A few years ago, elite Canadian runner Sasha Gollish started experiencing some symptoms that had her wondering what the hell was up with her body—crime scene (or as she called them firehose) periods, strange memory lapses, times in races when her legs were flailing and her muscles were not responding the way they typically would as she struggled to find her stride. She wondered if she was sick. As you likely guessed by now, she wasn’t sick. She was in perimenopause. After suffering alone for a bit, Sasha decided to open up and share her experiences online, not only for her own mental health, but also so other women wouldn’t feel alone or invisible in their own struggles. This week she talks all about how she is learning to make peace with and tame what she calls her hormonal perimonster.

Along with being an elite runner, Sasha Gollish, PhD, 41, is also a high-performance coach, engineer, and researcher in the Mental Health and Physical Activity Research Centre at the University of Toronto where her work focuses on knowledge translation. She has a substantial resume of world and national records, including setting the world record in the women’s 40+ indoor mile in 2022 and setting two Canadian Masters Indoor records earlier this year at the Hal Brown Invitational Indoor meet. Also, this year she competed in the marathon at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, the half marathon at the inaugural World Road Running Champs in Riga, Latvia, and the World Mountain Running Champs in Innsbruck, Austria. You can learn more about her and her work at www.sashagollish.com

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