Spoiler: I’m racing! All the info about that is at the end of this newsletter. But first…

What’s been going on with my health lately:

It all starts with a text to two of my fellow lululemon Ambassadors, Hunter and Tara Woodhall.

Me: Okay, so tell me more about this Noah Moos guy…

Hunter: Just stop what you’re doing right now and go see him.

Y’all I have seen everyone. I’ve been around the world seeing specialists and body gurus for literally 5 years trying to figure out what is going on with my body. On the one hand, I feel so strong and so capable. But on the other hand, I keep continually breaking down. In the last couple of years, my symptoms have turned from stress reactions in my feet and hips to a general feeling that something is just not right. I described it as “my left side is offline” or “it feels like I’m dragging my left leg along and my right side is doing all the work,” I would also have pain that was very intense but would move around from my foot to my back to my hamstring to my calf. A lot of people could tell I had a nerve problem, but no one seemed to know what to do about it. Even the doctor in Germany who specializes in nerve stuff with the back couldn’t help me. The whole reason I got into triathlon was because I just couldn’t really train for track anymore and the pain along with the awkward and uncoordinated feeling I would get while running was just unbearable. I felt like I had seen everyone who could help and still no relief. Is it in my head? Maybe I just need therapy. I tried that with a few different people, but that didn’t seem to be the answer either. Maybe I just need to move on from professional sport.

Then I listened to this podcast that interviewed Dr. Noah Moos (who I had coincidentally met a week earlier at US Para Track and Field Nationals while cheering for Hunter) and I thought to myself “hmmm… this guy sounds different. I’ve been looking for different. I think I have one more shot in me. I’m gonna shoot my shot with this Dr. Moos dude.”

This is the part where I’m gonna try to explain at least some of what Dr. Moos does and what I experienced at his practice (HealthPlus ATX) located on a quiet road in a suburb of Austin… Let me start by saying if you’re a big fan of western medicine as it stands now and have no issues with how our medical system works, you’ll probably want to skip this part because it’s just gonna annoy you. However, if you feel like something is missing in the way we approach illness, injury, health, and wellness, your curiosity is going to be peaked here (and you might already know about a lot of this stuff). At a macro level, Dr. Moos has a whole-body approach to health, not just looking at the knee or the back or the foot individually. I’ve never had someone treat me in this way and it’s so refreshing to see how different things affect one another. He also looks at the whole system and sees how something like a chronic infection can cause systemic issues in the body. He is a Doctor of Chiropractic and does the most incredible adjustments I’ve ever experienced, but he uses over 20 different techniques in his practice, most of which I have never heard of before. Dr. Moos practices Applied Kinesiology which uses muscle testing to diagnose issue and then he uses acupressure points to release muscles. There’s also a huge red light therapy component and Dr. Moos has a bunch of red light laser thingys that he points at the brain and body while he is working to reset nerves (look into Quantum Neurology if you’re interested in this part).

The first thing we did was get a comprehensive bloodwork panel done. I haven’t gotten my blood checked in a couple of years, and I’ve NEVER gotten this many biomarkers checked. There was a LOT of stuff off in my bloodwork. Some that would have been off for “normal” people and a lot of markers that need to be better if I’m going to compete in sports at a global level. Getting that information about how much was out of whack was scary but also validating.

Actually “validating” is the word I use the most and feels the most accurate when describing my experience at HealthPlus ATX. Like I said before, I had seen everyone. For years. And was just steadily still going downhill in my health without understanding why. At some point, you see so many people who are so good at what they do and have had so much success, that when none of them work for you… you start to think, “I’m the problem, it’s me.” I started to wonder if I was somehow blocking myself from healing and/or imagining it all in my head. Finding out more about why things have been so difficult feels extremely validating in a “See? I’m not crazy! I knew something as wrong!” kind of way.

One other component of Dr. Moos’ work that is really interesting that I want to make sure and highlight is a practice called Neuro Emotional Technique (NET), which helps us deal with unresolved emotional blocks, beliefs, and perceptions and clear those stuck emotions out of the physical body. This practice also uses muscle testing and basically what happened with me was Dr. Moos would find something in my body that wasn’t releasing by the normal methods, and so we would work through an emotional block in order to unstuck the physical body. 

I feel like it might help to illustrate this therapy by sharing one of the things I worked through with Dr. Moos in an NET session. This example is super personal, but it was one of the most impactful things that I learned through this therapy and so I want to share it with you.

It goes back to 2017 at the World Championships where I ran in a super tactical prelim and qualified for the finals… until I got disqualified. If you have been with me for a while you will remember this horrible incident. After one of the water pits I stepped half of my foot on half of the white line on the inside of the track and one of the officials called it and disqualified me. We fought the call, but the judge’s call stood in the end and I watched the women’s steeplechase final from the stands. I cried my eyes out while Emma Coburn and Courtney Frerichs went 1-2 and made history for Team USA. I was happy for them, of course, be my heart felt like it got ripped out of my chest. But something interesting happened after that. A lot of people said to me that since I had been working out with Courtney for the lead up to this race that if I was in that race I would have medaled too. That was really nice of people to try and give me that inspiration, but honestly that conclusion that they jumped to caused a ton of stress in my brain and body because I didn’t actually believe that to be true. Truthfully, I didn’t think I could medal at those World Championships and that was never my goal going in. But since Courtney medaled, and we had worked out together all year, it meant that if I had been in that race and I hadn’t gotten on the podium… I would have been a failure. Failing is my biggest fear. So then my body learned something at that time which was that if I make the team I put myself into a very vulnerable position where I’m likely to “fail” by falling short of a podium spot. 

Dr. Moos and I explored this trauma through muscle testing with my arm. He tested me for fear of not making the Olympic team, but I held strong for that. Then he tested me for fear of MAKING the Olympic team and I couldn’t hold my arm up- signaling a disconnect or incongruence in my brain-body. On the one side I know that what I described above is crazy- I don’t have to get on the podium if I make the team. Not getting a medal is NOT the definition of failure. But that’s where the incongruence comes from. Part of me believed it and part of me did not. Fear of making the team? I was shocked. That’s my goal! Why would I be afraid of that? That’s what I want! But then through the NET process we dug in and figured out where that fear was stemming from. Of course I’m crying pretty much the whole time as this is really deep and emotional stuff. And then Dr. Moos is working on my body to clear that emotion out so that it can’t hold me back anymore. 

This brings me to something I’d like to ask of all of you. Not that any of you have said this to me or any other athlete (even if you did, we still love you and I know you didn’t know why that would be harmful). When I made the Olympic team in 2016 I was over the moon. I wrote in my training log on that day “I’m an Olympian! BEST DAY EVER!” Shortly after that, I noticed people sending me messages on social media saying, “Congratulations! Now go bring home a medal for Team USA- we don’t care what color!” .. way to kill the vibe. I mean I just achieved the goal of a lifetime, I’m an Olympian, but for whatever reason that’s not enough. Now I have to go get a medal (of any color) or else I’ll disappoint my country. This is honestly just unnecessary pressure and feels like a “never good enough” mentality. I’m sure it comes from a place of love and support, but I know I’m not the only person who gets triggered by this message so I thought this might be a good place to share a request to avoid this kind of language when supporting your favorite athletes!

Okay, back to the healing journey story. So on April 8th I went to Austin for 4 days and got my mind blown by Dr. Moos and his team. Then I came back to LA to digest some of the stuff that we unearthed. I started to run again, but kept the intensity down as my body felt like it was sorting itself out slowly. On April 28th I went back to Austin for round 2. I was honestly kind of nervous that the first trip was a fluke and I wouldn’t find the same *magic* the second time around. I shouldn’t have doubted it! The second trip was even more mind-blowing and validating and mystery-solving than the first! It really showed me how many layers of issues I have been working through and made me so proud of myself for what i’ve been able to accomplish over the last 4 or 5 years despite all the crap my body has been fighting. After the second trip I got to start ramping up my workouts, moving from easy runs and fartleks to finally doing some track workouts. I’ve been feeling beaten down and overworked for years now and in the last couple of weeks I finally got a glimpse of how I used to move and run. I’m still figuring out how to utilize this refreshed body and lean to trust myself again, but I’m improving every week and continuing to tell my body “you are safe.”

Some recovery tools I’ve been using that have really been helping me:

Pulsed Electromagnetic Field therapy (PEMF)- uses a pulsating charge through tissues to increase circulation and blood oxygenation which can help reduce pain and inflammation and encourage the body to heal itself naturally

Red light therapy- reduces inflammation and helps repair muscle tissue by increasing production of mitochondria (looks like a tanning bed but no UV light!)

Live02- this is a system that uses periods of low and high oxygen (delivered though a mask) to facilitate saturation of oxygen in cells that can do a whole ton of crazy good things for the body.

Stratosphere ATC- this is an insane machine that I’ve been using in Los Angeles that allows you to train at high altitude and ultimately increase oxygen delivery to tissues. Ask me if you want to learn more about this one!

Ozone therapy- Ozone is 3 oxygen molecules combined in a gas that can be used in the ears, nose, blood, or even infused in water that you drink. This puts extra oxygen in your body that can help you recover and fight infection. I did ozone therapy with Dr. Moos as one of the things to help get rid of an anaerobic parasite that he found in my intestines (yes, so gross). 

Hyperbaric chamber- I’ve done a lot of training at high altitude (hyperbaric), but I had never heard of using hyperbaric therapy. The idea here is that there is an increased amount of atmospheric pressure pushing air into your lungs so that you can take in more oxygen than you would at sea level. 

If you want to learn more about your body, Dr. Moos recommends that a great place to start is with bloodwork. The bloodwork panel we did on me was so extensive and so insightful I couldn’t believe that no one else I had worked with over the years had done this with me.

A great place to start would be with a CBC (complete blood count) test. Getting the test is pretty simple, the tricky part is interpreting it correctly (especially for athletes). 

This is actually great timing because Dr. Moos just launched his first course on his website, The Human Nutrition Project, and the program is called “Anemia 101: CBC and the Red Blood Cell”. This is a 5.5 hour course that will teach you everything you need to know about your blood and help you understand your body better. For a limited time, you can use code “launch” to get the course for $99 (originally $150).

As I have been going through this process of getting truly healthy and slowing breaking through with my body moving better every week, it feels like I’m coming back to myself bit by bit, piece by piece. It hasn’t necessarily been an easy process- mentally it has challenged me to be patient and trust the process and my support system as well as myself and my instincts. The hardest part has been wanting my own personal timeline to line up with the timeline of the track season, with the Olympic Trials rapidly approaching. I’m struggling with the sense that I finally figured out what to do about my health, but now I’m going to run out of time to be ready to make this team. That’s why Kate Grace’s words in a recent interview really struck me. She is telling herself “Every step along the way I don’t need to be at my absolute best. I just need to be good enough to get to the next step. There is time and I can do this.” And I know there is power in the words we tell ourselves and in our mindset as we work every day towards our goals. Being stressed about the timeline comes from a place of lack and scarcity. Being grateful for the time that I have, the tools that I have, and the people in my corner comes from a place of abundance and peace, which is exactly where I want to be.

I also know that no one who shows up to the Olympic Trials has had a perfect build to that week. Everybody is stressed about something and wishes they had more time to prepare.

It reminds me of 2016 when I got cleared to start running just 10 weeks before the Olympic Trials after healing from a stress reaction in my hip. I was definitely stressed in the build up to that race, feeling like I didn’t have enough time and that I wasn’t going to be ready. But somehow I found peace. I recently looked back at my training log from that year and on the day of the finals at the Olympic Trials I wrote: “I’m an Olympian! BEST DAY EVER! 9:21 PR, 3rd place. Happy all day before the race, just relaxed and smiley.” I remember having lunch with my family on race day and making a bet with my big brother that if I made the team he would have to shave the giant beard he had been growing. Somehow I knew that even though I cared so much, this whole thing wasn’t really that big of a deal. With my family surrounding me, I knew I had everything that I needed already and I was free to go out there and just try my best. When it came time to be brave in the race, I covered the big move and took my shot. That day changed my life forever and I’ll always be grateful for the opportunities that being an Olympian has afforded me. 

RACE UPDATE!

To be able to compete at the Olympic Trials, you have to have a qualifying time. This year the qualifying time for the women’s steeplechase is 9:41. I’ll be racing THIS WEEKEND at the Portland Track Fest with the goal of running until 9:41 to qualify for the Olympic Trials.

The meet will be live-streamed for free if you want to tune in and cheer virtually. If you’re in Portland, I’d LOVE for you to come out and watch.

Right now I’m working to earn another chance to be brave in an Olympic Trials final at Hayward Field. I’m so glad you are here with me for this adventure because one thing I know for sure.. I have no interest in doing this thing alone. I want to bring anyone and everyone who wants to be here along with me for the fun. So consider this your invitation to be a part of #TeamColleen!