Listening to the whisper, coaching and comfort

Hi all!
Last week I was captivated by images of Des Linden, a favorite runner of mine and winner of the 2018 Boston Marathon, running the Marathon Des Sables in Morrocco. If you aren't familiar, the Marathon Des Sables is a six-day stage race where competitors carry all their gear, not just their food, but everything. Water and shelter are the only things provided so runners are carrying decently heavy packs while running through soft sand dunes. 
I was captivated because it just seems SO, SO far off from a race a very fast road marathoner would want to do. Turns out this journalist thought the same thing and captured it in pictures and in this article here. Despite looking at her posts and some articles, I don't have a sense of WHY she picked that event. I know that one of the stages is 100k and twice the distance of her furthest race. I know she doesn't owe anyone the why of her decision. And neither do you. 
My most successful athletes sign up for races that pull them. Sometimes there is no "good" reason, it just is a whisper in their ear that turns into a song that won't get out of their head and they need to try it. Sometimes they have seen someone else and it motivated them to also give it a try. If you have a song in head for a race that is calling but you think it is too far, too "unlike" you, too anything, see what happens if you keep listening. It may take you somewhere! 

​COACHING WITH ME
If you are interested in coaching for your next fun race idea, GET ON MY WAIT LIST. I currently do not have any coaching openings, sorry summer racers, BUT there will be openings this summer. Let me know!

There is always space for you in Strength Training for Runners. Join me on Wednesday night for a thirty-minute strength training session live to your screen and always free. Stay home, get strong. 

TALKING ABOUT FLOSSING- AGAIN
I get a lot out of this Substack, Run Long, Run Healthy. It highlights research on running and gives some narrative on the implications for runners. The studies are almost always on men which is frustrating and honestly, infuriating, but that is a different post. This week's post included a study of fascial flossing, the use of a voodoo strap I mentioned here a few weeks ago.  "After the intervention, gliding improved in the flossed leg but not in the control leg. That was one of the clearest findings in the study. The range-of-motion results were also favorable. Both legs improved in ankle dorsiflexion after the treadmill run and intervention period, but the flossed leg improved more. That suggests some of the gain may have come from the general warm tissue effect of running and moving around, but flossing added something extra on top."

DISQUALIFIED
An athlete at a recent Ironman 70.3 event posted a video where he was dumping a bunch of gels out of his tri suit, claiming races were expensive so he was getting maximum value. Then Ironman disqualified him from the event, scrubbing his name from the results. WOW. 

THE HIDDEN COST OF COMFORT
So many things to consider in this article, but this one was eye-opening for me. "There’s even early research that points to our perfectly temperature-controlled environments contributing to the obesity epidemic. One study found that after just one month of sleeping in cooler conditions, subjects showed a 42% increase in brown fat volume and a 10% improvement in insulin sensitivity. We’ve muffled our body’s internal thermostats, shutting down our thermogenic system because it’s not needed anymore. We spend 90% of our time indoors where it’s constantly between 68 and 74 degrees year round."