ICED - Athletes, injuries & mental health

Katie Kellner fractured her pelvis training for her first Boston marathon. Ring a bell?

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She’s a 2 time Olympic Trials Marathon qualifier and placed 57th at the trials this February. She was a Division I All-American in both Cross Country and the 10K on the track at Cornell, where she also was Ivy League Champ in both events. She’s transitioning right now from being a professional runner (paid to run) to an elite runner (still super fast, paycheck comes from elsewhere). She’s now a biostatistician currently doing research on the Coronavirus.

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Katie has a great attitude about injury recovery: Focus your energy on rebuilding your bone instead of lifting weights (cross training). Some pearls of wisdom from this conversation are:

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Don’t focus too much on the past (never going to be as good as I was) or too much on the future (I need to get ready for X race) - but what you can do today. Getting a massage, icing, sleeping an extra hour are all helpful in making you a better athlete. Doing hard work is the only way you are making yourself faster, doing hard work is not a recipe for success while you’re injured.

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If you're interested in being coached by Katie (she is AMAZING! super supportive and responsive) go to http://www.forwardfocusrunning.com/. She's also on Instagram @forwardfocusrunning.

After placing 7th in downhill skiing at the 2018 Olympics, Breezy Johnson was ready to make her best THE best. A partial ACL tear that Fall took her out for the whole 2019 season. She thought she had paid her dues to ski racing, “almost every skier tears their ACL,” but not every skier tears their PCL and MCL. Breezy did, just as she was getting back into training.

The second knee injury really shook her. This is an athlete who lives for race day. She loves that feeling you get when it’s all on the line, “when you have to put up or shut up,” and she felt like part of her soul had been wrenched out when racing was taken away for the second time.

We talk about her amazing recovery and return to racing in January, and how having something for your mind to focus on is just as important as having something for your body to work on.

Paula Dubovoy ruptured her achilles in January 2019 and had to take 6 months off of running. She has an amazingly positive approach to recovery and encourages injured athletes to focus on what they can do, rather than what they can't. You can follow her on instagram @eat_lift_bemarried and check out her personal training plans at https://extramile.fitness/. She's got an awesome pull-up challenge that I'm thinking about starting!