6 Training Essentials for the Female Runner: Part 1 - Eat Enough Food
Over the next few blog posts I will be breaking down 6 Training Essentials for the Female Runner.
At the time this blog post is written (February 2024) I am in the throws of planning and hosting a series of live workshops on this topic throughout several cities in the Mountain West! This has been a big goal of mine and it’s so fun to see it come to life.
The goal of these live workshops and this blog series is to breakdown some commonly missed aspects of training as a recreational runner or endurance athlete more broadly in hopes of helping women both maximize their own personal potential and protect their hormone health at the same time. I also hope that highlighting some common pitfalls will help anyone dealing with symptoms to identify what their triggers might be and ways to begin the healing process.
Distance running is more popular than ever and studies are showing that the longer the race, the better women are performing. Whoop whoop!
But… how we train and what training methodologies work for us has largely been muddled by the overwhelming gap in research and science done on and for women.
Too often in sports medicine, studies are done on men and then the results are extrapolated to women. Additionally, lots of studies are done over a short period of time, for example 1 day to 6 weeks, and therefore are unable to accurately describe how the proposed interventions may effect the menstrual cycle or long term hormonal health of both genders, but especially women.
So while the evidence is still taking its time catching up to women as they continue to push the limits of fitness and endurance, and we don’t have all the answers yet, we do know some things.
As a beginner runner I was never really taught any of this. If you aren’t on a team, in a structured program or hire a coach you may never really get guidance on how to progress your running training and performance well and in a way that supports your hormone health at the same time.
So.. my hope with this series of articles is that they saves you some time and hard earned lessons by shortcutting some of the mistakes I made early on in my running journey. I also hope it helps clear up some questions you might have and gives you some direction as you structure your training schedule.
Ok, let’s get into it.
PART ONE. Eat enough food
One of the most important aspects of caring for your hormones while endurance training is making sure you are eating enough. Under fueling is a quick recipe for under performing and sets us up for chronic injuries, illnesses and hormone imbalance. Stacy Sims, a well known researcher and author talks a lot about this and pushes back on both intermittent fasting and fasted training in general for female athletes.
When we under fuel, our body interprets this as a threat. It signals our body to shift into a ‘fight or flight’ system which triggers a cascade of survival and protective hormones. In the short term this is no problem, it can actually be helpful and over a couple of days to weeks you might feel more clear headed and stronger (literally what our ancestors felt when they were on the hunt… we needed to be able to think and run when we were starving and our survival was at stake) But… over the long term this can wreak havoc on our reproductive hormones, bone health, immune system and gut.
Have you ever experienced a major sickness after a particularly stressful event? I know that in college, the first couple years I would get a nasty sickness a couple days after I got home for winter break. My body was finally crashing after the stress of the semester and finals once it felt safe enough to do this. This is what can happen if we stress our system with our exercise for too long, and unfortunately, the longer we require our body to stay in that elevated state, the longer and more harsh the come down is and takes to recover from.
So what’s enough?
Well this varies for everyone and depends on your genetics, your training volume, what other stressors are in your life and so on. So I like to give this general guidance… instead of calorie counting, consider meeting macronutrient baselines and tune into your body by listening to hunger cues
Aim for 3 meals and 2-3 snacks/day Increase on training days but stay highly fueled on rest days as well.
“…this varies for everyone and depends on your genetics, your training volume, what other stressors are in your life and so on…
Instead of calorie counting, consider meeting macronutrient baselines and tune into your body by listening to hunger cues”
Here is a general guide for fueling for the female athlete as outlined by a research team at Stanford.
Macronutrient recommendations for female athletes:
Protein: 1.2-2 grams of protein/kg of bodyweight
Fat: 20-30% of your daily calories tip: make sure every meal & snack includes fat
Carbs: 7-10 grams of carbs/kg of bodyweight
Fueling for exercise:
Before:
Avoid fasted training always, get something in
This can be light for shorter workouts but should be bigger if going out for > 90 minutes
During:
Activities 1-2.5 hours = 30-60g carbs/hour
Activities > 2.5 hours = up to 90-120g carbs/hour
After:
40-60 g of carbs & 20 g protein in the 4 hour window post exercise
So in summary for this part one of this series … when in doubt, eat more food :)
