Hi Everyone!

Happy August if you can believe it! Many people are now right into their training for fall races. This is the fun time: training is purposeful but there’s still lots of time to add fitness. It’s time to figure out your routines and training systems and try new things and see what works for you. It’s also a good time to get on top of things that might not be working. Along that vein, we have an excellent guest post today by Carloyn Steele Gray. Thank-you Carolyn!

“A nice problem to have”

Runners have a lot of problems. If the signs on marathon courses are to be believed it’s possible we run because we have problems. But pretty much all of us will come up against a problem to solve – an injury, a scheduling conflicts, they changed the shoe we like and why the hell do they look like that now?

A few months back I had a race that didn’t feel quite right. There were a lot of problems I could point to that were likely contributors to the feeling, but there was one I hadn’t thought about – or perhaps didn’t recognize as a problem at all. I wasn’t hungry. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I was hungry. No matter how many hours a week I was training or whether I had eaten or not, hunger never factored into my day. In some of my longer bike trainer workouts in the winter a fun message would pop up at the end asking if I was now “dreaming about breakfast” and every time I would say “no – ew gross.”

I was eating. Having read so much about fueling and performance I had a rhythm I generally followed. But would forget to eat because I was too busy, or have meals that were that bar I found in my bag, and would go long stretches without eating. But I didn’t seem to be changing shape at all – in fact I had been feeling like I was puffy all the time. There were also several other things that hadn’t been right for a long time, which I had been attributing to my age and hormones, but some new reading suggested that there was a good chance I had landed in LEA (Low Energy Availability).

If you’re not familiar LEAs (sometimes referenced as REDS), and it can be the icicle stabbing in your performance. Beyond it just being hard to pinpoint, it comes attached to a rich history of social constructions around body image and food. The athlete identity has often been tied to how one looks and what one eats. What we now consider to be under-fueling was previously commended as being the badge of a “real athlete.” While we often think about this affecting female athletes, no gender identity is immune (in a past life I had hoped to do a Masters in Sociology studying body dysmorphia in male athletes because of what I was seeing in my male athletes when I was a strength and conditioning coach). While there has been some amazing progress away from this incredibly damaging rhetoric, often thanks to brave coaches and athletes who are working hard to push back, these social constructions run deep and never really leave you.

There was no world in which I would have recognized LEA in myself – largely as I didn’t fit the visual image I had of an athlete in LEA. But I was tired, and empty on many levels, and nothing felt right. At a family BBQ at my sister’s I was trying to unpack this with her after she asked how training was going – I was explaining how I was feeling and that it was weird I hadn’t felt hungry in maybe 18 months and she said “well that’s a nice problem to have.” Then I changed the subject.

I see what she was saying. Many struggle on the other side of this – epidemiologically more folks sit on that side of the problem. I have historically also been on that side of the problem. I remember wishing to be less hungry – many of us joke(ish) about being ravenous even weeks after a big event, while worrying we’re now eating too much. But it turns out hunger is a critical signal of body functioning. From what I’ve read not feeling hungry means that your metabolism is shifting into into lower and lower gears. As this happens the other symptoms swoop in – you get “puffy” to retain water and protect your organs that are having to work too hard – you get anxious/depressed/angry/foggy because your brain is starving.

So what to do with my “nice problem.” I guess just eat more. Which was/has been harder than I would have imagined physically and emotionally. First, eating when you’re not hungry sucks – I know a few of us who’ve prepped really big events have experienced this before – but forcing calories into your body is not a nice way to enjoy food. Second, my body dysmorphia and history with disordered eating got exceptionally loud and overwhelming. Because of this history I generally don’t weigh myself or count calories, but in talking to my coach the way we had to deal with this was to start counting calories – this time instead of working to be as far under a bar as I could get while staying functional enough no one would notice, I had a high minimum to hit and macros to attend to. We experience lots of kinds of pain as athletes – this one felt like hands reaching into my body and squeezing as hard as they could.

It took about two weeks of, what I’ll call aggressive, eating to feel hungry again. A surprisingly short time considering how long this had been going on. I only counted calories a few days to be able to create a new pattern without getting sucked into the more dangerous patterns of the past. And three weeks after that, this past weekend, I had another race.

Maybe a better story would end with a crazy strong race and podium finish and probably like a long lost aunt/friend/cat who finds me on course to help me push through to the finish where there’s like a slow-clap or fireworks or another long lost cat. But it was just a race – I hit most of my targets and did ok in a deep field – not my best performance but not my worst. Just a race. But it was also a lot of fun. Like – a lot of fun. The day before the race we were joking around sitting out on the lawn of our farm BnB, and Ian paused to reflect this is the least encumbered I have seemed in almost two years. No pun intended but I think he said “lighter.”

My “nice problem” is far from solved, it will ebb and flow and feel good some days and shit others. But I also know this is not a lonely problem and am thankful for the (strong 😉 ) encouragement to share. Because runners have a lot of problems – but we get to have them together.

On to tomorrow’s workout: Back to hills! Beach crew doing Glen Manor, Riverdale crew doing Pottery! Let me know if you need details to meet with either one.

Let’s get back to sets of one full, one half, 4 min tempo. 3 sets is plenty since it’s still pretty warm. Take a few minute walk break before starting the tempo.

That is all – see you in the a.m.!

xo

Seanna