Running News Daily

I think the most important workout I prescribe as a coach happens the day after many races. The workout is given in all-caps, shouted with urgency. 

PIZZA.

Or perhaps BURGERS. If we're feeling spicy, BURRITOS. An athlete can make substitutions within the spirit of the plan, but if they eat a salad, it better be topped with enough bacon and croutons to qualify as a structurally-challenged BLT. 

There are exceptions for athletes that have been told by a doctor or nutritionist to follow different guidelines. The main idea is that the post-race recovery window is a good reminder that eating enough food is the key to long-term adaptation in the context of a healthy life. So I might not always be writing PIZZA, but PIZZA is always implied. Pizza isn't just a meal, it's a lifestyle.

The rationale: eating enough is key for the healthy function of the nervous, endocrine, metabolic, and musculoskeletal systems, all of which are needed at full strength to encourage adaptation. Low energy availability-even within a single day during heavy training-is like pulling out an assortment of Jenga blocks from our physiology at random and then facing an earthquake. At first, things might not collapse with a few blocks on the ground. But eventually, when the quake comes (if not sooner), everything will come crashing down.

New Study Overview

A November 2021 review article in Sports Medicine by a wonderful group of researchers led by Trent Stellingwerff found some fascinating links between overtraining and underfueling, underscoring the importance of always eating enough food. Let's start with some definitions.

Overtraining syndrome is a series of maladaptations to chronic stress loads, with the article using the specific definition of "an accumulation of training and/or non-training stress resulting in long-term decrement in performance capacity." Short-term performance decreases from days to weeks are called functional overreaching (usually planned, possibly leading to an athlete progressing above baseline) or non-functional overreaching (unplanned and unproductive). The 2021 article uses the term "training-overload/OTS," reviewing studies that find a sustained and significant decline in performance outcomes.

In 2014, the British Journal of Sports Medicine published the IOC Consensus Statement on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), defined as "impaired physiological function including, but not limited to, metabolic rate, menstrual function, bone health, immunity, protein synthesis, cardiovascular health caused by relative energy deficiency." Low energy availability is when total energy intake doesn't leave enough energy availability after considering energy expenditure during exercise (undereating or overexercising or both).

The 2021 article is so important because it answers a question that gets to the heart of athletic performance. May some cases of overtraining be partially attributable to underfueling? 

And it raised some questions in my mind as a coach. 

How many athletes have undershot their ultimate potential because they (and/or their healthcare providers/coaches) didn't see the link between fueling and adaptation? How many athletic careers have come crashing down, seemingly without explanation, all due to misinformed understandings of physiology? 

These questions are especially relevant with recent revelations that the University of Oregon adjusted training based on body composition readings in repeated DEXA scans (we talk about the background on the Some Work, All Play podcast here). If overtraining and underfueling are interconnected, then increasing training while failing to appropriately increase fueling could send athletes into unnecessary, almost universal physiological black holes.

Study Principles

A primary difficulty in study design is that both overtraining and RED-S involve diagnosis by exclusion, where other potential causes are ruled out first. On top of that, there is no one presentation of either condition. For both, "performance decline is coupled with a broad and individually variable palette of psychological/emotional, physiological, immunological,and neuroendocrine decrements." You could imagine someone who rarely exercises and eats plenty going to the doctor with a similar set of symptoms as an athlete with overtraining or RED-S. If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it may be a duck (subject to disclaimers). But it could also be a rabbit, depending on how you are looking at it and what you are looking for.

For overtraining, there are some helpful protocols to add certainty to diagnoses. A 2010 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine used a two-bout exercise protocol, involving two max performance tests four hours apart, finding attenuated changes in cortisol and certain hormones for overtrained athletes. Generally, performance decreases over time can provide diagnostic clues for overtraining. For RED-S, risk-assessment tools and energy availability calculators can evaluate energy availability, and bone health scans and menstrual cycle status are diagnostic factors, but it's still difficult to directly prove that clinical outcomes result from underfueling in all cases. 

That uncertainty of individual diagnosis is why the review article is so helpful. It examined 57 studies for overtraining and 88 studies for low energy availability to draw conclusions that apply across a broad population of athletes. Interestingly, 78% of the nearly 10,000 participants in the RED-S studies were female, while only 19% of the 1000+ participants in the overtraining studies were female, which could influence how observations/diagnoses have been made over time (i.e. perhaps male athletes have been underdiagnosed with RED-S). There are four conclusions I want to highlight.

One: Overtraining and low energy availability share almost all symptoms

There are 13 performance and health outcome groupings for the two conditions, and overtraining and RED-S share all but one (bone health, which only applies to RED-S). They share impacts to: endurance; strength; injury/illness; adaptation; glycogen/protein synthesis; coordination; sex hormones; other hormones; biochemistry; immune function; metabolic/cardiovascular function; and mental health/related variables. Both ailments have at least some hypothalamic-pituitary origin, affecting almost every variable that goes into health and performance.

Two: Overtraining and RED-S are related to "under-recovery" 

Every training session introduces stress, leading to some sort of rest and recovery requirement. Overtraining and RED-S are both causes and responses to chronic stresses that are not being adequately processed by the body. Notably, overtraining and RED-S both lead to performance decreases. For athletes dealing with these ailments, increasing training volume and/or intensity will likely make them perform worse, which can be especially difficult in an athletic landscape that sometimes focuses on weekly miles and hard workouts. But even short of long-term performance reduction, stagnation and general fatigue may be related to the same under-recovery processes.

Three: Some overtraining-related diagnoses may be due to misdiagnosed under-recovery from underfueling

The next step the article took made me gasp with excitement. I know that sounds dramatic, but that's how cool it is, and that's also a clue to how few dates I got in high school.

The authors looked at a subset of 21 studies that implemented training overloads, many of which resulted in overtraining-related outcomes. Next, they calculated energy availability in those studies. In other words, the 2021 article studied the past studies to make new findings.

14 of the 21 studies found an energy availability decrease between the training overload and control groups. For example, a 1988 study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise examined 12 male collegiate swimmers during a 10-day intensive training block. Retrospectively, that study classified swimmers as overtrained or non-overtrained based on subjective feelings of fatigue. Despite similar training and energy expenditure increases in the two groups, the overtrained group ate about 1000 kcal less per day (4682 vs. 3631). Across the studies, differences as low as 15% in daily energy intake could explain some of the overtraining symptoms.

As the study authors concluded, "Even small within-day energy deficits (only 300-400 kcal) have been associated with clinically meaningful RED-S symptom outcomes in cross-sectional study designs. Although a one-off small 300 kcal deficit (either within day, or over an entire day) is most certainly not clinically impactful, when multiplied over months, these small mismatches in energy can become significant (e.g. energy deficit of 300 kcal/day over 1 year = 100,000+  kcal deficit)."

4 of the 21 studies demonstrated an independent effect of low carbohydrate intake. Even without low energy availability, there is some evidence that carbohydrate restriction could lead to RED-S symptoms. At a Halloween party, an athlete with amenorrhea was talking to my co-coach Dr. Megan Roche, and the part of Megan's advice that jumped out to me (after she heard about the athlete's background and nutrition) was very simple: "CARBS!"

However, not every study supports the overarching hypothesis that underfueling is an element in overtraining. 3 of 21 studies showed overtraining-related symptoms without evidence of lower energy availability. Interestingly, one was the 2020 study in the Journal Of Applied Physiology on muscle fiber typology and overtraining that was 

The authors summarize the findings: "Taken together, 86% of the training-overload/OTS studies reporting dietary outcomes (18 out of 21) showed reduced EA (n  = 14 studies) and/or CHO availability (n  = 4) between treatment groups or between pre and post concurrent with symptoms consistent with both OTS and RED-S." 

Eating enough won't prevent every case of training-overload/OTS, but it may prevent many of them.

Four: Awareness and monitoring is key

To conclude, the authors highlight that increased training load "tends to initially result in improvements in performance, potentially through a combination of increased training adaptations and/or initial changes in body composition outcomes." That's adaptation to training, and it's not a bad thing. But what happens next can be very, very bad.

In some athletes and coaches, the authors say, it can create a "feed forward" misconception that "even more training and/or more decreases in extreme body composition metrics might further drive positive performance outcomes." That misconception creates "the perfect storm" for overtraining and RED-S.

A few weeks ago, we saw this problem magnified with disturbing clarity at the University of Oregon. Their body-composition monitoring program was a scientific failure because it interpolated from outliers winning Olympic medals while extrapolating from the beginning phases of an athletic life of the college runners in the program. It was more than a problem of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It was also a problem of trying to push every athlete into a hole to begin with, whether it was backed by individual physiology or not.

The 2021 article emphasizes the importance of fueling the work you are doing. Under-recovery via overtraining or RED-S is unequivocally bad for health. The next step is elevating a culture that supports long-term recovery and adaptation, which requires plenty of fuel. 

As a coach, I know that if an athlete is eating enough, I can prescribe more training and harder training. Those athletes can pursue big dreams without fear, and they can imagine adventures for decades and not just a few months. 

Eating enough isn't just about avoiding a big wall in the middle of the road in athletic development. It's about removing that wall entirely so that we can put the pedal to the freaking metal in training, chasing some scary dreams.

Most Olympic marathoners spend their youth focused on running. They join track clubs, compete in national championships, and pursue the sport from an early age.

Julia Mayer’s journey was very different.

Today, Mayer is Austria’s marathon record holder, a multiple national record holder on the roads, and an Olympian. Yet for much of her athletic life, running was not her primary sport.

For 16 years, she played soccer.

Then she discovered something that would change her life.

“I noticed that I was really fast in the fun runs and that it was really, really fun,” Mayer said when reflecting on her transition from soccer to distance running.

What began as curiosity quickly became a passion. She eventually made the bold decision to leave soccer behind and focus entirely on running. It was a move that surprised many people around her, but Mayer believed she had found her true athletic calling.

The decision proved to be the right one.

Within a few years, Mayer developed into one of Europe’s top marathon runners. Her steady improvement carried her from local races to the international stage, where she began rewriting Austria’s record books.

She now holds Austrian records in the marathon, half marathon, and road 10K. Her marathon best of 2:26:08 established her as the fastest female marathoner in Austrian history. Her performances in the half marathon and 10K have further cemented her place among the country’s all-time great distance runners.

Her rise culminated with qualification for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Competing in the Olympic marathon represented the realization of a dream. On one of the most challenging marathon courses ever used for the Olympics, Mayer ran courageously against the strongest field in the world and finished 55th in her Olympic debut.

Behind the scenes, success has come through extraordinary dedication. During marathon preparation, Mayer trains twice a day and covers approximately 200 kilometers, or 124 miles, each week. The workload demands discipline, patience, and a deep commitment to continuous improvement. 

What makes her story especially inspiring is not simply the records or the Olympic appearance.

It is the fact that she found her greatest talent later than many elite runners.

In a sport where athletes are often identified at a young age, Mayer’s journey serves as a reminder that potential does not always reveal itself early. Sometimes it takes years of experience, a willingness to try something new, and the courage to follow a different path. 

The former soccer player who once chased a ball across a field is now chasing history on the roads of Europe.

And according to those closest to her, her best performances may still be ahead.

For runners of every age and ability, Julia Mayer’s story delivers a powerful lesson: it is never too late to discover what you are capable of.

From soccer player to Olympian, her journey proves that remarkable achievements can begin when least expected.

Megan Keith produced the performance of her career in Oslo on Thursday night, shattering one of Scotland’s longest-standing distance running records and cementing her place among Britain’s greatest female 3000m runners.

The 24-year-old clocked a sensational 8:28.35 over 3000m, breaking the Scottish outdoor record that had stood for nearly four decades. In doing so, Keith eclipsed the previous mark of 8:29.02, set by Scottish legend Yvonne Murray back in 1988, ending a record reign that had lasted 38 years.

Keith’s breakthrough run was more than just a national record. The performance also propelled her to third on the UK outdoor all-time list, placing her behind only two of Britain’s most celebrated distance runners — Paula Radcliffe, who leads the rankings with 8:22.20, and Laura Weightman, whose 8:26.07 remains the second-fastest outdoor mark by a British woman.

The significance of Keith’s achievement is amplified by the calibre of athletes she now joins in the record books. For decades, Murray’s mark stood as one of Scottish athletics’ most untouchable records, surviving generations of elite competitors. Keith has now succeeded where many outstanding runners have fallen short, announcing herself as one of the leading distance talents in British athletics.

Her time also compares favourably with the best performances produced indoors. Olympic medallist Laura Muir ran 8:26.41 indoors in Karlsruhe in 2017, underlining just how exceptional Keith’s outdoor effort in Oslo truly was.

The run continues a remarkable rise for the Scottish star, whose progression over recent seasons has transformed her from a promising prospect into a genuine force on the international stage. Running with confidence and composure against elite competition, Keith demonstrated both the speed and endurance required to challenge the very best in Europe and beyond.

With the World Championship season gathering momentum, Keith’s record-breaking display sends a powerful message. Not only has she etched her name into Scottish athletics history, but she has also established herself as a serious contender in one of the sport’s most competitive events.

In Oslo, Megan Keith did far more than break a record. She ended a 38-year wait, climbed into the upper echelon of British distance running, and delivered a performance that may prove to be a defining moment in her career.

British middle-distance talent Phoebe Gill took another significant step forward in her return to top form, producing a determined victory over 800 metres at the Meeting de Marseille in France on Wednesday.

Competing in challenging, wind-affected conditions, the 19-year-old demonstrated both resilience and composure as she held off a late charge from Switzerland's Veronica Vancardo to secure the win in 2:00.81. Vancardo finished just three hundredths of a second behind in 2:00.84, underlining the fiercely contested nature of the race.

While the margin of victory was narrow, the result represented another encouraging milestone for Gill as she continues to rebuild momentum following her injury setback. The young Briton showed impressive race awareness and strength in the closing stages, maintaining her advantage despite the difficult conditions that made fast running a challenge throughout the evening.

The Marseille triumph adds to a growing body of evidence that Gill is steadily progressing toward her best form. Earlier in her comeback campaign, she clocked 2:01.50 for 800m in Bydgoszcz before demonstrating her versatility with a strong 4:05.53 performance over 1500 metres at the BMC Grand Prix meeting in Trafford.

Those performances have highlighted not only her improving fitness but also her ability to compete across multiple distances as she carefully builds her season. The Marseille victory now provides further confirmation that the European junior star is moving in the right direction.

Gill emerged as one of Britain's most exciting middle-distance prospects through a series of breakthrough performances as a teenager, earning widespread recognition for her fearless racing style and remarkable maturity. Injury temporarily interrupted that upward trajectory, but her recent results suggest she is steadily rediscovering the form that made her one of the sport's brightest young talents.

With each race, the signs of progress become increasingly evident. Winning in difficult conditions and under pressure from a quality field is often a stronger indicator than a fast time alone, and Gill's latest success demonstrated exactly those qualities.

As the summer season gathers pace, the Marseille victory offers another confidence boost for the British teenager, whose return continues to gain momentum. If her recent progression is any indication, Gill could soon find herself back among the leading names on the European middle-distance circuit. 

The NCAA Track and Field Championships delivered a moment few could have predicted as Ja’Kobe Tharp produced one of the most astonishing performances in the history of sprint hurdling, rewriting the record books in spectacular fashion.

Competing in the opening round of the men’s 110-meter hurdles, the Auburn star stunned the athletics world by clocking an incredible 12.75 seconds, becoming the first athlete ever to break the 12.80-second barrier. In doing so, he eclipsed the long-standing world record of 12.80 set by Aries Merritt in 2012, a mark that had stood as one of the sport’s most revered achievements for more than a decade.

What makes Tharp’s breakthrough even more remarkable is the scale of his improvement. Entering the championships, the defending NCAA and U.S. champion had recorded a season-best of 13.05 seconds. Yet under the brightest spotlight, he unleashed a performance that exceeded every expectation, slicing an extraordinary 0.26 seconds from his personal best in a race that instantly became one of the greatest ever run.

The achievement sent shockwaves throughout the track and field community. While Tharp arrived in Eugene as one of the leading contenders for the NCAA title, few envisioned a performance capable of redefining the limits of the event. Instead, the American hurdler delivered a race for the ages, combining flawless technique, explosive speed, and impeccable rhythm from the first hurdle to the finish line.

The historic run not only secured his place in athletics history but also transformed the outlook of the championship. With the world record now in his possession, Tharp advances to the final as the overwhelming favorite, carrying momentum that could make an already unforgettable weekend even more extraordinary.

For years, the 12.80 barrier appeared untouchable. On a stunning day at the NCAA Championships, Ja’Kobe Tharp proved otherwise, producing the kind of performance that reminds fans why sport remains so unpredictable. In a matter of seconds, he turned a routine qualifying round into a landmark moment that will be remembered for generations.

The world record no one saw coming is now a reality—and Ja’Kobe Tharp is the man who changed history.

A new chapter in middle-distance running may have begun in Oslo after American teenager Cooper Lutkenhaus produced one of the most remarkable performances of the season, narrowly defeating reigning Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi in a thrilling men's 800m contest at the Diamond League meeting.

The 17-year-old sensation shocked a world-class field by crossing the finish line first in a race that came down to the smallest of margins. After an intense battle over the final metres, Lutkenhaus held off Wanyonyi by just one hundredth of a second, producing a dramatic finish that left the packed stadium in disbelief.

From the opening lap, the pace was relentless as the leading contenders positioned themselves for a fierce showdown. As the athletes entered the home straight, Wanyonyi appeared poised to unleash his trademark finishing kick. However, Lutkenhaus refused to be intimidated, matching the Olympic champion stride for stride before producing a perfectly timed lean at the line to secure a historic victory.

The result marks a breakthrough moment for the young American, who continues to establish himself as one of the brightest talents in global athletics. Defeating an Olympic champion at a Diamond League event is a feat many athletes spend entire careers pursuing, yet Lutkenhaus achieved it before reaching adulthood.

For Wanyonyi, the narrow defeat does little to diminish his status as one of the world's premier 800m runners. The Kenyan once again demonstrated his exceptional class and competitiveness, pushing the race to a world-class standard and forcing his young rival to deliver the performance of a lifetime.

Beyond the result itself, the race offered a glimpse into what could become one of the sport's most exciting rivalries in the years ahead. With established stars and emerging talents now pushing each other to new heights, the men's 800m continues to evolve into one of athletics' most captivating events.

On a memorable night in Oslo, the spotlight belonged to Cooper Lutkenhaus. At just 17 years old, he stood toe-to-toe with an Olympic champion and emerged victorious, announcing himself to the athletics world in spectacular fashion.