Run.Eat.Repeat

Since Thanksgiving is right around the corner I thought I would do a little blog about food and what you should and shouldn't eat as a D1 runner.........Just kidding!!! One of my biggest pet peeves is when people think that runners should have a special diet. No, it is actually the opposite. With the amount of running we do, it is almost impossible to replenish our bodies with the amount of calories we lose when we run everyday. Because of that, my main goal is to get those calories by whatever means necessary. I don't only eat salads and vegetables. I eat lots and lots of carbs, sweets, and just about anything that I can get my hands on. If you are a runner and you are worried about your diet then you should't be and I hope this blog helped you a little bit. Now get seconds and thirds at Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow cause I know that I'm going to!! Very thankful for running so I can eat all of the pie I want :-)

This blog is just one big PSA. Everyone and their dog should know this information so I will tell you. You're welcome! So this Friday our cross country team hosted the midwest regional meet at our home course in Peoria. Our boys went in ranked 5th in the region which was tied for our highest ranking ever. So that in itself was a feat. Our boys went out and ran the 10k of their lives and by a complete miracle, pulled out second place to auto qualify for the national meet in Wisconsin!! They beat 2 nationally ranked teams and they are now ranked as #25 in the country. Our boys made history on Friday and now you can go watch them continue that history this Saturday. It makes me so happy to see the people that work so hard every day right along side me finally be recognized for all of their hard work. This team is so special and they deserve every piece of history that they are paving.

Even writing this blog post makes me very sad. Why? Because even thinking about winter running right around the corner sends a shiver up my spine, quite literally. But here I go so prepare for an informative yet depressing blog. Winter training is tough for two reasons. The first most obvious one is the cold and the snow and the ice and everything that comes with winter weather wise. It is so so so hard to get yourself to wake up at the crack of dawn and leave your warm bed to go run in negative temperatures every single morning. Putting on so many layers is literally exhausting and no matter how hard you try you either end up with not enough layers and you're freezing the whole run or you have way to many and you feel like a marshmallow who starts sweating profusely about 5 minutes into the run. Everything about it is tough and makes every run so much more taxing mentally and physically then those nice fall runs that we all fell in love with. Now what I think the worst part ab...

Im just gonna start out by saying, my team is the absolute best. Even tho I have been out most of this season there is not one day that went by that I didn't feel like I was apart of the team. Since I was barely attending any of the team practices it would be pretty easy to feel left out. Instead I received countless texts and phone calls about how I was doing and when I was going to be running again. Now this leads into my favorite thing to do which is brag about my teammates. My teammates worked so so hard this fall. From 5 am workouts to 15 mile long runs every Sunday, they killed every single practice. All that hard work led up to this past Saturday, the MVC cross country championships. Both the boys and girls teams went in ranked numero uno and they definitely competed like they were number 1.  The cool part about our teams this year was that they weren't full of all old people or all young people. There was such a good mix. The girls had some super seniors, some seniors...

I know, I know.  Really crazy to even think that there are other things than running that you need to do in order to stay in good shape, physically and emotionally. Here are some things that I think are a important part of running. The first thing I wanna talk about is weight lifting. I know what you're thinking, runners are the most scrawny people in the world and yes that is correct. Lifting is not all about getting huge. We lift twice a week for about an hour and its never a competition to see who can lift the most. It is mostly centered around toning and strengthening certain little muscles in our abs, core, and arms to prevent us from getting injured. You will be able to see that a lot of this blog will be about preventative things that we do just cause it is so dang easy to get injured. The next thing that I'm gonna talk about is core and meditation. At least once a week after practice we have a pretty intense core session. This consists of about 15 min straight up ex...

Great News!! I am running again. Finally. Not so great news: I am horribly out of shape. Even though I have been cross training and swimming, nothing gets you in the same shape that running every day does. So in this blog I am going to talk about some easy tips to get back into shape the right way. My first tip, patience is key. If you are a runner like me the solution is not to go run 10 miles on your first day back running. You will be injured the next day, that is a promise. I started back by running for 15 minutes about 4 times and then I slowly started running farther and farther. It is very important to build a solid base. My second tip is recovery, recovery, recovery. It is so so important to take care of yourself before and after runs. I am so bad at this because I only think to do these things once I am already injured (tragic I know). You should always heat or roll out your legs before all of your runs and do some kind of dynamic warm up. After runs you should roll out ag...