Nutritional Revolution Podcast

Back to the Start Line: Dani Moreno’s Road to Broken Arrow

• Season 6 • Episode 188

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In episode #188 we spoke with NR athlete Dani Moreno as she goes into her first race post-surgery out at Broken Arrow Sky Race 46k. Dani shares her journey through injury recovery and optimization strategies, and what she is doing leading up to race day.

KEY TOPICS

  • Dani's journey through her first major injury and recovery
  • Mental resilience strategies during injury recovery.
  • Nutritional strategies and key supplements for healing.
  • Importance of comprehensive blood work for athletes.
  • Training and race preparation insights from Dani.

Please note that this podcast is created strictly for educational purposes and should never be used for medical diagnosis or treatment.

ABOUT DANI MORENO:

Dani Moreno is a professional trail runner galloping and residing in the Eastern Sierra mountain town of Mammoth Lakes, California. She moved to the mountains at the end of 2020 from the coastal town of Santa Barbara, where she lived for a decade, having graduated from the University of Santa Barbara, California.

While at UCSB, she competed for the women's Cross Country and Track and Field programs and produced times that made her competitive on both the conference and national level. After college, she took a break from running to rediscover herself, leaning into outdoor guiding and things like climbing, spearfishing, motorcycle riding and other outdoor activities that pushed her to her physiological limits. During this phase of life, she found nothing gave her quite the same satisfaction running did. She began dabbling in trail running, which reignited her passion, and soon she was exploring the Los Padres National Forest's front range on her off days. Trail running immediately appealed to all aspects of her personality in a way that no other type of running had before. As she began to race trails, new opportunities arose and doors opened. She began traveling all over the United States and the world, feeling gratitude the whole way. That feeling hasn’t stopped since 2016, and since her debut to the sport, she has exploded on the sub-ultra and ultra scene, with an incredible number of podium and top 10 finishes, including being the top American at UTMB’s World Championship OCC race in Chamonix in August 2024, a top 5 finish at the 2024 Broken Arrow Skyrace 26k, 1st at Canyons Endurance Race, 1st at Kodiak Ultra Marathon 50k in 2023, 2nd at Mammoth Trailfest 26k in 2023, and many others. 

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MENTIONED:

TIMESTAMPS:

  • 1:01 - Introduction to Dani Moreno
  • 3:19 - Dani's Injury Journey
  • 5:54 - Mental Resilience During Recovery
  • 9:10 - Nutritional Strategies for Healing
  • 11:22 - Importance of Blood Work
  • 16:22 - Training and Race Preparation
  • 38:04 - Innovative Recovery Tools
  • 29:14 - Upcoming Races and Goals
  • 45:18 - Community and Support Systems

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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Nutritional Revolution podcast. We have for you guys Dani Moreno. Thanks for joining us, Dani. Thanks. I'm excited to be back for the second time. Yes. When we had you on last, did we have you and MK together? I think it was just me. And then maybe you had MK on separate? I don't remember. on. I might be thinking of when I was on Europod. Oh yes. So like I feel like I can picture both of you guys on the screen at the same time. for our listeners, we will link in the show notes the last episode we had Dani on. So you can go back and listen to that and get an idea of all the things we're gonna be diving into today. Um, but as per usual, our episodes, we are gonna do your two truths and a lie in no particular order. So I'm gonna let you break those down. I'm gonna type them down. So I have them in my memory and then I'm gonna guess which one is your lie. Okay. First one is I've been featured on ESPN. Hmm. I think that's true already. is my first running partner was my brown lap. Oh And my third one is I had two middle names. Ooh. Hmm. I'm trying to like remember your initial intake form if you had two middle names. I don't think you did and at least I don't I don't remember if you did. Or maybe you did and you changed it. When you got married, maybe. Hmm. Okay. These are all good ones. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna say the middle name's one is the lie, but don't tell me the answer. I wanna hear about this ESPN story. I feel like that's gotta be true. I feel like it's gotta be. Um, okay. Well, I'm gonna have you, Dani, break it down for us. For our listeners who well, I'll let you explain it. Dani and I have been working together for a minute now. but I'll let you share. Our listeners are primarily Endurance athletes, but some of them are cyclists. So they might not all be inversed in the um trail running world and ultra running and all that. So I'll let you give a little background to like what you've been up to. Tell us about your sport. What's coming on the calendar for you? Yeah, so I believe I first reached out to you to interview you for uh my friend and I's podcast, the Subhub podcast, because we were doing this series called Candid Coaching. And so I found your information online because you had worked with a lot of endurance athletes already. And between that time and later that year, I ended up having my first major injury. At that point I had been run running professionally as a trail runner, I think, for like seven years. Well. w it was my first major injury, fractured my cuboid and tore my perennius longus. And I was just like struggling to figure out what exactly I needed to do, and I'm pretty sure that's when I reach out to you. Was like that first injury and healing through it. It might have been a little bit before that. Um, and then also identifying that I felt that there was more to optimize in my sport. And so then we worked Together to get me ready for Broken Arrow 2025. Ended up third place, earning a spot on Team USA, and then two and a half weeks later broke my toe. And then we were trying to like manage that through my various decisions. Um, and then ultimately ended up uh being pretty injured again, got surgery, and we worked through that process again together, and then I've been running again since February. Just getting after it. So I think it's my ninth year of professional no eighth year of professional trail running. Um, but been running my entire life and primarily focus on the fifty K distance, but hoping to move up in the next year or so. All right. Um, so athletes across the board, everyone deals with injuries at some point in their life, whether it's sport related or other crazy accident related scenarios. Um, can you share with us how you and I know we've talked about it in some of our check-ins, but maybe to like help others realize what's normal or also how you can manage that. That feeling of I'm a runner, I'm training for something, or I'm uh a professional athlete or cyclist, whatever you are, you have a goal in mind. You're training for something. And then all of a sudden a broken pinky toe or a bike crash. now you're sedentary or you're in a boot. How are you mentally navigating that at all? Like what's going through your brain? Yeah, it's pretty tough, especially since I had two injuries back to back. I think the first one, since it was my first injury in a while, and I could pretty much move throughout the injury, i.e. I was cleared by my doctor to swim or bike. Um, that helped quite a bit. but it was still quite tough just feeling like I was getting left behind. How am I gonna come back from this? Um, and I was grateful to have like a very blip of a comeback in a way. um But then the pinky toe, you know, I made the decisions, the best decisions I could in the moment, and that was tough because they ultimately didn't work out. And I think that was actually mentally more difficult because it wasn't so black and white. Um, and then it was just like gray for a really long time. And with that injury, I was fully out for four months. and it was just really difficult. So I honestly think it's like leaning on your people, uh, your team, and if you need like extra help, like talking to a professional, which luckily I have like a normal therapist, meaning like the rest of my life, and then I have a sports psychologist. Um and so working through pr with professionals through that time like helped me a lot too. Yeah, amazing. Um, what I I have this like vivid picture in my brain from I think one of your social media posts where your foot is like in a boot, up on the scooter, you have your red light mask on and like your hands up in the air doing something. and I forget what your comment was on the post or something, but it was it was something along the lines of like trying to stay busy or something like that. Um, what are some of the things that you did to try and like keep your mind busy. Yeah, I honestly tried to just stay as social as possible and I really I think having the two injuries back to back I was able to learn from the first one and like what helped my mental health and what I found helped me helped my mental health because both were during the winter too and I live in a very snowy place was just like being un embarrassed to ask for help and so the second round as I like to call it I really just texted friends like, hey, can you pick me up and like can we go do this thing? Or like anyone want to go do this? Can you give me a ride? Can someone help me with laundry? Like just including people in what seems what can be like come off as mundane activities, make them a lot more fun. and yeah, so I did like trivia nights, I did a lot of crafts, I just did a lot of things I am now finding like, why don't I do these things? It's like when I'm training full time, I just don't have time. Right. and so yeah, just tried to fill my time with other things and I was blessed that it was also around the holiday season. So I had a lot of time with family already kinda like defaulted scheduled into my calendar as well. Nice. I love that. Trivia night. Were you also doing some like puzzling too? Did I see that? Yeah. We did like felting with a couple of friends, movie nights, yeah, just like a lot of fun stuff. Yes, keeping it busy. Um, and then let's see, nutritionally, so you had a broken pinky toe. So when we're working together, things I'm always thinking about of like what what tissues are impacted. You had a broken pinky toe, but then that progressed into surgery. So we were surgeries touching on obviously skin, tendon, ligament, bone, all of that. Um, do you wanna do you wanna share like what we were working on nutritionally or what we were watching and things that we were noticing like maybe needed improvement in the diet. hundred percent, yeah.'Cause I I do think that's a huge part why it's been able to rebound quickly was I think as athletes, I would say especially endurance athletes, and I I don't mean to generalize, but we're used to doing so much work and then it's like, now I need to eat a lot and we kind of it's like defaulted in our brain like big training, big fueling slash recovery. And so when you're sedentary and you're like coming off of a injury or surgery, your brain doesn't necessarily think, oh, fuel and recover. It's like I'm just in our heads it's like, in quotes, we're doing nothing. We're just laying here, you know, and like not moving our body. And so yeah, leaning on you for the expertise of like, no, you should actually be eating way more than you realize because your body is still working. Um and so yeah, obviously you're the professional, but the things I remember are fish oil, a lot of calcium, Um, collagen was like a huge one, constant collagen. ah and like keeping the rest of my blood good pretty much. Like we still got blood tests while I was recovering, which I think a lot of people don't think to do. Yeah, yeah. Hey everyone, when's the last time you actually looked under the hood with comprehensive blood work? Most of you are training 10, 15, 20 hours a week, but have no idea if your body has what it needs to perform. Here's what we see constantly. Low ferritin tanking your aerobic capacity, vitamin D deficiency that's increasing your injury risk or keeping you sick, elevated cortisol from over-training, thyroid markers that are normal but not optimal for an athlete. So that's why we created our full athlete blood panel. We test everything, complete metabolic panel, advanced lipids, iron stores, vitamin D, B12, folate, magnesium, testosterone, cortisol, thyroid, insulin, hemoglobin, you name it, it's over 20 markers that directly impact your performance and your recovery as an athlete. you can get tested as soon as tomorrow morning. Check the show notes for the link to order. Some state restrictions do apply, but it's available in most of the US. Stop guessing and get the data. A big thing, remember too, is like we kept watching your vitamin D in diet. Um, because obviously vitamin D will help vitamin D3 and K2 will help drive where that calcium goes that we're getting in our diet. And we were doing some uh you're doing some supplemental calcium as well in there. So yeah, we were seeing kind of like where. Where the gaps are, like what can we get from real food? And then where are we not able to like increase that more? And then also to your point, yes, when your your body is healing and repairing, there's an extra energy demand. Even if you're just laying there doing nothing to heal that injury, we do want to make sure there's enough energy availability to to support that reparation. So that was something too we were watching and making sure it wasn't, you know, an excess. And every injury is so uh different. Like I remember in my undergrad there's these different like equations you can use, but they're they go all the way to the extreme of like someone who has an entire body of like burns. And it's like that's obviously very high energy demand. And then we're looking at something like with you is like a pinky toe is broken. So like what how does that um what is that energy demand? And then what about surgery on that pinky toe? And and um, you know, so it is an interesting area in how, How minute is that or not, like that energy demand piece. But it is always important. I also tell my athletes, if you're sick or injured, tell me as soon as possible. Like a lot of times they'll kind of slowly disappear into the distance and I won't hear from them for a while. And they're like, yeah, I was sick. I'm like, there's things we can do nutritionally to help get you through that faster. Like, let me know. So Yeah, I think people sometimes too can forget or not realize or not know the impact of nutrition on those things. But yeah, we we definitely um yeah, you went through a lot. You went through a lot with your toe. I'm super happy you're you're back and moving. let's see. So we talked about ways for because I do get list like clients and listeners too all the time asking or s sharing injuries and Yeah, really just feeling like defeated. Um, was there ever any books or podcasts you listened to that helped you kind of reframe your thoughts around the injury and being less active or not being able to train? No, it was pretty hard the whole time. There wasn't like aha mo like, you know, there'd be glimpses where, you know, it it just ebbs and flows, to be honest. And when I I did notice like when I got more sunshine I felt good. I like took a couple trips to Southern California and that really helped just like mixing up the space that I was in instead of feeling kinda like I don't know, a little trapped, um, where I was. But yeah. I honestly just talking a lot to like professionals helped a ton. Um a and normalizing it. Like I think it's easy to feel oh like sorry for yourself, which I think it is good to be gentle with yourself, but also you're not the first person to ever go through an injury in humankind. Um and to normalize your the the sadder blue feelings, um, and being like that is part of the process and like you'll come out of it. Um So yeah. I don't know. you you post on Substack. Was that a form of like were you doing that then and was that a form of jer like journaling for you as well? Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I just started writing another sub stack, whereas when I was injured I was writing them more consistently. And yeah, it definitely was like a creative outlet for me to just share what I was going through and like put my thoughts on to a tech like, I don't know, wireless paper. But um I also did it as a way to just remind myself, not like as a remember this traumatic thing that happened to you, but like as a point of like flexion in my life. Cause now I can look back and be like, Whoa, I can relate to that Dani, but she's not the current Dani and just kind of like not like paying respects to her and being like, Wow, we've come so far and being gracious for that. So I think that's also why I did it in the moment too is like, don't forget about this. Like this is part of your story now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The comeback. The comeback. Um, so let's see, what's coming for our listeners? What is the next coming like coming down the pipeline thing for you on the calendar? Yeah, so I'll be doing my first race, which is pretty crazy. Um, on June twentieth, broken arrow forty six K. And it's crazy 'cause last year I was I had maybe a month extra of run walking, I guess, um, in the big scheme of things. And I had raced already two times by this point. whereas this year I'm kind of just jumping into the deep end. Yes, diving straight in. Um, with your progression, with that being three weeks away, what kind of what kind of things are you doing from a um nutrition lens? Like what walk us through, like what is I know the answers to this, but for our listeners, what walk us through what's a normal breakfast for you? my gosh, it's more carbs than you would think. I've gotten more used to this. Um, but I find my favorite combo is oatmeal and then I slice up an apple and then I'll add some like maple syrup to get to the carb count and then sometimes add a little bit of coconut milk or just regular milk. Um I find that sits the best in my stomach. But there's a lot of mornings while I'll have toast and uh eggs and stuff like that. So you mentioned a lot of carbs. Was that something when we started working together? Was that kind of like, this is a big change in my diet from how I was eating previously? Yes, definitely. I was I just like I've always been so protein and fat heavy. Um and even when I was recovering, like that was a lot easier for me to hit at times. Like still it was a lot of protein. Um than the carbs. Like the carbs just have always been a struggle for me. Yeah. Do you what do you why do you think that is? Is it just like you don't crave those things? Is it I I feel like I'm already getting enough? Or why do you think that is? I think I do crave protein and fat, but also I think it's like a it's easy to cook. You just like cook the protein and it's done. Whereas the carbs there's more preparation typically. Yeah. Yeah. I yeah, I have different like theories around that too. Like like primally, I think too our brains are more geared towards fats for sure over carbs. Just my like they give us more calorie per gram and um our brain and primal body probably is like that's a good st storage form of energy. Like let's put this in. And then I think it lights up our brain chemicals a little bit more fats, you know, more so than carbs oftentimes. But um yeah, running the calculations, yes. Exactly. Running the calculations for athletes' carb needs. I think that is oftentimes the biggest yeah, biggest like change. Either new clients or athletes that I'm working with notice. I get people asking me like, Are you sure you did the calculations right? Like, yeah, this is these are the numbers, believe it or not. Um, yeah. So people are really Surprised by that. And certainly when we do things like carb loading too, I think that surprises a lot of people. The carb loading targets too, based off the literature, those can be hard for people. So yeah, we we're we're testing some carb stuff with you. Um carb loading stuff. So um we got we got your breakfast. It sounds delicious. Are you doing that on the stovetop? Okay, and then do you do your training session shortly after breakfast? Yeah. I usually like thirty to minutes to two hours, depending like probably thirty minutes to ninety minutes I would say. I have a pretty good stomach with that stuff. Like I can eat and go straight out most of the time. That's awesome. Good good good gut training tolerance. Um, what are you fueling with during your training sessions? never second and I use a mix of like the C thirty and flavored like single scoops or the C ninety orange. Um those are my two favorites to kind of go through. It's weird because I I'd always been a gel girl until this last training cycle. It's just so much easier to just throw the drink mixes in. Yeah. Yeah. And then you you're kind of um making sure you also get your fluids in too. So that's good. Um, how do you when you're training, how are you transporting your nutrition or hydration? vest with some flask. Just one, two, a third one in the back, and then I'll sometimes take a belt. Um but yeah, that's pretty much how I do it. How much fluid can you fit in your belt? Uh, just one big flask. And then um yeah, like I had a long run this last weekend where I I still needed more. I took five flasks with me. Um but I threw one like in my quiver 'cause I'm not running with poles right now. and that helped as well. Yeah. That's smart. And the bottles you have, when you said third bottle on your back, that's not a bladder. That's a bottle that you pull from the back. Yeah. Okay. Um, do they have any vests where there's a bladder and bottles? I bet you there is. I don't use one, but I bet there is nowadays, yeah. Yeah. All the everybody needs all the fluids. so you get your nutrition during and then um what is happening right after you finish? Um, some mix of like protein and carbs, pretty much. Um, I've been really liking these Fair Life shakes from Costco. They're like thirty grams of protein with some carbs. And then I just took a trip to Trader Joe's and they had some pretty good protein smoothie thing where it was like protein, carbs and fat. Um, but yeah, usually that like straight after. If I'm going home, I'll make a smoothie with some protein in it. Yummy. And what's like if you're doing the fair life, what's your carb that you pair with that? like a banana. Something easy. Yeah. started going in. Um, I think that's a big piece a lot of people miss is like there's been such the talk around like protein after protein shake after workout, protein shake. And then with endurance athletes, it's a lot of it is around like carbs. You need carbs in the first like 30 minutes after, um, after exercise. So you do that and then do you get home to like a full meal? yeah, I'll do like I'll really beef up the smoothie if I can do that and add like fruit and collagen, vitamin C, just like different supplements and stuff to that. And then it's kind of whatever the day gives me, honestly. Like maybe it's a salad or a sandwich or just like leftovers or something like that. we do actually have this place called All American Daves in Mammoth Lakes, and he does these really cool meal plans and so based off of the numbers you give me, I send that to him and then he preps a bunch of meals and so I'll just like grab that out of the fridge sometimes too. That's amazing. We need an all American Dave here. That's so cool. Yeah. like write on it like, this one has X amount of carbs and this much protein. That's so rad. I know there's online companies that do that, but it seems it seems nice when you have like a local person like doing it. It's not being shipped across the entire United States to your door stem. Uh that's awesome. So what kind of things is he putting in there? Like what um carbs, color proteins, like what are you getting access to with that? A lot of sweet potato. Um zucchini, chicken, ground beef, onions, uh sometimes honeys and maple syrup to like help the carb count, different grains. Yeah, he mixes it up. Yeah, that's good. It gets lots of variety. That's good for the gut microbiome. so let's see. So we kind of walked through that. Those will be dinners, lunches, stuff like that. Are you doing any stacks throughout the rest of the day or any other training sessions happening after the morning run? yeah, if I go out on another training session, I'll just do more Never Second, like during the training session. Um sometimes I'll take like dried mango or gummies just to kinda like mix it up. but yeah, it's and then honestly my husband's more of the cook, so I kind of just ask him like, Can we do this and this? And then he's pretty good about making dinner. That's great. To have a supportive partner that is like perfect. You need that in a relationship when you gotta eat all the food. Is he a runner too? no. Like he likes to run, but he's not a runner. Well he is a runner, but you know what I mean. Yes. Yeah. Um so looking forward to Broken Arrow, um, what right now is your I know we'll when we check in, we'll obviously like fine tune all of this, but like what's your game plan for your race morning breakfast for Broken Arrow right now? Kind of like on your radar. I'll probably do the oatmeal with Apple just because it's like something I've been doing regularly and it's nice that I can drive to the race. So I can just bring like my own breakfast stuff, and the oats and stuff I'm used to. So yeah, I'll probably just do that. Nice. And then um same like fueling plan right now you're thinking during the never second and in the bottles, like with the mix and the gels. Yeah, I mean I hope I've been that's what I've been using in practice, so I hope that it does the same thing. Yes. Well, it's yeah. I think too that's like also a mistake sometimes people make, right? It's like they'll try and consume more than they ever have on race day and they've never tested that amount in a training session, or it's new products they've never used that they were just trying to like add up to get more carbs. And so yeah, testing in practice. I hope that goes without saying, but testing in practice, what do you want to use on race day? Nothing new on race day is really important. Um, and then With that, um that event for you is not necessarily at too much altitude, right? Cause you live at altitude. Yes, it it's roughly the same. So yeah, not too much. Nice. That'll be yeah, good. It's always nice to like have that exposure already naturally at altitude. That transition is makes a big difference. Um, supplementally, are you taking anything right now, whether it's like baseline vitamins, minerals, are you doing anything like ergogenic supplement wise that you would be using on race day or in preparation for race day that you want to share with the listeners? Uh yes. Uh so iron. Uh I've just got a thorn vitamin C. Um just because people around me have been getting sick and you know, in addition to some probiotics, I just wanna make sure my immune system has been good. It seems like it's been really good, so just gotta keep that going. Um collagen, uh calcium and fish oil. Mm. Nice. All right. Got the stack going. Um, and then how do you do you how do you time those things? Do you take them all at the same time of day or you break up? Mm-hmm. like my um and I take vitamin D as well. I do I consider it like my bone health mix in the morning when I'm eating breakfast. And so I'll do like the vitamin D, fish oil, um, calcium, and collagen. And then if I remember, I do my collagen and vitamin C after I work out or do strength training. and then then the PM Wait. Yeah, the iron I kind of honestly do at different times of the day. Sometimes I do it right after a workout or I'll do it like as soon as I wake up. Yeah, so it's kind of hard to say exactly how the stack goes. Yeah, yeah. It's when you remember. That's the big thing too, right? Is like setting stuff up in a way that you make sure you take it and then you can perfect timing of it over to have those pill boxes, so I lay that out for the week. Yes, those are helpful. Certainly helpful. Do you do your iron every day or are you an every other day dozer? You do. Yeah. last couple blood tests have shown it's a little high. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. The iron is do the pill case, I think is so helpful if you're doing the every other day or every like third day iron dosing. Cause I tried that and without a pill case and like I just with the way a seven day week and then doing every day, it's just it gets I forget and it's uh then you just don't take it. So that is helpful. Um okay, so we know what's coming down from the pipeline for you. Anything else after broken arrow on the calendar right now that you're thinking about? I don't know. I gotta see how broken arrow goes. It's like so I just I don't know what kind of shape I'm in. Like I think I know sometimes and then other days I'm like, that's wrong. I don't know. And so I just wanna see how it goes, especially it being my first race back. I um I'm kind of a little bit like closed on it. I forget what that's called. I got my blinders on. But yeah, I mean There's a couple of fifty K. Speed Goat fifty K is in Utah in July. there's fifty K on the East Coast in August. And then there is um CCC in Chamonix which I really want to finish that course because I didn't finish it last year 'cause I dropped out. But then they just released the new O C C course and it made it longer and so that's kind of intriguing to me. Um and so I would have to make that decision. Probably very soon after Broken Arrow. So we're just gonna see how Broken Arrow goes and then it'll be some combo of those races. Yeah. And then um we can cut this part out too if you want. But what remind me, what was the with uh OCC, what um and your like racing history, wasn't there something where you had to like race a certain race within a time window or they changed something so you could is that still the case or do you is broken arrow the race that you'd have to race to Yeah, that's actually a really good point, Kyla. Good memory. Because I got into C C C via the lottery. So I don't even know if I can drop down to O C C actually. I might just only have a spot in C C C. I'd have to ask UTMB. Um but yeah, because of because last year I ran the race and didn't finish and because I got an injury I didn't have the time to requalify for, so then I put all the stones in and kind of went for it and luckily I got picked. Nice. my goodness. Yeah, that whole system is like, I mean, I know a lot of systems are like that these days, but it's gotta be stressful, stressful. Yeah, goodness. Um, well, we will make sure you get very well recovered, obviously, after broken arrow. And then depending on where your mind's at, you can choose, you know, what you want to do after or not. Um, we'll keep your body in tip top shape. okay, any um anything that you have been outside of obviously the the bone um Bone injury, but anything you've been struggling with nutritionally that you feel like you've overcome in the last year, six months? Um I would say probably just eating more carbs in general. I mean, you and I are doing some planned gut training, and I was humbled this last weekend. making a pretty big jump because of how my training schedule ended. Um, and so that's been pretty fun. I actually hadn't even tried to eat that much before. Um, I think it was like 120 grams of carbs an hour. Yeah. And so Yeah, I think just continuing to work I'm looking forward to continue work on that 'cause I think that'll help me even more for like these races that I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. And certainly like, I mean, again, you live and train at altitude, but rating at altitude too is more you're just yeah, the heart rate's pumping a little higher higher, you're a little bit more glycolytic, you're burning through those carbohydrates a little bit faster. So making sure we can get you up to a good tolerance level. So I mean, your gut's pretty s pretty darn strong, but want it to feel easy and fuel you and support you for that that effort um at Broken Arrow as well. Um, with the carbs just in general, trying to hit all those. I mean, you mentioned like easier to prep and you said sweet potatoes and oatmeal. Is there any other go to carbs that you've found easy to like help you hit your carb goal? Are you doing like liquid forms of carbs or anything like that to help? Mm-hmm. cereal and I found that's been a lot easy, it's just like buying some koshy cereal from the store. Um and if I'm low on carbs like as I'm nearing bed, I'll just like pour myself a bowl of cereal. Yes. Kashi, that's a good one. I'll have to check that one. I will lean on if you have access to it, it's called nature's nature's path cereal, and they have two versions. one is Mesa Sunrise, and then uh the other one is called, I think it's called honeyed honeyed cornflakes, and they're both like really high carb. The Mesa Sunrise one has a little bit more fiber in it. if you're wanting more of like a hearty, like not worried about the fiber. And then the honeyed cornflakes is like straight up like no fat, no protein, just carb, no fiber. Like easy. Yeah, easy to put down. And they actually, I think they don't add any sugar. They add honey. So that's technically a sugar. But yeah, it's a little bit like air quotes, like cleaner, I guess. but those are good ones too. Like any rice or cornflake based cereal, too, is like usually pretty carb dominant and low fiber, low fat. What's your go to juice? uh in this moment, orange juice. I've been just like drinking so much orange juice, yeah. good. Well the vitamin C too, like you're saying, like if people around you are getting sick. That's all yeah, wanna avoid that certainly as we get close like this. Is it like sinus stuff going on or that you're see yeah. It's it's confusing. It's like it's either allergies or sickness. You know, so and also it's hard 'cause people don't know. They're like, I think it's allergies and then they'll text you and be like, No, actually I'm very sick and I'm like, Oh no And yeah, it's hard to tell right now. But yeah. be careful for sure. I forget if I shared this with you already in one of our check-in sessions, but one of the things I learned at that last conference with the immune system functioning was the did I tell you about the zinc lozenge thing? Yeah, if you you should do that if you like are around people that are sick, just as a preventative to like prevent the viral docking and replication in the mouth. Yeah. No, I I love that. Yeah, so basically you take a zinc los engine loseng, how do you say that? Los engine. And you swirl around in your mouth 'cause the zinc coating the mouth is actually what's gonna help you, not the Yeah. Yeah. So the yeah, the zinc pills aren't doing the same thing. Um, at least what they saw in the study. So yeah, that that's it's in your well, what if it gets in your mouth, that's like would help with that. Um okay, and then what else do we want to talk about and share? I did not do any notes for this. I was gonna free ball it because we check in all the time. And so I like I know we've talked about at check ins, but Any other stories, things you want to share? Nutritionally, hydration, supplement, recovery. Yeah, I guess just like I guess beta alanine. Yeah. Yes, I do that every day. Yeah. It's definitely like I feel like it helps. I don't know, I tell myself it helps. I mean, for people that don't know, it's like another way to get the benefits of bicarb without doing bicarb. Yeah. Yeah. Do you when you take it daily, are you taking it before a training session too? I take yeah, like two in the morning, two in the evening. Yeah. Did you get the parestetia, the tingling, when you started taking it? yeah. I still kinda get it actually. Yeah. Subsided a little bit. Yeah, it basically feels like pins and needles and you're just like super tingly. Yeah. I I notice it like when I react to something really quickly. Like I don't notice it like when I'm just walking around, but like if I'm riding my bike or I like quickly move to like dodge a rock or something, I just like feel it like jolt through my body. It's all the tingles like like whoosh through and then they kind of like fade out when I when I use beta alanine. It's an interesting tool, but legal in sport, folks, as long as you get a um NSF certified safer sport product version, right? So you can use that. Um, and then let's see, supplements. Um, that was what I was gonna ask you, recovery right-wise from training. What are your go-to, like it doesn't have to be nutritionally, but like recovery tools to help your body recover? Are you, you know, hopping in the sauna, you're doing mobility, you're doing the compression boots? Like, have you found anything that's like pretty noticeable? Like, I know this helps my legs feel more fresh, I feel more recovered. if I do X, like what would that be? Well, I just had an ankle sprain three weeks ago or three and a half weeks ago at this point. And um one of the things that I used, which I also used for my toe break, was a PMF ring. And I just think that's a game changer. Like I just put that on my ankle two or three hours during the day, during that ankle sprain. Um and I really think it like made a difference. Also in my toe, like that was the biggest improvement I had between x-rays was when I finally got the PMF ring. Mm. For listeners that don't know, what is a PMF? It's a pulse electromagnetic field ring. and essentially it's like there's ultrasound waves, there was red light waves, and then there's electromagnetic waves, and they all hit different parts of your cellular system. and so the electromagnetic pulses send to your cells it's kind of like giving them like a little jolt of electricity to like go to work, go to work, like wake up, go to work. Hmm. Um, that's a very simplified uh explanation. People can look it up on their own and kinda like learn about it. But yeah, it's been found to be extremely helpful in bone healing. Yeah. And is it like a wrap or is it l electrodes that like It's like a it's a circle ah and you stick whatever you want in the middle of the circle. And the circle is I mean it could go around your head, like it's that big. Um and you set it to different frequencies based on what you want it to target, whether you want it to target bone, tendons, ligaments, and yeah, yeah, you just sit there and you can kind of feel it. It's like very buzzy. There's like these PMF mats that are very popular right now, like by higher dose and stuff like that and those are at pretty low frequencies, like zero to ten. I forget it's if it's megahertz MHC. Um, but the PMF ring could go up all the way to ninety nine and you could feel it. Like when it's lower, it's like a very slow like humming. Whereas if you like set it up to like fifty, seventy or a hundred ninety nine, like it you can feel the vibration a little bit more. If you like sit there for a bit, if you're constantly moving you won't feel it as much. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. I have not even I feel like you told me about the red light thing. I don't remember us talking about the PMF ring thing. I have never heard of that, I don't think. I gotta look that up. Yeah. I uh I won't s I've heard it started with race horses. I don't know if that's actually true. To like heal them between races quite fast. Um, but I would need to fact check on that, yeah. I'm gonna have to look that thing up. Is that the what's is that the brand? Is it called PMF Ring or? the one that I got called an Omni P F ring. O N I and it's a white ring. and yeah. I kinda swear by it now. Yeah. That's awesome. I will be checking that out. We'll find it and we'll link it in the show notes too for the listeners. cool. So, okay, so anything you want to promote and share, like on your from what's coming up on your pod or are you commentating anything at TrailCon or do or bro um that weekend, like Western states, or you anything else going on that you're that's coming up? yeah, the Subhub podcast will have a booth at TrailCon that we'll share with the Wild Strides Paper Co. And then we are also doing two live podcasts, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. And so if people listen to our most recent episode or they go to our sub stack they'll see like the whole shebang and then MK and I, my co hosts, are also doing trail gating for broken arrow between the two of us with free trail. Cool. All right. And for our listeners, TrailCon is happening, is it the twenty second through the twenty fourth of June? Think so. That sounds right. Yeah, yeah. Twenty second to twenty fourth, yeah. Broken arrow is the nineteenth through the twenty first, Trocon's twenty second through the twenty fourth, and then everyone keeps saying we get two days off and then it's Western States, but I bet you're just gonna feel gonna like a blur. Yeah. That's a good stretch. What time are or when are you arriving in Tahoe for Broken Arrow? Um, I think the Wednesday before. Nice. Yeah, you don't need to do any altitude prep. You're ready to roll. Ready to roll. Um, okay, well, I'm gonna jump back to your two truths and a lie. So you said you had been featured in on ESPN. Your brown lab was your first running partner, and that you have two middle names. I thought the middle names one was a lie. Which one was it? No, it was my first writing partner. He was a black lab. I ha or I said I had two middle names. But yes, so I had it wa it was Alma Lynn. Alma was my grandma's name. Lynn was my aunt's name. And as the story goes, I was in the process of being born and they like kept like arguing about who got my middle name and my mom was just like, Shut up, I'm just gonna put both of your names. So then I had both of their names as my middle name. That's a great story. I like that. And do you still have them or did you change it when you got married at all? Yeah. my maiden name is my middle name. So it's Daniela Morano Carroll. But I go by Dani Morano and running still just to not cause confusion. Right. Yes. I know. I um hyphenated my last name and it was a nightmare. I don't recommend it. Like all the paperwork you have to do. Oh Lord, it's too much. have to do the paperwork 'cause I changed my name, but it's like, yeah, it's it's tough. because I what did I do? I like changed it legally online, but then I didn't and I think I changed it like with the social security office. But then my driver's license I had was like still the same. And then when I went to fly, they were like, This doesn't match. And I was like, Oh no. That happened to me too. It's rough. It's an ongoing nightmare, folks. Um, yeah, and then one of my friends, she kind of did what you're doing. They I think she, yeah, she said she took her maiden name, made it her middle name, and then took her middle name and gave it to her kid. So that that was cool, like a little trickle down effect there. clever, different ways to do it. Um, okay, we're totally talking about nothing nutrition really. And I'm sure our listeners love this. Um, okay, so where can our listeners find you and follow you, Dani? they could find me on Instagram @dan_yell_a or if they follow the subhub podcast, that's like another easy way to find me. Sweet. We will link all of that in the show notes and your sub stack so people can check that out as well. And then um this has been awesome. I know we, I mean, I feel like it's always fun like doing a a pod with a client because I mean, I feel like kind of silly asking you these questions because I know the answers to all of them, but I think it's fun for the listeners to. hear um, you know, how we're either how we're working together, but also you've gone through a lot. And I think again, I hear so many clients where they like really hit a wall when they get injured and they struggle. And I think it's helpful to know that like other people go through the same thing and like how you get through that. I love that you did the trivia and you like really brought in your community and you have your like tool toolkit of resources of you know, like you said, therapists or psychologists or stuff like that for like the sports psychology and then just generals general uh therapist all that I think is so helpful. So I appreciate you sharing that. So thank you, Dani, for joining us again for a second time on the pod. Yeah, thanks for having me.

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Kyla Channell, MS

Host