

I did win the county seat — and have spent the last year discovering that campaigning and governing could not be more different. It’s like the difference between being pregnant and having a newborn. One prepares you for the other in a small way, I guess, but not as much as you’d hope.

This year’s Courage to Run has an AMR team for both the D.C. and virtual runs.
You can get the early bird price if you sign up by January 31.

The details: Just start typing in “Another Mother Runner” when you get to the team section and select. You’re all set.

If running “virtually,” Courage to Run will mail everything you need for race day: training plan, bib, t-shirt, and medal. You choose your route, time yourself, and post your experience on social using the #couragetorun5k hashtag.

Women participated in 25 states last year. Let’s hit a new P.R. and get all 50.
I’ll be representing for New York. You?

Love It: Valentine’s Day RunnerBox is Here!

Remember the amazing present you received last year for Valentine’s Day? Well, we’ve decided to put together another fun-filled BAMRbox with our friends at RunnerBox so you can have a a gift (you actually want) on February 14th! We thought last year’s box was pretty incredible, but thanks to our friends at Aftershokz, Triggerpoint, Balega, Nuun, and several other goodies, the 2019  box is even better! 

Be sure to buy yours today, these boxes ran out in 9 days last year!

This limited-edition aims to provide a fun, affordable Valentine’s Day gift that will make anyone from your BRF (best running friend) to your sweetheart feel loved. The box features a range of nutrition, gear, and good-for-you chocolate aimed to be the female athlete’s perfect substitute to the traditional box of bonbons or flowers. Featured products include:

**BONUS: Two lucky recipients of this box will each get a membership to  Many Happy Miles; a year-long program offering daily workouts, webinars, exclusive discounts, and more! **

“All that for $30? That’s a lot,” you say! We know. Which is why we were only able to curate a very limited number. Hurry and nab yours before they’re gone!

And just because we love memes at AMR, here are a few of our favorites from around the internet.

 

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