Lately in Lane 9
It’s been a busy month in Lane 9, and in my (Heather’s) little world. I scheduled seven podcast interviews and three events for our Clinical Members this month, and recently completed my second year as a volunteer Race Director for a local 5K/10K event with about 1,000 runners. I coached a local group of Girls on the Run kids, and got to complete their culminating 5K with them, too! Now I look ahead to my own race—a half marathon on the last day of this month—and continue doing all the things to keep my plantar fasciitis (from last year) at bay, which has been a successful endeavor thus far!
Outside of running and talking about female athlete health, I dug out a piece of music I used to know how to play on the piano and gave it a try again. A friend of mine is taking adult piano lessons, and posted a video of practicing her recital piece. I recognized the music, and realized I still had my own copy of it from high school1. The pencilled-in date in the corner says “4/6/03”, and “Recital?” in my teacher’s handwriting. I’ve played the piano maybe 5 times in the past 10+ years, but I could get through four bars of this Sonatina in C Major (op. 55 no. 3, first movement). Which is to say: I highly recommend going back to something you once knew and enjoyed, and giving it a try again. I’ve been doing this with writing, music, and watching 90’s movies with my kids (which is a real adventure!). Hobbies!
Lane 9 Podcast highlights
We talk about this expanding of the Self Identity pie in our conversation with Dr. Savannah Landis on the Lane 9 podcast, episode 88. If you’re here, reading this, you are probably an athlete in some way, shape, or form.
What other pieces make up your pie chart? Piano player? Writer? Painter? Gardener? Improv-er? Really, I’d love to know!
The last time I regularly played the piano was in high school, when I also played soccer, and participated in our school theater program. I loved all of the above, they all felt like important pieces of me. I lost all of those things when I went to college; I just, didn’t do them anymore, partly because I wasn’t sure how to, and didn’t think I was “good enough” any of them to try at the college level. Decades later I’m still re-learning the lesson that you are allowed to do things simply (or solely) because you like to do them, skill or talent or not.
What I definitely wasn’t doing much of in high school? Talking about my period. We talk about that with Dr. Bethany Brausen DPT, on the Lane 9 Podcast episode 89. She’s a former D1 runner, current physical therapist (in our Membership!) and high school XC coach.
Clinicians connecting to athletes in Lane 9
We love talking to our clinicians, and sharing their expertise with you on the podcast. We also love when you connect with them.
Over the past seven days we’ve matched 13 athletes with clinicians in our Directory! These are athletes who are in high school, college, working full time jobs, training for a marathon for the first time, or seeking support post-menopause in sport. Really, we’ve seen all of the above in last week alone. We get a little thrill every time we get to recommend one of our clinicians, knowing you are getting REDs-informed and women’s health support, as a person in women’s sports.
Coming up
Our members have two more events this month:
Our monthly Case Consultation Hour (May 19th),
and a New Member Orientation (May 29th).
We got to hear from Dr. Morgan Smith, of the Stanford FASTR lab, and now working with the USYNT (soccer), yesterday, on “Early Signs of REDs in Female Athletes”. The recording is now available in our Membership library!
Mary Cain, Lane 9 physician Dr. Rosa Pasculli, Lane 9 Coach Becky Anthony, and Miran McCash are all coming to the Lane 9 podcast. Subscribe to stay tuned!
P.S.
You are probably also a subscriber of Alison Wade’s Fast Women newsletter, but in case you missed it, she had a life-altering event earlier this month. She wrote about it here, and there’s been a GoFundMe set up to support her and her twin daughters in the days and years ahead, here.
I bought an out-of-tune piano off of Fb Marketplace in 2022, with hopes of playing again. The next time I visited my parents’ house, I took some music back with me. I did get the piano tuned, but that was now almost 4 years ago, and I’ve only sat down to play it a small handful of times. It was a “free” piano that actually cost $500 to move and has mostly been decorative in our houses since!
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