I am not exaggerating when I say my pre-race nerves were almost debilitating.

Not quite a panic attack, but close. Heart pounding, stomach turning, shallow breathing and the gun hadn't even gone off.

I was determined to solve this mystery of why this kept happening to me.

So I fell into a rabbit hole of breathing techniques, visualization, and cognitive conditioning. I began to practice consistently, not just on race morning but throughout training.

That combination changed how I raced. And it changed how I move through hard things in the rest of my life too.

It is why I build the mental work into everything I do with my athletes. Not as an add-on, not as a bonus, but as a core part of training. Because the legs are only half of it.

Ready to try a taste of what runner-specific cognitive training is like?

It is a FREE seven minute audio called the Readiness Reset. Use it before hard workouts, long runs, and race day. It combines guided visualization and cognitive conditioning to train the response you need when running gets hard.

The more you use it, the more automatic it becomes. By the time mile 18 arrives, it will already be a reflex.

free Readiness Reset

Fun story: Here is what one of my athletes said after Boston:

"Around mile 20 I felt that uncomfortable breathing we talked about, but I literally said to myself,' here it comes, it's fake, let's go,' and it passed. That was such a huge mental moment." — Vincent, 3:53 Boston Marathon

That moment did not happen by accident. Vincent had been practicing that response for months. By the time mile 20 arrived, it was already a reflex.

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from the team

"I already have a plan that I like, but I'm here anyway."

Sarah found me three weeks before her marathon. She already had a plan she liked that she'd been recycling for years. Her training was solid.

She just kept second guessing herself anyway.

Because every race, she felt like she backed off. She would finish knowing there was more to give and just couldn't figure out how to bring it out.

And she wasn't the only one. She shared her experience with the team and we all talked about what helped us the most in the same situation.

Sure, strategy and some good luck on race day mattered a lot. But so did learning a fresh perspective.

Sarah PRd by nearly six minutes. But that's not what she wrote about in her race report. She wrote about confidence. Support. Calm. What she learned. The community that showed up for her. Trusting herself. Actually enjoying the race.

Sarah thought she was joining the PR Team for the PR part. She didn't know there was so much more.

join us

*team names changed for privacy

planted practice

Each week, I'd like to challenge you to one small action that I'm calling your Planted Practice.

You don't change the way you think by reading something cool in a newsletter. You change with small, daily work, just like training your body.

Each Planted Practice is deceptively simple, but might just be more powerful than you think.

This week's challenge:

This week, try a watchface run. Change your running watch to show only the time, nothing else. No pace. No distance.

You can run your usual route if that helps you feel less untethered. The goal isn't to remove every anchor at once. It's to remove the one you check most, the number that tells you if you're doing it right before you've had a chance to decide that for yourself.

Run by feel instead. Notice when you want to glance down out of habit. Notice what you do when there's no number to confirm or correct you. That urge to check is worth paying attention to. It's usually not about the pace. It's about wanting reassurance that you're doing okay.

This is a small, controlled way to practice trusting yourself on a run instead of outsourcing it to your wrist.

*share how it went on social and tag me!

#plantedpractice

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podcast

If you’re a marathoner training for a fall race and you’re running goal marathon paced workouts in July, you’re doing it wrong.

Let’s explore a better way.

In today’s encore episode, we’re going to talk about race-specific workouts from the 5k to the marathon.

You’ll learn:

• Why the timing of race-specific workouts matters
• Why and how to plan workouts that focus on overall fitness instead, and
• When to narrow your focus so you peak exactly on race day

I’ll also give you some examples of my favorite race-specific workouts for each distance.

This is a topic that will probably bust a lot of common myths out there. W

hether you are brand-new to racing or you’re a veteran runner looking for ways to sharpen up your fitness at exactly the right time, this is the episode for you and your running buddies. So share it with them!

listen here

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inspo

"Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next."

—Gilda Radner

Have a great run today, Coach Claire

Thank you for being a part of the Planted Runner community!

My mission is to help runners just like you reach goals they never dreamed possible through science-backed training and plant-based nutrition.

Since 2016, I've helped thousands of every day runners become fitter, faster, and stronger with truly customized training and coaching.

I also love to share what I have learned from my own journey starting as a non-runner to a 2:58 marathoner at age 42, as well what I have learned coaching runners, completely FREE. I do that every week in this newsletter and on the Planted Runner Podcast.

I'm so glad you're here and my inbox is always open. Feel free to reply with questions or feedback!

If that's not for you, ​unsubscribe here​, completely guilt-free!

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