“No more than an hour a day,” she cautioned. “You’re too low.” New York Presbyterian Hospital’s endocrinologist, a resident at Columbia’s Medical University, made reference to how at one point or another leading up to an appointment with her in the fall of my senior year I was too low on energy, estrogen, calcium and/or body weight. And because of that, any running following my collegiate experience would be limited – if I wanted to heal and strengthen my body. What a classic case of a washed up college female distance runner I had become, I thought.
As I was identified with varying degrees of the interconnected health problems of the Female Athlete Triad, I gained insight into the conditions prevalent in highly competitive, type A, long distance-running females. Although lessons I gleaned from such medical interventions elucidated just how common these issues were to my collegiate-athlete peers and competitors, I quickly realized how off-the-radar – or under-the-rug – the scientific facts were to coaches, trainers, doctors and other athletes.
This realization began to develop from when I was a frosh with a broken foot compulsively cross-training, studying, drinking and eating my way not out of but into a depression hinging on the fact that I could not run; and when “runner” was the only thing I kind of knew about myself 3,000 miles away from the provincial homecity I somehow gathered the balls to step out of…and into the world of elite Ivy academia, pressurized Division I cross country, overwhelmingly unique cityscapes, etc. Of course, this was all foreign, just as I found the implications of compounding physical, social, psychological, environmental and personal factors to be.
No tale of woe is to be found here. I was able to explore the previously listed factors and this thorough examination shed tremendous light. So much information is empowering, if not overwhelming. But it is easy to apply practically. The simplest lesson I learned relates to the weak bone/osteoporosis problem at one corner of the Female Athlete Triad. I’ll get to that soon enough; I’m going to go get some supplements, because female runners ought to be vigilant about their calcium intake. ...