I am disgusted by most of you. 50% of Americans are obese. Okeefe is the healthiest woman in the country and some of you are insulting her. Go attack the 150 million people who will get cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, arthritis, strokes and other health conditions due to overeating.
She still might get cancer bc it’s largely hereditary. And arthritis definitely happens to skinny people, esp. those who run a gazillion miles.
Anyway, I think she’s dropped some weight since college but I hope someone’s keeping watch on her. Phenomenal performance and maybe the future on the ‘thon if she can keep it up.
Hate to say it, but I've been here for 20+ years and the eye test (when people have noticed enough to comment) has never been wrong. Plenty of skinny elite marathon runners in the field who don't look like they have an ED like Sisson, Mcclain, Hall, and Rotich. I hope she holds it together past the Olympics, and she might even be able to do it for years, but I genuinely worry about her health. Sorry, it's probably the worst part of the sport.
I was thinking about how to articulate this as well. I am a woman and I feel like I have this sense when other women have gone too far. It's often a sunken look in their arms, legs, and face. I've seen it in real life with my training partners. Just because someone doesn't have the eating disorder *look* doesn't mean they haven't taken things too far--some people's bodies can handle being leaner than others genetically and some people manage their nutrition better than others. But if it's severe enough to notice, it almost certainly is an issue.
If she’s gone too far, it’s odd she managed to win the OT yesterday. Wouldn’t that indicate she’s in good health?
Yeah it was blood on her bib. She had a nosebleed during the race.
I don’t think that’s right since it wasn’t in her face and not sure how that stops while running 5:20s. I think it was sports drink.
I thought sports drink too, but don't the runners drink from bottles? That would have been one lousy effort on that hydration attempt. The chaffing someone mention sounded rough (haha) but would that soak through a bib? Nosebleed seems plausible at least.
AND she did this on a warm day, where one might imagine that any first-time marathoner would either play it a little safer or, pushing too hard, blow up. She did neither. She just blazed on.
More impressive is she negative split the race. Did anyone else do that?
1:11.43 first half
1:10.27 second half.
Sisson also neg split. She also had a great day but was overshadowed by O'Keeffe. I wonder who will fare better in Paris. O'Keeffe because she's clearly a natural - or Sisson with all her experience in big races?
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I was thinking about how to articulate this as well. I am a woman and I feel like I have this sense when other women have gone too far. It's often a sunken look in their arms, legs, and face. I've seen it in real life with my training partners. Just because someone doesn't have the eating disorder *look* doesn't mean they haven't taken things too far--some people's bodies can handle being leaner than others genetically and some people manage their nutrition better than others. But if it's severe enough to notice, it almost certainly is an issue.
If she’s gone too far, it’s odd she managed to win the OT yesterday. Wouldn’t that indicate she’s in good health?
To be determined, I guess. Many people can run well over the line for a while--sometimes shockingly well with very talented people--and then it comes crashing down as a string of nonstop injuries. Sometimes it's even a year or two or a few before it starts to catch up to you. Recent examples of this are Allie O (recall she made it to world champs in the steeple in 2019 along with being NCAA champion as well as second place in XC as a true freshman) and Molly Seidel. I recall around summer 2022 seeing a post on instagram from Molly Seidel and thought she was beginning to look like she was flirting with the line again (even if she didn't look as emaciated as she was in college). Sure enough she spent nearly a year and a half digging herself out of a hole (one she might be still sort of in).
RED-S is a b*tch because you can run really well for a while and it seems like eh, it's fine, you can't have these performances if you aren't healthy, right? But eventually it comes crashing down and it can a frustratingly long journey to get out of the hole. If it doesn't get too severe, it can be fixable fairly quickly with rest and calories. If it goes on for a long time, it's often years of nonstop one injury after another. You are definitely playing with fire.
Lauren Fleshman talks about this in her book and how her foray into disordered eating land led to some huge missed opportunities in her career at points.
I am disgusted by most of you. 50% of Americans are obese. Okeefe is the healthiest woman in the country and some of you are insulting her. Go attack the 150 million people who will get cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, arthritis, strokes and other health conditions due to overeating.
She still might get cancer bc it’s largely hereditary. And arthritis definitely happens to skinny people, esp. those who run a gazillion miles.
Anyway, I think she’s dropped some weight since college but I hope someone’s keeping watch on her. Phenomenal performance and maybe the future on the ‘thon if she can keep it up.
I can't believe how tiny she is. Saw a picture with her next to Kara and Kara, a very small person herself, towered over her.
I have a feeling we will see similar stories to Molly in her future. This whole unhealthy body that qualifies for the Olympics is just not a good look.
Connor Mantz looks thinner. Why isn’t anyone saying this stuff about him?
Because he's not a woman.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic but disordered eating is much, much more common with women compared to men. That's why no one is really talking about Connor.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic but disordered eating is much, much more common with women compared to men. That's why no one is really talking about Connor.
That’s true, but it’s also true that LRC (and society in general) is very quick to shift from talking about how a woman ran to judgments about how she looked. It happens every time and gets pretty tiresome. And literally never happens to men.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic but disordered eating is much, much more common with women compared to men. That's why no one is really talking about Connor.
That’s true, but it’s also true that LRC (and society in general) is very quick to shift from talking about how a woman ran to judgments about how she looked. It happens every time and gets pretty tiresome. And literally never happens to men.
I agree about the focus on women's appearances on this board/in society goes way overboard, but while eating disorders and underfuelling is extremely common in both male and women runners, men have a more wiggle room for error before heading down total hormonal disaster land due to physiology.
In this case, Mantz is not giving off red flags, as someone else put it from "the look test" at least to my eye (just my opinion though)--which doesn't mean he *isn't* riding the line, just not giving off obvious red flags to me. It's not like it isn't a problem with male runners. I strongly suspect that Ritz tendency to be so famously injury prone during his career was probably in part RED-S related. Ryan Hall has talked openly about how he got way too lean at points in his career and it caught up to him. And then you have people like Jake Riley who did not necessarily pass the "look test" but was too lean/underfuelled for his particular body type, ran into RED-S issues, and is a total non-factor now.
Someone else who gives off this "look" to me lately is Annie Frisbie. It hasn't really come up on the boards because she hasn't put out any phenomenal performances so she's out of the spotlight. She had a solid 10th place at the trials, but she's never improved upon her debut at New York in 2021 despite seeming like such a natural at the distance and perhaps even regressed a bit.
Another factor is it is much more normal for women to get a lot leaner in their 30s after years of heavy training (especially marathon miles) due to their bodies naturally adapting over time. Women undergo some hormonal shifts in their 30s that are protective against RED-S and allow many women to naturally find a leaner stable point than they could be without running into issues than in their 20s (Lauren Fleshman actually has a really good section on this book explaining the research on this and some personal anecdotes training with Deena Kastor and Jenn Rhines). Fiona O'Keefe is only 25, so that is extra reason for concern.
I am disgusted by most of you. 50% of Americans are obese. Okeefe is the healthiest woman in the country and some of you are insulting her. Go attack the 150 million people who will get cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, arthritis, strokes and other health conditions due to overeating.
