Run to the Top Podcast | The Ultimate Guide to Running

Toby Tanser - Running to Make a Difference   How did a nordic athlete wind up living and training in Africa and becoming a huge philanthropist? Toby Tanser,  the founder and CEO of Shoe4Africa, which has evolved from providing Kenyan athletes with running shoes to a charity focused on health, education, and women’s empowerment, and which built the first public children’s hospital in East and Central Africa, tells Coach Claire how it all got started.   In this inspirational episode, Toby also talks about his experiences in Kenya, including differences between Kenyan and Western attitudes towards running, and offers up some training tips as well. He discusses his “cult classic” book  Train Hard, Win Easy: The Kenyan Way, not to mention he literally wrote the book on the New York City Marathon. He has a great take on what makes the NYC marathon unique.   In addition to his philanthropy, coaching, writing, and running, Toby has sat on the New York Road Runners Board of Directors since 2002, was on the Achilles Track Club Board for six years before moving up to the Vice President of Achilles International in 2011, and is on the Coaches Advisory Board for Runner's World.    Toby has many other achievements under his belt, but more than anything, he shows us how one person can make a huge difference in the world.     Questions Toby is asked:   2:27 You are a philanthropist, a coach, an author, a writer, and a former professional athlete. What roles of these have been your favorite?   2:58 Tell us a little bit about your charity, Shoe4Africa. How did it start and what is its mission?   3:59 Where has Shoe4Africa grown in the last 25 years?   4:34 It’s not just runners that you’re helping; it’s everyone?   5:20 Do you still go to Africa and run with people there?   6:11 You’ve also written several books about running and one of them is Train Hard, Win Easy: The Kenyan Way. I’d love to hear the story behind that book and some of the main training tips.   7:38 What are some of the tips you learned about how Westerners and Kenyans train differently?   10:52 How have things changed in the past 25 years in Kenya?   12:34 I think you’ve seen that in America nowadays people are learning from the Kenyans, and there are so many more group running programs out there as far as at the elite level. You have all sorts of training groups that you really didn’t see before, and it seems to be kind of based on the Kenyan model, don’t you think   13:48 It’s said that the Kenyans really take their jogging seriously too, which Westerners sometimes have a problem with. Can you talk about how they run easy?   17:11 You were on the board of directors for the New York Road Runners and the New York City Marathon for 15 years. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience?   18:56 Tell me a little bit about the New York City Marathon. You’ve written a book on it, so I’m sure you know a lot about it. Can you give any tips, any experiences about the marathon there?   21:06 How many times have you run it?   23:04 And after that day running the marathon for charity, pretty much that has been your whole life is running for charity in a sense?   24:50 Any thoughts about whether the New York City Marathon will go on this fall with everything that’s going on?   25:58 How are things in Kenya right now with the pandemic?   27:24 Have they started to reopen things again in Kenya?   28:44 What is next for you and Shoe4Africa in the future?   31:21 How can people help? If they’re listening to this and they’re inspired, how can people help the efforts that you’re doing? Questions I ask everyone:   32:25 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you first started running, what advice would you give yourself?   35:21 What is the greatest gift that running has given you?   Quotes by Toby:   “You rarely find a Kenyan training alone. They’re always in some form of a group, and together you have an amazing power.”   “You run a marathon in Berlin or France and people come out and cheer, but in New York, they come out to cheer the people at the back of the pack.”   “Imagine if every single person said, ‘I want to run to make a difference.’”   “I think in life if you’re given opportunities and you turn them away, there’s only a certain amount of opportunity you can turn down before you start to realize, ‘Hey, I should be doing something.’ It’s almost like an obligation.” Take a Listen on Your Next Run Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel Mentioned in this podcast:  Shoe4Africa Book: Train Hard, Win Easy: The Kenyan Way New York Road Runners The Essential Guide to Running the New York City Marathon All4running Juli Anne Perry Children’s Cancer Hospital Run To The Top Winners Circle Facebook Community RunnersConnect Facebook page claire@runnersconnect.net   Follow Toby on:   Toby Tanser email Toby    We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top. The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use. The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

How to increase your mileage safely? Does increasing the total miles at the rate of 10% every week work for everybody? How quickly can you increase your running mileage? Coach Hayley explains in this week's ExtraKick episode.

What are electrolytes? Why is electrolyte balance important for runners? How electrolytes and hydration go hand in hand? Coach Claire explains in this podcast episode.

In this week's Team RC Update, Coach Michael talks about the biggest running lessons learned from 2020. Tune in now!

In this week's Uptempo Talks, Coach Dylan and Coach Ruairi talk about the pros and cons of the Strava application. As its best features are now moved behind a subscription, is it worth paying? How valuable are Strava segments to non-paying users?

Miriam Salloum, MPT, COMT, OCS - Build Better Tendons   Have you ever had an issue with your achilles, hamstring, patella, or IT band? As a runner, you probably just answered, “Yes.” Miriam Salloum, aka The Runner’s Mechanic, shares her tendon injury expertise in this episode, including what causes tendon issues in the legs and feet, how to treat these issues, and most importantly, how you can keep running while gradually getting pain free.    Miriam is a physical therapist who  specializes in working with runners at her aptly named business, The Runner’s Mechanic, in Asheville, North Carolina. She hails from Gulfport, Mississippi, earned a BS in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by a Masters of Physical Therapy at East Carolina University, and then a post-graduate internship at the Mayo Clinic’s prestigious biomechanics  and motion analysis lab in Rochester, Minnesota.    Miriam has practiced orthopedic and sports physical therapy for the past 20 years, helping runners in Western North Carolina and elsewhere with foot and ankle rehabilitation, foot orthoses fabrications, taping techniques, spine and lumbopelvic neuromuscular reeducation, spinal manipulation, and the biomechanical analysis of running gait.   Miriam also uses dry needling techniques used for rehabbing the neuromuscular system. In 2015, she studied these techniques under Sue Falsone, head of Athletic and Sport Performance training for the US Soccer’s Men’s National team, as well as effective treatment of chronic tendon disorders in high level athletes and runners. In 2016, she was the physical therapist for the Olympic Training Site under the Center for Excellence for Sports Science in Johnson City, where she worked with Olympic athletes in bobsled and track and field.   Miriam received her certification of orthopedic manual therapy (COMT) for spine and peripheral joint disorders through Maitland-Australian Physiotherapy and is an orthopedic certified specialist (OCS) through the American Physical Therapy Association. She has been a national presenter for North American Seminars for the past 4 years, educating health professionals in the latest treatments of running related injuries. She models her approach to runners’ rehabilitation after the Speed Clinic & Center for Endurance Sports at UVA and Spaulding National Running Center at Harvard, which has allowed her to utilize the most effective techniques for real time gait re-training.       Questions Miriam is asked: 2:15 You are the Runner's Mechanic.  What does that mean and how did you come up with the name?   3:45 You provide a wide range of physical therapy services for runners, but today, I would like to talk about just a few specific topics that runners face and what we can do to prevent and treat them.  One of the most common issues that comes up with runners is injury to our tendons, most often the Achilles and the hamstrings, but all the other tendons in the legs and feet as well.  Can you talk a little bit about what’s going on with this?   6:45 Let’s talk specifically about the achilles first. Is this so common, who is at risk for this, and what do we do about it?    8:30 What do we do to prevent our tendons becoming like brittle elastic bands, or at least push it down the road, specifically with Achilles because I think I hear Achilles injuries most often, and so what would you say you would do if you felt that niggle after, let’s say, a speed workout?   9:56 Can you talk about why hills are a problem for the Achilles?   11:09 Moving up to the hamstring, let’s talk about that. Who’s at risk for that? Is it the same population, or are there any differences you see between people who have hamstring injuries versus Achilles injuries?   12:13 Let’s start talking about treatment. We hear about for the Achilles, some people say do the eccentric drop, some people say the calf raises, some say do one but not the other, so what should we be doing for rehab for that?   16:08 I’ve heard different advice for insertional tendonitis, and I’ve heard different advice for if the problem is a little higher up. Do you use the same protocol for both, or do you treat those differently?   17:26 Are shoes, and orthotics, and things like that helpful? Can you use those long term? Should people with lower-leg problems always wear a kind of a stacked, non-minimalist shoe?   19:18 Once the rubberband (tendon) is overstretched, that’s it, right? There’s no getting back that elasticity, or can the body kind of heal that?   20:19 For the high hamstring, what is the PT for that?   22:24 What about the other tendon issues? We’ve talked about some of the most common ones, but we see runners that have all sorts of issues with tendons, the outside of the leg, the inside of the leg, the top of the foot, all of that. Can you talk a little bit about those and how common those are?   23:34 So basically, whatever tendon it is, there’s a loading protocol and you can still keep running as long as you’re not in too much pain?   24:13 Let’s talk a little bit about the IT band. Some of the issues that I’ve seen, the IT band gets upset when there’s something wrong with your ankles or there’s something wrong with higher up, like in your hips. Can you talk about that and how those are connected?   26:21 If somebody comes in to you and they’ve been suffering for 12 weeks and they’ve been trying some of this PT work on their own, when is that point where more invasive procedures and treatment have to come? What’s the point where maybe you need to have surgery or something like that? How do you know when it’s really, really severe?   29:00 I know tendons take a really long time to heal, and is it something that even if you do everything right, you could just be one of those people that has a cranky hamstring just forever, or is there hope that doing everything right, eventually you will be pain free?   30:14 In this crazy time, I want to ask you, how are telehealth visits going and how do they work if someone wants to schedule an appointment with you? Questions I ask everyone:   31:42 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give yourself?   32:38 What is the greatest gift running has given you?   33:39 Where can listeners connect with you?   Quotes by Miriam:   “As we go through our life as runners, there’s always going to be changes in our system, and always ways that we can adapt, and have those addressed, and go on.”   “It was kind of perfect that your demographic was between 35 and 55 years of age. These kinds of tendon issues are usually in this population.”   “Tendons don’t like inactivity.”   “Training errors are probably one of the biggest reasons people can start to kick off some of these tendon problems.”   “In the research currently, even with these tendon-loading programs, if someone’s even doing it perfectly to the T and to the best of their ability, there’s still about a 40% rate of chronic tendon issues.” Take a Listen on Your Next Run Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel Mentioned in this podcast:  runnersmechanic@gmail.com Run To The Top Winners Circle Facebook Community RunnersConnect Facebook page claire@runnersconnect.net   Follow Miriam on:   The Runner's Mechanic email Miriam    We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top. The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use. The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!

During this trying times, many of us are experiencing significant stress. So how do stress and anxiety affect your training? What can you do about this? Should you rest or push harder? Coach Hayley explains in this podcast.

Why you need to stop icing your running injuries? Is icing effective in every situation? Can you use ice for an acute injury? Find out in today's podcast from Coach Claire. 

With Boston Marathon being cancelled, what areas should you focus on now and why you need to find other ways to motivate yourself within running? Coach Michael explains and also talks about the importance of staying optimistic and adaptability in today's podcast.

How do you run when you're dealing with adversity, whether it is internal or external? When and how to adjust your training? When you should run and when to take a break during these turbulent times? Find out in today's podcast from Coaches Ruairi and Dylan.