Coach Croft

Summer hydration hack: Stop acting like electrolytes have to identify as beverages.

Freeze them + make a slushy.

Eat your sodium with a spoon while making uncomfortable eye contact with the sun.

Checkmate, dehydration.

If you’ve opened your weather app lately and wondered…
“Should I actually be running in this?” You’re not alone.

Between wildfire smoke, Saharan dust crossing the Atlantic, rising ozone, and summer pollution, air quality has become another training variable that runners can’t afford to ignore.

It’s important to understand what those numbers actually mean so you can make informed decisions.

Inside this carousel, I break down:
• what the Air Quality Index (AQI) measures
• when it’s reasonable to modify a workout
• why runners with asthma or allergies may need to be even more cautious
• how to adapt your training without feeling like you’re losing fitness

Training is all about managing stress…

Mileage, workouts, heat, humidity, sleep, life stress…and yes, the air you’re breathing all contribute to the total load your body is carrying.

Sometimes the smartest decision isn’t pushing through. It’s protecting the lungs that make all of those miles possible.

Save this post for the next smoky or hazy day, and send it to your running friends because chances are they’re wondering the same thing.

Thoughts from a coach’s s**tty long run (aka the s**t most coaches don’t share)…

I spent two and a half hours on my feet today. Well… a little more than that, but we’ll get to that part later.

It wasn’t just time on my feet though. I spent that time carrying around an athlete’s email and everything it represented.

I don’t think we give enough credit to cognitive load. Coaching isn’t just writing workouts. Sometimes you carry other people’s fears, frustrations, expectations, and projections. This particular message didn’t stay in my inbox. It came with me on the run. So did the lingering feelings from another athlete.

When you’ve spent hours mentally processing difficult interactions, your brain doesn’t magically set them down because you laced up your shoes. The perceived effort of exercise can absolutely be influenced by that background stress.

The biggest thing about today is that I never made it about proving anything.

I walked. I refilled my handheld at a Fleet Feet water stop (thanks, FF!). I took a detour to Starbie’s and bought a blended mango dragonfruit refresher that completely lied to me about being delicious. I gave two coaching clients unsolicited reviews of it while they checked in. I sat for a few minutes, regrouped, talked myself through it, and then got back to work.

Some runs just go like that. Physically, I was mostly okay. Mentally, it was a grind. The heat and humidity chose violence, and my brain was busy processing things while I worked through the final long run of a cycle that was anything but glamorous.

I think that’s important to remember.

Coaches aren’t immune to the same stressors their athletes face. We don’t coach this way because training is supposed to look perfect. We coach this way because we’ve learned that your body doesn’t exist separately from the rest of your life. Stress is stress. Recovery is recovery. Sometimes the biggest win isn’t running the perfect workout.

Sometimes it’s simply refusing to quit when the day asks more of you than you expected.

Anyway, I’m grateful for the end of this cycle, my group, and the clients who trust me with their training (even when they’re not entirely sure about the method.)

Older Fans After Dark.
Episode: It’s Getting Hot in Herre.

The younger generation hears this song and thinks dance floor.

Peri/menopausal women hear it + immediately wonder where the nearest fan is, whether we packed electrolytes, and if this is a hot flash or if Oklahoma is just being disrespectful again.

To everyone navigating Cougar Puberty…

May your fan batteries stay charged. May your ice water remain cold. May your sports bra never become your sworn enemy. And may Nelly someday issue an official menopause remix.

Most runners look at a mileage graph and want to see one thing.

Up ⬆️⬆️⬆️

Every week a little higher than the last. More miles. Bigger long runs. More proof that training is working.

But here’s what I look for: the dips.
Those little pullback weeks every few weeks aren’t interruptions to progress. They’re what make progress possible.

The question isn’t, “Can I get away with another five miles this week?” It’s, “What gives me the best chance to be exceptional on race day?”

Those are very different questions. One is trying to negotiate with your body like it’s a toddler…

“Come on… just one more workout. It’ll be fine.”

Your body usually responds with, “Interesting proposal. Counteroffer: shin splints.”

Your body can tolerate climbing volume for a while. That’s the tricky part. You can get away with it…until you can’t.

The missed workout. The lingering soreness. A cranky tendon that suddenly starts filing formal complaints. The stupid illness that shows up like an uninvited houseguest. A race that feels flat despite months of “perfect” training.

If you refuse to schedule recovery, your body will eventually schedule it for you.

Unfortunately, your body is an absolutely terrible administrative assistant. It loves booking deload weeks during peak training, race week, or three days before your destination marathon.

I don’t want my athletes constantly wondering how much they can survive. I want them asking what gives them the highest probability of arriving at the start line healthy, confident, and ready to perform.

Sometimes that’s another workout. Others it’s the week that makes your mileage chart dip just enough to let your body catch up.

Resilience isn’t endlessly proving you can tolerate more. You have to develop enough confidence to leave a little fitness on the table today so you can cash it in when it actually matters.

The best mileage graphs don’t look like a staircase. They look like someone who understood recovery wasn’t the price of performance. It was part of the training plan.

Everyone talks about resilience like it’s your ability to survive more… More miles, workouts, fatigue, suffering in the name of resilience.

But that’s only one version of resilience. The version that actually gets people to big goals looks a little different.

At some point you stop asking, “Can I get away with this?”

Can I skip recovery? Can I add another workout? Can I squeeze in a few more miles? Can I push through this little ni**le?

Instead, you start asking a better question:
“What gives me the best chance to be exceptional on race day?”

Those are completely different mindsets. One is trying to prove how much you can survive. The other is protecting the athlete you’re becoming.

The mileage graph isn’t a story of seeing how close I could get to the edge. It’s a story of rebuilding trust + capacity, surviving random life s**t, backing off when summer humidity is trying to commit crimes, taking recovery seriously, lifting consistently, strategy, respecting cutback weeks, and trusting that boring consistency beats forcing training every single day.

Resilience isn’t permission to keep testing the ceiling.

Sometimes resilience is having the discipline to leave it alone. Because the goal isn’t to win today’s workout. It’s to become the athlete who shows up ready when race day finally arrives.