Run to the Top Podcast | The Ultimate Guide to Running

Many people want to lose weight with running.  While the benefits of running can go far beyond losing a few pounds, running can be a fantastic part of your strategy to get in the best shape of your life. So why is it that runners come in all shapes and sizes?  If running is so good for weight loss, why aren’t all runners perfectly trim and lean?  And what about those stories that you hear of people actually gaining weight while training for the marathon?  How is that even possible when you are pounding out mile after mile? Coach Claire Bartholic goes beyond just calories in and calories out to explore why you might not be losing weight despite how much you run.  Then, she goes over how you can change your routine and habits to finally achieve the weight loss results you are looking for. CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY: Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!  A great FREE way to support the show! Email Coach Claire Follow Claire on Instagram Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each month! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community  RunnersConnect Facebook page   GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT!

Hydration and Fueling For Endurance Performance Series, Part Two: The EXACT Fueling and Hydration Secrets from the Best Endurance Athletes with Abby Coleman Learn exactly how the best endurance athletes in the world are fueling and hydrating with sports scientist, Abby Coleman.  Abby is part of the team at Precision Hydration and she has helped create and analyze the strategies of top Ironman performers, the man who broke the 100 mile and 12 hour world record breaking race, and multiple champion ultra runners and riders.  She knows exactly what they ate and drank at every stage of the race and will help us apply that knowledge to our own plans. Abby is an expert on sweat and has Sweat Tested some of the top athletes in the world - including NBA, Premier League, NFL and MLB players - to help them refine their hydration strategies. She advises professional cycling teams, pro triathletes, and 2x Olympic runner Eilish McColgan.  Oh yeah, Abby helps recreational athletes too. CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY: Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!  A great FREE way to support the show! Email Coach Claire Follow Claire on Instagram Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each month! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community  RunnersConnect Facebook page   GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT!

Welcome to Part One of our two part series on Hydration and Fueling for Endurance Performance.  In this episode we’ll talk about how to craft your perfect hydration plan and on Part Two, we’ll learn the exact fueling and hydration strategies of some of the best endurance athletes in the world.  Be sure that you are subscribed to the Run to the Top so you don’t miss out on a single episode! Ah, summer.  The warm, sunny days, and short nights are perfect for getting outside and savoring nature with family and friends.  But if you are an endurance runner, training in the heat comes with challenges. Not only is running simply more uncomfortable as the mercury rises, but the combination of heat, sun, humidity and distance will begin to affect our performance as the body struggles to cool itself down. If you’ve ever come back from a run soaked in sweat, or had salt stinging your eyes and staining your clothes, you probably already know that hydration is important. And if you are training this summer for a marathon or an ultra, a perfect hydration plan is an absolute must. The question is how do we do it right for both our health and our performance?   To get into the precise details and science to help you craft your own personal hydration strategy, I invited sweat expert Andy Blow of Precision Hydration back on the Run to the Top to help me out.  You may remember him from my interview with him in 2020, one of our most downloaded episodes of the year.  If you haven’t listened to that one, be sure to go back and check it out!  CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY: Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!  A great FREE way to support the show! Email Coach Claire Follow Claire on Instagram Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each month! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community  RunnersConnect Facebook page Precision Hydration hello@precisionhydration.com How To Measure Your Sweat Rate Cramps How To Start an Event Well Hydrated How Much Dehydration Can You Tolerate? How To Tell if You May be a Salty Sweater Discount code for precisionhydration.com for 15% off your first order: RUNTOTHETOP GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT!

Your spine starts showing signs of aging at age 20.  Is too much running putting it at more risk? We talk about the spine a lot to our athletes. Your posture and spinal mobility are huge players in good running form, which allow you to run faster and longer with less effort.  Flexibility in the thoracic spine in particular allows you to run light and tall, as well as makes more room for lungs to fully expand to their potential. So what can we do to make sure that our spine is supported, helping us run faster and pain-free?  And what happens to our spinal health as we age, especially if we’ve spent years pounding out mile after mile? Brigham Young University’s Dr Ulrika Mitchell researches the spine and is on the show to talk about it.   Dr Mitchell was born in Germany and got her degrees in Sports Science and Physical Therapy there before moving to the US in the 90s.  She got her PhD at BYU and now teaches Functional Anatomy and Orthopedic Impairment at the university. Her research is mostly focused on the spine, low back pain, and she frequently studies runners as she is a runner herself. Coach Claire asks her all about how the spine functions when we run, how to make sure that it is optimally supported, what exercises we can do to maintain proper spine alignment as we run, and what happens to our spines as we age.  CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY: Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!  A great FREE way to support the show! Email Coach Claire Follow Claire on Instagram Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each month! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community  RunnersConnect Facebook page GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT!

The instinct to run hard from the start is something that is tough to unlearn. That’s why you so often see new runners, and even experienced runners do this in workouts and races:  they start off too fast and at some point, dramatically and disappointingly slow down, finishing far slower than their potential. But there is a proven race strategy that race after race produces far better results. It’s a strategy that has led to nearly every world record in distances from 1500m to the marathon and beyond.  It’s called the negative split. A negative split is simply running the first half of your race slower than your second half.  That means you have to run slower when you are feeling good and run faster when you are feeling tired.  Sounds impossible, right?  Well, it’s not easy, for sure, but it’s a concept that can work in nearly any race to ensure that you get the very most out of your potential. CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY:   Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!  A great FREE way to support the show! Email Coach Claire Follow Claire on Instagram Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each month! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community  RunnersConnect Facebook page GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT!

Is a lack of great sleep ruining our lives and our running?  Claire wanted to find out, so she invited sleep expert Dr Shelby Harris on the show to talk about it. Dr. Harris is the former director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center.  Now in private practice in White Plains, NY, she treats a wide variety of sleep disorders such as insomnia, nightmares, circadian rhythm disorders, narcolepsy, and more using evidence-based behavioral treatments. She has researched the neuropsychological effects of insomnia in older adults as well as behavioral treatments for insomnia, parasomnias, narcolepsy, and excessive daytime sleepiness.  Dr. Harris has written for the New York Times and Psychology Today and has been quoted in media such as The Huffington Post, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, O Magazine, and New York Magazine. She has appeared on the Today Show, World News with Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America, and more. In other words, she knows a lot about sleep and she is a runner herself.  Claire asks her how we can better decide to prioritize sleep over running and whether afternoon runners or morning runners are doing a better job with their sleep.  She talks about how much sleep we really need and how to get more of it. And if you are a runner with kids, this episode is especially for you because your little ones might just need a little more sleep too. And just so you know, if you are listening to this at 2am because you can’t sleep and you just happen to fall into dreamland before the show is over, we will take it as a compliment!

Summer is officially here in the Northern Hemisphere and while longer days leave lots more time for running, the sun, heat and humidity can make running miserable.  But unless you’d like to spend the season on a treadmill in the air-conditioning, learning to adapt to the heat is your best option. The good news is that all your sweaty work this summer will pay off with faster times in the fall, when things cool off a little. We'll get into the science of what is happening when you run in the heat and then offer some cool suggestions that can help you train this summer more effectively, despite the temperatures. CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY:   Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!  A great FREE way to support the show! Email Coach Claire Follow Claire on Instagram Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each month! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community  RunnersConnect Facebook page GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT!

Matt Frazier is a vegan ultramarathoner, author, and entrepreneur, best known as the founder of the No Meat Athlete movement and host of the No Meat Athlete Radio podcast. Matt found he could run longer and faster with the help of a plant-based diet, and shortly after adopting a plant-based diet, Matt qualified for the Boston Marathon after taking over 100 minutes off his first marathon time. He has run several 50-milers and a 100-mile ultramarathon on a vegan diet. Matt's books have sold over 125,000 copies in five languages, and his work have been featured in books including Rich Roll’s Finding Ultra, Brendan Brazier’s Thrive Foods, and Seth Godin’s What to Do When It’s Your Turn. Matt was named by Greatist as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Health and Fitness, and Sports Illustrated has called The No Meat Athlete Cookbook one of the best Health & Wellness books. Matt has a brand new book out called the Plant Based Athlete and I couldn’t leave out his equally amazing co-author Robert Cheeke. Robert began a vegan lifestyle for ethical reasons at age 15, weighing just 120 pounds. Today he is the author of the best-selling books, Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness, Shred It!, Plant-Based Muscle. He is often referred to as the “Godfather of Vegan Bodybuilding,” growing the industry from infancy in 2002, to where it is today.  As a two-time natural bodybuilding champion, Robert is considered one of VegNews magazine's Most Influential Vegan Athletes. He tours around the world sharing his story of transformation from a skinny farm kid to champion vegan bodybuilder. Robert is the founder and president of Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness and maintains the popular website, VeganBodybuilding.com. He is a regular contributor to No Meat Athlete, Forks Over Knives, and Vegan Strong. In my conversation with Robert and Matt, we talk about common nutrition myths about plant-based and vegan diets (here’s a hint--they are not always the same) and how more and more top athletes around the world are discovering that plant-based nutrition is not simply some fad diet, but a powerful performance and recovery enhancer. We talk about protein, calories, macros, and whether or not you need to be all in to reap the benefits of plants. As you can probably guess, this was a delightful conversation for me because not only did I get a chance to interact with two people whose work I think so highly of, but I also get to talk about my two most favorite subjects:  running and food.

Have you ever experienced painful leg cramping late in a race? Coach Claire goes into the science of leg cramping.  This episode will equip you with an action plan that you can start today to cramp-proof your legs, so you can crush your next race, cramp-free. And she does it with a little help from her running mentor, Coach Jeff Gaudette, 2:22 marathoner and founder of RunnersConnect.net. Coach Jeff has extensively studied the issue of late-race cramping in runners and it might not be caused by what you think it is.   CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY: Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!  A great FREE way to support the show! Email Coach Claire Follow Claire on Instagram Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each week! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community  RunnersConnect Facebook page GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT!

What if I told you that there was a simple way to improve your muscular endurance, reduce your respiratory rate when running, reduce the production of lactic acid, slash your cortisol build up in half, allowing for faster recovery times after every run?  I bet you’d be all over it, right?  And then you might be asking, what’s the catch? My guest today is Dr Dena Garner and she’s spent the last 17 years of her career researching and developing a very simple product that promises to do just that. Dr Garner is a professor at The Citadel, one of six senior military colleges in the United States.  She has degrees in exercise science and muscle physiology as well as a postdoctoral fellowship in neurology.   At The Citadel, her research has concentrated on the effects of a mouthpiece inserted over the lower teeth during exercise. She measures physiological parameters of her subjects while using the mouthpiece, including levels of lactate and cortisol, as well as respiratory rate and has found some pretty incredible results. Her research has shown that the specific way you place your jaw and tongue, aided by a mouthpiece, results in a physiological change in the airway, which improves performance outcomes.  In addition to opening your airway, when you bite or clench down on the mouthpiece during exercise, research cites an increase in cerebral blood flow, which may be the link to the improvements in cortisol and lactate. Okay, okay, I know what you are thinking.  This is pretty weird, right?  And I’m not afraid to say that to Dr Garner in our conversation.   But, if you think about it, it could make sense.   Think about when you are concentrating hard on something.  Many people instinctively clench their teeth or chew on a pencil or their lip or a necklace or bite their nails. Why do we do that?  What if it’s not just a habit your mom tries to get you to stop doing?  What if it’s a stress-relieving mechanism that’s evolved over time that actually does help us? I don’t know about all that, but what I do know is that this research is absolutely fascinating to me and potentially could be a gamechanger in performance and recovery.  Let’s find out. CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY:   Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!  A great FREE way to support the show! Email Coach Claire Follow Claire on Instagram Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each month! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community  RunnersConnect Facebook page GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT!