Suunto Blog

Photo by Matic Kozinc on Unsplash Walking feels like the most natural thing in the world. It’s just one foot in front of another, right? Well yes, but not quite. In this second article in our series on walking your way to good health (first article here), dynamic movement and mindfulness teacher Tatjana Mesar explains how there is more to walking well than you might guess. She runs Zen Yoga by Dynamic Mindfulness, a studio and school in Berlin, and trains yoga teachers. Tatjana is passionate about helping people find more freedom and spontaneity in their movement, and breaking out of conditioned and limiting movement patterns. When she isn’t teaching, Tatjana studies the science of movement, and implements what’s relevant into her training. Recently, she has been studying Axis Syllabus, a biomechanical user manual and movement system. How we walk, our gait, is a central part of that training. Socially ingrained gait patterns What research shows is that how we walk, our gait mechanics, isn’t as “natural” as we might believe. We learn to walk by observing our parents and the world around us. As we grow up, we embody the patterns we see. These can limit the full potential of our gait. Some of us unconsciouly prevent the pelvis and arms from swinging because of cultural taboos that frown upon having a gait as being, for example, too free. “One of the main elements regarding our gait is the counter lateral movement pattern (swinging the opposite arm and leg forward as we walk), which is an engineering marvel of human movement,” Tatjana says. “However, we don't really use it to its full potential due to the fact that walking is mostly cultural.” “Changing the gait pattern is a process,” Tatjana continues. “It’s worth the effort because there’s usually a huge leak of energy when our gait is unbalanced or restricted.” Here are three tips to improve your technique. Explore your cross lateral pattern You can do this exercise at home before you even step out the door. Its purpose is to learn to walk more freely. To begin with, stand in one spot, and practice swinging your arms forward and back, allowing the pelvis to rotate side to side. As you do this bounce a little in your knees. Once you have a feeling for this, begin taking steps forward, swinging the opposite arm and leg forward as you do so. Really allow your arms to swing. Try to relax as you do this, and don’t worry if it feels weird. Unlearning old and learning new movement patterns always feels awkward at the beginning. Practice this, off and on, when you are out walking, and over time it will become more natural. Click play to watch Tatjana demonstrating a natural, free gait. Check your head position Another common issue with how we walk is our head position. It’s common for people to look down, tilting their head forward. “Especially because so often now we are walking and looking down at our smartphones,” Tatjana says. “The head adds six to eight kilograms of weight, but by tilting the head forward it increases to something like twenty kilograms. If the head is positioned directly above the shoulders, with the chin parallel to the ground, then that weight is transferred down into the feet and ground.” When you’re walking, Tatjana advises to keep your head upright, with your eyes looking ahead, not on the ground below. “Also, relax your lower jaw, even slightly open the mouth to facilitate this, and relax the root of the tongue,” she says. In this clip, Tatjana demonstrates a fun exercise to help free the pelvis. Roll the feet How you place your feet as you walk is also important. The correct technique, Tatjana says, is to roll the feet down as you step through. First place the centre of the heel, then roll the outside edge of the foot down before placing the outer toes, and rolling down the inner toes. This is also something to take your time with exploring. Don’t force yourself to do it all the time. It’s good to spend some time noticing how you are already placing the feet. “Imagine when you are walking you are kissing the earth with your feet,” Tatjana says. “This will help your footsteps to become more sensitive and mindful.” Lead image: Photo by Noah Phung on Unsplash Read more articles How to walk your way to good health The benefits of training to music and making your best playlist 7 recovery tips for immune fitness

DJs have an uncanny ability to sense the mood on the dancefloor and the perfect gem to drop to bring the crowd up or down. You can learn to do the same with your own workouts! We recently spoke to DJ act the Mambo Brothers about workout music and how to put together a playlist that makes you want to move – see below! The Mambo Brothers, Christian and Alan Anadon, have been living and breathing electronic music since they were kids. Their parents were founders of the legendary Cafe Mambo Ibiza where some of the world’s biggest name DJs have come to play. Now full time DJs themselves, they try to exercise everyday to stay in balance. In a new partnership with Suunto, the Mambo Brothers put together three playlists for Suunto users to enjoy on their next workout. The first playlist is ideal for recovery and chilling. The second playlist is more upbeat. And the third playlist is suited to an intense workout.   © Kevin Scott Batchelor Play your own favorite tunes from your wrist With the Suunto 7 smartwatch you can connect your headphones to your phone and control music and other audio – adjust volume, pause and skip tracks – straight from your wrist without taking your phone out of your pocket. You can also listen to music without your phone: Spotify has just released an update to their Wear OS app that enables offline use. Simply connect your bluetooth headphones with your watch and download the tracks that you want to take with you! With this new feature, Spotify Premium users will be able to download their favorite albums, playlists, and podcasts to listen offline. Free users will be able to stream their tunes in Shuffle Mode using a WiFi or cellular connection, as well as download any of their favorite podcasts directly to the watch. LEARN HOW TO USE SPOTIFY WITH YOUR SUUNTO 7   The right music can boost performance There are numerous studies that have shown the performance boosting potential of music. As always with scientific research, the findings are complex and contingent. To simplify things, the National Center for Health Research breaks down the benefits of listening to music while working out into two main categories: physical and psychological benefits. Boosting physical performance For you pop, rock and electronic music lovers, there’s good news; studies show that listening to music with between 120 and 140 beats per minute (BPM) can improve athletic performance. It can improve your pace, effort, overall distance or number of reps. Studies have shown cyclists can push harder when listening to faster tempo music. Another study discovered that our inbuilt rhythm response – the tendency to synchronise movement with music – helps runners to keep pace. Slower music, between 85 and 115 BPM, can also help to reduce your heart rate, suggesting it might be good to listen to during your warm down or recovery. Psychological benefits Listening to music has a massive impact on our perception and mood. One study found that listening to music you enjoy can elevate your mood and improve self awareness. It also distracts you from the sometimes unpleasant sensations of your workout, such as a thumping heart or tired and shaky muscles. And these two seem commonsense: music can kick you in the butt and get you out the door for a run, according to this study, while this study suggests it makes workouts more fun (we knew that!) Lastly, it also reduces your perceived level of exertion and can delay on the onset of fatigue! 5 tips to create an awesome workout playlist Get the mood right “Make it happy and uplifting so you can feel the good vibes and positive energy,” The Mambo Brothers advise. “It’s amazing what music can make us feel!” Try creating different playlists from different moods. For example, you might want a different playlist for a morning run compared to a run after work. One playlist might fit better for when you have tons of energy and another for when you’re feeling worn out. Pick the right BPM This handy tool tells you any song’s BPM. The recommended BPM for low to moderate workouts is between 120 and 140 BPM. For activities like yoga, pilates or mobility exercises, choose songs between 60 to 90 BPM. For slightly more intense exercise, the BPM can be around 150. For full on exercise, like cross fit or indoor cycling, the BPM can be up to 180. Consider creating different playlists for different activity intensities. Find the right rhythm Remember the “rhythm response” we mentioned above? To benefit from this natural tendency, try to find music with a BPM that matches your desired pace. For runners, match your stride rate to BPM, and cyclists match the number of RPM to BPM. If you’re doing lifting weights, be careful not to go with music with crazy fast BPM – or you might hurt yourself! Create a journey Every successful DJ knows how to take the crowd on a journey. If they only play one style, or one intensity, people get bored. Try to select music for your playlists that give a sense of a beginning, a middle and an end. You want to experience some big highs and some mellow moments during your workout. Perhaps you know you tend to struggle at around the three quarter mark of your long run, for example, so build in some bigger sound, faster tempo tunes for then in your playlist. Test it out No playlist is ever really finished. Feel free to make changes as you go so you get it just right. “Make a draft playlist, try it out while training, and if one tune doesn’t work delete it from the list,” the Mambo Brothers advise. “After three or four workouts, you should have a playlist that can really motivate you!”   Lead image: © Philipp Reiter   Read more articles Meet the Mambo Brothers, two health conscious DJs living the nightlife Ultra champ Courtney Dauwalter's 6 tips for mental strength How to adapt your training when the unexpected strikes Finding the right coach and Suunto compatible training service for you  

  They travel the world playing at festivals and parties that go until the sun rises. They return home to Ibiza and party some more at their own venues, including the famous Café Mambo Ibiza. But don’t be fooled, Mambo Brothers Christian and Alan Anadon prize health and fitness as much as an epic night out partying. They have been living and breathing electronic music since they were kids. EDM aristocrats, their parents were founders of the legendary Café Mambo Ibiza where some of the world’s biggest name DJs have come to play. Only boys, they watched and learned, fell in love with music and the ability of DJs to send a crowd wild. Now they run the cafe, play at events across the globe, and produce their own music. In a new partnership with Suunto, the Mambo Brothers put together three playlists for Suunto users to enjoy on their next workout. The first playlist is ideal for recovery and chilling. The second playlist offers more get up and go. And the third playlist consists of tracks suited to an intense workout. We caught up with two brothers and asked them about sports, fitness and the DJ lifestyle – read on below.         With a view like that we can see why Christian likes to work out at home. © Mambo Brothers Play your own favorite tunes from your wrist With the Suunto 7 smartwatch you can connect your headphones to your phone and control music and other audio – adjust volume, pause and skip tracks – straight from your wrist without taking your phone out of your pocket. You can also listen to music without your phone: Spotify has just released an update to their Wear OS app that enables offline use. Simply connect your bluetooth headphones with your watch and download the tracks that you want to take with you! With this new feature, Spotify Premium users will be able to download their favorite albums, playlists, and podcasts to listen offline. Free users will be able to stream their tunes in Shuffle Mode using a WiFi or cellular connection, as well as download any of their favorite podcasts directly to the watch.   LEARN HOW TO USE SPOTIFY WITH YOUR SUUNTO 7   Running, the gym, hiking, dancing all night – what’s your sport? As kids, we really enjoyed playing basketball on the weekends, but all that kind of thing got lost when we discovered the world’s best night clubs on Ibiza! Nowadays, we mostly go to the gym and work out there. We do 30 to 45 min runs on the treadmill and keep our heart rate over 140 to burn all that excess good life we have! Then we do compound exercises like deadlifts, squats with dumbbells, lumberjacks etc. Doing this helps us burn fat much faster. Any outdoor adventure sports? Sometimes we enjoy a good hike somewhere on the island, or while we are on tour we find a good track to walk. We also do a lot of deep sea diving. We love diving as it’s a gentle sport, and you have to be concentrated on your breathing and what you see in the water so it’s a very relaxing and a kind of therapy for us. It helps us to chill out. Being a DJ is a nocturnal life right? How do you stay balanced and in shape? For us it’s really difficult to find a routine because it’s so easily broken with all the travelling, playing at festivals, nightclubs, working at our venues in Ibiza. We have tried working with a personal trainer, which works very well during winter months, but when the night clubs in Ibiza open, and the summer tours start again, it’s a drastic change for us. We difficult to keep appointments because we never know what time we are going to call it a night. So this makes maintaining a routine difficult. It’s important for us to do some form of sport every day to get the positive vibes that exercise brings!   Alan overlooks Ibiza, an island famous for its electronic music. © Mambo Brothers Has the DJ scene got healthier these days or is it still pretty wild? It has got healthier for sure, and DJs are more conscious about wellbeing and feeling good in general. We are all very happy about that, but we are still playing with fire every night and try not to cross the line and break routines and good habits. For us, it’s very important to maintain good habits like training most days, plus sometimes adding a hike, a swim in the ocean, and eating healthy food! Keeping a balance and feeling fit is essential to handle our busy schedule. What do you love about producing music and DJing at dance parties? We love being DJs because it’s very social and we love making friends around the world that eventually visit us at Cafe Mambo during the summer. It makes us very happy being able to return their hospitality and have a few shots of good tequila with them! We have an amazing job; you get to travel, meet people, eat at great restaurants and of course dance! Producing our music is great – we get a buzz when a studio session goes well and we get a good track that you can play at a gig and see the crowd’s reaction. You can see how the track works and whether we are getting it right or if it needs some changes next time we’re in the studio! We feel blessed to be able to travel the world doing what we love most! Tell me about your playlists and why you chose these tracks? All the music has been tested on the treadmill and it works! We have never ran so much and enjoyed it so much! We have made a selection of classics, music that we love, and records that really motivate us! We hope you like it and enjoy as much as we do!   Lead image: Photo by Sebastian Coman Travel on Unsplash   Read more articles The benefits of training to music and making your best playlist 4 indoor training tips for endurance athletes How to adapt your training when the unexpected strikes 7 indoor training exercises to stay in shape

Michael Arend coaches ultra and marathon runners, as well as triathletes and ski mountaineers.   With much of the human population currently confined to their homes because of the coronavirus, our online connections have become vastly more important. Everything from meeting with friends and family, to yoga and exercise classes, and faith group meetings, all the way to dance parties have moved online. For runners, triathletes and cyclists meeting a coach face-to-face is no longer allowed or advisable. But working with a coach online and managing your training via one of the many digital platforms now available can keep your training on track. We talked to professional endurance coach Michael Arend, a former officer in the German Mountain Army, semi pro runner and host of Germany’s most popular running podcast, Fat Boys Run, and asked how to work with a coach online. We also did a stocktake of all the awesome online coaching services Suunto partners with and have provided a list below. And check out the Suunto Value Pack to see the additional benefits provided to Suunto watch owners by these partners.   Find a a coach now Michael says now is a good time to work with a coach because things are so uncertain and many of our plans are out the window. A good coach can help steady the ship and adapt your training so you still reach your goals. “Some athletes need help to stay optimistic and to prepare for the races in autumn,” he says. “Others need creative suggestions on how to arrange the training. Working with a coach online can help with long term planning, macro planning and how to rearrange the goals. In times of uncertainty a coach can provide a lot of experience and I think that’s the greatest demand in this time.” Here are his three tips for a successful coach-athlete relationship! Trust is a must It’s difficult to trust someone you’ve never met in person, right? Michael says this is the one con of working with a coach online. “Online coaching has a lot of pros, but one big con is establishing trust,” he says. “That’s the most important thing. Of course a coach has to know his or her physiology and science, and should have proven experience and the soft skills, but if the athlete is suspicious from the start on, it is hard to work together.” The upshot? Make sure you choose a coach you definitely trust. That way you can let him or her lead the way without doubting or questioning his or her suggestions. “Try to trust your coach at least for a fews months,” Michael says. “Even if you think you know better, that’s rarely the case.” Honesty first For a coach to help you he or she needs to know where you are really at with your training and how things are going for you. Don’t hide where you are at from you coach. You’ll only cheat yourself. “First of all, be honest,” Michael says. “Of course I cannot speak for every coach, but for my coaches I can definitely say that they all want to help the athlete inact in their dreams. There are a lot of topics which are not enjoyable to discuss, but your coach should know about your stress at home and about your digestion problems.” Eye level and informed You don’t want to have a coach who calls all the shots with little concern for your input, or a coach who gives into your whims and excuses. “It has to be a relationship at eye level,” Michael says. “Your coach should be able to tell you the meaning and goals of your training and of every workout, without using stock standard phrases. He should use your experience and let you participate in his or her decisions. In addition to our regular conversations, we send an analysis video to our clients once a month in which we explain the progress and justify our decisions. That is very important.”   Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash  Digital training services and apps You’re still looking for a coach and training service and now need to pick a service to help you hold and analyze your workouts? Read on – we’ve put together some options for you. There are various online apps and services that you can use with your Suunto watch. Many of these help to match you with a coach and allow your coach to monitor your workouts and keep you on track. The services have different pricing models, and different benefits because some are focused on different sports. The Suunto Value Pack offers Suunto watch owners additional benefits and special deals. Learn about the Suunto Value Pack benefits! TrainingPeaks TrainingPeaks is probably the most well known coaching platform for endurance training in the world, especially among the cyclists and triathletes. TrainingPeaks provides in-depth training analysis tools, the possibility to buy training programs and be connected with your coach via the platform. It gives you analysis and overview tools with parameters, such as training stress score (TSS). If you don’t have a coach, there is a coach matching service where you can try to get a coach that fits your needs. Coaches can monitor several athletes via Trainingpeaks and also sell their training programs for athletes who don’t need one to one coaching. Pricing: Limited free versionPremium account: 9.92€/monthCoach’s account: basic, $19USD/month; unlimited, $49USD/month Trainingpeaks here. Today’s Plan Today’s Plan is an online training and analytics platform suitable for coaches and athletes from beginners, self-trained enthusiasts or fully coached professional athletes. The platform has been gaining popularity in the cycling and triathlon communities. The system includes a range of powerful online training tools that allows athletes to enjoy the quantifiable benefits of structured training. You can also choose to use the training plans generated by the platform. Today’s Plan offers free tools for coaches. They can also create their own branded coaching site on the platform. Pricing: I train myself: 16.00€/monthI have a coach or structure my own training: 11.00€/month More about Today’s Plan here. PKRS.AI PKRS.AI provides 24/7 coaching for its members. Built by Olympic Gold medalists, world champions and their coaches, PKRS.AI is the perfect marriage of A.I. technology with a human touch. When you start using PKRS, you will be matched with a coaching team based on your preferences. PKRS then builds a personal training plan based on your goals and the time you have to train. There are real coaches that follow your training and your plan will adapt based on your actions. PRKS.AI also provides a video library for strength training as well daily stats from your lifestyle. Pricing: 90€/month More about PKRS.AI here. Staminity Staminity is a professional service for online training in cycling sports and most popular in Russia. It’s made for athletes, coaches and clubs. For athletes, Staminity helps to find a coach or get the best training plan to reach your goals. For coaches, Staminity provides the planning and analysis tools. For teams, Staminity provides coaching and athlete management. Staminity provides in-depth analysis tools, workouts summaries, training plans and templates, and the ability to manage other activities such as sickness or diet. Pricing: Athletes Basic: free. Premium: 5€/monthCoaches: 5€/monthClubs: 5€/month More about Staminity here. PWRlab PWRlab is designed for runners and provides insights into how much training load they are getting from their daily workouts. PRWlab provides coaches with the ability to monitor the runner’s resilience, and to identify if they are over or under training. This can be also used to determine if the athlete has a greater risk of injury. PWRlab uses easy to understand traffic lights to illustrate the risk of injury; this is based on training load and stride characteristics. Pricing: $15.99USD/month More about PWRlab here. SportTracks SportTracks is a complete solution for planning, tracking, analyzing, and sharing your workouts and other fitness performance data. It’s particularly popular among cyclists, runners and triathletes. Coaches can use it for free as long as their clients have the unlimited version of SportTracks. They also have the option to pay a monthly fee and switch this between athletes. For example, a coach subscription for five athletes would cost $39USD/month. Pricing: $59USD/year More about SportsTracks here. Coach4Pro Coach4Pro is a customizable platform for coaches and well-being professionals. It’s designed to help coaches run their business, and can also be used with corporate wellness programs and to manage a team of athletes. For coaches the platform has training planner tools, integrated messaging between the coach and athlete, and content libraries to share with clients. Pricing: The pricing is based on the number of athletes the coach is managing. Each athlete costs 0.33€/day+VAT so four athletes would cost 48€/month. More about Coach4Pro here. XHALE Xhale is a specialized triathlon coaching platform. It’s training diary simplifies tracking, planning and connecting the training to the overall plan. It helps athletes to plan their week, stay consistent and build motivation. With Xhale you and your coach analyse workouts, create new splits, overlay and compare laps and sessions as you progress towards your training goals. Pricing: The pricing is based on the number of athletes a coach has. For up to 10 athletes it costs 5.99€/ per athlete/month. More about Xhale here. RunningCoach RunningCoach is an online training platform designed for runners. The toolset provides runners with a dynamic training plan and various parameters to calculate and shape your personal training plan. The platform also offers coaches to support you. Pricing: Freemium versionBronze: 10€/month; Silver: 15€/month; Gold: 69€/month More about RunningCoach here.   Go-Heja Go-Heja provides a full club and athlete management service. For clubs, Go-Heja provides athlete management system with sports, communication, payments and your own club store. For coaches Go-Heja provides planning, athlete training analysis, monitoring and direct communication tools. And for athletes the Go-Heja platform can be used with or without a coach for training planning and analysis. Pricing: $1.5USD per athlete, per month. More about Go-Heja here.   To get connected with these services first register with the one below that fits your needs, and connect it with the Suunto app. Once you select Suunto, you will be asked to authorize the tool’s access to the data stored by your watch and Suunto App. Do this by giving the Suunto app your username and password. From then on all your workouts will automatically sync with your chosen coaching platform. You can connect to several tools and find your data in each one. Your data will also remain in Suunto App. Read more articles How to adapt your training when the unexpected strikes Ultra champ Courtney Dauwalter's 6 tips for mental strength 4 indoor workout tips for endurance athletes Adapting to life in a time of pandemic  

When Courtney Dauwalter is running an ultra marathon the buzz for her isn’t taking in the spectacular vistas, the changing light as the earth turns, or crossing the finishing line under her own steam, though she does love these. The thing the UTMB 2019 champion most relishes is finding the entrance to the “pain cave”. Not because she gets pleasure from her own suffering, but because the cave is her own private laboratory to explore the power of the mind. “What I keep discovering during these ultras is how powerful our brains can be,” the 35-year-old says. “Using that strength during a physical activity, tapping into my brain and using it to overcome the physical discomfort, is the main goal of doing an ultra for me.” A former high school science teacher, Courtney sees ultra running as a kind of experiment into what her mind and body are capable of. The results have been impressive. She won the Western States Endurance Run 100 Miler in 2018, and was named Ultra Runner of the Year in 2018 by Ultra Running magazine after winning nine of the 12 races she entered. We caught up with Courtney and asked her how she navigates the pain cave. “I find a lot of comfort in being uncomfortable,” she says. “I call it the pain cave. It’s not a place I’m scared to enter. It’s a place I’m excited to find the entrance to.” Stay present Out on an ultra marathon we have a lot of time to think. The danger of this is that we get in a thinking feedback loop and ruminate on all sorts of things. That’s why Courtney tries to stay in the present moment. “Sometimes it’s about focusing on what I’m doing, how my body is feeling or just staying in the moment by breathing, taking another step, and breathing,” she says. Flip the script Courtney is a big advocate of staying positive no matter what happens. “Staying positive helps a bunch,” she says. “It’s so important not to get whirlpooled into panic about how awful you are feeling. Instead, flip the script in your head and tell yourself you’re feeling fine even if you’re not. It can be really powerful.” Click to read more about Courtney! Acknowledge it’s tough As much as we want to stay positive and for everything to be rosy, let's face it, every ultra is going to bring us to a point where things kind of suck. Courtney says acknowledging how you’re feeling is important. “Sometimes you just need to wallow for a second,” she says. “If the negativity keeps knocking I’ll acknowledge how awful I’m feeling and how much it stinks to be puking in the bushes for hours, and acknowledging it lets me move past it to the next thing.” Have a mantra To help you flip the script, have your own mantra that you repeat to yourself again and again when the going gets tough. Courtney’s mantra is “I’m fine” and “everything is fine”. Try to keep it short and inspiring to you. “Put that track on repeat!” Remember the evidence Another tactic Courtney deploys when the going is tough, is to remind herself of the evidence she has that proves she is capable of enduring the hardship. “I’ll remember back to when I’ve been in the same boat and got through it; remembering the evidence, that this is something you have been through before, helps you to keep pushing and know it will be fine.” Daydream Sometimes Courtney takes a different tact; rather than engaging directly with what she is experiencing on an ultra, for example reframing negative thoughts into positive ones, instead she allows herself to check out. “Sometimes I try to totally disconnect from the race and think about my family and friends, different things going on in life, or about sitting on a beach with a tray of nachos,” she says. “It varies from being fully present and giving all my attention to the running motion, and to getting out of it and just daydreaming for some miles.” All images by: © Martina Valmassoi Read more articles Courtney Dauwalter and her pursuit of mind power Adapting to life in a time of pandemic 4 indoor workout tips for endurance athletes How to adapt your training when the unexpected strikes 7 indoor training exercises to stay in shape

© Philipp Reiter Known for her speed, mental grit, sense of humour and funky running shorts, Courtney Dauwalter is always exploring her limits through ultra running. The Suunto ambassador lives in Golden, Colorado, and trains in the Rocky Mountains. Time in the Rockies pays off; the former science teacher won the Ultra Trail Mont Blanc in 2019, placing 21st overall. The previous year she won the 100 mile Western States Endurance Run, finishing in 17h 27m – the second fastest time by a woman in the race’s history. The same year she stunned the ultra running community by coming second overall in the Big Backyard’s Ultra race, in which the goal is to run as many 6.7 km (4.167 mile) loops as possible. Courtney completed 67 laps and set the woman’s course record with a mind boggling 449.30 km (279.268 miles). Raised in Hopkins, Minnesota, Courtney has loved running since her track and cross-country days in high school. She also excelled in Nordic skiing, winning the Minnesota state championships four times in her teens. While her family wasn’t into hiking or camping, Courtney says they spent most of their time active outside. “I run because I love it,” she says. “The challenge of it, just moving yourself by foot for all those miles, all those hours.”   © Philipp Reiter   She is fascinated by the power of the mind to help her overcome adversity and achieve incredible things. Gaining a reputation in the racing scene for being a man beater, Courtney has an innate understanding of how to use her mind to work with all the highs, lows and pain of ultra running. “I find a lot of comfort in being uncomfortable,” she says. “I call it the pain cave. The thing I’m seeking in these ultras is to reach the entrance of the pain cave so I get to go in. It’s not a place I’m scared to enter. It’s a place I’m excited to find the entrance to.” While she has an intuitive approach to training, Courtney uses her Suunto 9 to track all her runs. “If during the week I’m feeling really tired I can look at my workouts and analyze what is going on,” she says. “Then I can see, for example, ‘Oh, it makes sense you’re exhausted because look how much climbing you’ve packed into the last five days’. It also tells me when my last rest day was. It’s a great way to look back and then reflect and figure out what things I need to adjust a little bit.” Follow Courtney on her awesome ultra adventures via her Instagram feed.    Lead images: © Philipp Reiter   Read more articles Ultra champ Courtney Dauwalter’s 6 tips for mental strength 12 must-read running articles to boost performance How to adapt your training when the unexpected strikes