Allie O Leaves Brooks, Takes Step Back from Pro Running

Dromano19 wrote:

Kobbs Hessler wrote:

She's done. Too bad because she was such a great little story from her high school days in Alaska. Tough as nails. She'll always have Doha. Best wishes to her.

Needs to hit the trails. She would kill it

Why would the trails make her more healthy?

SHE IS SICK AND NEEDS SERIOUS HELP and you idiots think that running a different discipline will make her healthy. She has been sick her entire running career and will probably die if not taken care of.

Sick? What is it?

I wish Allie the best and I am going to be optimistic here. I think that Allie can successfully return to competitive running if she can correct RED-S and increase her bone density. Molly Seidel very similar issues with severe multiple bone injuries due to underfueling. However once Molly got treatment for her eating disorder and reached a healthy body weight, her injury problems disappeared. She has ran 100+ miles/week without a stress fracture/reaction, whichby greatly indicated that Molly was able to successfully improve her bone density. Virtually no with osteopenia/osteoporosis can run such milage without getting a bone injury. Getting healthy was absolutely essential enable Molly to partake in the running necessary to her success finishing 2nd at the Olympic marathon trials and meadaling in the Tokyo Olympics. I hope Allie can find the right support she needs to get her body stronger and break the injury cycle.

[Please respect my contrarian viewpoint in this issue]

Do Sumo wrestlers have "eating disorders"? How about horse jockeys?

It's not disordered to be obsessive about your food intake if your objective behind it is to maximize your performance in some physical competition. If the real effect is that your performance is getting worse, that just means this element of your training is flawed, not necessarily that the whole idea behind it is the result of a broken psychology.

It's better if runners who feel that low body weight is an essential part of their performance just come out and say shamelessly that they often go to bed hungry in order to drop some pounds. No shame in that.

Some examples I can think of:

* Last Summer I was watching some stream of a pro track meet and one of the Bowerman girls was commentating and made a joke about how Centrowitz would celebrate his victory that night by eating carrot sticks and celery.

* Bekele's coach Renato Canova says that Bekele's almost-WR in Berlin was due not to increased fitness from the previous year but decreased body weight, and also mentioned that Bekele will take a direutic to speed up weight loss at the beginning of a training cycle.

* Long jumper Ivana Spanovic jokes about extra kilos being her biggest enemy in long jump achievements.

* Tyler Hamilton, former pro cyclist who used to be a complete skeleton and would try to lose weight by going on a long ride and then downing a bottle of seltzer and sleeping pills, says he doesn't believe he ever had an Eating Disorder, rather that it was a matter of taking his race weight seriously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbXffWUxqoU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4nLOK0e_Tw&ab_channel=AthletissimaLausanne

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CMdyOFgQDQ

I believe you don’t understand what an eating disorder is or how it affects people.

Agreed and love this optimistic perspective. Taking a step back and focusing fully on recovery must be agonizing for such a high-caliber runner, but in this case, I think it's her best shot at getting back to running fast, happy, and pain-free. Molly Seidel has done an incredible job of demonstrating what's possible when you put your mental and physical health first. Plus, Allie is still young, and running careers can be long– just look at Sara Vaughn and Keira D'Amato, killing it in their mid to late thirties after years of ups and downs!

Jamin, I understand what you’re saying, and I agree with all of it except the notion that Allie doesn’t have an eating disorder, if that makes sense.

Many runners have an ideal race weight that is considered “underweight” and I don’t think they have an ED for trying to get there. The difference between a mentally healthy athlete and one with an ED is that someone with an ED will NEVER be satisfied. If you are eating so little that you are losing significant bone density and not recovering, you aren’t training anymore.

In highschool people would always tell me stuff like “you look like a sprinter, not a distance runner” and “you should try multi, you have the build for it” and they meant it as a compliment. I didn’t take it as a compliment. I took it as “you are too big for a distance runner you need to lose weight”. I remember watching a race video where I won a duel 800m by about 10 seconds, and all I could think about is how big I looked compared to the other racers and how embarrassing that was. I got to the point where I was constantly looking at my figure in the mirror, would skip breakfast and lunch despite running 40-50 mpw, and all I would think about was losing weight. I showed up the next cross country season with a more ideal cross country body, ran two terrible races and got a stress fracture.

As someone who has both healthily and unhealthily cut weight for competition, I promise there’s a HUGE difference. The people you used as examples were likely on the mentally healthy side of weight cutting.

Not an expert, but would guess Allie is an type A personality with very high standards of self validation which are too tightly wound together with her running performance. Her ED is both a way to control and sabotage this unrealistic view of her self validation.

Stepping back and getting healthy is a good choice before she does more damage to her body. Hope she can make a comeback like Molly Seidel.

She has never looked underweight which is odd. So maybe she gets injured at what is a normal race weight for others because it is by definition, underweight. That doesn't make it an eating disorder. She is smart. She sees herself and her competitors. So wanting to achieve an average race weight for an elite at her height is normal for her and her competitors. 70% of Americans have an eating disorder. They are unable to control eating in order to maintain a normal healthy body weight. 69% of those people can't control overeating whole 1% can't control undereating yet the 1% is the group that has gained focus recently while the 69% has gained acceptance. I wish society cared about everyone.

Obesity is the single largest health problem and cause of death in the US.

Kobbs Hessler wrote:

She's done. Too bad because she was such a great little story from her high school days in Alaska. Tough as nails. She'll always have Doha. Best wishes to her.

Somebody probably said the same thing about Molly Seidel a few years ago.

I respect your unalienable right to be misinformed and ignorant.

different body types might just have very different weights they can sustain and still be able to perform. thats part of the talent equation really. but when this is an individual thing how would you tell beforehand when you are going over/under this barrier. So it really can only be done with the benfit of hindsight. In my view that kinda diminishes the whole concept of eating disorders applied to athletes. Especially if you consider that there are har reasons for some athletes to lose weight so its not a psychologically irrational thing. Like jamin said its very much more like a wrong training regime.

Allen Webb wrote:

She has never looked underweight which is odd. So maybe she gets injured at what is a normal race weight for others because it is by definition, underweight. That doesn't make it an eating disorder. She is smart. She sees herself and her competitors.

She didn't look underweight but tiny and childlike which can be a case of stunted development. The body also doesn't care if it's a psychological problem or just undernourishment. But of course, one needs to diagnose it properly for countermeasures.

The sad truth is that some people are just unlucky and an ideal weight for running will have them undernourished while some slim, lanky types can sustain a very low weight without long term problems. It's just another aspect of "talent", like being able to withstand hard training without lots of injuries.

I see your point, but it's not this simple.

There's a difference between being healthy but "obsessive about food intake" and having a diagnosable eating disorder. If the behaviors don't get in the way of happy, healthy living and good performance, then seemingly extreme behaviors might with within normal limits for one person. But when they lead to anemia, decreased bone density, fractures, electrolyte imbalances, passing out, poor performance, depression, anxiety, heart failure or death, then clearly that's more than just "taking their race weight seriously." No athlete can succeed in their sport, let alone in life, with any of that going on.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which and to separate the two. What's within normal limits for one person, my lead to career ending injuries or even life threatening health problems in another person.

We shouldn't attempt to diagnose people we've never met over the internet. Even an eating disorder specialist can't do that. Just realize it can be a serious problem for some people and that sometimes professional help is needed.

I wish her the best in whatever she decides to do. Eating disorders are horrific and the long term effects can be devastating on many levels. There is hope....

There is a different professional runner who had a similar trajectory so far. High school standout, some struggles in college mixed with great success, tough as nails. Decided to take a step away from professional running to get help for an eating disorder and other mental health issues.....She's now a Bronze medalist.

Good for her, I'm glad she is doing what she needs to do to get healthy, and I'll be rooting for a comeback (or not, if she would rather do something else with her life!)

To the posters who were saying things like "this isn't an eating disorder!" "she doesn't look tiny!" - what the heck is wrong with you people? You have no idea what she is going through, and you cannot just look at people and decide if they are "healthy" or not. Also - just because pro athletes watch their diets DOES NOT mean that Allie and others cannot also have serious, dangerous, EDs.

Jamin - you have no idea what disordered eating is. By definition all of those things are disordered eating. If Tyler Hamilton was doing long training rides an then passing out with sleeping pills without eating, that is fricking DISORDERED EATING. I guarantee he would have been better off eating a healthy meal to refuel at the end of his ride.

You have bought in heavily on the psycho babble. Tyler Hamilton is fine. There are literally countless things that people do that are not beneficial to health in order to achieve their goals. From sports, to the military, to oil rig workers, to doctors not sleeping enough. It’s life.

Jared Dunn wrote:

You have bought in heavily on the psycho babble. Tyler Hamilton is fine. There are literally countless things that people do that are not beneficial to health in order to achieve their goals. From sports, to the military, to oil rig workers, to doctors not sleeping enough. It’s life.

Psycho babble? *inserts massive eye roll*.

There is a difference between needing to do something and how you go about achieving it. Do TdF riders need to count calories and get to their optimal race weights...weights that are likely unhealthy to be at long term? Of course they do!

Is it better to do this: A) with expert nutritionists and sports scientists who dial in nutrient needs, recovery needs, and calories? B) By starving yourself after a long ride when your body is depleted, not recovering efficiently, and taking sleeping pills so you can sleep since you are so hungry?

Please. Common sense is not psycho babble.