When it comes to running, more isn't always better. At some point, adding more miles, intensity, or strength training can stop helping and start working against you.

In this episode, Kevin and I discuss the law of diminishing returns and how it affects running performance, recovery, and race preparation. We share lessons from our daughter's intensive PSAT prep and explain why, just like studying for a big test, there comes a point when you need to trust the work you've already done instead of trying to squeeze in more.

We also discuss professional marathoner Vinny Nauti's high-volume training, why copying another runner's approach doesn't always work, and how to recognize when you're accumulating fatigue instead of making progress. I share why building an easy running base, balancing training intensity, prioritizing recovery, and adjusting your plan to fit your life are essential for long-term improvement.

We also break down race tapering, including how to adjust your running and strength training so you can arrive at race day ready to perform.

00:00 – When More Stops Helping: The Law of Diminishing Returns
01:07 – PSAT Prep and Knowing When to Stop
02:16 – Trusting Your Training During a Race Taper
02:59 – Mileage, Training Stress, and Recovery
04:50 – Breaking Through Plateaus: Push, Pull Back, or Wait?
06:06 – The Salt Analogy: Finding the Right Amount
08:05 – Vinny Natti and the Outlier in Marathon Training
11:17 – High Mileage and Fast Treadmill Running
15:40 – Is It Overtraining, or Just Part of Racing?
19:59 – Finding Your Individual Training Limit
21:37 – The Gray Zone: When Every Run Feels Moderately Hard
23:19 – Balancing Running Volume and Intensity
24:26 – Build Your Easy Running Base First
26:20 – Making Training Enjoyable and Sustainable
28:13 – Age, Running History, and Recovery Needs
30:46 – Lifestyle, Sleep, Nutrition, and Performance
35:01 – Creative Training Cycles and Adjusting Your Schedule
36:18 – Race Tapering: Trust the Work You've Done
38:03 – How to Adjust Strength Training During a Taper
40:02 – Running Taper Variations and Individual Needs
42:15 – Balancing Training Stress and Life Stress

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

Pain and injury can be incredibly frustrating as a runner, especially when it feels like the pain came out of nowhere. In this episode, I’m sharing the three-part framework I’ve used throughout my 20 years as a physical therapist to understand pain and determine what to do next: Evaluate, Assess, and Treat.

We’ll look beyond the painful body part and consider the bigger picture, including training load, mobility, strength, sleep, stress, fueling, hormones, and previous injuries. I’ll also walk you through how I decide when to modify running, how much pain may be okay during recovery, and why complete rest usually isn’t the answer. The goal is not just to get you out of pain, but to help your body become stronger and better able to handle the demands of running long term.

00:00 Understanding Running Pain and Injury

03:00 The EAT Framework: Evaluate, Assess, and Treat

06:00 Understanding Your Pain Story

08:00 Running Injuries and Your Training Load11:00 Sleep, Stress, Fueling, and Recovery

00:16:00 Pain and Injury Red Flags

18:00 Screening for Bone Stress Injuries

22:00 Testing Mobility, Stability, and Strength

26:00 Assessing What Needs to Be Addressed First

29:00 Making Your Nervous System Feel Safe

32:00 How Much Pain Is Okay?

33:00 The 24-Hour Rule

35:00 Mobility, Stability, and Strength

40:00 Modifying Your Running During Recovery

43:00 When to Return to Running

45:00 Fixing the Root Cause

47:00 Building Your Body’s Capacity to Handle More Load

49:00 What’s Next in the Injury Series

Gain access to my new secret podcast, Unbreakable: The Runner's Guide To Injury-Proofing Your Body After 40. Click here: https://www.realliferunners.com/secret

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Be sure to hit FOLLOW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one!

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

What do you think would happen if you completely ruptured your Achilles tendon with two kilometers left in a marathon? Most of us would probably assume the race was over. But Tigst Assefa’s 2026 Berlin Marathon story forces us to ask a much more interesting question: how could someone experience a significant injury and still keep running at an incredibly fast pace? Assefa developed pain around 31K, eventually completely ruptured her Achilles around 40K, and still finished the race, won, and set a course record. That doesn’t mean she somehow didn’t have an injury or that pain is “all in her head.” It gives us a fascinating look at how the brain processes pain and how much context can influence what we actually feel.

In this episode, Angie and Kevin break down the idea that pain is an output created by the brain based on much more than tissue damage alone. Your brain is constantly taking in information about what is happening in your body, along with your stress level, sleep, emotions, attention, past experiences, expectations, social environment, and how important the current situation is to you. They talk through examples ranging from phantom limb pain and the famous construction-worker nail story to elite athletes, childbirth, war injuries, and their own experiences with running and pain. The bigger takeaway is that pain isn't simply an on/off switch. It's more like a volume dial that can move up or down depending on the context.

And this is where the conversation gets really practical for everyday runners. You can learn to change some of the inputs that influence your pain experience. Better sleep, reducing chronic stress, having a meaningful goal, shifting your attention outward, social connection, gentle movement, and slow breathing can all help turn the volume down. But Angie and Kevin also emphasize an important warning: becoming really good at ignoring pain isn't the goal. Pain is still a protective signal, and turning that signal down too far can allow you to continue running through an injury that needs attention. The goal isn't to become someone who never feels pain. It's to develop more nuance around what you're feeling, understand the context, and learn when to listen, when to adjust, and when you can safely keep going.

00:00 – Berlin Marathon Shock

01:44 – Achilles Rupture Details

03:34 – Pain Comes From Brain

04:34 – Phantom Pain Stories

05:54 – Pain Inputs Explained

08:48 – Turning Pain Down

09:43 – Achilles Anatomy Q&A

12:29 – Descending Modulation

16:23 – Stress and Pain Effects

20:40 – Elite Athletes and Pain

23:51 – Research on Pain Tolerance

27:01 – Training Builds Nuance

29:42 – Trauma And Ultra Running

31:54 – Stress Kills Pain Edge

33:43 – War And Survival Analgesia

39:03 – Childbirth Expectations Shift

41:28 – Everyday Pain Amplifiers

47:59 – How Pain Spirals In Races

48:49 – Tools To Turn Pain Down

54:30 – When Tuning Out Backfires

Gain access to my new secret podcast, Unbreakable: The Runner's Guide To Injury-Proofing Your Body After 40. Click here: https://www.realliferunners.com/secret

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Be sure to hit FOLLOW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

If you’ve been told that women in perimenopause or post-menopause should stop doing easy, steady-state cardio and replace it with HIIT, sprinting, and heavy lifting, this episode is for you. Angie and Kevin continue their Running Myth series by unpacking where this idea came from, what HIIT actually does well, and why replacing your easy running with high-intensity training misses a much bigger picture.

The problem isn’t that HIIT is bad. In fact, Angie and Kevin talk about plenty of reasons to include higher-intensity work in a well-rounded training program. HIIT can be a time-efficient way to improve VO2 max, provide a strong metabolic stimulus, develop neuromuscular power and coordination, and provide the impact needed to stimulate bone remodeling. The problem comes when one tool gets treated like the entire toolbox. What helps one specific outcome does not automatically replace everything your body gets from other types of training.

For endurance runners, easy running provides the foundation that allows everything else to work. It helps build aerobic capacity, mitochondrial and capillary density, metabolic flexibility, running economy, and connective-tissue resilience while creating a much smaller recovery demand than repeated hard sessions. And especially as recovery needs change with age, being able to accumulate consistent training matters. Angie and Kevin also discuss how recommendations from researchers like Stacy Sims can lose important context when they are reduced to short social media clips. The takeaway is not “never do HIIT.” It’s to build the foundation first, then layer intensity onto a body that is prepared to handle it.

00:00 – HIIT Myth Setup
02:36 – Why Nuance Matters
03:11 – TLDR: Keep Both
05:44 – Where the Myth Came From
09:32 – Training Is Individual
12:42 – What HIIT Actually Is
13:20 – HIIT Benefits Breakdown
18:52 – Why Easy Runs Matter
21:37 – Recovery and Volume
26:03 – Volume Builds Economy
27:11 – Connective Tissue Resilience
29:46 – Easy Runs Feel Better
31:36 – Cortisol and Cooldowns
33:22 – The Gray Zone Trap
34:19 – Miles Beat HIIT Alone
35:35 – Injury Risk and Base
39:21 – Safe Speed Progression
40:14 – Effort Levels Simplified
43:03 – Strength and Mobility Foundation
45:48 – Stacy Sims Advice Misread

Gain access to my new secret podcast, Unbreakable: The Runner's Guide To Injury-Proofing Your Body After 40. Click here: https://www.realliferunners.com/secret

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

If you're a woman in perimenopause or postmenopause, you've probably seen the claim that running is bad for your hormones because it raises cortisol. Maybe you've even wondered if you should be doing less cardio, switching entirely to walking, or giving up running altogether.

In this episode, Kevin and I unpack that idea and talk about what cortisol actually does in the body. Yes, exercise temporarily raises cortisol, but that's a normal and useful response. The bigger issue is chronic stress, poor sleep, under-fueling, and inadequate recovery. And while menopause can change how our bodies respond to stress, that doesn't mean we need to stop doing something that's incredibly valuable for our cardiovascular health, fitness, and brain health.

I want you to walk away from this conversation feeling less afraid of running and more confident about how to balance running, strength training, fueling, recovery, and the rest of your life.

00:00 – The Menopause Running Myth

02:50 – Where the Claim Comes From

07:08 – Cortisol Isn't the Villain

11:08 – Menopause and Cortisol Regulation

13:41 – What Actually Drives High Cortisol

15:20 – Research Says Aerobic Exercise Helps

18:11 – The Real Risk Is Heart Health

21:35 – Why Walking Isn't Enough

25:09 – VO2 Max and Longevity

29:03 – Measuring VO2 Max

33:01 – Training to Boost VO2

34:16 – Brain Benefits of Cardio

38:44 – Cortisol Fearmongering

40:24 – Strength Plus Running

43:11 – Walking Versus Aerobic Exercise

Gain access to my new secret podcast, Unbreakable: The Runner's Guide To Injury-Proofing Your Body After 40. Click here: https://www.realliferunners.com/secret

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Be sure to hit FOLLOW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

Have you ever looked at your schedule and thought, “I only have 20 minutes, so it’s not even worth running”? I get it. As runners, we can easily fall into the trap of believing that a run only counts if it’s long enough, fast enough, or fits perfectly into our training plan. But in this episode, Kevin and I are kicking off a new series where we bust some of those common running myths, starting with the idea that short runs aren't worth it.

I actually got a real-life reminder of this when a few short 20-minute run/walks with our rescue dog, Jasper, ended up having more of an impact on my training than I expected. It made me think about how often we dismiss the training we can do because it doesn't look like the training we think we should be doing. We talk about the mindset traps behind this, including all-or-nothing thinking, comparison, productivity, and even the hassle of showering and doing more laundry.

We also dig into what the research tells us about maintaining fitness when you have less time to train. The goal isn't to turn every short run into a hard effort. It's to understand that shorter runs can still provide a meaningful stimulus, and sometimes a little running is much more valuable than skipping it altogether.

01:37 – Why We’re Busting Running Myths

02:28 – Are Short Runs Actually Worth It?

03:56 – My Short Runs With Jasper

07:17 – What My Garmin Data Taught Me

10:00 – Why Running Isn’t the Same as Walking

13:23 – The All-or-Nothing Trap

16:54 – When Showering and Laundry Become the Barrier

18:12 – Consistency Over Distance

19:45 – Can Long Runs Increase Injury Risk?

20:59 – What the Research Actually Says

23:19 – What the Hickson Study Says About Frequency

25:39 – What Happens When You Reduce Duration?

26:56 – Why Intensity Still Matters

30:00 – How to Add Intensity When Time Is Short

31:04 – Short Runs Still Count

32:12 – The Jasper Principle

Gain access to my new secret podcast, Unbreakable: The Runner's Guide To Injury-Proofing Your Body After 40. Click here: https://www.realliferunners.com/secret

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

What if you stopped asking, “Do you think I can do this?” and started asking, “Who do I need to become to do this?” That’s the conversation Kevin and I are having in this episode. We’re talking about how we are all constantly becoming, whether we’re intentional about it or not. Our circumstances, past experiences, injuries, relationships, and even the opinions of other people can quietly shape who we believe we are and what we think is possible.

I want to help you start looking at your running and your life differently. You don’t have to wait until you feel ready to become a marathoner, a stronger runner, a trail runner, or whatever version of yourself you want to grow into. The decision can come first, and then your actions begin to build the evidence. We also talk about giving big goals enough runway, planning ahead while staying flexible, protecting new goals when they’re still fragile, and understanding that sometimes becoming a new version of yourself means making different choices in your life.

01:37 – What Does “Becoming” Really Mean?

05:11 – When Your Circumstances Start Defining You

08:52 – “Do You Think I Can Do This?” & Borrowed Belief

12:00 – Giving Big Goals Enough Runway

14:41 – Planning Your Training When Life Changes

20:33 – Kevin's Journey From Marathoner to Ultramarathoner

25:09 – Becoming the Mom I Want to Be

28:00 – Becoming a Business Owner & Choosing a New Path

29:22 – Why I’m Choosing to Become a Trail Runner

31:45 – The Real Time Commitment Behind Big Goals

32:28 – Choosing Before You Feel Ready

33:45 – What Kevin Didn't Expect About Running 100 Miles

36:23 – Borrow Belief, Then Make It Your Own

40:58 – Protecting a New Identity & New Goals

45:17 – How Growth Can Change Your Relationships

49:31 – Choose Your Identity, Then Let Your Actions Follow

55:46 – Adjust Without Quitting

57:02 – The Power of Intentional Becoming

Gain access to my new secret podcast, Unbreakable: The Runner's Guide To Injury-Proofing Your Body After 40. Click here: https://www.realliferunners.com/secret

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

In this episode, I’m introducing the newly rebranded Running Reconnected Podcast, formerly Real Life Runners. The name reflects what I’ve always loved about this work: helping runners reconnect with their bodies, understand what their bodies are telling them, and recognize how running connects to the rest of their lives.

I also share a surprisingly useful lesson from learning to make sourdough with my daughter. Building a starter took patience, consistency, and a willingness to trust the process even when it looked like nothing was happening. Running is the same way. Sometimes the most important progress is happening underneath the surface. We talk about the four foundations I believe runners need most: mindset, training, nutrition, and recovery, along with why progressive overload, sleep, and hard efforts all have their place.

Most importantly, I want you to walk away remembering that your training doesn't have to be perfect to be valuable. Every season, every race, and every training cycle can teach you something.

00:00 Welcome to Running Reconnected

01:03 Why I Chose the Name Running Reconnected

02:53 Why I'm Focusing More on Pain and Injury

03:50 A Solo Episode and a Sourdough Story

06:15 Building Your Running Base

09:06 When Progress Seems to Disappear

11:59 Your Body Is the Variable

14:13 The Four Ingredients for Running Progress

19:45 Progressive Overload and Stretch & Folds

28:08 Sleep, Recovery, and Adaptation

33:27 Why Your Training Plan Matters

36:34 Easy Running, Hard Efforts, and Performance

39:36 Learning From Every Training Cycle

41:49 Keep Feeding Your Starter

Gain access to my new secret podcast, Unbreakable: The Runner's Guide To Injury-Proofing Your Body After 40. Click here: https://www.realliferunners.com/secret

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Be sure to hit FOLLOW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.