Injuries, Setbacks & MIA Motivation: Overcoming the Challenges of Running Through Perimenopause with Normi Coto, PhD (Episode 212)

Hit Play Not Pause

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.9 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Running through the menopause transition can be challenging. If you feel like throwing in the towel sometimes, you’re not alone. This week’s guest, distance runner and blogger at runandbebrave.com has faced it all: injuries, setbacks, poor sleep, fatigue, vanishing motivation, hot flashes, and all the joint pain that accompanies the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause. Through it all, she found a way to keep going, and she believes you can, too. She talks all about how this week.

Normi Coto, PhD, is an English teacher by day and a writer by night. She writes about running, writing, prayer, rhetoric, and mindset. A runner since 1983, Normi ran through three pregnancies back when running was misunderstood almost as poorly as women’s health. She has run 6 marathons, and is most proud of qualifying for Boston twice, running it once (2001), and finishing her first 50K ultramarathon in 2023 in Washington D.C. at the age of 54. Normi’s PhD dissertation was Persuasion by Word of Foot: A Rhetorical-Ontological Inquiry into Barefoot Running as a Health Practice–a practice she has found helpful for resolving her own stubborn running injuries. 2024 was her hardest year yet when she ran straight into menopause. But she’s still going. You can learn more about her and her work at www.runandbebrave.com

Resources:

Running and Menopause: The 9 Ways I Made It Through the Roughest Running Year to Date, blog post here

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Hit Play, Not Pause, a feisty menopause podcast for active performance-minded women.
0:14.6	I am your host, Celine Yeager. Each week, I bring you advice from athletes, scientists, researchers, and other experts to help you feel and perform you best no matter what your hormones are doing.
0:25.0	This show is a production of Live Feisty Media.
0:29.9	Hello, Strong Feisty Women.
0:32.0	I hope you all are well.
0:33.9	So this week, I have a real tale from the trenches for you, and I'm sure one that many of you
0:40.0	will relate to.
0:41.5	I sat down with Normie Koto, a distance runner, English teacher, and writer who blogs at
0:47.8	run and be brave.com.
0:50.3	She caught my eye when I came across one of her blogs titled The Nine Nine Ways, I Made It Through the Roughest Running Year to Date.
0:58.1	And that was menopause.
1:00.6	And her advice tips included committing to a running partner, committing to a challenging race, increasing strength training, not worrying about speed, cutting back on alcohol, increasing iron and
1:12.0	protein, focusing on sleep, recalibrating mindset, and consciously injecting joy into her runs.
1:18.0	We talk about a bunch of that during this show, and I will put a link to it into the show
1:22.3	notes so you can check out the full article yourself. But I have to say that even after
1:27.4	reading all of this, I was really
1:30.3	struck by the level of adversity, Normie has overcome to continue running when she hit
1:37.0	menopause and pretty much went from ultra running to barely getting in four miles on a consistent
1:43.6	basis.
1:45.0	She had all this stuff we talk about.
1:48.0	Poor sleep, her motivation tanked, fatigue, all the joint pain that accompanies the
1:53.0	musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause and more.
	...

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