Every year, I engage in some sort of challenge to close out the year – most years it’s been some physical challenge like a different exercise each day to count down the year; last year I did a daily reflection centered around a word/feeling. This year, I’m looking back on lessons learned. I had so many amazing experiences this year – some deeply personal, and some purely professional, but almost entirely connected to athletics & movement! So I’ll take the remainder of 2025 to share with you, in no particular order:25 lessons learned(I use that term quite loosely – some of these are just observations, cool adventures, or validations of things I already acknowledged as true).
~Dr. Coach Megan
- Complex =/= complicated. This year I went through the Clinical Athlete (CA) certificate program to gain a new perspective and deeper understanding of exercise prescription for athletes. One of the first lessons in the curriculum was understanding the difference betweencomplicated (something with a lot of parts or processes, but generally linear and predictable), andcomplex (an interconnected “whole” that is greater than the sum of its parts). Building a car is a complicated process; interacting with humans is complex.
- Stress is helpful.Think back to your middle school health class – do you remember the difference between eustress & distress? Eustress is a positive type of stress – your body & brain are responding to something that is challenging and rewarding … and often leaves us wanting more. Distress is a negative type of stress that can be perceived as harmful, dangerous, or scary … and gives us that sense of anxiety or dread, and avoidance. Either way, these stressful situations give us information and guide us to our next steps.
- I can do hard things.I flew across the country to present at a conference where I knew one person. I ran at the Western States training camp weekend (and couldn’t walk right for a week after). I biked from Buffalo to NYC, including a 100+ mile day in 100+ temperatures. I ran 4 races in 3 days, totalling over 50 miles. I started to say no, and hold firm on my boundaries.
- In the NCAA, female coaches dominate! While the percentage of female head coaches is still low, it is rising, according to the Women in College Coaching report card put out by the Tucker Center (you can read the whole reviewhere). At the NCAA DI cross country championship meet, the top 3 teams – NC State, BYU & Oregon – are led by female coaches.
- Time off allows for rebuilding … higher. I recently heard an analogy of training & performing compared to building a house. If we decide the house needs a taller roof/peak, we have to take down some of the old and rebuild it. In running, ideally each season/year builds on the previous, and that starts with taking down some of the “old roof” … or, losing some top-end fitness. You can’t build higher without starting low.
- Family means everything. I’ve felt this in so many ways this year. Early in 2025, I felt disconnected from my family because I was away at track meets more than usual – and that’s something I couldn’t continue, and needed to change. My family is my foundation – no job or hobby can take priority over them.
- Psychosomatic does not mean not real. Sometimes our brains can do wild things and make us question our sanity. When I have a big race coming up (within a week or so), I will have foot pain and convince myself my foot is broken. My friend, a dietitian, throws up her breakfast before a long run (her race week fueling is super important because she knows she can’t keep it down on the day of!). We’ve concluded that our pre-race anxiety manifests as these things related to our professions … and then they disappear … but that doesn’t mean the experience isn’t real!
- Shoes aren’t always the answer, but they may be a part of the solution. It feels like there are infinite possibilities in the shoe industry these days – zero drop, cushioned, high stack, plated, up-tempo... Now, despite what you may have been told at a shoe store, your “foot type” does not necessarily mean you should run in a certain “shoe type” – this is a highly effective marketing strategy from the shoe industry that hasn’t held up well in research. BUT I do think there is validity in adjusting footwear if you are experiencing pain or discomfort – it may be a short term thing, or it may be adding a certain type of shoe into your rotation long-term. Ultimately, wear the shoe that is most comfortable, end of story.
- Protein is cool, carbs are cooler. There has been a big push this year to jump on the protein train! I’ve read a few papers and had many conversations with dietitian friends. One non-scientific article I read said – and I like this phrasing – that female athletes are probably taking in less than ideal amounts of protein BUT ALSO less than ideal amounts of carbs, leading to underfueling in general. So simply gorging on protein is not the answer, because you’d still be missing out on a key nutrient: carbohydrates (and, if you take in too much protein, you excrete the excess and with it goes some important micronutrients…). #eatmorecarbs
- “Don’t forget to drink water and get some sunlight because you’re basically a house plant with more complicated emotions.”I saw this on an Instagram post recently and … well, it just made a lot of sense. This time of year is bonkers – and let’s face it, most of the year is bonkers in one way or another. So drink your water, go outside, and be emotional :)
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a bad-ass. With women’s rights a hot topic these days, it was especially meaningful to make a pit stop in Seneca Falls on our way home from Rochester earlier this year. She owned a property when it was not common to do so, and she acted as her own general contractor to refurbish it. Oh, and she was part of the convention that started the social reform movement for women’s rights, nbd.
- SHIT framework. Proposed by Peter Tierney, a performance coach, this just makes sense. It’s always nice to feel validated in what I’m already doing, and gives me a good laugh when someone else comes up with a clever way to lay it out.
- 10% is out. This one has been on the fence for several years, so can we just … let it rest? The idea that you should only ever increase your weekly mileage by 10% or less does not hold up. In the case of a low-mileage runner, you’d take an unreasonably long time to build up; in the case of a high-mileage runner, you’d get to a max threshold pretty quickly and it will probably backfire. “10%” is not a magic number with increasing mileage, so let’s just be done with it.
- 10% is in … kind of. New research is suggesting “spikes” as a higher injury risk factor than previously thought. Again, the 10% number has been tossed around – that would mean that a single run that is 10% greater than any other run in the previous 3-4 weeks would be a flag for injury risk. I’m not going to fully subscribe to the 10% here either, but I do like that the research is identifying spikes. Do spikes happen? Yes…and sometimes they’re unavoidable. But don’t make a habit of spiking.
- There is no quick fix. I wouldn’t say this is a lesson I’ve learned this year, but one that’s been shown over and over to be true. In the age of influencers, magic fix-it exercises, and cure-all concoctions … be repeatable & sustainable. People have asked me to post reels and blogs of “the best exercises for xyz” and I just can’t … because those don’t exist. Are there exercises that I like for all-around things, and turn to often? Yes. But every injury, performance barrier, or health-focused target has a different story, and deserves more than a boiler plate list of exercises.
- I don’t respond as quickly as I’d like to. Because of #15, I take time to formulate a program for you. Sometimes I give you 1-2 things during our appointment to start on, and send you another batch a few days later once I’ve had time to synthesize everything. Your program may have overlaps with someone else’s, but I guarantee they are not the same, and are not designed with the same intent.
- But often I respond more quickly than my family would like me to. And this is a project for 2026: holding firm on some boundaries. One feature that I am loving about my new phone is that I can sort my email by “unread & flagged” – in the past, if I flagged an email I’d then have to go search for it on my computer and sometimes forget about it. Now, I can flag it for later and still have it easily accessible in my inbox. This has allowed me to feel less “I need to respond now so I don’t forget” which lets me spend more attention and time with my family. It may seem silly, but boundaries come in many shapes and this is one for me. I even went all weekend without responding to a work email!!
- Train/treat the individual, not the cycle. For the last several years, there’s been a push to train according to your menstrual cycle: Do this type of workout in this phase, expect this response in this phase, etc. I admit, I was promoting this for a time too, but then I started noticing that it wasn’t really going “as planned” for my clients. And now, research is showing that this cycle-syncing idea doesn’t actually hold up… women are different, and even cycle to cycle can be different, and of course fluctuations across the lifespan. So, why should we expect to fit nicely into a boxy model when we know that our hormones do not? There is validity to “I feel this way & like this type of workout during this phase” – but just know that the exact feeling, response & phase arenot going to be the same person to person. As a healthcare professional & coach, it’s my job to work with the person in front of me … and so I shall :)
- GOOD HEALTHCARE DOES EXIST!!! I am so excited about this one – it really just feels good to know that other providers are feeling the same level of “done” with the healthcare system, enough to branch out and provide their patients/clients with the level of care that you all deserve. Here are a few who I’ve discovered and/or connected with in 2025: Dr. Meghan Monthie (Heirloom Family Med); Dr. Jackcy Jacob (Ascend MD);Lane 9 Project;Eternal. I encourage you to check out their websites and explore what they have to say & offer… truly amazing people & networks.
- Our bodies need load in order to heal.I wouldn’t classify this as 2025 news, but the research is growing. Our tendons and bones need to be loaded in order to get better – whether that’s recovering from injury, or just trying to get better for performance reasons. This is why I began theRestore program: because all too often, athletes with a bone injury are told to just rest for a few weeks then “ease back in” … but what happens in those few weeks is your body loses the stimulus and has no “motivation” to get stronger. Your bones lose the drive for adaptation. Your bones are getting weaker when you are told they are “healing”. And then … you are “cleared to run” and … oh, something hurts again. Yep. So there is a lot of nuance here – I would not tell an athlete with a tibial stress fracture to go run a few miles and say “you’re healing!” … rather, we’d be working onother areas of her body to continue to support the injury site, and facilitate general muscular & bone development throughout the body. Tendons need load. Bones need load. Our bodies need tomove and have a reason to adapt stronger. Rest and immobilization are almost never the best practice (but yes sometimes they are!)
- Athletes with tibial BSIs have higher step counts during the day. OK so stemming from the previous lesson, saying that we do need some load in order to heal … it is possible that people who have a tibial stress fracture aren’t reducing the load initially and it could potentially prolong recovery. As a clinician, it’s important for me to ask about the daily activity levels around the time of injury and through rehab to get a complete picture of the load – not just “running load” or “exercise”.
- Low carb vs. high carb fueling for distance events?Disclaimer: I’m not a dietitian or even a self-proclaimed nutritionist! But, being familiar with research related to fueling is important in terms of managing injury status/rehab components, and performance. There was a study that came out claiming that 10g/hour of carbs is great; there was a study that claimed 120g/hour is great … so the exact number is not clearly defined (although most RDs I know steer toward the higher end, 60+) BUT what do these have in common? Carbs > no carbs. Hard stop.
- A woman sued Nike for a career-altering foot injury, blaming the AlphaFly2. Supershoes are a hot topic these days, and there has been some shift in the injury profile among people who wear them, including suggestion for association with navicular bone stress injuries; however, it has been demonstrated over and over that running injuries are multifactorial, meaning we can’t blame one single thing for an injury sustained. I think the recovery benefit of supershoes is key – if you’re not feeling as beat up and sore after a workout or race in your supershoes, you’re “good to go” and crush another hard workout, right? Wrong. Training errors are a HUGE component of running injuries … and I think supershoes play right into it, making training errors really easy to come by. So it’s not the shoes themselves, but what we do with them … (so as much as I don’t like Nike, I think this lawsuit is bogus).
- Discipline & commitment =/= no rest days. If you look at the big picture of training, where does the magic happen? In the recovery. You put in a big effort – a big stimulus designed to drive adaptations – but your body can’t actually adapt to those demands until it has the opportunity to do so. So if you’re alwaysgo go go! then when do you actually get stronger, fitter, faster? :( Scheduling a complete rest day (or maybe a partial rest day, like going for a walk & doing yoga versus going for a run & lifting weights) is a critical component of any training cycle. Every athlete is going to need this at a different frequency: for example, I schedule 2 rest days/week for some athletes, and 1 day every 2-3 weeks for others! This doesn’t mean they aren’t disciplined or focused on their goals – it means they’re taking the steps necessary to get the most out of their training as they can (& trusting that their coach knows a thing or two about this!)
- Community is essential. I really don’t say this lightly: the communities that I identify with are critical to the success of my business, and my happiness and satisfaction in life. As a former high school athlete, now coaching at that same high school, and pursuing athletic goals as an adult runner … as a business owner (x2!) and solo practitioner … as a mom of a very busy, bright, energetic kid who has ideas that could very well save the world … ALL of it comes together to build my identity. As I write this I’m thinking “duh, that’s the same for everyone” and it probably is … I’m not saying my community is any better than any other. All I’m saying is that it’s amazing, and I am so thankful for it. With all of the craziness happening in our country and world today, I am entirely grateful for my opportunities to work with each of you in whatever capacity we have together, and build a happier world one step at a time.
Here’s to a happier, healthier, and stronger year ahead!
~Dr. Coach Megan