Stronger Strides

The holidays can be a hard time to stick to your goals. Here are five tips to beat the holiday pitfalls in your goals! 1. Tweak your recipes Cherished family recipes may be loaded with ingredients that we should avoid. Try substituting with applesauce, greek yogurt, vanilla extract and trade condensed milk for coconut milk. 2. Practice portion control Feeling stuffed after a holiday meal seems to be a common feeling this time of year, but it doesn’t have to be. There is a difference between feeling satisfied and feeling full. Watch “having seconds” This can lead to excess calories and not giving yourself enough time to fill full. Limit the food that is around. Food waste is a big deal in America and we can reduce this by the amount of food that we make. Do not miss meals! This slows down your metabolism and will actually do more damage than good on your body. Bring your own snacks to work- there are always tons of holiday treats around the office this tim

You know the deal. You train hard for four months. Your runs are spot on. Waking up at 4:30 every day to sweat it out. Recovery is right. Nutrition is right. Your pace is right. Hydration is right. EVERYTHING IS RIGHT ON SCHEDULE. I have always suffered with my mental strength. I grew up in a house that competition was in our blood and growing up with two amazing athletes for sisters. Try being 11 and 9 years younger and always trying to keep up.  When I signed up for the Big Cottonwood Marathon, I had big dreams. My sister had run that marathon a few years prior and she told me that it was fast and an easy course. I could achieve great things on that course.  I live close to the course so I would run it at least once a week. I could run that course with my eyes closed. Every run I was spot on for achieving a 3:15 marathon. I had my eye on that prize. I could almost taste the victory. The night of the race, I was so nervous. I finally fell asleep about 3 AM and my alarm

Protein is always a hot topic which I will talk about in a later post. Try to get your protein in within 30 minutes of finishing your workout.  I drink this smoothie almost every morning because it is jam packed with protein which keeps me full and grows my Sponge Bob arms! I absolutely love Ideal Fits protein, it is by far my favorite. You can find a more about this protein here .  Here is the recipe: -3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk -2 tablespoons powdered peanut butter -1/2 banana (frozen if you like a thicker consistency) -1 scoop of chocolate protein powder (I use Ideal Fit- Chocolate Brownie) -1 tablespoons of natural peanut butter (there is never a thing of too much peanut butter) -6-8 ice cubes Directions: -Place in a high speed blender (I use my Blendtec) and enjoy!! Happy running friends, Kylie

Speed work often gets neglected in my training but I can tell when I am at mile 20 if I have done the proper amount of speed work.  There are some critical things you need to focus on while you are training for a marathon that include tempo runs, strength training, and mileage. There are some classic VO2 max workouts that consists of repeats with a duration of 3-5 minutes. These are awesome to test your fitness and really train how your muscles will feel that last 10 K of the race.  After you have achieved some goal times and are ready to take it to the next level, do not focus on increasing the length of the workout but focus on shorter distance with sprints as short as 50 meters. Studies have shown that this can change the way your body works on race day.  There are many different ways that you can incorporate these workouts into your training. 1. Short for Speed Endurance: This is a very important workout because on race day, this will make your feel like you are moving a lo

I've talked about the marathon a lot before. It is a race that consists of thousands of hours training for, hundreds of miles ran, countless hours of strength training, hill training, speed work, tempo runs, and the list could go on and on. I would like to talk about finding yourself in those rough training days. Whether you are training for a marathon, half marathon, triathlon, or any endurance competition. I know that we have all had them. What do we do? Quit? Give up? Keep pushing through? This can happen on any given training day. Short runs, long runs, speed work or even strength training work. I am a big believer in listening to your body. Do not mistake me here, if you are listening to your body and giving it what it needs, your body will give you more on race day if you respect it during training. There are those training sessions that you need to compete. I usually like to get in three 20-mile runs before a marathon. And some days, you just do not want to run that 20. I

It is that time of year again! Here in Utah it is dark and cold pretty much all the time that I am not at work. So you know what that means?? TREADMILL TIME! When I am on the treadmill, I try to do different workouts every day. Also, I strongly believe in the ration 2:1. Go hard for 2 minutes easy for 1 minute, go up two levels, down one level, etc. I keep this principle when I plan out my treadmill workouts. I also like to train my lactate threshold as well. You can modify the speed & incline so this workout is personalized for you. Give this a try:  0 to 2 mile warm up. (this should be about 1 minute slower than average workout pace) Mile 2 to 3increase base speed  * keep at a steady cadence Mile 3 to 4: increase base speed *break this mile down into 400m (1/4 of a mile) do one 400m at an increase, rest for a 400m Repeat twice in this mile Mile 4 to 5: Increase base speed *Break this mile down by 800m- Increase speed for 800 m (1/2 mile) an

I absolutely love these bars! I do not understand how people do not like peanut butter.  When you mix peanut butter and honey.... you have me. I love quick and easy recipes without a lot of ingredients. I mean, this only has FOUR ingredients! YASSS! Once I created this recipe, I make it almost every week. I love to eat these before or after my workouts. I wanted to share this SUPER easy protein granola bar recipe: Ingredients: 2 cups oats 1/2 cup honey 1/2 cup peanut butter 1 serving of vanilla protein powder Directions: In a mixing bowl, combined oats and protein powder, set aside In a small sauce pan over medium-high heat, bring the honey to a boil Let the honey boil for one minute Remove the honey from the heat and stir in the peanut butter Immediately pour the honey-peanut butter mixture over oat and protein mixture in mixing bowl as the mixture becomes sticky and difficult to work with so move quickly Pour mixture out on a pan or on a plate Flatten mixture a

Mondays! They get such a negative rep. I for one, get so excited about them that I do not sleep very well on Sunday nights. I think that I stress myself out with all the things that I would like to accomplish. I love to counter act this stress with a plan to prepare for Mondays! As soon as that alarm goes off... it is go time!! Every minute counts. Here are some tips that I have learned to help mornings run a little smoother. I hope these help kick off your day to a great start to get you one step closer to those dreams. 1. Make a short term goal - Set a goal for just this week! Example- run 3 times this week, strength train 2 times a week, eat vegetables at every meal, etc. 2. Write this goal down - It is so important to write the goal down so you can see it. Keep this as your screensaver on your phone or in a place that you look at often. The mind actually visualizes it and can remember it to help motivate you to achieve this goal. 3. Prepare your workout - wether you are fol

Supplements.... Supplements... Where to begin! The fitness industry can be a very messy, intimidating and contain a lot of misleading information. Supplements are a huge money maker for companies because everyone is looking for that "magical pill" to make them fit into those high school jeans. If you know me, I am a very naturalist person but I also do take supplements. I love to find very natural supplements and limit my caffeine intake. **Disclosure- I am not paid to represent any of these products. They are all just products that I like and recommend to everyone in the fitness world. My schedule: Wake up at 4:30 AM- Take my pre-workout from WM Nutrition & L-Carnitine from Ideal Fit During my workout- sip on Ideal Fit's BCAAs & WM nutrition Hydrenengery After my workout- IdealFit Protein Powder At breakfast- Glucosamine and daily multi-vitamin Here are what they look like and links to where you can buy them: Pre workout- WM Nutrition WM Nutrit

As the New York Marathon approaches, many memories from last year's race flow through my mind. I ended up running a 3:36 last year (which qualifies me for Chicago) and boy oh boy was it an amazing experience. Lets start with the training: THE MARATHON:- 16 weeks of training. 2-20 milers, running 5 days a week, lots of blisters and always being hungry. I love what Stephanie Bruce said- "The marathon is about learning how to run on tired legs." How true that is. I was able to run a 1:30 half marathon which qualified me to run this amazing race. As I started to read about the marathon everyone said it was not an easy flat course. They had a thing back east called "Bridges" and a lot of them. Well Utah has something called "Mountains" and I used those to my advantage. I have ran my share of marathons but this one was different. I wanted to train smarter, harder and just have some fun. This is what my average week looked like: Monday-  Get the legs