Recovering from a Sacral Stress Reaction

In this episode we chat about the biggest injury of Gabriela's running career, her sacral stress reaction which prevented her from competing at this year's World Championships. 

Content Warning: puking, eating disorders, disordered eating, weight issues.  We talk quite explicitly about maintaining weight, my struggles with puking during hard track sessions, as well as my anxieties around food given my struggles with IBS. We strive to have these conversations responsibly and with care (we hate diet culture!) So if that kind of conversation is not right for your at this moment, or if you find yourself uncomfortable at any point in the conversation, please feel free to skip ahead (timestamps below) or skip the episode altogether and we’ll see you in the next one!

0:00 Intro

5:00 Explanation of Grave's Disease (hyperthyroidism)

6:00 The process of getting a diagnosis

24:30 Warning signs and how do we think this happened?

38:20 Thinking about this injury in the context of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDS)

41:00 CW: disordered eating, food anxiety, puking My experience with IBS, puking in training, stress, and under-fueling in training 

47:35 Overtraining, menstrual function CW: disordered eating, puking

52:00 Recovering from Grave's Disease (hyperthyroidism) while pushing hard to Tokyo Olympics CW: puking, disordered eating, food anxiety

56:30 Dealing with a REDs episode in Winter 2020 after the 2019 World Champs, why time off and breaks from running is important CW: weight, overtraining

62:19 Why we look at REDS patterns starting several years ago (Fall 2019) to explain this sacral stress reaction in 2022

66:00 How do we prevent this from happening again? Big goal: eat more, gain and train at a higher weight. CW: weight, body composition

69:20 PSA to young athletes especially: we do not recommend trying to lose weight in training! It's not worth it - your health is too important.

72:40 Strong not skinny. A rant about diet culture, the fear of gaining weight, and bad coaches telling athletes to lose weight. CW: weight

79:40 Outro! Thanks for listening!