Female Runners Over 45: Fix Fatigue, Weight Gain & Performance

0:00This episode of She Runs Strong is brought to you by Active Forever. As a female runner over 45, every mile is an investment in your long-term health, strength, and confidence. But staying consistent means taking recovery just as seriously as training. Active Forever provides targeted supplements designed to help women keep their muscles strong, joints healthy, and energy levels high, so they can run longer, feel stronger, and recover faster. For women serious about staying active for life, Active Forever is the solution. Visit getactiveforever.com and use code strong for 10% off your first order. That's getactiveforever.com or click on the link in the description now. Hello everyone, welcome back to the She Runs Strong podcast, powered by Coach Perry. Today we have an interesting episode. We are doing a coaching call, which Nikki, I'm quite excited about. We're doing a coaching call with someone from Australia for the first time.

1:02We haven't done that before. We've done a lot of the globe for a change, which is cool. We've been across from the US to the UK, we've done South Africa, so now it's hatching the other side of the earth. Nikki? Yeah, that's really cool actually, so that means it's late at night for her. Yes, it's very nice. She's already completed her day today and that's her catching at the end of the day. It always blows my mind when we do that, and my brother lives in Australia, so always trying to catch up. It's always quite tough with those time zones, so it blows my mind, but we'll introduce Jason in just a second, but Nikki, how are you doing? How is life treating you at the moment? Are things going well for you? Yep, all good. I'm just taking a long training, gymming, and just all good stuff, aiming at keep taking marathon in the end of me, and we're just taking a long training. We can chat about training maybe in another episode. I'm coming up, but yeah, so that's me.

2:04And how about yourself, Shona? Yeah, good. We are about three weeks out from two oceans. Oh my god. Oh my god. It's getting closer and closer, and yeah, training isn't going exactly to plan, but I love the race, and I'm planning on having a good time. It'll be my seventh, and so, yes, no, looking forward to that. Good, but yeah, we're going to introduce Jess now. I just want to mention that I'm really excited about this episode, because Jess is, she won't mind me saying, Jess is turning 45 in the next month or so, and she's really astringling with a couple of things that you and I both know that most women struggle with, sort of at this age. And so I'm really excited for this call, for that reason. And so, yeah, looking forward to this chat and all that she has to ask, and perhaps all that we can answer, and we can all learn. Yeah. Good. Let me bring her on. There we go. Jess, welcome. Nice, Jess, Jessica Browning. Let me give you the full name. Jess, you're based out of Melbourne, right? So that's the rest. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's right. I'm over in Melbourne. I'm on the other side of the world as you've just put it.

3:06Other side of the world. Yeah, well, that's that's how we feel. I mean, I know it's a, and you know, so for those of you don't know, we do a live coaching call in the Coach Perry platform, quite often, or every Monday, evening, South African time, 8 p.m., which would normally be at 6 p.m. UK time, and obviously in the US a lot earlier. And Jess joins those live coaching calls, which is what, like 4 a.m. 5 a.m. your time. And I'm always amazed. There's, yeah, right? Yeah, like Jess is always like a wide awake in those calls, asking the most awesome questions. I'm half-folding asleep and Jess is wide awake, but yeah, so really, really, yeah, Jess, right now it's 5 a.m. I'm on the coaching calls, but then when the clocks go back in a couple of weeks, it's going to be 4 a.m. So I'm, oh my god, or coffee even before that. Are you an early morning person anyway? I mean, or, right? I've always kind of been a morning person, but I guess when I studied the gym, when also open early, but also I started working a lot earlier too. So like my job would start at 7 o'clock. Right now I started 8 o'clock. So I just make

4:07sense that I'm up early. I have my coffee, read my email, but then I go to the gym, I just get everything done in the morning. Like time I go to work, I come home, you know, it's, it's, you know, tired. Just give us a little brief summary about yourself. Just who are you, what you work, family or any of those sort of just a little briefbio of yourself. Yeah, sure. So I guess the world comes to Melbourne, the world watches Melbourne. Australia is a very traditional country but it's also a country of migrants and that's that's what I am. I'm originally from Western Montana in United States so I grew up in Montana but I've actually lived and worked in six different countries. So I did a couple different stints in Japan. I lived in Lincolnshire, England. I got to study for a semester at uni there. I lived for two years in Doha, Qatar, safe for a few months in the Philippines and I've been in Australia for 15 years. So at this

5:11point I'm actually in Melbourne for close to 10 years and you know like at this point I've become an Australian citizen so I'm actually a dual national at this point. So in terms of family, all of my family are still back in America so my parents are in Montana. A lot of my family comes from the Midwestern United States. So I got a chance to hang out with cousins in that. So what I do during the day when I'm not at the gym, oddly enough I actually work with safety valves. So I work in the safety industry. So safety valves or anything that say goes on a boiler or goes on a compressor hot water heaters. We serve we serve customers in the compressor industry, the oil and gas industry, clean energy, you know there's all sorts of industries in Australia. So basically we supply pressure safety valves and pressure relief valves. So I set valves like it to do machining today. I got to drill valve flanges and tear valves apart

6:12and sometimes old valves get need to be cleaned and yeah I mean it's it's not something I necessarily fell into but you know basically they I had enough of a wide background that they said we'll teach you what you need to know. So yeah yeah I've just kind of all went into it as you do. Yeah as you do yeah and then from a running running perspective Jason you've only really been you took a running yeah I've worked about two and a bit years ago right so yeah you've accomplished a few things in that time already. Yeah maybe talk us to that I mean I know you mentioned around Sydney Marathon this was before Sydney was a major that was one of your first races. Yeah maybe just take us through a little bit of your running history and then we can we can dive into a little with more on that as well. Yeah well I met the running history the history itself is quite short. I was always active beforehand so I went to the gym lifting weights spending time on the treadmill but I never really went. I guess I was never quite that athletic growing up I wasn't fast so it never was

7:16really anything I got into but one day on the treadmill and this was after I started my current job one day I just it's kind of weird but I just started running and it was a very short period of time it was like 30 seconds but I just love that pound I thought that was why did I just start running I just suddenly I just urged to just run and so I started keeping it up and I guess as I got I wasn't in my job for very long I actually had a significant life change in myself I actually chose to retire from alcohol after being in the brewing industry for like three years I just decided that I needed something to do on the weekends besides like sampling everybody's fears. I guess like kind of going around there was these signs for this running event called the two times you run this run that's held every year in St.

8:17Kilda and basically it's to race funds for a group called Beyond Blue and what Beyond Blue is they're based in Australia but they it's basically like a help line that people can call so like they're not feeling well they're feeling down it's like they can reach out they can get kind of just speak to someone they can get help so it's a way to to race funds for Beyond Blue so I saw this poster for 5k there's 10k there was like the half marathon which you know I was running my little bouts on the treadmill so of course a half marathon kind of scared me but I'm like well I decided to just challenge myself and it's like well I know I could do 5k I'm gonna go for the 10k so the first running event I ever did was a 10k and I absolutely fell in love with it and I don't know if it's because I was like a little bit of targeted marketing but at the time the Sydney marathon they were at Abbott's candidate race so like kind of

9:17our Cape Town and Shanghai are now so Sydney at the time was in the running for and they they're coming up on their final assessment but they really needed to boost their numbers so I guess rather than going back to the running communities again they started branching out a little bit and you know kind of started reaching people such as myself and I guess it was I don't know if it was like the emotions they use their marketing technique the idea the Australian makeshift that look we actually need your help come and run the marathon will will help you you know there's all these great things it's gonna be wonderful and I think just somehow planted the seed and and right after this I came off this 10k I kept seeing this advertising and I planted the seed in my mind you know I think I'm gonna run the marathon at the time there was it was Rory Darkins and Eloise Wellings from marathon state of mind they were

10:19working with the Sydney marathon they were doing a podcast series and I downloaded all the episodes and I listened to the episodes on the way to Bali and it was really really hard because I was listening to the episodes offline and just the content and the the stirring I mean it was hard not to cry on the plane I mean it's just listening to this and I right then already I was like I'm gonna run the marathon I'm gonna go to Sydney and it the cool thing is the first time I ever came to Australia I landed in Sydney and like you know what what an interesting turn of circle good to go back to something like this to you know just change my life and yeah when I came back I committed so it was of course I had to do some training on the way so I entered the half marathon which I'm glad I did because I didn't realize how bloody hilly the Sydney CBD is okay hills yeah exactly this is Melbourne this is hilly so yeah I went to the Sydney marathon in August and surprised the

11:25hell out of everyone including myself it's interesting my I was talking my parents on the phone and I still remember this I was talking my parents on the phone and they said oh are you oh yeah you signed up to any running events and I said oh yes I'm running the Sydney marathon and there were thoughts you know I think I thought I was you know it's being funny it's I off yeah yeah yeah no not Sydney Mara who's that Sydney Mara yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah my dad's reaction was magnificent oh I did it and I did it and I thought well I'm gonna do another marathon and so yeah what you did so that was for me sorry just to confirm that was 2020 for correct and then you went on in your end gold coast in 2025 as well so it's a marathon burger button for sure yeah and you you know so that's it's in there and so yeah perhaps some some gold for this

12:26year you were telling us offline but back to the gold coast right what's what you got there yeah I'm revisiting stomping grounds so you know talk about planning a seed I was on the gold coast last July and I saw people that were signing up for the double so the double is actually two days of racing so Saturday is the fun run Saturday is the half marathon then on Sunday we do a full marathon and I saw these people like regular looking people signing up for it and I think I was sitting on the balcony thinking what what would trading for that look like because you know I mean I've done a marathon I've done a run let's try something different and and I talked to a man in the gold coast airport and he said yeah yeah he said you can do it he said just it's just the half and then it's the pool on Sunday's like you'll be tired but you do it yeah it's just kind of the it should be right may mind yeah I love it yeah should be right yeah I love it yeah I'm doing the double in

13:28July and then six weeks later I'm running Sydney again so I'm a member of the candidacy club so basically we've got a guaranteed entry and we had to just nominate a year so I nominated 2026 is my year okay good that's the year running a bit close but we'll get there she'll be right yeah yeah she'll be right yeah yeah that's awesome I mean I've I've heard I had a client actually who ran that I think was it a couple of years oh gosh losing track I was at last year year before yeah yeah but just a bit in perspective though you're Sydney marathon times and you're Sydney marathon time in 2024 was six hours 11 yeah six hours 11 minutes and then and then so and what was the other one the gold coast one was six hours five so so when you're looking at a half marathon and a marathon back to back you're looking at about two and a half hours for your

14:32half and then six ish for the marathon so it's a lot of time on feet that we can it is yeah and yeah well the big key I think is is not to go out too fast in the half marathon and completely blow yourself up and then you're too tired to run on Sunday so taking the half marathon slow so even if I would say two hours 45 but I was doing that at a leisurely pace so then I had recovery for fun night so I'm not necessarily looking to race both races yeah we're in March at the moment so how is your running going at the moment yeah look um I actually got diagnosed with an iron deficiency last winter so after around gold coast I just didn't feel well and at the time I was actually training for Queenstown marathon which was last November so I got treatment for the deficiency in October but

15:34I've actually noticed that it's almost like I don't quite have all the stamina back that I had when I was training for gold coast so I'm actually finding I'm having to put in a lot more walking brakes right that I was before so when I was training for gold coast I was kind of doing walk breaks about every 20 minutes because I was trying to train to run between the drink stations and now I'm finding like I'm having to put in a walk break like every 10 minutes or if I'm really taught even like okay just make it five minutes five minutes five minutes and just make sure it's easy run um so I'm finding I'm not having as much stamina and I guess late last week too I hit a little bit of a speed bump um unfortunately I've got osteo and one of my knees and I've managed to tweak it um did it oh I overdid it in the weight room so I'm I'm probably on a repeat recovery week but I've still got 15 weeks so I think I'm a little bit slower out of the gates on this training block but at the same time I've also kind of switched over to coach Perry planning

16:38so I'm definitely running a lot slower too so I'm coming out of my runs a lot more recovered than when I was trying to just go on it as hard as I could every single run so you know there's positives and negatives I would say so certainly some things to learn marathon yeah I mean marathon training is super hard and it takes its toll on your body it's a big stress and I think people quite often underestimate and quite often the first marathon or you know early stages of running you're often quite void and then infused and highly motivated and when you kind of get into the thick of it now you're sort of set yourself a bigger target I mean it's yes mean feet what you're looking to do and um and you say you've had designed deficiency which kind of fatigue type yeah illness it was yeah it's a fatigue but my biggest thing was last winter I was just so cold yes you get cold even more freezing yeah yeah I work with a bunch of men in the factory and they're running around in short sleep t-shirts

17:42I know that's not fun you need to come close the door yeah yeah and guys don't give you anything for that as well they're just like oh what's wrong with you and it's like actually I'm really cold to the bone and then it makes you feel tired and quite ill and you do need to keep wrapped up warm hopefully that's passing by in your levels are back to yeah I had a three month checkup and when they did took bloods that they actually said everything is fine again so hopefully that's in middle of the range or on the low end because for a runner if you're on the low end that's still quite low okay I guess I didn't actually get what my number was it was just the GP just reported to me oh yeah it's fine now I think that's a sorry Jess it's a really good point that Nikki's making because that range that they have for normal human range yeah if you're on

18:42the low end of that that's still not fine for endurance I mean both Lindsay and are both went through and I know that he also has heard some some stories about him coming back to him yeah Linda and I went to doctors where they yeah I was told I'm fine and Lindsay was told he's definitely not fine and we actually had very similar readings so yeah I think just that would just be something that I had question and just sort of say you know well am I in the lower end of that range because that could be partly why you still feeling a little bit fatigue but again you know that's not the perhaps the only reason and yeah I mean one of the things I wanted to Nikki yeah sorry I can follow up with a question with that they know you know you mentioned to us Jess you turning 45 next week and one of the questions we asked you was you know do you feel like you're entering perimenopause you feel like symptoms are there things you know you mentioned strength a lot so I'm assuming you know strength isn't one of the reasons that perhaps you're fatiguing all the time but are you feeling any other kind of symptoms along along with this that could be perhaps contributing to the feelings of fatigue yeah does anything else well

19:47the only other thing that I've had and I have spoken to my GP about last winter so it would have been in like kind of after July so it would have been after the Gold Coast marathon and I kind of had a couple of weeks recovery what I've actually noticed since then and I think that's when the iron deficiency symptoms started but what I've actually noticed since then is I've actually gained five to six kilos since last winter and at first it was like this really kind of just slow but steady weight gain because probably I wasn't doing as much marathon training as I should have been for Queenstown because I did have the fatigue but since about October the gain is probably what I'd call a runaway train so I just said like five to six kilos but certainly four kilos has been since October and you know like look I went away at Christmas I went to Fiji I was diving in that so I expected to gain a little bit when I when I came back but it just hasn't come back off

20:51and like I'm trying to make sure I'm eating enough because I know like if you don't eat enough then your body tries to conserve what it has I'm trying not to overeat which of course trying to find that balance is you know it's like what do you apart from counting everything you eat yeah that's probably the main symptom that I've had but my sleep patterns haven't really changed good it's just moods haven't really changed you know nothing's being like that too of course we've just come out of summer so there's been lots of sunlight daylight warm weather but yeah the weight gain is probably the weight gain is probably the biggest concern that I have okay just I thought it was yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely want to dive into into some of that just especially the creativity and stuff the respect but I was just wanting to link you know perhaps figure out that your feelings of fatigue if the iron is okay you know perhaps the reason for that you know if you're still doing strength work should mean your your loss of muscle hasn't been flowed dramatic so that's really really good so yeah the weight gain I think definitely could

21:54play a role in in that's the feeling of fatigue especially if you're trying to train at the same pace easy pace as you were last year right so we need to obviously make those small adjustments which you have mentioned that we've made at coach fairy for you so so no so that that that that definitely will help but yeah and that you're not feeling shattered off to every run I think that is that is just a key to key aspect to focus on that is actually one thing that I have noticed is said's going on to a plan where you're kind of two weeks on then one week adaptation I am actually finding that I'm getting to the end of my my long run or my longer session and I don't feel like I just need to have a nap for the rest of the day granted my longest session being like a hundred minutes I haven't quite done over supposed to do two hours but let my knee clear first but yeah yeah and you've got time like I said you still 15 weeks out so there's no need to be doing longer than that now so yeah yeah um Nikki you do you want to tap in with anything they're from

22:54the the the way they're inside of things or you were mentioning you are definitely through into things I'm 55 now so I'm a bit on from you um I think you know marathon training is hard on the female body and it's especially hard during pyramid and pause so taking on a challenge I don't want ever to put people off running marathon absolutely love running marathons but it's probably not the best thing to do when you're pyramid opposed or it can just cause that little bit extra stress on your body and that can manifest in lots of different ways and put potentially it might be the weight game for yourself um with a lot of lengthy runs and long runs as well it can be really difficult to know how to balance your food and your calorie intake it's great that you're doing weight training that really helps with weight gain and and stuff but clearly it's not quite working in this sort of state I'd say there's two options I would say

23:56firstly I would track food like properly over the next couple of weeks I'd use one of the the apps and I'm a fluidically track it using grams like don't because often they do like one cut this one you're a bit guessing you actually have to use the grams and be right on it every single little bit of food and just if you track over two weeks and you're weighing yourself I don't want to create a weighing uh a meeting sort of here but you know whether your weight goes up or down or how it sort of balances over that time and what you're looking for is your kind of maintenance level of calories and then potentially on the days that you're running a little bit what you need to add on because it's so easy to think well I'm not actually eating that much I could just have my porridge this morning I just had this and all of a sudden you maybe had two crunchy bars in the middle of that you know and and I think as well as runners we often think we can get away with eating quite a lot I know I certainly did and I often used to gain quite a lot of weight when I was

25:00marathon training it was the biggest thing for me I used to gain a lot of weight marathon training when I went back to five and ten k's the weight would just drop off me and so I would but I would track but then I would also recommend probably working with a nutritionist um to dial it more in if you can't then find a solution but they will often ask you for some sort of food diary and if you have that um and don't try like to sort of just just track your food just you know don't necessarily kind of go right I want to hit this amount of calories or anything just just track it and see where you are and how you feel on those days and and then you're looking to find what level kind of works for you I guess and then um and it's difficult because there'll be days that you'll be running two hours and then days that you won't be and and so then you need to know whether you're wanted to balance your calorie diet across the week or whether you balance out

26:03during the day it is a really difficult I think for runners and and also for us women um it's really tricky my husband can basically say at the start of a week I want to lose weight and he can and he can pretty much be in a calorie deficit quite quickly and lose weight at the end of the week and mine skills might not budge for two weeks because we have to be really consistent and persistent or equal with that and just look at the long term and that's what you have to do long term for it especially it's very difficult to lose weight when you're training for an event such as you are so what you really want is that maintenance plus fueling well and it is about timing as well so we shouldn't might want to go at cracking all that one but timing around your runs and fueling your runs and then not fueling for the right method then not eating the crisp and

27:06chocolate for the rest of you right yeah so it's you because obviously you you need to fuel and train yes yeah you don't want to be fasting but the idea is you feel sufficiently that you're you're training properly but then the idea is maybe later on in the day you know like once you've done your recovery uh niki de Villiers suggested along the lines of well you know say you're taking spoons from a serving dish so you've made you know whatever dish you've made instead of say having three spoons we'll just have two two spoons of salad so also creating more of a diverse plate yes with different kinds of vegetables etc the key thing though sorry niki is also so niki guys anyone who's listening niki de Villiers is our dietitian on the coach prairie platform so just just FYI and so I think the key thing though is yeah I think when niki's

28:06getting to yet niki Friedman is getting to here though is that stop taking the guesswork out of right so if you if you track and you track for it doesn't even because I'm also I don't like being pedantic about these things because I think we can become quite um obsessive I think is the word not pedantic obsessive is you know we're not suggesting that I think just the key to get an actual idea of what your intake is versus your outputs right and so working with the dietitian is key for that because I mean my example last year was exactly oceans this time last year I was string training I was running and I and I wasn't taking it enough and I only figured that out by tracking it's I thought I was eating enough and I mean this is my job but what's not a dietitian but I'm in and around it so I think that's just what niki's getting to is just get to the point where you it's not you're taking the guesswork out of it you know so maybe you aren't eating enough maybe you think you are so you know maybe you aren't this was just my my my suggestive bias and from myself onto you but I think you're just working with someone because then adding in non-structured movements is going to be key you know so you have an active job so then if we know that you can

29:11perhaps update the the output side of it you've got your structured training and we know how much you're putting out from that perspective but then maybe it is adding in you know a couple of walks in the week or or something like that just where there's that non-structured movement that can hopefully then help with with some of the outputs as well um I mean look that we that sitting as saying all of this and we know that it's not a um not easy not easy yeah and so that's the general sort of advice I'd say it's just just take the guesswork out of it yeah rather than trying to keep track in my head so I'm kind of keeping track in my head also I've been roughly following Matt Fitzgerald's diet quality score just okay okay so you've got your fruit your veg you've got your protein you've got your your good quality dairy you've got your grain so like your first you know let's say your first fruits so say your first two servings you get two points each for that then like your third one you get through your pork it's kind of basically it just breaks down food into different categories so you're trying to hit like a good pork for the day so

30:15okay so I guess I'm packing my lunch it's like okay well I've got protein protein I've got dairy I've got veg okay I've got veg I've got all right I've got two fruits so it's like okay what am I eating today but I guess rather than doing it inside my head actually writing it down absolutely we're writing it down or following an app um yeah they're amazing like I mean now you can also take a photo and it gives you a guest yeah and thank guests and we're telling not guess bad it's better than you're guessing no it does it it's quite really really good uh and and also if you use things like my fitness power which is probably one of the best known ones um I have been using it regularly for the last eight weeks and you can actually see weekly how your calorie count is as well because some people eat a little bit more at the weekends and do in the week and it's very interesting over the course of a week just where you know because sometimes you have a good day and then the next day you know and this sort of stuff but I say it's across the week as well and and if you kind of look at the science I love it I mean I love the

31:16science of these things that's why I often kind of do a lot of them myself um you can really see across the weeks how you're going and then how your level of activity is working alongside that then you can sort of say well I actually think I need you know a little bit more carbs at night as well as unity and this sort of stuff and all more protein I find that a game changer for me actually in terms of whether I felt hungry for the rest of the day was having a really good portion of protein in the morning for breakfast yes I agree and so I think if you set that off right then that really helps but I think um it's good that you've been in contact when a kid develops as well and I think if you keep that going hopefully that should help yeah um I haven't done like a one-on-one but I've asked a few questions in the form and obviously kind of grew and they digested content in the free course she's done so I've kind of started with like free like the free resources but then we have certain your coach Barry um but yeah then my

32:21next step was going to be we'll look maybe I should just have something with Nikki because then I can just yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well it is with the matter of training you're going to be doing as well and I would say just be really really careful because it's so easily easy if you're wanting to lose weight and we have this fine balance uh but also you're training quite heavy you just want to make sure you don't go into to an energy deficit as well so and then cause some other niggles and injuries and stuff so um you just that also it needs to be flagged there as well just long-term it's tough though it's not it's not easy I think when we hit the sort of pain in the pores and stuff things happen to our body then we're just not quite sure what's going on and it's just like oh right and it's only with the beauty mindset when I reached 55 that kind of okay that was definitely that stage and that was a bit of that stage but when you're in it it's hard to know that you're kind of going through the stages um well and I think it's so subtle too it's not like there's a great combination of wide or big obviously like it's um it's it's obvious when

33:26you start your period right you know like it's obvious when you start your period and then you move forward and it's and as you degrade it's it's not so subtle when everything starts stopping you just start getting finds kind of like the you don't even get the warning sign on your car the car just starts to stop yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the low energy availability thing for me is always bread one of our director's a coach Perry has a saying that he always says death by paper cuts so it's just little bits a little bit over time that eventually this accumulates and I think that's that's a concern then I think you know so yeah let's yeah I got you know moving on from that because you've got you've got this massive goal um you know in in in July but then you've also got Sydney marathon at the end of August yeah yeah that's like it's six it's probably like a six week break in between those two is that correct or yeah just counting at six seven weeks on six seven weeks yeah okay that would be inclusive of having a short break after the the double just to

34:29just to recover so yeah really counting there'd be about six weeks of training so okay yeah yeah so having a good recovery and then the six weeks of training okay yeah so I mean that's that's that's it's it's on the edge of fun for me let me say that like I think if they were any close I would yeah yeah yeah and I remember Jace I remember you asking me if you could fit in comrades in that mix as well and I was like you cannot I remember in the four dishes I love this there of you whoo I know I love it it's also good as I know Jace nothing else but yeah let's look at it another year showing on your mistake and it was two oceans oh was it ocean sorry apologies apology I thought it was comrades my bed okay no no then oceans might yeah again that all would have been quite tough yeah I could work so no so I look at yeah for me it's it's on the just on the cusp of fun um in terms of yeah getting a good recovery and the key thing there is going to be your recovery after those after your your Gold Coast double if you don't recover well enough you're going to struggle in the training and in Sydney as well but yeah you yeah do you have any I mean we

35:33obviously throwing that you have questions for us that we haven't perhaps answered for you just yet or the specific things that you wanted to ask us if you want to recover from sessions faster not feel tired all the time run pain and injury free and improve your endurance then be sure to join me in my upcoming training specifically for female runners over the age of 45 in it's I'll share with you my simple five step framework that'll transform your running simply click on the link in the description of this podcast to save your seats in the training now we're looking forward to seeing you there yeah um actually a couple couple training points I'd like to touch on tonight so I guess kind of rather than going right out into the left field um since we're talking about the Gold Coast double so the format is a half marathon on Saturday then the full marathon on Sunday so obviously running 21k on Saturday 42k on Sunday um have you ladies had clients that have done similar

36:38like double events or multi-day events right now what I'm thinking is I've been periodizing through I started on a 10k plan um after Christmas then I went on to like six weeks of a half marathon and then I'm supposed to start on like a full marathon you know training block from next is kind of how I thought I would structure it but I'm actually wondering if that's going to be sufficient build up because I do remember asking in the form should I actually follow like a modified comrades plan because I'm doing yeah that's where you got comrades from no that's too long it's also a lot of travel it's also a lot of travel you so yeah just from my perspective Nikki please obviously chime in here as well I know whenever we've because we've had these questions a lot and in South Africa I've seen people use marathons like you know stepping stones right and drives me insane but but for these double you know these sort of stage race or type double

37:38up back events from my opinion marathon plan suffices for you to do those those two distances more than that I actually find you're going to you know you're pushing yourself beyond mileage and volume that isn't necessary for that distance necessarily like we have people who run relays and and multi-day relays that maybe take up to they do 10k's a day but they're doing 40k's in a week you know again I don't think that you have to then you don't always have to cover yeah more than that mileage in your training so for me a marathon plan will suffice for you to to cover your half marathon and the marathon on on on on race weekend Nikki yeah I'm not sure if you have a different view to me with that and that's yeah no it's the fine balance I had to Andrew with last year he did this one he ran exactly what you were running and the half marathon for him the half marathon was a sub 130 but he did that sort of easy run and then did the marathon the next thing he did he definitely struggled a bit you know because he wanted to sub three hour marathon and it wasn't

38:38it wasn't to be but that's not surprising um you know I think it is a fine balance but marathon training is perfect here I think what the use of walk runs strategies are going to be your go-to and definitely an easy way to recover going into Sydney and just keeping yourself strong as well which is a really key component as well it's just it's that whole thing of sleeping, eating, run, repeat, walk run and just keeping yourself well and healthy and just not overdoing it so that you're just feeling absolutely shattered so each week you're coming in and you're feeling good to go again and you're feeling good to go again and then just having that beat over the afterwards and yeah going into Sydney and yeah I mean cracking challenge of a year really yeah yeah could you yeah does that answer that that's that that's a question for you yeah yeah um any other training training questions yeah well I was I was about to stay so in terms of your

39:43running week maybe putting back-to-back runs so say Friday you run for an hour and then Saturday you do your long run I guess just to kind of practice the format would be also I guess what I've been following too so or my better off keeping distance and making sure I'm getting good recovery I yeah Nikki sorry I took the first question do you want to take this one? I don't know I was just going to ask you on a four-day plan and you run a four-day plan yeah I always like that and sort of a shorter easier run and then the long run the next day that I'm a big fan of that one I know some people like to do the long run and then run on for teague legs the next day but I'm not so keen on that one yeah I like that we're at the other way round I think it works yeah I think it works better the other way round and I certainly see better results that way what do you think should I yeah I'm a big I'm a massive fan of better-backer runs um for this type of training and for ultra-type of training so um I personally prefer it the other way or really do you like running on the teague legs the next day teague legs but I've seen

40:48good results as a coach from from either side so with athletes doing both I think the key thing there is again just just keeping an eye on your recovery how you feeling as Nikki you're saying you know this eats the run repeat recover recover repeat but yeah so um but yes I'm a fan of back-to-backer runs so and however you space those is or I guess it's fine so if you're saying Friday Saturday is fine I'm assuming then Sunday is like a rest day for you yeah I would do a rest day or if you know just just just to do like uh relative rest um still good out and go for a walk but just keep it at at strolling pace so say oh yeah I've got to the yeah I've got to the vines you know I've got to the coffee shop for you know just just something casual certainly not worrying worrying about pacing or anything like this but just more just to keep my next moving good yeah that's good good um yeah I guess the other thing I wanted to discuss today and this is kind of interesting but I'm um you probably agree that I'm a uh back-to-back runner at this point and whenever you look at

41:50feeling strategies for your longer endurance events it's door-to-door carbs so like like coming back to comrades is like the cruise ship buffet it's like just tables of you know potatoes and the thing is though is I'm actually finding after say two and a half or three hours I'm actually not hungry I'm actually thirsty and so what I'm wondering is is it actually underfueling that's contributing maybe to uh diminished performance so say people that are slowing down um is it underfueling or is it actually dehydration because if you know that human can live without food for quite a few days but if we go without water we die a lot faster from dehydration so it is it actually I mean because I'm actually thirsty I find well so that's that's I mean that's good so drink drinking too thirsty is the the the advice um

42:53I I definitely just in my experience of speaking to people and looking at how much they take in for me it's an underfueling issue people are not taking any enough fuel early enough early on which means they then are unable to eat later on and they are then bonking essentially in some sort of way of the form right so just in my experience that's what I see is that people are not taking and in particular with the comrades oceans runners you know that I mean the general recommendation for back of a pack runner is you know not necessarily needing to get up to the 80 90 grams of carbs per hour that the the faster guys are doing so you know 40 to 60 grams of carbs can suffice and for the most part when I speak to and in particular women is that they're getting in she's 20 grams of carbs if that you know and so if you're not getting that in from the beginning yeah for me you're just and then your body is going to not want to take in so um I think the dehydration plays a role don't give me wrong I think there is an element of that and obviously you live in Australia where it is hot and and warmer and of course that absolutely plays a role

43:58but for me then I would just structure your your intake slightly different is that you don't carbs doesn't need to be food either right so try and get some variety and uh so I take in a carb drink and a bar in my run so from the hour one I take in a carb drink and a bar and perhaps that I'm trying to get in an extra banana or something and that's my intake now so but that's that's almost what I said that it doesn't have to be food from the get go it can be liquid carbs as well um and so perhaps as you're getting towards the end where you're struggling to get food in then yes absolutely the liquid carbs are are key they um yeah Nicky sorry I would say this I was just going to say about the liquid just take it in as a nice a carb drink but also just going back to the tracking just track your long runs track the food fueling drinking strategy track the weather track you know if you write a lot of these things then and keep logbooks or stavas or the coach training tilts the coach parry you know write the notes and keep it so you've

44:58got to flight back because sort of having debrief so runs and long runs and marathons and keeping all the information really pays dividends when you go into the next one because you quite often forget maybe what you've done a little bit or what have you approached it and this sort of stuff whereas if you have a track and you know what you've kind of done you go oh yeah I did that that reworked really well I'm going to do that this time you know this sort of stuff so just track things a little bit more um however which way suits you the best I used to keep everything written down in a journal really old fashioned yeah and I quite like the whole thing of run journaling but um I know some people starve it and you know however which way works for you but um it's just that's the beauty of running it's we're just tweaking things all the time we're just trying to work out what works what's going to make us that little bit faster what's going to help us and stuff so um try it try a few different things there I think that's actually part of the fun of of the the sport that we pursue is the fact that there are so many avenues that you can

46:03tweak in different ways yes go down so um one of the things that doesn't always get touched on all the time is is actually the mental aspects of training yeah so it's the idea that you know like like physically you may not be able or you may not be quite prepared or you may be under-prepared but the ideas if you say in your mind well this is what I'm going to do um you know then you're somehow able to to overcome and you can actually push yourself to go beyond that barrier um you know there's so many different I mean you could spend you could spend a lifetime reading coaching philosophy is talking to people you know you you still be you know at all distances and you'd still be you'd still be learning up to the day that you decided to stop right I mean hopefully you'd never never ever stop so what exactly the thing is um a 90-year-old man ran the Sydney marathon

47:03so this was the age groups and yeah like I was leaving of course I was quite shattered and here's this 90-year-old man coming down Macquarie Street and he got some of the loudest chairs of the day and it's like you know I might not be the fastest but that's that's what I want to be doing when I'm working very inspirational things like that yeah you know I just say you like I love that you say that around the difference you know we can have these conversations these philosophical or scientific conversations around the mentality of different coaching or different levels and for me what I love about it even more is that it's so different from the front of the pack the elite runners to the back of the pack runners um yes I read a book um Ryan Sands who's one of South Africa's leading trail runners um he spoke about he ran the utter trail run in South Africa it's uh I think they ran it in about five hours and the the back of the packers are doing it in about 12 and he won the race and then a couple of years later he ran it as a charity event for saving runners and he ran with some other South African sportsman they obviously finished

48:06at the back of the pack and he said he's like never in his life has he realized how much time back of the packers are spending on their feet right and so you obviously he's finishing in six hours and the guys are the same with you know how to like always you know we joke about how to stay and run in comrades who you know she's back in time for lunch you know like by the time like she gets it by time lunch we have so there is just a different elements for the back of the pack running I mean I spoke recently about my my qualify marathon with that I landed finishing with 20 seconds to go and and yeah the mentality that that took I've never had to experience that every in my life so I love the difference between working with like someone who's an elite runner or a friend to the packer on a versus the back of the packer and it just it makes our sport yeah very very special so yeah yeah or for mentioning that as well um Jay sorry yeah perhaps one or two last questions and then yeah we can call it from there but yeah if you do have um as well which I'm sure you uh yeah it's good or good I thought I've got heaps of things we could have so we alluded to earlier

49:07the fact that I admittedly do have a fairly active job um I'm not necessarily literally running around all day but I'm definitely on my feet um I'm working on concrete floors I'm lifting objects carrying objects doing you know different things I'm probably on my feet for say up to two and a half hours at a time and then I sit down for a brief break um miss wondering if you ladies have experience with clients or you know like like mates clients who actually have active jobs and I'm just wondering how do you actually scale your training accordingly for for people that aren't necessarily they they finish their gym session then they get to go sit in the office yes versus someone who finishes their gym session but then they're on their feet busy all day yeah so Nikki yeah I'll take a hit and then you feel free um I yeah I mean it depends on on the activity of the other their job so I mean I have a lot of friends who are school

50:09teachers slash sports coaches you know so their jobs are quite intense as well um on their feet all the time and so one of the main things that I think we would like to play with is a variable is to reduce the the the intensity of some of your sessions so um in particular for those athletes I would so if they are sport coaches and they're running and they're getting involved I would also reduce the intensity of the interval sessions perhaps reduce the the frequency of those interval sessions as well um yeah because you are on your feet so much and especially in a time where we're needing to just balance that recovery but um yeah Nikki your your aspect but yeah I've played with the intensity quite a bit um yeah no I'd say the same I mean you just it's a balancing act isn't it so you just have to balance and it might be that in your long your midweek long run 75 minutes for you maybe it's 65 or 60 minutes instead or your gym session maybe it's 70% of what

51:10you normally do um and again I'm gonna have fun about tracking across the week so you know what you can balance and what um and what works because you need to be able to hold down your job and work well and perform at your job so marathon training is hard yes it is yeah exactly which is why a lot of people do a lot of the work at the weekends I guess so you know but that's great you have one full rest day and you know maybe if you've got four days of running and there's one long run that's sort of 75 minutes maybe you could split it over two days that might make you less tired you know it's sort of finding out the balance that's gonna work right for you so that you can work well at work but yeah that's yes just yeah reducing it and just finding the balance and that's why working with coaches is good and you can be in the forum and ask loads of questions all the time yeah so you don't have to be subjective about that yeah sorry Jay I think that just to add on to Nicky's point there the good thing

52:15about working at the coach with that is that you don't have to be subjective about yourself with that you have the coach saying this is this is what you're doing because otherwise you won't you you'll do the things that you like to do and the things and a lot of the running and all of that stuff so we spend our life doing going no you can't do that issue no yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's it's it's kind of like people that say oh I don't have time I don't have time it's like well what are you doing with your day yeah you know sometimes I stop and get objective and I look at well what was I actually doing today is I have how long did I spend reading how long did I spend on Facebook how long did I spend writing this thing now that maybe I need to write and you start looking at where you can either truncate or you can actually take you know whether it's events or even like longer habits that just no longer serve or you know if they are serving they're serving the wrong person I'm doing it for someone else and not for yourself sorry it you know certainly a lot to think about

53:16but honestly I could I could talk to you ladies for hours but I'd like to cover one final point if you've got yes if you've got yes yeah yeah last week yeah it's later at night for me but I'm kind of hitting my second man and you're thinking yeah but we need good sleep chase you need good sleep so yeah and you just need to go to bed so not all of all yeah she's all done yeah so Shana you you used to be actually working at the the high performance center at the university of Pretoria and one thing I think it would be interesting to do is so with the high performance center of course there's a lot of expensive toys that the athletes get to use but there's also practices so something that could be useful that I've been thinking about and I'm wondering what what you ladies would think what are some of the things that women could do to create high performance center experiences at home what are the sorts of barriers that you know like people could tweak or improve

54:23or even bring like the little hacks in that would would give us some of what what the like the you know good athletes or like the elite athletes get to experience so it's an excellent question I had to get a good question I know we don't have enough time for my entire answer because I'll ramble on this about forever so one of the things that that I carry on about when when I yeah when I eventually took over the head of sports because I took over the head of sports science job from Lindsay okay so we had so Lindsay was head of sports science and I took over from him Lindsay is our head coach for those of you who are listening um for me the the the center the the place the facilities the equipment none of that mattered all right when we were working with the elite athletes all of that stuff's great are they nice to have and we would look at the Australian setups and a lot of my younger staff would be like oh we need this and we want this and we want this and we would come down to the point to go that none of that stuff matters what mattered was the personal that we had that worked with those athletes that had the expertise to then bring that sort of stuff down and and and and and translate it down to the athletes and the second thing that

55:26absolutely mattered for those athletes were the basics so the things that we wanted them to do is we wanted them to sleep really well we wanted them to recover we wanted them to eat well and and so into answer your question in a shortened version we don't need any of that everything that you need is probably at your home um we can do better we can uh make better sleep environments but not having last coming in etc etc um but really you know some of the athletes that we worked with there yeah I mean it was just getting the basics rights and getting the basics rights in a repeatable manner over and over and over again in an Olympic cycle that thing got them to to get to where they need to be so um yeah they are thank you that's a great question because that is it's always been something that we we used to hop on you know the university would then say oh we're giving you X amount of money what equipment do you want and I was like well can we just pay my stuff more you know um because they really they the expertise of what we need here so um yeah so I think maybe to then translate that for female runners over the age of 45 find some expertise that you

56:28believe in that's evidence based hone in on that listen to that and get your basics rights I think that would that would be my advice as if you want to be a like an elite athlete um yeah I think it's interesting yeah um get your support and it's the having the support system isn't it basically having the people on your side who are going to help you and um and keep your being data informed is always good I think yeah and back to the tracking that I've been harping on a bit but um so you want a track and you want to know what's good for you don't you but having your support team is vital yeah absolutely but if you have the support team and you have all the equipment and you have all that stuff and you're not doing the basics yeah yeah well that's it we'll hopefully support team are guiding you for the b6 and this stuff it's funny I had a guy the other day who came on and he said oh I booked in I'm getting my lab tests done I'm doing this I'll have all this information for you next week and I feel like saying please don't waste your money I know what your pieces I know where we are I know you know and I said well okay well

57:31do you know I'm not sure you should do it and he's like yeah but I really want to and I was going well that's great you know we can be data informed but I don't need it as a coach yeah particularly I know where I'm at with you and I know where we're going but I think some people love it as well I mean it's great sort of totally yeah absolutely no for sure I mean like you can look at your garment stats you can look at they even like like what coach Perry so you look at your zones and I do pay attention to what like what the zones are saying and kind of look at the charts so you can certainly be data informed so you can look at how long for it say your your heart rate zones were but you shouldn't necessarily base your entire training around yeah love it die by it don't do it's like well that there could have been a lot of you could have been because it was 25 hours it was hot and you needed to do water yeah yeah there's 10,000 of the reasons but certainly I was thinking as well sleep environment is the other key factor so I think quite often we make do with things for maybe just a little bit longer than we should and it's not at the

58:33point of being wasteful but you know like you go to a hotel and the bed is just that comfortable well a lot of places you can actually buy that quality of bedding and it's not that dear so it's like you take time to set up a good environment take the time to buy good foods read the labels pay attention to where your food is coming from so I'm making sure you're using good and green certainly you know like as you said Nikki tracking what you're eating yeah building quiet times into the day yeah yeah you know like sheltering your day too it's like okay I do chores from this time I do chores every day I do 15 minutes of house food I don't like paying chores yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah now it's just boogers on the running bits of this trend but yeah it's and then it really has to it's and it's not just chores but yeah so no Jess that's a great question and just you know putting all of those things into life is and being cognizant of it and myth-methodical I think is really really good so no excellent excellent question yeah so Jess

59:36thank you so much it was bedtime for you talking about doing the basics right you need to definitely mission off the bed. But no, thank you for your time. Love the questions, love the chat. Yeah, and good luck. Please, obviously I'll know how you do and we'll relay back to everyone listening how you do in July and September or in August. But yeah, thank you so much for your time. And guys, those of you who are listening, if you are perhaps interested and you want to be on an encouraging call, pop it in the chat below if you are watching on YouTube. If you have questions or anything specific, there is a link in the show notes as well to post some questions there for Niki and I for some Q&As as well. But other than that, we will see everyone again next week. Well, we'll see Niki again next week. Jess, I will see you on the Coach Perry platform. But yeah, thank you very much for your time and Niki and Jess have a good rest of your night. Bye everyone. This episode of She Runs Strong was brought to you by Active Forever. Active Forever provides science-backed supplements to support muscle recovery, joint health and endurance. So female runners

1:00:42over 45 can train smarter, run faster and stay strong without being sidelined by slow recovery. It's time to take recovery seriously. Visit getactiveforever.com and use code strong for 10% of your first order. That's getactiveforever.com